On a recent flight I was flicking through the January 2018 issue if Easyjet's in-flight magazine, Traveller, and struck by the sheer amount of adverts for investing in cryptocurrency or companies otherwise servicing the blockchain industry:
Yes, all from one issue of one magazine.
Audience
Here is an infographic from Easyjet with some data regarding their audience:
Personally speaking, as a well travelled (mostly through budget travel) 33 year old, the EasyJet Traveller mag itself is one of the more interesting in-flight magazines. I feel due to the fact I am at least partially in its target audience of the younger, jet-setter, hip crowd.
These demographics do not reflect the usual average investor profile, and more evidence for this is that the number of cryptocurrency adverts in the magazine vastly outnumbered the adverts for other, classic investing vehicles, such as bonds. This all reinforces the view that cryptocurrencies are a seismic shift in the sphere of investment, opening up opportunities for wealth generation that a younger tech-savvy crowd are open to, moreso than their Bitcoin-mistrusting elders.
Type of Advert
The majority of adverts are for exchanges or trading platforms, though there is also one ICO advertised, one advert for derivatives and, curiously, an advert for a site which hasn't even launched yet 'Token.com'.
Focus on 'Cryptocurrency'
Up until now, Bitcoin has really been the flag bearer for all things Cryptocurrency, with alternative terms like 'cryptocurrency', 'blockchain' or 'Ethereum' having significantly less reach. This is beginning to shift, and other currencies, like Ethereum or Ripple, are beginning to attract attention of their own. This is reflected in the ad share above, with only one of these 8 adverts focusing on the Bitcoin name, and the others concentrating on the wider cryptocurrency field.
Thus, 2018 will not be so much the year Bitcoin goes mainstream (if anything, it may have already happened and reached its peak) - but rather, 2018 will be the year cryptocurrency as a whole, and the alternative coins and tokens which populate it, achieves mass recognition.
We sign off by borrowing the words of token.com: Crypto is coming. Don't get left behind.