21
st May 2021 3:00 pm
The first time I heard the word “Bitcoin” was in 2016, after I asked a classmate from my Chinese course the slightly intrusive question “What do you do for a living?”.
He replied he was buying and selling “Bitcoins”, an answer I found puzzling, as I had absolutely no idea about cryptocurrencies. After further explanation, I understood it was a digital currency, the value of which is constantly fluctuating, but you cannot use it to purchase goods or services.
I have always been a sceptical person, and so quite naturally deemed Bitcoin as highly suspicious. It really sounded like a scam to me; it could not be that easy to earn money.
Advised investors holding cryptocurrency assets on the rise
By Jean-Baptiste Andrieux 13
Boring Money’s 2021 Advice Report reveals that 9% of advised investors hold cryptocurrency assets.
Of the estimated 3.6 million advised investors in the UK today, it means that circa 325,000 own cryptocurrency assets.
Boring Money considers this finding as one of the most surprising fact of its 2021 Advice Report.
Ownership of cryptocurrency has increased over the last year, but Boring Money believes that Covid-19 is not the factor.
The price increases of Bitcoin and other cryptoassets and the normalisation of cryptocurrency all underpin this new trend.
Advised investors hold cryptoassets outside of the advice relationship in the majority of cases. Cryptoassets are sometimes compared to investing in buy-to-let.
5
th May 2021 12:01 am
Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) has welcomed thousands of young DIY investors to its platform in recent months, but the firm has warned these inexperienced customers could be vulnerable in some cases.
The firm’s head of conduct and client service Rob Branch made the observation at the Association of British Insurer’s conference on financial wellbeing yesterday.
He said around 200,000 new accounts were opened on the Hargreaves Lansdown platform over the past 12 months and other rival platforms had witnessed similar trends in the UK.
HL reports it has seen the average age of new clients decrease markedly since 2012 yet Branch warned some might experience difficulty.
23
rd April 2021 9:12 am
Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Friday, 23 April, 2021. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
Covid-19 shakes up advice recruitment
Will the advice profession build back better post-pandemic? The answer is yes according to recruitment consultancy BWD.
It has shared its latest hiring index exclusively with us that shows business is back to normal yet it has also changed.
The two big themes are regional recruitment is up at the expense of London and remote hiring could be here to stay.
The findings in the index give us the first glimpse of how the worst global health crisis in more than a century has shaken up the sector.
Millennial investors unsure how to protect against losses
By Tom Higgins 23
rd April 2021 8:11 am
Young investors routinely opt for high-risk assets, but a large majority are unsure how to adapt their strategies to protect against losses in the current financial climate.
The newly published research from Charles Schwab UK found that Millennial & Gen Z investors are more likely to hold cryptocurrencies (51%) than equities (25%) and see speculative assets as a good investment.
Charles Schwab UK managing director Richard Flynn said: “Digital platforms and the sheer volume of financial information available today has made it much easier for young investors to trade and cryptocurrencies seem to be the flavour of the month.”