31% of young Aussies hold crypto despite being ‘risk averse’

Despite seeing themselves as more “risk averse” than their older counterparts, nearly a third of all young Australian investors hold or have traded cryptocurrencies over the last year, a new study has found.

In an Australian investor

Notably, centralized crypto exchanges were singled out as a potential “handbrake” for the growth of crypto investment in the future.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent spate of legal action against exchange giants Coinbase and Binance in the United States stands as a clear example of challenges facing centralized exchanges.

Australia’s crypto exchanges have also faced challenges in recent months. In May, Binance Australia announced it is suspending all Australian Dollar-denominated services in June after its local payments provider was ordered to halt support for the exchange. On the same day, Australia’s second-largest bank Westpac banned customers from transacting with the exchange.

The following month, Commonwealth Bank — Australia’s largest bank — said it may decline certain payments to crypto exchanges citing a “high risk” of scams.

The biggest bank in Australia, @CommBank has just taken a giant step backward. They are blocking crypto transactions “for our safety”. pic.twitter.com/4tsddbNPg8

— Charles Edwards (@caprioleio) June 15, 2023

The research for the ASX’s report was conducted in November 2022, and based its findings on an in-depth online survey of a sample of 5,519 Australian adults.

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