Article by Phil
Latest research shows that Millennials are the most likely to embrace cryptocurrency investments, with up to 40% reportedly wanting crypto investments to form part of their pension holdings! Clearly, the FCA’s messages about the risks involved haven’t cut through to that age group. Remember so called “Millennials” are in the 25 to 40 age group.
This drops to only 10% for the so called “Gen X”, those aged between 41 and 56. Not surprising as they are nearer to retirement. Gen X investors favoured holding gold and buy to let property in their pension portfolios.
Those concerned about crypto investments are most concerned about the potential for fraud, followed by the fact that crypto has no established track record, that the risks are not fully understood and that the value might be being hyped by social media rather than being real.
All good reasons to be cautious.
Despite this research it seems that cryptocurrency investments continue to encroach into the mainstream, with broker TP ICAP creating a new trading platform for institutional investors. This despite the FCA warnings about risk. The trading platform will provide some assets security, in that they will be held by a reputable trader. But that doesn’t address the volatility aspect.
This continues to be very worrying. The FCA recently “banned” Binnacle Markets Limited from “selling cryptocurrency in the UK because it wasn’t regulated, or able to abide by money laundering regulations. However, what wasn’t reported was the fact that the FCA was powerless to prevent binnacle.com from selling in the UK, because it isn’t a UK registered or domiciled company, in fact its registered in the Cayman Islands. Worse than that its Chief Executive says it has no Head Quarters and is based nowhere! What more evidence do you want that crypto is risky when Binnacle is effectively saying it doesn’t exist!
Be warned (again).
But perhaps the Banks are coming to the rescue. It seems that a number of UK Banks are refusing to allow customers to transfer money top Binnacle or use their debit or credit cards to pay Binnacle. The idea is to starve them of cash. This seems like a strategy that might have an impact. But of course, some customers are up in arms about not being able to use their own money to spend on what they want to spend it on.
