An official survey by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has confirmed Canada’s technology city has a deep interest in the technology behind cryptocurrency, than its financial outcomes.
The financial trading regulatory body in Ontario had asked over 2500 Ontarians to provide input on their interpretation of the popular virtual currencies such as bitcoin.
Survey finds technology interest
True to the fact that Canadians are one of the most prolific technology adopters in the world, the survey found many had bought these not for speculative or profit-making purposes, but purely for the technology which makes cryptocurrencies.
The survey found that nearly 5 percent of the city’s population had an asset in the virtual currency world. The city has over 500,000 people and nearly 5percent of this population wanted to explore blockchain technology at a deeper level, beyond the currency and its value.
It was also found that 42% of such invested people wanted a return on the assets they owned. There were a handful, nearly one of every four such investors who wanted to use these cryptocurrencies purely for payment purposes, but in an anonymous way.
The rest of the 12% were interested in this new format of currency as they did not subscribe to the existing infrastructure and format of currencies. They believed banks role in financial dealings have to be subverted and blockchain technologies use of decentralization are highly recommended.
Retail investments interest
The survey also found that the money used for investment in cryptocurrencies were retail in their characteristic. On an average 38 percent of these owners bought in cryptocurrencies for USD of $1,000, while 25% invested over $1,000 to $5,000. Very few investors could invest high amounts in such currencies.
Of these only 5 percent of they were looking at brackets which was higher than $10,000 to $20,000. Above $20,000 bracket had only 4 percent of those owning cryptocurrencies in Ontario.
The method used for such investments included credit cards and personal savings as well. the survey also found that 70% of them did not understand much of the technology and few could actually recover from their investments. Another 27 % of them, had still to owe them money.
The other spectrum of investments included ‘speculations.’ The survey found that many were aware of a handful of coins such as Bitcoin. The use of the term bitcoin cash was common among only one in four participants. The other coins used were Litecoin or Ether as well. Here 13 percent to 11 percent were invested in the smaller coins, the survey found.
Bitcoin was the most popular and comfortable coin to invest in for these investors. The interest basically for these investors has been technologies such as ICOs. Their interest was with these instruments was more about their trading value than if the ICO was regulated.
The survey also discovered that such investors become interested in ICOs because of the hype created through social media. Thus, the survey identified the investor patterns in Ontario in great detail.
