Virtual Assets Report

FINDINGS AND OBSERVATIONS 17 16 Figure 12. Investment Products That Respondents Would Consider When Investing in Virtual Assets Figure 11. Types of Virtual Assets That Respondents Would Be Interested in Holding 0% 0% 40% 40% 80% 90% 10% 10% 50% 50% 20% 20% 60% 60% 30% 30% 70% Bitcoin Directly owned tokens Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) Investment in companies that operate in crypto space such as mining companies Ether Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens (yield farming, etc) Stablecoin Derivatives based on virtual assets such as futures options and swaps Other tokens / coins In terms of virtual asset storage (see Figure 13), most of the participants who expressed an interest in holding virtual assets in the future said that they would hold them on a crypto exchange platform. However, there was a significant drop (15.1 percentage points) between Phase 1 and Phase 2, reflecting a loss of confidence in crypto exchange platforms, which was likely to be a result of the aforementioned negative incident occurring in September. Overall, there appeared to be a stronger preference for types of digital storage solutions other than traditional brokerages, although the gap narrowed somewhat in Phase 2. The respondents displayed a relatively conservative attitude towards investing in virtual assets, as reflected by their inclination towards allocating low investment amounts and small portions of their overall portfolios to virtual assets (see Figures 14 and 15). More than 80% of the respondents said they would invest HK$50,000 or less in virtual assets. The proportion of respondents who expressed an interest in investing less than HK$10,000 increased by 4.8 percentage points in Phase 2. Notably, less than 4% and 3% in Phases 1 and 2, respectively, wanted to invest HK$200,000 or more in virtual assets. Only about 1% reported wanting to invest 50% or more of their overall portfolio in virtual assets. Figure 13. Storage Preference for Holding Virtual Assets 0% 40% 10% 50% 20% 60% 30% 70% Crypto exchange Traditional brokerages (if they offer virtual assets) Software wallet I don't know Hardware wallet Others Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 1 Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 2