Risk appetite is starting to return among investors. This year, the Stockholm stock exchange has risen by just over seven percent, while shares on the IT-heavy Nasdaq stock exchange in the US are up a whopping 17 percent since the turn of the year. As for the riskiest assets that have attracted small savers in recent years, cryptocurrencies, the fear seems blown away.
Recently, there has been wild speculation in newly started so-called “memecoins”, which both rose and fell in a very short time. On the other hand, the largest cryptocurrencies have trended upwards during the spring. Bitcoin is up 65 percent and Ether is up 53 percent since the New Year.
It seems that the crypto market bottomed out after the Great Crash of 2022 in the wake of bankruptcies and fraud scandals in the industry, with the crash of the crypto exchange FTX being the big sinker.
– At the beginning of the year, the number of crypto transactions was actually back at the same level as before the crash, while the value of the transactions is smaller. The interest remains, even if you don’t invest as much money when the interest rate is higher, says Michael Gronager, CEO of Chainalysis, an American analysis company that measures crypto flows globally.
Half a million exposed
An analysis by the Bank of International Settlements notes that it was the big investors who pulled out of the market when cryptocurrencies Terra/Luna and FTX collapsed, while small savers stepped in and bought.
– There are approximately half a million Swedes who are exposed to crypto in one way or another today. There is a great deal of interest, especially among younger people, says Rikard Josefson, CEO of Avanza Bank.
The Financial Supervisory Authority and almost all Swedish banks have a restrictive view of crypto trading. Josefson believes that in addition to the risk of money laundering and lack of consumer protection, there may be other reasons for the banking system to instinctively back away.
– If you take the perspective that crypto is a movement based on the fact that we do not trust the central bank regime and that it would become big, then we get a parallel financial system next to it. What then happens to the Swedish krona and trade?
