Recently I saw a comment on a Reddit thread about crypto with the following hyper bullish statement:
"I would be willing to bet that by the end of the year, 25-30% of millennials and younger will own some [crypto]."I wish.
Now I didn't respond like a jerk with the following kiloton of text to a rather off the cuff remark, I save that for my "dedicated readers." Not to be a Debbie downer, but if 25% of millennials owned crypto, Ethereum would already be trading above $2K, and people other than nerds on the internet, my libertarian homies, and my poor family and friends that are sick of hearing me REEEEEE would know what Monero.
I'm picking this apart because it's a sentiment that a lot of people seem to agree with, even if not to this extreme. People think Millennials alone will be able to drive crypto to the moon, and it just isn't true. Which I lay out in some shitty facts below:
A shitty fact:
About 45% of millennialist have $0 in a savings account (Sauce)
Assuming that a millennial with no savings account also has no crypto doesn’t sound like a stretch at all to me. Which only leaves 55% of millennials left to own crypto by EOY according to random Redditer's theory.
So according to the theory, of that 55% with savings, about half will own crypto. No way. Since according to the Saint Louis Fed (fuck the fed, but still good data) 60% of millennials don’t own stocks.
ZERO STOCKS. 60% of millennials. That's no 401K (which I think only 20% of American's even have access to, but I'm too lazy to fact check that.
I believe this, since I'm only here because my friends eyes glaze over every time I try to talk the markets to them.
And then finally, according to forbes and blockchain capital in the end of 2017 (you know, right in the middle of the spike) only 4% of millennials even owned or had ever owned bitcoin. Also, some valuable info from that link, is that on average, millennials still prefer traditional asset types.
So why a long post about some guy's comment on reddit? Because it speaks to the overly bullish sentiment in the crypto communities. Do not get it twisted, I am long crypto, and have invested a fair amount in a mining rig. BUT I am realistic about not thinking this will turn me into a millionaire by EOY, If you got into the space in the last year, unless you are a savant at trading, you will not be made a millionaire out of crypto. We aren't going to see crypto snap into mainstream adoption in a year, or even 5, but it will come. We need to remember we are in an echo-chamber of people who spend a ton of time on the internet, which is fine, but just because we are super amped up about crypto doesn’t mean most people know anything valuable about crypto at all, young or old.
People need to be deprogrammed off of the dollar- and that will likely take generations, or a collapse- before we see mainstream adoption and regular use of crypto. Or the price of crypto needs to level off and start remaining a lot more consistent relative to other asset types like gold and fiat.
Then there's ease of use, public education, and infrastructure improvements that need to be made before we could support full scale adoption.
If you want to support my writings about markets and money, hit me up on any of the following:
- Monero (XMR): 4HxdgcMRgecPFZEWhxW7xb9QEZ4ipQxbkUyeRkpv2Zq2Hnu8EBfo9Jo6TSNieQSVe45me4ZXjuq5kKBeQSmwWKY784crgFHVrcY6VGpcsG
- Ethereum (ETH): 0x5Bca9216e0fD5763236ab6E67E876DeF9eB405C4