New research from London-based Nickel Digital Asset Management (Nickel), Europe’s largest regulated and award-winning digital assets hedge fund manager, reveals institutional investors and wealth managers have dramatically increased their allocation to cryptocurrencies and digital assets over the past 12 months.
The survey of professional investors from the US, UK, Germany, France, and the UAE, who collectively have around $108.4 billion in assets under management, reveals 94% increased their allocation to crypto and digital assets over the past 12 months, with one in four (25%) increasing it by over 100%. Just over nine out of ten (94%) plan to invest more in crypto and digital assets over the next year, with 29% expecting to at least double their allocation.
Nickel Digital says most professional investors have tiny levels of exposure to crypto and digital assets as they are ‘testing’ the market in terms of how it works, its infrastructure and liquidity.
When asked where the institutional investors and wealth managers had sourced their funds from to increase their allocation to crypto and digital assets over the past year, 20% said at least half had come from their holdings in real estate. This is followed by 17% who said 50% or more had been taken from selling other crypto and digital asset investments, and the same percentage said this about selling commodity holdings. This is followed by 15% who said half of their new crypto/digital investments had come from selling private equity holdings. However, only 12% of investors said that this level of investment had been made by selling equity holdings, and the corresponding figure for fixed income investments was 13%.
