There’s a running meme that the cryptocurrency community is filled to the brim with millennials and generation Z — people born after 1981.
According to legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, this should be true, recently advising young people to buy Bitcoin.
Buy Bitcoin, Young People: Legendary Investor
Billionaire Investor Tim Draper — who bought thousands of BTC over five years ago and was also an early investor in Baidu, SpaceX, Tesla, AngelList, Coinbase, Robinhood, Twitch, and many other companies — recently sat down with Fox Business to talk Bitcoin.
Unsurprisingly, he expressed bullish sentiment about the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, saying that he thinks that Bitcoin will be key for the financial futures of millennials:
You look at bitcoin and you say ‘Hey, this is great because it’s not my father’s Oldsmobile.’ Things aren’t quite working for [millennials.] With the current salaries, they can’t quite pay it off. It’s a really difficult time, and they’ve become renters rather than buyers because they have to
He added that with the rise of new fees in life in credit card fees and with regulations, regular savings strategies will not work, mandating alternative investments.
Why Does Bitcoin Make Sense for Millennials?
Other than what Draper said, what makes Bitcoin and digital assets as a whole important for millennials to get involved in, especially from an investment point of view?
According to Raoul Pal, a former Goldman Sachs executive and CEO of Real Vision, it has to do with potential returns. In a podcast with prominent Bitcoin commentator Stephan Livera, Pal said that a majority of leading asset classes are not viable for investment at the moment.
Equities, he explained, are roughly at all-time highs, and are pushing extreme valuations for relatively little profit and potential.
Here is @RaoulGMI on Baby Boomers, Millennials and Bitcoin. Baby Boomers were given a gift!
Full ep and transcript available here:https://t.co/zPQso3Ul34 pic.twitter.com/1auWfcAkyL
— Stephan Livera (@stephanlivera) July 30, 2019
Bonds aren’t much better, Pal opines, drawing attention to the “virtually zero yields” — and negative yields in some cases — that debt deemed safe provides.
Even real estate isn’t attractive, with the prominent investor calling this asset class “unaffordable”, adding that it makes even less sense to purchase homes because they’re trading near all-time highs. Enter Bitcoin. Pal quips:
“So what the hell does a millennial do to save for your future, when almost all assets have negative imputed returns for the next 20 years, 10 years? And the answer is well, you take the optionality of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin.”
The former Wall Street executive added that buying Bitcoin now is like buying bonds and equities in 1982, which is prior to the absurd asset inflation bubble that has inflated since then.
It’s Happening Already
It seems that some millennials are ahead of the curve, with reports revealing that there are many millennials already throwing money at Bitcoin and cryptocurrency products and that there are young people with intentions to delve into crypto.
On Dec. 4, Charles Schwab released a report regarding its clientele’s favorite investments as of the end of the third quarter of Q3.
Under the column for millennials, those born after 1981 and before 1996, it was noted that 1.84 percent of this demographic’s collective net worth was allocated to Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), making the BTC-linked investment vehicle more popular than Berkshire Hathaway, Walt Disney, Netflix, Microsoft, and Alibaba Group.
This made GBTC the fifth most popular investment among millennials, falling short of Facebook’s 3.03%, Tesla’s 3.22%, Apple’s 6.18%, and Amazon’s 7.87%.
Damn that's actually crazy. @GrayscaleInvest BTC is ahead of Berkshire Hathaway, Disney, Netflix, Microsoft and Alibaba as a % of assets held in equities at Charles Schwab. pic.twitter.com/cCGcY0nLk4
— Nathaniel Whittemore (@nlw) January 27, 2020
Sure, 1.84% isn’t “mass adoption” per se, though many in the cryptocurrency community have taken this statistic in stride. Mike Dudas, CEO of industry outlet The Block, wrote that this statistic is the “clearest sign to me that there is retail demand for people to own bitcoin via traditional investment accounts.”
Also, a 2019 survey published by industry venture fund Blockchain Capital revealed that there is an overwhelming level of interest for Bitcoin amongst the millennial population in the States.
The poll, which 2,029 American adults responded to, revealed that 59% of those aged 18-34 “strongly” or “somewhat” agree that “Bitcoin is a positive innovation in financial technology,” while 42% of the same demographic indicated that they intend to purchase BTC within the next five years.