Nomura survey: 54% of Japanese institutional investors are interested in investing in cryptocurrency

Laser Digital, the digital asset subsidiary of Japanese brokerage giant Nomura Group, recently conducted a survey on local institutional investors and released a survey report on June 24.

The survey results show that 54% of respondents intend to invest in cryptocurrencies within the next three years. Additionally, 25% are optimistic about the cryptocurrency market over the next year, 23% are pessimistic, and 52% are neutral.

Laser Digital stated that the survey period was conducted from April 15 to 26 this year. The survey targets were domestic institutional investors in Japan, including banks, insurance industries, investment banks, family offices, etc., with asset management scale ranging from several hundred million yen to several hundred million yen. Between hundreds of billions of yen, a total of 547 people were questioned.

While 54% of Japanese institutional investors are willing to invest in cryptocurrencies, 66% of respondents expressed willingness to allocate only 2%-5% of assets under management (AuM) to them. However, 76% are willing to extend the investment period to more than one year.

Five reasons why Japanese institutions are interested in investing in cryptocurrencies

Laser Digital also asked institutional investors why they are interested in investing in cryptocurrencies, and the top three were: capturing diversification opportunities (60%), low correlation with other available assets (38%), and fighting against pass-through currencies. inflation (37%), and the other two reasons are "high potential returns" and "unlimited trading time".

Reasons why Japanese institutions are reluctant to invest in cryptocurrencies now

Nomura also asked 312 respondents "the reasons why they don't want to invest in cryptocurrencies now", and the top five were: lack of proper fundamental analysis methods, concern about counterparty risk, too much volatility, and poor internal investment environment within the institution. Perfect or not yet recognized, regulatory bottlenecks.

For wealthy investors, taxation is the biggest investment obstacle, and they also worry about security issues such as loss of funds. For example, the FTX exchange, which went bankrupt in 2022, had some institutional users.

In terms of investment preferences, 31% of the respondents prefer to invest directly in cryptocurrencies, but 53% prefer to invest through ETF trusts.

Nomura said that although Japan has not yet opened the listing of cryptocurrency investment trust products, if it does one day, it will make the encryption market more active.

Nikkei: 31 listed companies already hold cryptocurrency

According to previous statistics from "Nihon Keizai Shimbun", as of May this year, 31 listed companies in Japan hold cryptocurrency assets such as Bitcoin, and the reasons for holding are to combat the depreciation of the yen or for financing purposes. Japan's Metaplanet not only regards Bitcoin as a long-term investment, but also imitates the micro-strategy of "debt to buy coins" and raises 1 billion yen through the issuance of bonds, with the purpose of purchasing Bitcoin.

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