on Mar 08, 2021)BENGALURU: More women are actively engaging with cryptocurrency as an asset class than ever before. Take Nirali Solani who heads a Mumbai-based family office. Until last March, she had shunned away from crypto as it was volatile. And then she started reading whitepapers on it.
“I read them because I’m not from a tech background. I started with small investments, but my faith in the asset went up and now most of my personal savings go into Bitcoin and Ethereum. I’m a long term investor. I look at it as a store of value, it is a great inflation hedge over a longer period,” she says. Solani initially allocated 3-4 per cent of her portfolio to Bitcoin and Ethereum. Over time, the exposure has grown to 15-20 per cent. “When I started investing, the average purchase price was $8,000-10,000, and today, it’s 4x higher,” she says.
On India’s cryptocurrency exchange ZebPay, the average ticket size of women investors increased to Rs 5.7 lakh in the September-February period, compared to Rs 3 lakh in the March-August timeframe last year. February saw two key developments – Tesla buying Bitcoins worth $1.5 billion, and Bitcoin surpassing the $50,000 mark. The growing user base is a reflection of how the cryptocurrency ecosystem is shaping up.
About 15 per cent of ZebPay investors are women, a monthly active user base of 4 lakh investors. “Our target is to get the women investor base to 25 per cent within a year,” says Vikram Rangala, CMO of ZebPay. The most women investors are from Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Delhi. The top five coins that they invest in are Bitcoin, Tron, Ripple, Ethereum, and Matic.
Women are a lot more careful than men when investing. Rangala says they want to assess the risk and develop a risk management strategy. “Our women investors are mid-career professionals. Our data shows that women currently invest 1 per cent-5 per cent of their savings in crypto,” he says. About 46 per cent of their women investors are in the age group of 26-35, and 45 per cent are above 35.
A survey by US digital currency investor Grayscale in 2020 showed that 47 per cent of all female investors would consider a Bitcoin investment product (up slightly from 43 per cent in 2019), and 66 per cent of women interested in Bitcoin would be more open to investing if they could see evidence of a strong performance track record.
Cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX cofounder Sumit Gupta said 15 per cent of its total investors were women in 2020, but this rose to 20 per cent this year. “60 per cent of women investing in crypto are in the age group of 18-34 years. And 30 per cent of women investors come from Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai. Many investors invest fractional amounts in Bitcoin, in multiples of Rs 500, 1,000 and 10,000, instead of buying a whole coin,” he says. The average ticket size is Rs 8,000-10,000.
CoinDCX data shows Bitcoin is the most preferred cryptocurrency asset, with almost 15 per cent of women investors trading in BTC pairs till date this year. In cryptocurrency, trading pairs refer to an asset pair being traded, one cryptocurrency for another. Ashish Singhal, founder & CEO at cryptocurrency exchange CoinSwitch, says they have 5 lakh women investors, mostly in the 25-35 age bracket, and with an average ticket size of Rs 16,000,. “The highest amount invested by a woman investor is Rs 50 lakh and the total transactions by women to date have been Rs 450-500 crore,” he says.
