Nirav Vyas, who works in a small accounting firm, now spends hours glued to a screen, closely tracking prices of bitcoin, ethereum, solana, cardano and dogecoin.
“I have nearly doubled my crypto investments in the last two months. It is the best advice any friend ever offered to me,” says the 28-year-old resident of Ahmedabad.
About 1,200 km away, Yashika has started designing non-fungible tokens or NFTs in Chandigarh, after she managed big returns from crypto trading. “I started investing in cryptocurrencies soon after I learnt about NFTs,” says the 25-year-old, who uses only one name. “I started my journey as an NFT artist and along the way, I started learning and researching more and more about cryptocurrencies and what could make a good investment.”
Yashika has invested in Binance, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Doge and has been actively trading crypto assets since March of this year. Vyas and Yashika are the faces behind the cryptocurrency boom in India. They’re polite, they’re sharp, and they’re don’t live in big cities. Youngsters and investors from tier-2 and tier-3 cities have flocked to cryptocurrency platforms in the last few months of the pandemic. Crypto exchanges are now seeing more growth in smaller cities than in metropolitan areas, according to reports
Following the trend, cryptocurrency exchanges have also actively targeted a new generation of professionals residing in smaller towns with new programs and fresh products. Exchanges say the average age of investors has decreased while their investments have increased. Most of its users are under 35 years of age and the company saw a growth in user subscriptions from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India in 2021.
“In fact, tier-2 and tier-3 cities have driven almost 55 per cent of total user sign-ups on WazirX in 2021, thereby overtaking tier-1 cities, which demonstrated a sign-up growth of 2,375 per cent,” said Nischal Shetty, CEO at WazirX.
Other exchanges also saw similar trends, with most of the new crypto investors coming from cities like Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Patna, Bhopal, Vadodara, and Kolkata. According to data from BuyUcoin, a cryptocurrency exchange, Bhopal experienced the highest jump: by 100 percent – this year with new investors. Data from major exchanges shows that more than 90 percent of new investors are professionals. IT, MBAs, engineers, and start-up owners – industry trackers say new age investors are changing not only the way they invest, but how they invest and what assets they invest in .
These investors are not just sticking to bitcoins but are also buying and trading other cryptocurrencies, which seems to be a hedging strategy.
Most of the new age investors are also taking a cautious call before they follow the herd.
“Some coins are purely speculative, so the returns depend on market trends. Whereas blockchain-based projects are majorly dependent upon usability,” said Priya Ratnam, a 34-year-old resident of Hyderabad with an MBA degree, who started investing in crypto assets in April this year.
“Average investment in 2021 was almost 30 per cent higher than 2020. Positive news around regulation across the globe and overall healthy bull cycles in assets like bitcoin, ethereum, dogecoin, cardano and solana contributed to this fact,” said Shivam Thakral, CEO at BuyUcoin.
The exchanges are now introducing schemes similar to systematic investment plans (SIPs) to attract more nouveau investors.
“We have just launched a bundled crypto SIP product, which will lower the entry barrier for investors. We have also introduced features like lending, stacking, margin-trading as part of our long-term growth strategy,” said Thakral.
“We plan to launch five investment index products on our website by the end of the month. An investor can follow these indexes for investment advice,” added Hitesh Malviya, founder, itsblockchain.com.
Many other exchanges are now betting big on NFTs, which the new investors have started showing interest in.
“Over $108,000 worth of NFTs have been sold on our NFT Marketplace till now,” said Shetty.
Among the main reasons fuelling the growth of cryptocurrencies in smaller cities are social media and aggressive marketing by influencers, experts say.
The spurt in the new age investors seems to be colluding with not just the Covid-19 pandemic, where most professionals are working from home, but even positive overtures from the Indian government.
“People have all options open to buy cryptos on our platforms,” said Sumit Gupta, co-founder & CEO at CoinDCX, a cryptocurrency exchange. “With regard to the investors’ convenience, at CoinDCX, all remittance operations are fully functional through our three payment methods — a third-party based automated route, an INR deposit via our current banking partner and through UPI transactions. Additionally, we continue to explore other payment channels to enhance convenience in line with our efforts in providing the best customer service.”
