Binance took it to Twitter recently to ask the community when was it when they bought their first cryptocurrency. The poll saw serious activity and, as it turns out, most of the people who bought did so in 2017.
According to a recent Twitter poll conducted by Binance, 58 percent of those who took part bought their first cryptocurrency during the tumultuous 2017.
When did you buy your first #Cryptocurrency? (Be honest 😆)
— Binance (@binance) June 9, 2019
It goes without saying that the results deserve attention because almost 39,000 people have taken part so far. 20 percent of them had bought their first crypto in 2016. Going through the comments, it also turns out that quite a lot of people actually bought before that as well.
Now, it’s important to note that for those who bought during 2017, it matters a lot when exactly when they did so. The year began fairly quietly with steady price increases across the board but without major spikes until the last quarter when we saw the prices skyrocket and most of the coins reached their all-time high values.
It’s also worth mentioning that a serious amount of people had bought their crypto before 2017 – in 2016. This is interesting because, apparently, there was more retail investor interest back in 2016 than during this year, when only 5 percent of the participants admitted they purchased crypto.
As it’s always the case, everything has its good and bad sides. From a positive perspective, it’s a well-known fact that a lot of the retail interest in the space back in 2017 came because of the skyrocketing prices.
A huge amount of retail investors only bought in because they knew the prices were surging and they didn’t want to miss out. This is the so-called FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Naturally, interest of the kind is good for the short term, but this sort of speculative buying can never bring long-term positives.
2018 was the exact opposite of the bull run in 2017 and, as seen on the results, the retail interest faded substantially. In 2018, only 17 percent of the participants bought cryptocurrency. This is seen by many as a good sign because the speculative buyers had been shaken out, leaving smart money in the market.
While it’s definitely a positive that uninformed retail investors have been shaken out from the market, when looking at the long-term, this also has its drawbacks.
If cryptocurrencies are to grow, they need to continue seeing increasing interest, not because of speculation, but because of real-world applications, usability, and utility, in general. 2019, however, despite being fairly good for the cryptocurrency market, has seen an alarmingly low rate of new investors. Only 5 percent of the people admitted that they bought their first crypto in 2019.
Fresh money is always needed, especially in a market that is as nascent as the cryptocurrency one.
On the other hand, though, we can see that institutional investors are already starting to warm up. One of the world’s largest asset managers, Fidelity, has already confirmed that they are in the final testing phase of their cryptocurrency trading platform. The Bitcoin futures trading platform of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Bakkt, has also said that they expect to introduce user acceptance testing this month.