The generational gap in crypto investments ‘has never been more marked’,

“Younger investors just feel like the traditional playbook isn’t working,” said Gareth Kay, vice president of brand at Coinbase, about Gen Z and Millennials investing in crypto. “They’ve said, let’s go and build a different one, because technology allows us to do that.” 

Gen Z and Millennials, or younger investors, as the report calls them, say that 25% of their portfolio is in non-traditional assets, including crypto, derivatives, and NFTs. That is three times more than older investors, or Gen X and Baby Boomers, who say that just 8% of their portfolio is tied to such assets. 

Coinbase released the report at a time when crypto is becoming increasingly available to mainstream investors of all ages. In late October, ETFs in cryptocurrencies like Solana, Litecoin, and Hedera launched on brokerages. The Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) had the best ETF launch of the year of any asset class. And in early December, Vanguard—long a vocal critic of crypto—began listing crypto ETFs on its platform. 

Coinbase conducted the report by surveying 4,350 U.S. adults with investment accounts—a sample group that likely skews more affluent than the broader American public, but whose perspective does provide insight into shifting investment habits. This is the fifth such report that the crypto exchange has released, the first of which came out in June 2023. 

The report pinpointed how little trust younger generations have in conventional ways of creating wealth. 73% of Gen Z and Millennial investors believe it is harder for their generation to build wealth by traditional means, as opposed to 57% of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. Kay said this disparity is “staggering…and has never been more marked.” Younger investors see crypto as a way to catch up. 80% of Gen Z and Millennial investors say that crypto gives people in their generation more financial opportunities than they would otherwise have. 

The report also found that Gen Zers and Millennials are finding investment advice from non-traditional sources. Their preferred sources for investment advice are friends and family, as well as YouTube. Older investors, on the other hand, prefer consulting a financial planner about these decisions. 

Kay said that the report gives Coinbase an opportunity to cater its products to a younger consumer-base. “We can build an offering that is suited much more towards a more modern investing experience,” he said. “It’s exciting for the company to think about what we can do to meet the needs of this new generation.”