South Africans are scared of missing the next Bitcoin boom
Cryptocurrency is gaining traction again, thanks in part to a rapid price rise of late.
Earlier this year, cryptocurrency expert Simon Dingle also told MyBroadband that Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market was far from dead.
He said that seasoned investors know to buy when the prices are low to profit from the effects of public hype.
Cryptocurrency and the blockchain technology it is based on has also drawn serious consideration from major businesses and investors across the world.
To find out more about the local interest in cryptocurrency, and its expected performance, we spoke to Luno Africa general manager Marius Reitz.
Fear of missing out
South Africans proved during the wild days of ICOs, scams, and skyrocketing token prices that we have a keen interest in cryptocurrency – particularly the potential profits from investing.
Reitz told MyBroadband that South Africans are still buying Bitcoin and Ethereum on Luno’s platform, with new people constantly being on-boarded.
“Even during the flat or declining market of the past 6-12 months, thousands of people bought cryptocurrency, for the first time, every day,” he said.
“We are picking up some of this interest through high engagement rates on the Luno platform, where people constantly checking the price were not yet buying.”
He said consumers do not want to miss the next big investment opportunity for cryptocurrency, and that there has been “much pent-up interest and capital from both consumers and institutional investors who want to make sure they don’t miss the next wave”.
Innovation and advancements
Reitz added that cryptocurrency is still perceived as a store of value or investment, but this is only the first phase of mainstream adoption.
“In this first phase people also use Bitcoin for transactions, but it’s a very tiny percentage,” he said. “What you need is a critical mass of users for the transactional use cases to make sense.”
“The asset layer is important to build the infrastructure for what we call the transaction layer, which we will see next.”
He said that we should see cryptocurrencies build on their technology this year and scale with better speed, cost, and security.
“We believe the scaling trend will continue and slowly help start unlocking more value to the overall network and industry.”
Reitz said it is important to take a long-term view of the market, and Luno believes this means a major transition in the way the world thinks about and uses money in the next 5-10 years.
Price fluctuations
When it comes to the price of cryptocurrency, certain South Africans have already missed out on the opportunity to make considerable profits.
While digital tokens have historically been volatile, cryptocurrencies showed steady growth in the last few months.
This phenomenon seems to have occurred across the entire cryptocurrency market, from major tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum to smaller coins like TRON and Cardano.
In fact, if you invested in any of the top 10 cryptocurrencies on the market on 1 January 2019, you could have easily doubled your money by now.
It is important to note that the value of these coins is still driven by a healthy amount of speculation, though.
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