Women, along with Millennials and GenX-ers more generally, are playing a big part in Australia’s adoption of crypto, according to data supplied to Coinhead by exchanges eToro and Independent Reserve.

And yep, this is timely information to note on International Women’s (Crypto) Day.

 

A surge in Aussie female crypto ownership

According to the latest Retail Investor Beat (RIB) survey* conducted by investment and trading platform eToro, the three aforementioned demographs are big factors in the crypto-adoption surge in this country.

Overall, reports eToro, the amount of Australian retail investors owning crypto has risen from 29% to 45% quarter-on-quarter.

That’s a pretty impressive stat considering crypto, in 2022 had a bit of a shocker at various stages due to various three or four-letter factors including LUNA, Kwon, 3AC, FTX, SBF, SEC, Fed and FUD.

Some of the key takeaways from the eToro report include:

• A rising adoption trend in Australia has largely been driven by retail investors aged 35-44, looking to buy the dip in Q4 amid the FTX turmoil.

• There has been a significant rise in Australian female ownership of crypto – jumping from 23% in Q3 to 41% by the end of Q4 2022.

• Crypto (61%) is among the top three assets held by young Australian female investors (18-34 years old), who are also invested in home equities (71%) and cash (82%).

• For those Australians who invest in crypto, the main reason for doing so is the opportunity to make high returns (34%), though many also believe in the power of blockchain (30%) and think crypto is a transformative asset class (28%).

• For the majority (55%) of Australians who still avoid crypto, the biggest factor in this decision is perceived risk (55%), whilst a lack of robust regulation – something which is on the cards for likely later this year or early 2024 – is also a common explanation for not investing in the asset class (33%).

*eToro’s latest quarterly RIB survey took in information form 10,000 global respondents across 13 countries, including 1,000 from Australian retail investors.

 

The 2022 bear market has been ‘not altogether negative’

Robert Francis, Managing Director at eToro Australia, said about the report’s findings: “2022 was largely a bear market for crypto, which was not altogether a negative thing – after all, the top 100 crypto assets are still up more than 2,000 per cent on average since 2016.

“As a result, many people opted to actually embrace this period as an opportunity to begin investing while many sought-after cryptoassets were relatively cheap.

“In particular, we saw a significant uptake in female crypto ownership as well as older investors,” Francis continued. “With firmer crypto regulation on the horizon both here and abroad – not to mention widespread confidence in stronger markets ahead for 2023 – I imagine we will see even greater crypto adoption amongst investor demographics who have previously been reluctant to embrace the asset class.”

 

Further insights on female Aussie crypto trends

eToro gave us a few extra info bombs relating to the Aussie side of its report, as follows:

• For over half (57%) of the female respondents who own crypto assets, crypto makes up 50% or more of their investment portfolio.

• The top three reasons female investors invest (or plan to invest) in cryptocurrency is: they believe it’s a transformative asset class with a strong future (32%); the opportunity to generate high investment returns (29%); they don’t want to miss out on the next crypto bull market (26%) and they believe in the power of blockchain tech (26%).

• Female investors are much more inclined to believe it is a transformative asset class with a strong future (32%) vs (25%) for male investors.

 

Independent Reserve is also noticing the trend

As well as communicating with eToro (and BTC Markets’ Caroline Bowler earlier today) about Australian female crypto-investing trends, we reached out to Independent Reserve (IR) boss Adrian Przelozny to get his exchange’s related stats. 

And it may come as no surprise then to learn that IR has also been noticing an uptick in female crypto investors. 

“Female participation in crypto is definitely increasing as the asset class becomes more widely accepted,” noted Przelozny, who spoke with Coinhead recently in depth about the current state of the market and where he sees it heading broadly. 

“Every year we conduct a demographically representative survey of 1000+ Australians to compile the Independent Reserve Cryptocurrency Index (IRCI) report,” said the exchange boss.”

 You can view the latest one in full here, but in terms of that specific trend, it’s shifted upwards on the IR exchange as follows: 

• 2022: 21.4% of Australian females invested in crypto

• 2021: 20%

• 2020: 10.3%

• 2019: 11.5%

Independent Reserve is also uniquely licensed to operate in the Singaporean market, and Przelozny also notes a similar trend based on his exchange’s data and crypto ownership from Singaporean women:

• 2023: 37% of Singaporean women have invested in crypto

• 2022: 30%

• 2021: 26%

 

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