In October, Bitcoin surpassed Tether and Litecoin as the most popular cryptocurrency in Russia.
According to a new poll, over half of retail investors in Russia believe that cryptocurrencies like as Bitcoin (BTC) are a hedging asset connected with consistent income. Investing.com questioned 1,000 Russian retail investors to find out which forms of alternative investments were most popular.
According to a poll of 1,000 Russian retail investors conducted by Investing.com, up to 46% of respondents saw cryptocurrencies as a possible defensive asset that would allow them to hedge against financial risks during a financial crisis.
Crypto was preferred by Russian retail investors over real estate, with just 37% of respondents engaging in alternative assets considering real estate to be a viable investment vehicle.
According to Anastasia Kosheleva, the head of Investing.com’s Russian branch, real estate has historically been the top hedging asset in Russia. She stated that cryptocurrencies have surpassed other traditional assets such as foreign exchange currencies and equities as the most popular investment trend in 2021.
Bitcoin appears to be the most popular alternative investment among Russians, despite the fact that there are several cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin was the most popular cryptocurrency in Russia in October, according to a survey by the big data platform Brand Analytics, outperforming currencies like Tether (USDT) and Litecoin (LTC) in terms of social media mentions.
Cryptocurrencies have been increasingly popular among Russian investors in recent years, with a poll last year finding that 77 percent of Russian investors prefer Bitcoin to gold. The Bank of Russia released a financial stability report last week, highlighting the country’s expanding position in the $2.8 trillion global cryptocurrency industry.
Russia ranks third in the world in terms of national BTC hash rate, according to the central bank, and is one of the most active users of the Binance cryptocurrency market. Global investors have been increasingly looking at cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as a hedge against financial risk in the face of rising inflation and the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic.
According to Damian Courvalin, Goldman Sachs’ director of energy research, investors are increasingly utilizing crypto in addition to traditional assets like gold to hedge against inflation. “Just as we say that silver is the poor man’s gold,” he stated in mid-November, “gold is maybe becoming the poor man’s crypto.”
Vimal Gor, the head of alternative duration strategies at Pendal Group, previously stated that cryptocurrencies should be included in new alternative defensive portfolios since government bonds have lost value as a risk buffer.