UK Survey Highlights Anticipation of a Bitcoin Collapse in the Next Six Months

It seems that nearly a third of people surveyed in the UK during November looking into Bitcoin think that the currency will collapse in the next six months due to high speculation.

Bitcoin is now widely known across the globe, and albeit public awareness of the technology has reached its all-time high, confidence in this new digital currency is still low as a study has suggested many investors and analysts think bitcoin will burst in the next six months.

The price of bitcoin has surprised a lot of people lately. It has already gone across the $7000 barrier but suffered a huge set back a few weeks later. Now the price is orbiting above the $7000 barrier again. However, a recently released survey by market research firm D-CYFOR, which had a sample size of 1,015, found that although 80 percent of the general public in the UK have heard of bitcoin, 58 percent said they would not invest in it while 30 percent predict the currency will be worthless within the next six months.

On the other hand, 54 percent of the inquiries were optimistic and firmly believe its value will go up over the next six months, while 15 percent said they were thinking of investing in it and another seven percent said they already had. More than 20 percent of the inquiries considered buying into the cryptocurrency, these were mainly ‘Millennials’ which have been traditionally the most open to investing in bitcoin. The survey also showed that only four percent of people aged 65 and above wanted to invest in bitcoin.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) warned about initial coin offerings (ICOs) in September where investors were cautioned that they should be prepared to lose all of their investments when participating in ICOs. China also started a campaign against ICOs and the US is now looking into a formal regulation over this kind of fundraising.

On November 14, the FCA released a warning alerting for the dangers of investing in cryptocurrency contracts for difference, calling the investments “extremely high-risk, speculative products.” China’s position towards bitcoin has also changed to a negative stance lately, and recent news about legal impositions to mining. With China being one of the biggest markets for bitcoin, this might be a sign that the bubble is about to burst.

In September, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon drove panic in the markets by claiming the cryptocurrency is a fraud. He argued that Bitcoin is in a valuation bubble that will eventually burst. This, it seems to have created a dark veil around the currency and now many analysts are also saying that bitcoin might eventually falter under government pressure. Bitcoin is having its glory moment, and its use is growing faster than ever before, with an astonishing number of wallets being created by the day.

Bitcoin finally reached the mainstream, but while that means more people are getting into digital currency, it also means that government scrutiny is going to increase and unwise regulation might stifle the market.

The full results of the survey conducted by D-CYFOR can be found here.