Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Overbit Insights.
This week's first news is about Amazon employing a digital currency and blockchain expert, indicating a growing interest in cryptocurrency.
According to their website, Amazon's payments acceptance team is looking for a new member, as an Amazon spokesperson stated, "We believe the future will be built on new technologies that enable modern, fast, and inexpensive payments, and hope to bring that future to Amazon customers as soon as possible."
A managed blockchain solution is currently offered by Amazon Web Services but does not accept cryptocurrencies as payment for its products. In 2017, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy (then CEO of AWS) indicated that the company was not particularly interested in blockchain technology, although he later confirmed that Amazon was: "watching it carefully."
In recent years, digital currencies have gained in popularity, leading to more business use. Facebook, which has supported a digital currency initiative called Diem, is another example of a technology company warming up to cryptocurrencies. Apple announced in May that it was looking for a lead negotiator to forge agreements with alternative payment partners, citing cryptocurrencies as one area of potential growth.
Heading into our next story of the day, according to a recent University of Chicago survey, more than one in ten Americans invested in cryptocurrency in the previous year, indicating the popularity of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. According to the survey, 13 per cent of Americans purchased or traded cryptocurrency in the previous 12 months, whereas 24 per cent of Americans invested in stocks during the same period.
Investors were most likely influenced by a rise in cryptocurrency prices early this year. According to NORC, a research organization at the university that released the poll, most crypto investors (61 per cent) bought in over the last six months.
In mid-April, Coinbase, the largest digital currency exchange in the United States, went public. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has also expressed interest in cryptocurrency ventures. Tesla said in May that it would accept Bitcoin as payment for vehicle purchases, but currently, Musk has cancelled those plans due to environmental worries over Bitcoin mining.
Because of this volatility, some financial professionals have labelled cryptocurrency as a speculative asset. Financial advisors often advise cryptocurrency investors to commit only a tiny amount of their portfolio to it. According to the survey, only 11% of individuals who had not invested in cryptocurrencies said they were highly or somewhat inclined to start trading in the next 12 months.
According to the report, US cryptocurrency investors are younger and more varied in terms of gender, colour, and ethnicity than retail stock investors. A typical crypto investor is 38 years old in the US, while the average stock investor is 47 years old.
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