More than eight out of ten (84%) professional investors believe digital assets will become mainstream, with just 3% saying this will not happen and 13% claiming it is too early to say.
This is according to new research from London-based Nickel Digital Asset Management (Nickel), Europe’s largest regulated and award-winning digital assets hedge fund manager founded by senior traders and investment professionals formerly from major financial institutions including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.
The survey of 200 institutional investors and wealth managers from across seven countries who collectively manage around $329 billion in assets, reveals 81% believe that digital assets – in particular DeFi protocols – are emerging as an important disruptive technology for traditional finance. Some 56% strongly agree with this view.
When asked for their main overarching view on blockchain and digital asset technology, 41% of professional investors said it is scalable and, on the way, to achieving mainstream adoption, while 21% said it bears strong transformative potential for the global economy.
By contrast just 30% believe digital assets will remain a niche technology although there is a compelling business case for it and only 9% believe there is little practical value in the sector and the technology will ‘die out’.
In terms of the role professional investors expect digital assets to play in the future, the main one is diversification of investment portfolios – the view of 53% of those surveyed. This is followed by 51% who said tokenization of traditional assets, 49% who cited access to DeFi platforms, and 38% who highlighted its ability to provide a new value transfer mechanism.
Anatoly Crachilov, CEO and Founding Partner of Nickel Digital, clarified: “To a great extent, digital assets have already achieved ’escape velocity’ – they have achieved a multi-trillion Dollar market cap, and there is gradual regulatory acceptance of them in key countries. This is clearly reflected in our research findings which show that the overwhelming majority of professional investors believe digital assets will be mainstream.”
