Croats and Cryptocurrencies: Most Invest for Savings and Easy Earnings

According to the MasterIndex survey on the ‘new normal’, 20 percent of respondents have experience investing in cryptocurrencies, and 18 percent plan to invest in the future. The most common reasons for such investments are saving for retirement, quick and easy earnings, and entertainment.

As stated in the announcement, the barriers to such investments for Croats are primarily a lack of information about cryptocurrencies, the high risk of such investments, and a lack of funds. These are the results of a survey conducted for Mastercard by the Improve agency in April this year, involving a sample of 1,010 banking service users in Croatia aged 18 to 55.

In addition to the aforementioned advantages of such investments, as many as 32 percent of respondents invest in cryptocurrencies for portfolio diversification, and currently, men with higher personal incomes are more likely to engage in such financial ventures.

According to the announcement, digital currencies are least interesting to respondents from Slavonia and those with low personal income, while they are most appealing to respondents in the Istria and Primorje regions. As many as 14 percent of respondents do not believe that such investments are fairly regulated, and many find other forms of investment more attractive.

The number of users increased by 178 percent

During the survey, more than half of the respondents, or 52 percent of those investing in cryptocurrencies, said that the value of their cryptocurrencies had increased, while 41 percent said it had decreased compared to the value at the time of purchase.

– In less than 15 years, cryptocurrency has grown from a mostly speculative investment vehicle to a global financial phenomenon. According to a recent report on cryptocurrencies, the number of cryptocurrency users increased by 178 percent in 2021, amounting to 295 million users worldwide, and this number is expected to reach one billion by the end of 2022, said Cosmin Vladimirescu, Mastercard’s director for Croatia and Romania.

In the next 12 months, 77 percent of respondents plan to buy more cryptocurrencies they already own, while 74 percent plan to buy other types of cryptocurrencies, and 74 percent plan to buy other types of cryptocurrencies.

Interesting data also shows that 6 percent of cryptocurrency owners do not track the value of their digital assets, 37 percent of respondents plan to sell part of their currencies, while 13 percent plan to sell everything.