Millennials, Gen Z want NFTs in investment portfolios: poll

By George Prior 

More than half of millennials and nearly three-quarters of Generation Z are considering including NFTs into their investment portfolios, reveals a new survey.

The findings from a global poll carried out by deVere Group, one of the world’s leading financial advisory, asset management and fintech organisations, show that 52% of those born between 1980 and 1996, and 74% of those born between 1997 and 2012, would welcome the inclusion of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) into their portfolio mix.

More than 600 of the organisation’s clients under the age of 42 were surveyed across Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, Australia and Latin America.

An NFT is a digital asset, such as an image, audio clip or GIF, whose ownership is recorded on a tamper-proof digital ledger known as a blockchain.

This emerging asset class took off in a considerable way last year with a digital-only piece of art selling for $69m. Since then, an increasing number of celebrities, and artists, as well as fashion, music, tech and sports brands have been creating, buying and selling NFTs.

According to deVere CEO and founder Nigel Green: “The findings of this poll underscore that digital natives – those who have grown-up immersed in a fully accessible digital life – understand that unique, highly portable and transferable digital assets have an intrinsic value and that this is a trend that will inevitably grow moving forward.

“They know that how we live, study, work, interact and enjoy downtime is increasingly digitally orientated.  As such, it’s natural to want to take digital representations of fashion brands, music, sport and art into the digital space – and now we can with NFTs.”

He continues: “Clearly, this groundswell of digital engagement is creating new business models across many sectors.

“Sensibly, younger generations – who instinctively better understand it – appreciate that, therefore, it’s going to shape the future of investing.

“They’re keen to have a stakeholding in this new financial ecosystem by including NFTs in their portfolios.

“We expect this could be a sound strategy. Not only because NFTs are likely to be an intrinsic component of the global digital architecture of the future, but also because this hot new asset class can act as a major diversifier in investment portfolios.”

This last reason, says Nigel Green, is arguably the most important for the majority of investors.

“Proper diversification of a portfolio across asset class, sector, region, and currency is the best way an investor can best position themselves to mitigate risks and to seize opportunities when they are presented.

“NFTs have a very low correlation to other assets, such as stocks and bonds, and can, therefore, lower your portfolio’s overall risk and volatility levels.”

As NFTs become increasingly mainstream by those wanting to seriously build wealth for the long-term, earlier this month, deVere Group launched dV Gems, a non-fungible token (NFT) platform that aims to give investors access to an emerging asset class and streamline digital ownership.

At the time of the launch, the CEO noted: “deVere has always been ahead of the trend in financial services. Our new NFT platform is another first.

“Uniquely positioned to help investors see value and opportunity in a digital financial era, dV Gems will provide immediate access to the decade’s hottest emerging asset class – an asset class that will become a standard feature of investment portfolios within a few years.”

Of the findings of the recent poll of clients, Nigel Green concludes: “As the token economy and decentralised technologies develop at pace, the huge investment potential between millennials, Gen Z and NFTs looks ever-more undeniable.

“No longer content to consider only traditional portfolio components, such as stocks and bonds, younger generations are set to own a raft of different digital assets too. And this makes sense in today’s world.”

About:

deVere Group is one of the world’s largest independent advisors of specialist global financial solutions to international, local mass affluent, and high-net-worth clients.  It has a network of more than 70 offices across the world, over 80,000 clients and $12bn under advisement.