Bitcoin and Crypto Seen as a Better Investment than Real Estate
With potential profits to be made in cryptocurrencies, attitudes are shifting. Traditional investments and finance are taking a backseat amongst many who consider bitcoin a better investment. This is especially the case in a recent study done by a real estate developer in the UK who found that 27% of male millennials are more interested in bitcoin than property.
pixabay, pixabay
Get Living London, the company that did the study, says this is partly due to the youth demographics that saw bitcoin as more attractive. When something triples in value in a few months, or even goes up by 10 times in value in a short period of time, that is sure to attract the attention of many. Property has a low rate of appreciation when compared to the high potential appreciation that bitcoin has already demonstrated.
"For Millennials the soaring performance of Bitcoin – followed by an almost equally profound correction – holds more intrigue than the prospect of steady growth in house prices."
It's not just real estate investments that are being overshadowed by bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, as other assets and investments are in disfavor among millennials. Blockchain Capital took a survey in November 2017 in the United States, showing a preference for bitcoin overs tocks and government bonds among 18 to 34-year-olds. They also found a 27% preference to own $1000 worth of bitcoin instead of stocks among both male and female millennials. Male millennials liked it the most, showing a 38% preference of bitcoin over stocks.
It seems that the millennials prefer cryptocurrencies because they have more awareness of this developing technology compared to other age brackets. The study showed that while 42% of millennials had heard of bitcoin, only 15% of adults over the age of 65 were aware of its existence.
The US-based The Student Loan Report released this past March, asked "have you ever used student loan money to invest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?" This showed that more than a fifth (21.2%) of university students surveyed had taken their financial aid funds to invest in some of the top cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrency is so attractive that students are risking their education and futures on something that could pay off, or it could leave them with more debt. If someone bought bitcoin at a high point thinking it would go higher, right now they might be kicking themselves as they lost a large part of their investment. With more than 1.4 million university students who took on private loans to finance their education, many of them are going to be in greater debt in addition to interest rates that are set to rise.
This could backfire in the long term for future students who seek to get financial aid. With greater risks being imposed by this student behavior, lenders might start to impose greater restraint on who they lend to.
A similar move has already been done by various banks who found out that credit cards were being used to buy and invest in bitcoin and other cryptos which is something they didn't approve of. In February 2018, they banned the purchase of cryptocurrency through a credit card. Before the ban, 20% of bitcoin investors were using credit cards to make their purchases.
Many people would have never heard of cryptocurrency if they hadn't found their way to Steem/Steemit.com. Some people have likely seen the great potential in Steem and other cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, and have chosen to switch over from traditional investments and assets.
I wonder though, how many people have decided to do as some students have, and use money they don't have to buy into Steem or other cryptos? How many people have used money from loans to try to capitalize on the cryptocurrency mania? I understand using a credit card to buy crypto as a convenient electronic means, and then paying off the credit card debt with your bank account money. But there are probably some people that didn't have the money in their bank account, yet chose to get into debt and come out ahead by investing in cryptocurrency.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
References:
- More Than a Quarter of U.K. Male Millennials Prefer Bitcoin to Real Estate: Survey
- MILLENNIAL LIVING IN 2018
- Students Increasingly Using Financial Aid for Purchasing Cryptocurrencies
If you appreciate and value the content, please consider: Upvoting, Sharing or Reblogging below.
me for more content to come!
My goal is to share knowledge, truth and moral understanding in order to help change the world for the better. If you appreciate and value what I do, please consider supporting me as a Steem Witness by voting for me at the bottom of the Witness page.
I also think that another reason millenials do not choose real estate is because, they dont have enough money for the deposit and incomes arent enough to get a high value property. The case is even more true in London where average household income is 35k pa and average home price 550k plus. May be for a few people preference of bitcoin isnt a choice.
I have taken debt to invest in crypto but i see it at leverage at a cheap cost. And i have only taken enough leverage that is sustainable for me. A level of debt that i can pay off. However i have heard cases where people invested part of their mortgage debt, sold off assets to invest in crypto for a quick and big profit. That kind of short term thinking may have burnt them during this crash.
Ah yes, you can buy bitcoin easier than property, no doubt! Yeah, some people don't make wise decisions when trying to get in on the FOMO :/
The dramatic rise of crypto only tells half of this story. Millenials also learned from the my generation's (Gen X) mistake of trusting traditional "investments" like real estate. I went into debt to buy my first home info 2005. It soon dropped over 60% of its value. 13 years later, even after major upgrades, it is still about 20% below our 2005 price. This story is not unusual. You bet I'm interested in crypto. This dip is nothing.
Housing bubbles are crazy, and there is one now :/
There is one very scary aspect of the whole field of investment in our current society. That is the fact that "investments" are becoming less and less tangible. I think the concept of real "wealth" has been lost and replaced with the accumulation of fiat and other currencies.
At the end of the day the only things that truly have value are are those which are intrinsic. Can you feed, cloth or shelter yourself with crypto? Of course you can (maybe) buy these things with currency, assuming they are accepted by the party doing the selling... but do we not realize that this makes the value of these currencies only speculative? Think about it, how can something be worth thousands of dollars yet not accepted for most items or services?
Your "investments" are only worth what others are willing to pay for them, not what you think they are worth, not what the market tells you they are worth. You may think you own a $500K home, well guess what - in a shit market where no one is buying, your home is worth a big fat zero.
Yes, it's a speculative value as a means of exchange. Real things matter more. Gold is real, but it's not accepted for most services either ;)
"have you ever used student loan money to invest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?" I wish I had the foresight to have done that. I took my student loan in 2009 and that would have been a great time to get into bitcoin.
This doesn't surprise me. Real estate has always been risky plus the threshold one has to cross for buying property is much higher because he or she has to gamble with a lot more money on a single investment. With crypto you can buy and sell a little at a time so it seems like it would be much easier to weather any potential losses.
LOL, 2009, yes, great time :P
Due to the uncertainty and fluctuation of Bitcoin's price becomes an interesting point for investors. Although Bitcoin prices may drop sharply, prices can also soar despite the trend every year Bitcoin has tended to be positive. No one can know for sure whether Bitcoin's performance will be more positive every year, or even dropped down someday.
Bitcoin follows this high risk high return investment principle. The greater the risk or uncertainty of an asset, the likelihood of return is also greater. This is why, Bitcoin is seen as an investment instrument different from other investment assets, so investors buy a little bit of Bitcoin as a protector of wealth and wealth addition
Literally speaking i was browsing YouTube videos and i dived into an video where Title was related to the, how Bitcoin changed the life or something like that , and i saw that son brought a gift into the envelope and when mother opens the envelope she started crying and hugged son and then that envelope passed to Father and Father hugged son and cried like baby, in that envelope there was an letter which states that loan amount of their house is completely paid off, and that means they were paying the loan of house from many years and it was tough phase for them but when their son paid off all the loan amount their burden was washed away and they cried like happy birds.
And this magic happens due to Investment in Bitcoin and the magical Investment was $30 and those were initial days, who knows what life can show us and now i want to ask those speculators, come on tell me about this magic, your Centralisation and banks just make us slaves of Debt Trap but Bitcoin already changed many lives and will change in future.
So, it's time to showcase faith and every individual can do that because here we hold our ownership and not the banks and decentralisation is truly gift and the Bitcoin is real guider of future and never judge due to bad phases, the fighter will rise like Roaring Tiger and our intuition can hear that Roaring and we are ready for the journey of dust or the moon.
Thanks for sharing this post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
Yes, some lucky ppl got into BTC when it was worth pennies. Lucky them :)
Yes, sometimes luck play it's role magically. 🙂
Housing prices are pathetic around the world; there is no way that this cycle will continue. We are trying to get into buying a piece of real estate and it’s untouchable if you are smart with money. It’s just another one of the massive bubbles that are ready to burst completely.
I’m glad these people in the UK are investing in crypto, it shows that our generation is doing away with the poor methods of the older generation in our own way; the stock market is a sham, real estate is impossible in so many parts of the world. Why not take a bit of those student loans and do something good with them? The cost of schooling is a joke, might as well take a better gamble and invest.
LOL, go to school to get a loan, don't go to class, then invest in crypto :P
Yup! We can make our own gambles. Not sure if the UK is the same but you can’t get rid of student loans in bankruptcy so might as well risk some
Funny! They didn’t study students’ awareness of buying gold or silver!!
This tells me something!
Thanks for your good work!
Cheers.
Gold? Silver? What's that? :P
Gold and silver were money in the old days, but they are more like eggs to me as they can hatch into something bigger. One should never puts all the eggs in one basket!
Cheers.
The elderly owns the real estate. Young people are trying to do something to put them self in to the game. I would like to see a post about generation gap from you :)
I would prefer real estate though as Indian Government is not in favour of cryptos and making regulations over it and i am a property fan
I think even if our government is not in favour it will be legalized in few years as they have not banned it
So investing 20% of saving in it will be good decision @bhargavivkothari