Inventions and innovations of the digital age, which began in the 1970s, has resulted in a paradigm shift in economies, culture, work style, education, health, investing, and everything seems to have become “smarter”. From photos, music, and videos stored on smartphones, to documents, emails, illustrations, animations, social media accounts, books, and logos stored in the cloud, and more, today, we live in a digital world.
Similarly, financial technology is driving innovation in financial markets globally and bringing with it the emergence of a digital asset market. With many individuals interacting with digital assets on a daily basis, from investing in crypto as a digital asset to digitisation of existing investment assets, the digital assets market is becoming integrated in the existing fabric of traditional financial markets.
The market structure of the digital asset space initially built around retail, high-net-worth, and crypto-native investors has expanded with traditional institutional investors including digital assets into their existing portfolio of traditional investments, and some monetary authorities adopting digital currencies as a legal tender or introducing a digital version of their countries’ currency.
In the US, the combined market capitalisation of digital assets grew from about $14 billion as at November 2016 to about $3 trillion as at November 2021, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 193%.