Crypto has brought in a new generation of investors who identify at a personal level with what they invest in, and they’re not necessarily calling for the regulator as soon as they face problems, according to a European blockchain and technology investor.
“If you look at the history of financial products […] interestingly, the consumer called for the regulator, and the regulator replied, and that is how we arrived at the regulatory framework we have today,” said Christian Angermayer, founder of Apeiron Investment Group, during an online panel discussion hosted by the Financial Times on Wednesday.
Now, however, things are a bit different, according to Angermayer, a London-based investor who oversees around USD 3.5bn of assets under management.
“There is a new generation of investors, especially in crypto, who actually doesn’t want that sort of protection,” the investor said, adding that people in crypto are “way more independent” and that they “know the risks.”
He further explained that this more hesitant approach to regulations partly has to do with ideology and the libertarian ideas that were central to the creation of bitcoin (BTC), although the more important factor now, according to Angermayer, is a new mindset among younger investors.
“There is a generational shift, which I’m actually very happy about,” he said, explaining that younger people want to identify with whatever they invest in – “whatever is their thing.”
“Hopefully, the pendulum swings a little bit back after decades where the consumer – especially when things went wrong – pushed the responsibility to the regulator. There is a new generation that takes the responsibility back,” Angermayer said.
FCA is pushing consumers offshore
On the same note, Teana Baker-Taylor, Chief Policy Officer at the Chamber of Digital Commerce, an American advocacy group for the digital asset industry, criticized how regulators operate today, saying some of them effectively push consumers offshore.
As an example, Baker-Taylor used the UK, where she said there are two conflicting official views on how the crypto industry should be handled.
On the one hand, the government has said it wants to make the UK “a crypto hub,” but the regulator – the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – is “only approving 30 out of 200 plus applications for cryptoasset licenses,” Baker-Taylor said.
“If you didn’t get through, you can go offshore and continue to sell into the UK, so as a UK consumer, I can still go to an offshore platform and do the same crypto trading activities that I was doing before,” she said, before asking:
“So, who does that protect? The regulator – who doesn’t want to make a mistake – or the consumer?”
Institutions still embracing crypto
Meanwhile, Kevin Kang, a founding principal of the crypto hedge fund BKCoin Capital, said in the same panel discussion that crypto as an asset class has come a long way in the past four years.
As an example, Kang said that when his fund launched 4 years ago, not even he was convinced that digital assets would be around in the next 5 to 10 years. Today, however, many institutional investors are showing great interest, he said.
“When we first launched back in 2018, traditional allocators didn’t want to touch this asset class with a 10-foot pole. So, a lot of our clientele was more family offices and some funds of funds with higher risk appetite,” the investor said, adding that his fund is now talking to both pension funds and endowments as potential investors.
“The whole infrastructure looks very similar to traditional asset classes such as equities or fixed income,” and that has made the big institutions more comfortable with investing, Kang concluded.
Source: Cryptonews
