Cryptocurrency is known, by and large, as the preserve of the younger generation, and a new study by reputed investment firm Charles Schwab has reaffirmed this theory. The company’s SDBA Indicators Report, an “industry-leading benchmark on retirement plan participant investment activity”, reports on the investment activity of three groups – Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials – and the most recent report shows a taste for crypto by Millennials only.
Millennials Bringing Home the Bitcoin
The report showed that 1.73% of Millennials (born 1981-1996) had shares in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, more than Microsoft, Netflix, and Walt Disney, while Generation X (born 1965-1980) and Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) had no representation whatsoever with cryptocurrencies.
Tech firms came out on top in the survey, with Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Tesla performing well across all age groups, and the sight of Bitcoin among such luminaries as this is a pleasing development. Its placement in the Millennial shopping basket alone also highlights the generational divide, and backs up what we have seen in terms of opinion in the political and private sphere, with old timers such as Bill Gates, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, and U.S. Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) all making public their negative perceptions of Bitcoin.
Move, Boomer, Get Out the Way!
This is in contrast to the likes of entrepreneurs such as the Winklevoss twins, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, all of whom are from the younger end of the spectrum and are advocates of the potential benefits of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
News of the generational divide isn’t anything groundbreaking – an eToro survey from February found that millennials were waiting for more secure ways to enter crypto over any other group, while investment bank and asset management firm Piper Jaffray conducted a survey in December 2018 that found a high percentage of teenagers showed a preference for receiving cryptocurrencies over cash for Christmas. With the Baby Boomers slowly making way for Millennials and Generation Z in the corridors of power and the world’s boardrooms, expect these patterns to continue for decades to come.
