Australia’s bitcoin users are exactly who you’d expect
Young white males who use the Internet.
Who comes to mind when you think of the average bitcoin user? If you said young white males on the Eastern Seaboard you're on the money. 86% of bitcoin users are males while only 10% are women (and 4% preferred not to say), and 59% are under the age of 34 with a quarter being under the age of 24. The survey also finds bitcoin investors to be predominantly white.
The results come from the largest ever survey on Australia's bitcoin users, carried out by bitcoin.com.au. However, some of the less expected results might be more about the where, why and how much, rather than the who.
Where and why
The majority of Australia's bitcoin (BTC) users (63%) said they specifically got into it as an investment strategy rather than to actually make transactions. And around Australia, the bigger and more expensive cities have an exceedingly disproportionate portion of bitcoin users.
- 29% are in New South Wales and 3% are in the ACT
- 27% are in Victoria
- 24% are in Queensland
By contrast, only 1% of Australia's bitcoin owners are in Tasmania, 2% are in the NT, 6% are in SA and 8% are in WA. While the survey didn't differentiate between metro and regional areas, it's safe to say that almost all of the traders are in the cities.
If you squint, it looks exactly as though young Australians in the places with the least affordable property are turning to more volatile investments for bigger risk and reward. Coincidence? Probably.
What and how much?
Plenty of them are also diversifying their investments, with a large portion of bitcoin users also holding other currencies.
The most popular by far is Ethereum (17% of Australian bitcoin users also hold ETH), followed by Litecoin (9%), Monero (6%), Dash (5%), Dogecoin (5%) and some of the many other alternatives (8%).
There's also a lot of diversity in users' choice of wallet.
- 49% use a mobile wallet for access on the go. This most popular option might be a good idea for such a volatile asset.
- 35% use a desktop wallet and prefer to access their coins from their home computer.
- 30% use a web wallet, for versatile multi-platform access through a third party system.
- 15% use cold storage, such as putting their keys on a USB or external hard drive. If you don't want to touch it, then cold storage might be the place to put it.
According to bitcoin, at the time of the survey, one BTC was worth about AU$4,700. This could have been around mid August, or more likely mid to late September. Now at the time of writing one bitcoin is worth around $9,000 $9,100 $9,150 $9,115.
How much is it now?
The latest jumps might be coming ahead of the mid November "hard fork", as investors jump aboard looking to multiply their efforts. Whether or not it will pay off is anyone's guess.
