Last year, before a pandemic changed the world, surveys showed millennials and adult-age Generation respondents steadily developing a curiosity in cryptocurrencies if not buying into the bigger idea that the technology will transform money
The results also revealed that, in the U.S. and U.K. at least, this generational pairing still holds much more faith in traditional investments such as stocks and bonds. The data suggest a cohort of crypto dabblers, not outright converts
What will take this all-important group of digital natives to the next level? How might they see crypto and blockchain technology as diehard believers do, as the driver of an entirely new paradigm for money, investing and wealth accumulation
Consider the pandemic’s global economic fallout: the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs in lost work hours, a mountain of deferred bankruptcies, government debt levels above or projected to exceed 100% of GDP. Just as the Great Depression shaped economic decision making for decades, the shock of COVID-19 will be felt for a very long time.
The future decisions that matter will be those of Gen Zers and millennials, who together account for more than 60% of the global population. I see their decisions leading them to bitcoin.
I have two Gen Z daughters. One is entering her second year of college just as she ended her first: homebound, learning virtually. The other is starting her critical junior year of high school in the same situation. It’s hard not to feel they are being denied some key rites of passage in their journey into adulthood.
Yet, they are among the luckiest. A Pew Research survey early in the crisis found that half of adult-age Gen Zers (ages 18 to 23) said they or someone else in their household had lost a job or suffered a pay cut because of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, many millennials the youngest of whom are 24, are facing life-defining decisions about marriage children, home-buying, career paths and long-term investment strategies in a uncertain economic environment. COVID-19 has barged into this defining period of their lives. It seems inevitable it will reset their expectations of the future