Bitcoin is a Young Man’s Game

The average bitcoin investor really is young, rich and male — 71% of Bitcoin owners are men.

Highly volatile crypto trading attracts high-risk players who have money. Namely rich young men.

Interestingly, a recent joint survey conducted by Survey Monkey and the Global Blockchain Business Council found owners of Bitcoin are overwhelmingly young men.

According to the survey, 71% of Bitcoin owners are men, and more than half are Millennials and GenZ between 18 and 34.

Like Wall Street and the stock market, crypto is a game for male software engineers, male investors and young men willing to risk it all for a quick buck. For ICO scams and Bitcoin price volatility that’s actually been one of the drivers of crypto’s momentum.

The true fans and profiteers of Bitcoin then are Millennial men earning more than $75,000 a year in urban areas, according to a recent survey of more than 1,000 Americans. We really should not be so surprised!

Early adopters of crypto tend to be men, and that creates a characteristic vibe of crypto projects where young men in their twenties are playing high-stake games with other people’s money.

From Bitcoin evangelists to crypto profiteers, men seem to be particularly motivated to make money off of the hype and the ‘business opportunity’ of it all, even when blockchain was supposed to usher in a new era of trust on the internet.

From internet stocks in the late 1990s or marijuana stocks today, crypto is the new investor drug of choice. And it’s getting into America’s wallets.

If you were lucky enough to have bought into Bitcoin in 2013, you could seriously have made a lot of money. Crypto ain’t no tulip mania however, as digital assets have had a pretty big year, with notable momentum occurring especially with the rise of crypto funds that could partly replace ICOs in the near future.

Should we be troubled by a male-dominated crypto world? I mean let’s not be foolish, men dominate venture capital, tech innovation, software engineering, AI, executive management and board rooms around the world. There’s no doubt blockchain and crypto may be even more of a boys club.

If a single Bitcoin is now worth over $6,000 US dollars, it certainly isn’t for everyone. But what about other kinds of crypto assets and currencies? The era of the crypto asset is upon us. According to CryptoDaily, nearly 30% of Baby Boomers surveyed indicated that they would consider investing in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies for their retirement. We must figure for GenX and Millennials and GenZ, this figure will only go up as regulation, user experience and accessibility mature in the space.

It’s taken the mainstream years to start to know what blockchain and Bitcoin are. A growing number of Americans — 58% — are familiar with Bitcoin, only a faction of North Americans even own it or any cryptocurrency for that matter. So why do men take the lead? And why do governments and banks not trust crypto? So it’s not just counter-culture, it’s decentralization advocates:

• The majority — 58 percent— are young, between the ages of 18 and 34 years old.
• An overwhelming 71 percent of them are male.
• 24 percent also said they trust Bitcoin more than the U.S. government.
• Coin Dance, which tracks statistics on the bitcoin community, found 97 percent of engagement was from men.
• The young male is nearly synonymous with all crypto investment and activity.

Boys Don’t Cry Crypto — They Swear By It

According to many analysts men are more likely to display DIY investment habits and be over-confident in their knowledge of investing. This may mean they are more willing to risk some of their assets in high-risk crypto than women who tend to more readily seek advisers and trust traditional authorities.

• Young men appear to identify more with the ideological framework of crypto being an alternative to fiat and Wall Street (an old man’s game).
• Young men tend to be more likely to know what blockchain, decentralization, Ethereum and Bitcoin are.

Even social networks with high-volume information on crypto such as Reddit, Telegram, Medium and Discord tend to be more young-male oriented.

It turns out over half of Bitcoin owners are either GenZ or Millennials.

• 58% are Millennials between 18–34 years old
• If given $1000, they’re roughly 3 times more likely to invest it in Bitcoin than put it into their savings account

I think this also speaks to the desperation of young men today, and not just their incredible intelligence with regards to the future of digital assets, cryptocurrencies and crypto assets in general. Young women are more likely to be well educated, have made safe bets in career and have managed personal finance such as student debts in a well-balanced manner.

• Men who work in technology and have higher salaries are even more likely to own Bitcoin.
• Millennial men earning more than $75,000 a year in urban areas are the stereotypical owners of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin and crypto is a young man’s game. Men aren’t just more risk-tolerant than women, they are less risk-averse. Whether this is neurobiological or socialized, probably both, there’s no doubt this has impacted the evolution of Bitcoin and crypto as a construct that has pushed digital assets into the mainstream in the 2013 to 2018 period and will continue to do so.

Young men want to be a success and like success stories and whatever you say about Crypto or the burst of its price bubble, Bitcoin is an incredible success story. It’s up, after all, a staggering 3,000% in the past five years! The legend of crypto grows, and those young men will continue to fuel the dream.