JPMorgan strategists say retail investors have outperformed institutional investors in Bitcoin investment

Charles Abuede

JP Morgan Chase’s research strategists have revealed that retail investors have purchased more Bitcoins than institutional traders. They said the increased influence of retail traders comes as a result of stimulus payouts and the current craze around the NFT.

The research strategists, in a report, posted that over 187,000 Bitcoin have been bought by retail investors using Square and PayPal this quarter while the institutional investors have purchased 173,000 volume of the digital currency which indicates that retail investors have purchased way more than their institutional counterparts.

As of October 2020, when the digital currency initiated its bull, it was principally engineered by the institutional traders. But the table has reshuffled for the retail traders to increase their trading activity levels in the Bitcoin market. These investors are now beginning to wield more power as shown during Reddit’s WallStreetBets community in January. Meanwhile, the price of the cryptocurrency has appreciated massively after massive investments from top firms such as Tesla, MicroStrategy and MassMutual.

According to the report issued by the U.S investment bank, the massive price increase also catches the attention of the average everyday trader as retail has started gaining higher portions of Bitcoin since the beginning of the first quarter of the year.

It further revealed some several factors influencing the increased influence from the retail segment. Ed Moya, a senior market analyst at Oanda in the U.S stated that: “the sudden rise of retail interest is a result of stimulus payouts, the current NFT craze, and social media influence. He reiterated that the stimulus payout has given some traders extra cash to add to their investment, and many of them chose Bitcoin. More recently, the Reddit-fueled meme stock trend has also contributed to the massive investment by retail traders.”

Also, Brian Vendig, president of JPMorgan Wealth Advisors, in his view, opined that “the fear of missing out on high-yielding investment has driven retail investments. As institutional investors are busy grabbing any piece of Bitcoin they can get, retail investors do not want to be left out.”

Meanwhile, at the start of the year, the push in cryptocurrency has been influenced majorly by institutional investors in the market. However, on a recent run of bulls in the market, retail traders have taken into doing extremely well by growing massively in their influence for the price of the coins over the past few weeks. Though, the currency still trades at around $56,000 after it fell from its all-time high of $62,000 per coin.