As of late, everyone appears rather bullish on bitcoin considering the asset just rose past $18,500 – the highest it’s been in roughly three years. While everyone is positive that the currency is likely to keep on shooting up, many people have different reasons for believing this, and for BlackRock’s CIO of fixed income Rick Rieder, the reason is millennials.
Millennials Are Why Bitcoin Is Doing so Well
Millennials are members of a younger generation that allegedly spent their teen years, or the early portion of their adult years trapped in the Great Recession. They witnessed banks taking advantage of the systems they were given and of the customers that came in for assistance. They saw credit card companies and other financial institutions bailed out, while individuals lost their homes, their jobs and their saving in one ugly sweep.
They saw politicians repeatedly lie about where the state of the world was going, and ultimately, it can be said that they lost faith not only in the dollar, but in how traditional banks do business. To them, the financial system as we know it is the enemy of the people.
Therefore, it makes sense that they would be attracted to bitcoin and other digital assets. Bitcoin initially came about during the time of the Great Recession. It’s whitepaper came out during 2008 and it was ready for early trading the following year. Bitcoin was designed to be a tool that could potentially free one from the confines of a standard bank. They could use the asset to get the products and services they needed without having to worry about things such as their credit and job backgrounds.
Bitcoin was non-discriminatory and let virtually anyone with an online or digital wallet begin engaging in trades. Millennials were likely attracted to this element after everything they had seen and all the failures that had taken place during the previous few years.
It seems that attitude is continuing to progress forward, as most millennials still seem thunderstruck by crypto according to Rieder. He says that digital currencies are “here to stay” thanks largely to younger generations and their open-mindedness towards what they do and what they bring to the financial table. He also commented that bitcoin could potentially replace gold in the coming future, and that most younger users are intrigued by the idea of bitcoin payments.
In an interview, he states:
[Bitcoin] is so much for functional than passing a bar of gold around.
Knocking Gold Aside
Other companies to feel this way include JPMorgan, who in a recent note, commented that bitcoin has everything it needs to potentially compete head-to-head with gold. It explained:
Even a modest crowding out of gold as an ‘alternative’ currency over the longest term would imply doubling or tripling of the bitcoin price.
