Around 5,80,000 Dutch people are cryptocurrency holders either bitcoin or ethereum. The number of investors has tripled in half a year. It has gone incredibly hard in recent months. While in August 2017, there were only 135,000 households who owned cryptocurrencies, there are now 490,000. In addition, some households count multiple crypto investors. The total number of investors is therefore 580,000, according to research by Kantar TNS.
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Buy, like your friends
"I can not remember that I ever experienced such a thing," says researcher Reg van Steen. "That a market more than triples in a few months."
It seems that many Dutch people saw that the price rose rapidly and that coins were being bought around the top of the market. "They also call that band-wagon effect", says Van Steen.
"Your friends and neighbors are doing it, so you are also going to step in. Social media also means that cryptocurrency is faster than you saw in the rise of traditional investing."
Start cautiously
The Dutch seem to want to start quietly. 76% invested less than 1000 euros in cryptocurrencies. And less than 1 % opted for an entry amount that was higher than 10,000 euros. There is therefore only a fraction of the total savings and investments of households in cryptocurrency: only 0.1 percent. The stake is increasing, Van Steen notes. Less bitcoin, more ether Investors also seem to shift their attention. Bitcoin is still very much present in the portfolios, but more and more coins are added, such as ether, litecoin and bitcoin cash.
An average investor now has 2 different coins in his portfolio, in August there were 1.4. The interest in cryptocard guilder declined slightly: 3 percent of Dutch investors have those in its wallet, compared with 4 percent in August last year. Some investors like (even more) risk: 11 percent participated in an ICO, a cryptocurrency corridor.
Coin investor is much younger
The crypto-investor turns out to be a completely different type than the man who invests in Shell or Philips listed companies, says Van Steen.
"The average traditional investor is often an older man, higher educated and wealthy, you can not see that with cryptomount investors, who are younger, even more highly educated, and there are more women in. You could almost say that it is a democratization of investing. "