People also prefer BTC to gold in India
2 min readOne of the markets where there is the strongest competition between BTC and gold is certainly India, because Indians are historically large investors in gold. In fact, it is estimated that Indian households own more than 25,000 tonnes of gold, although BTC has also been making its way into the country recently.
The Indians prefer BTC to gold
According to Chainalysis, in the last year alone, investment in cryptocurrencies in the country has increased from about $ 200 million to almost $ 40 billion, an increase of 20,000% in just one year. This incredible increase was despite numerous efforts by the government and the country’s central bank to discourage, if not completely ban, investments in cryptocurrencies.
So, on the one hand, there are traditional institutions that try to persuade citizens not to invest in BTC, and perhaps they also try to protect the gold market in some way, while on the other, there are more and more citizens who prefer to invest in BTC and cryptocurrencies.
It is estimated that there are now more than 15 million cryptocurrency investors in the country, which is less than 23 million in the US but more than 2.3 million in the UK. However, with a population of over 1.3 billion, the percentage of Indians active in crypto markets is still very low, below 1%. Of these 15 million, most appear to be millennials, especially Indians under the age of 35, who are less attracted to gold than previous generations.
It is worth noting that the size of the Indian crypto market is still small compared to the gold market, but the growth trend is clear. On the other hand, the fact that many Indian families already own gold suggests that they might be interested in experimenting with new investment opportunities, especially if they are convinced that they could yield significantly higher returns.
In fact, gold is not a speculative investment that can bring a high return on investment in the short term, while many investors believe that cryptocurrencies are possible in the short term and without much effort. So in a fundamentally rising market, such as the cryptocurrency market in 2021, the illusion of easy profits could have made many Indians jump on the bandwagon.
However, there is another factor that makes some Indians prefer BTC to gold, namely ease of purchase. The process of buying cryptocurrencies is much simpler and more accessible to all, and it is easy to make small purchases of cryptocurrencies online without verification.
