The majority of financial institutions currently operating in the UK believe that cryptocurrencies will see the light of mainstream adoption within the decade.
In terms of certainty, UK institutions held this opinion with the most confidence – shared by 90 per cent of respondents – whilst a still promising 81 per cent of French respondents and 82 per cent of German respondents agreed.
These were the primary findings of Bitstamp‘s Crypto Pulse survey, the intriguing contents of which were divulged this week. As the world’s longest-running crypto exchange, these results were naturally of high importance and interest to Bitstamp.
The data from more than 250 institutions in the UK comes from a Bitstamp survey of over 28,450 respondents — including 5,450 senior institutional investment strategy decision-makers and 23,000 retail investors — from 23 countries across North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.
The rise of crypto investments
When considering the data more holistically, the survey also found that around 70 per cent of institutional respondents in the UK currently place trust in crypto products, with 67 per cent of the country’s banks, fintech companies and trading platforms actively recommending investing in crypto to their clients.
On a global level, 80 per cent believe that crypto will overtake traditional investment types such as stocks, shares, and ISAs. A 70 per cent majority of institutions are already very likely to recommend crypto as an asset class, while 71 per cent of institutional respondents have ‘high trust’ in crypto as an investment.
The appetite for everyday crypto
The polling of more than 1,000 UK consumers also found that more than 40 per cent would purchase their groceries and everyday items, as well as shopping online, using cryptocurrencies.
Furthermore, just under half of UK consumers believe cryptocurrencies will overtake traditional currency in the next decade.
However, there is still a clear need for education about crypto investment in the UK, with 45 per cent of non-investors in the UK saying their top reason for not investing is that they ‘do not know enough’ about it, and only 18 per cent of respondents saying they were very knowledgeable about cryptocurrency.
“The adoption of crypto and other digital assets is advancing at an unprecedented rate,” explains Julian Sawyer, CEO of Bitstamp.
“In the last few years, cryptocurrencies have moved from the outskirts of the financial ecosystem to find themselves front and centre of mainstream investing, with many of the largest trading venues in the world now catering to both retail and institutional crypto needs.
“We’ve seen interest propel in the years since the pandemic, and crypto is now part of the wider conversation in global macro-economic matters. Our survey shows something we have advocated over a long time: talking about the survival of digital assets is firmly over — the question is now about evolution.”
