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A new study conducted by Global Custodian, The Trade Crypto, and BitGo in Q4 2018 shows that 94% of endowments have either direct or indirect cryptocurrency investments, which signals that cryptocurrency adoption is gradually increasing.

The study was comprised of 150 endowments, of which 89% were in the United States and the rest in the United Kingdom and Canada. Of those surveyed 50% planed to increase their positions over the next year and only 7% planned to decrease their positions. Their investment methods were pretty evenly split with 54% directly owning cryptocurrencies and 46% invested via cryptocurrency funds.

One endowment anonymously told the surveyors that they view cryptocurrency as “the future of investing”. However, the overall vibe of the sample was a cautious optimism since many endowments were looking forward towards future regulations to clarify and solidify cryptocurrency investment methods and strategies. They listed the ability to comply with future regulations, sufficient liquidity, and account security as the three most important aspects for going forward with their cryptocurrency investments.

Investing for the long-run

The fact that endowments are starting to invest in cryptocurrencies is a positive sign for the long-run outlook of the sector since endowments often have professional investors and/or advisor looking for the best ways to grow and secure an institute’s wealth over a long period of time. These parties are often not concerned with short-term gains and loses since their main concern is greater wealth further ahead in time. Thus, this helps reassure the cryptocurrency sector that despite its recent volatility, many professionals believe in its long-term performance.

Recently, Harvard invested around $50 million USD in a cryptocurrency project further illustrating strong belief in the sector. However, there are growing pains of these endowments learning which cryptocurrencies offer which types of services and which are in demand by consumers. Thus, each endowment is pursuing different trends and strategies and there has not been a clear consensus on what may yield the best return within the sector.

Dash offers investment firms future opportunity

1/ These are the largest payment firms by market cap (Q1)

Visa $343 bil

Mastercard $241 bil

Paypal $122 bil

Amex $92 bil



In the payment industry, you want to be the network. Other firms - security, hardware, software, etc - all COMBINED are worth less than these four firms. — Ryan Taylor (@RTaylor05) April 3, 2019

As the CEO of Dash Core Group previously pointed out, payment networks are very large and can provide huge opportunities, which is partly why Dash is attempting to be digital cash for everyday consumers in everyday purchases. Dash is accomplishing this via sub-2 second transactions for less than a penny, better security , and enhanced usability. Dash is expected to take its accomplishments to the next level with Evolution and DApps that will provide even more use case scenarios for payments.

These innovations by Dash are causing more mainstream financial companies to venture into Dash for its future outlook. Fidelity, the large investment firm, was one of the first major firms to take a step into crypto and now currently owns around 10% of Neptune Dash, the publicly traded Dash masternode shares company. Neptune Dash took masternode services to the traditional financial sector by distributing profits to public shareholders on Canadian, US, and EU stock exchanges. These attributes help illustrate how Dash is able to simultaneously cater to individuals for peer-to-peer transactions and large firms and endowments for future wealth creation, which helps reinforce one another to create a independent source of money that is even more stable and reliable.