A new demographic analysis of people trading in cryptocurrencies has brought up some intriguing results such as that only very few are female, most have little to no previous experience, and many are students or working in sales and marketing roles.
Understanding Trading Demographics
Market analysts for the social investing network and multi-asset brokerage, Etoro, have conducted a research of their vast user base to help the company better understand exactly who are bitcoin and cryptocurrency investors. Looking at data from March 2017 to February 2018, they surveyed the public profiles of those investing in cryptocurrencies using their systems, and extracted demographic insights from age to gender to job sector.
One interesting point emerging from the data is that an absolute majority of traders are new in the business with regards to having any investing experience. A whopping 81.96% are at the Novice level, 10.66% are defined as Intermediate level, and just 7.38% qualify as having an Advanced level of experience in the market.
Looking at the breakdown by occupation, it’s not surprising to see people working in the computer and IT services strongly represented at 15.05%, as well as the finance industry at 8.48%. Less expected is the high share of people working at sales and marketing involved in cryptocurrency trading at 14.49%. Additionally, about 30% of cryptocurrency traders are currently out of the job market, with 13.85% being students, 2.06% retired, and 14.74% just having no job.
Crypto Gender Imbalance
One demographic issue that keeps coming up with relation to cryptocurrency developers is the lack of female representation, and the same statistics seem to be true for traders. In fact, the data shows that less than a tenth of crypto traders are women, with just 8.5% market share compared with men’s 91.5%. While there could be other factors at play, bitcoin is located at the intersection of technology and finance, both fields that suffer from a severe gender imbalance, so the results are not all that surprising in that context.
Interestingly, the research also revealed that there are differences between the cryptocurrencies men and women prefer to trade, other than BTC which has 0% gender difference. It appears that Ripple’s XRP skews strongly into the female side, while ETC, BCH and LTC are firmly in male territory. In a note to investors, Senior Market Analyst at Etoro Mati Greenspan, summarized it all with a clear “Women Love ripple.”
Earlier this year, Etoro was among seven leading cryptocurrency companies operating in the UK that formed an independent trade body tasked with developing self-regulatory standards for the cryptocurrency industry and engaging policymakers. The other founding members of Crypto UK are Coinbase, Cex.io, Blockex, Commerceblock, Coinshares, and Cryptocompare.
How cloud the bitcoin community attract more female users? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.