A new survey has revealed that despite Bitcoin losing over 80 percent of its value over the course of a year, tech start-ups are still putting their money in cryptocurrency.
A study of 500 startup executives shows that 40 percent of them have invested their own money into digital assets this year, although currently, only 13 percent see the emergence of Bitcoin and blockchain as a significant force for the future.
The world is becoming increasingly digital-based which is primarily the attraction in cryptocurrency as financial startups see the potential for virtual currency to eventually replace fiat and offer users ease of use and greater efficiency in the long term. Blockchain technology, on which Bitcoin is based is increasingly demonstrating its real-use cases across a range of sectors around the world, offering the potential for far more successful business models that currently exist, particularly in the area of logistics and supply chains,
Despite these potential attributes, 57 percent of those executives surveyed in this particular study felt that many blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies were more experimental than practical and many startups were simply speculating without real belief without the potential for success.
The ‘skin in the game’ theory may account for the continued levels of investment in financial technologies in which, according to this survey, larger institutional investors have little faith in what they are actually investing in.
The same survey mirrors the findings of a recent Cambridge University study which suggests that the number of individuals investing in Bitcoin of the past year has doubled reaching approximately 35 million, suggesting that most want to be “In the game rather than out of it”
The Cambridge report revealed that the numbers of verified users rose from 18 million in January 2018 to 35 million in December. Individual accounts at the time of the release of the report had risen to a record 150 million, although indications are that only 38% of these accounts are considered active according to some exchanges’ definitions and criteria.
The reports indicate that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies remain of primary interest to individuals rather than institutions. This fuels the current argument being put forward from within the industry that it will be the institutional interest which will push the fortunes of both cryptocurrency and blockchain forward in 2019. As yet, the impressive numbers of new individual players have done little to get the attention of institutional players.
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