Seven out of 10 professional investors forecast institutional investors will hold 60 per cent of digital assets within seven years, according to a survey by Grayscale Investments.

This figure reverses the current status where institutions hold around 3 per cent of digital assets and retail investors 97 per cent.

The research among professional investors who control USD 182.5bn assets under management found almost total agreement that institutions will replace retail investors as the main holders of digital assets – only 4 per cent said it will never happen.

Institutional interest is being driven by a range of factors, the research found, but key drivers include hardware providers such as Canaan which supplies servers and processors for digital mining being able to expand into cloud computing capital expenditure.

Around three-quarters (71 per cent) of investors believe hardware providers will take a bigger share of the predicted USD 55bn spending beyond the digital asset mining industry.

They also believe the digital payment platform sector will grow strongly - on-chain payment volumes reached USD 25trn across stablecoins, Bitcoin, and Ethereum last year but 70 per cent of investors believe they will be worth USD 30trn or more by 2030. One in three (32 per cent) believe it will be worth more than USD 40trn – more than the credit card sector.

“Institutional investment in digital assets is growing rapidly and professional investors expect a dramatic shift by the end of this decade reversing the traditional dominance of digital asset investment by retail investors. Retail investors will remain a very important part of the digital asset investment market but the shift underlines how the investment case is being adopted more widely,” Grayscale Investments Global Head of ETFs, David LaValle, said.

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