Around 3 per cent of the populace from the new middle class in China have included bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies in their investment portfolio, according to a recent survey conducted by researchers in the team of Wu Xiaobo, a famed financial writer and blogger on Chinese business and economics.

The survey, named The White Paper on the New Middle Class of 2018, polled more than 100,000 respondents from the new middle class and interviewed some 500 representatives in the country.

Considering the continuous surge of house prices in China, investment in real estate takes up the lion’s share of the middle class’s investment portfolio, and traditional financial investment like time deposit in banks is also a top choice secondary to property investment for the expanding middle class in the country.

That shows most of these well-educated new bourgeoisie (93% of them have at least a BA degree), with disposable wealth ranging from 200,000 Chinese yuan to 5 million (roughly US$30k-$730k), are still quite conservative in financial management.

While some of them keep cautiously optimistic in their financial management. It is notable that there are about 3 per cent, 3,000-odd of the respondents investing in cryptocurrency. Though it is not a big number, the middle class’s interest in cryptocurrencies is hard to ignore, yet they are not the only ones interested in this market.

Of these, half of them are allocating more than 10% of their household wealth in the basket of crypto assets, which indicates that these people would like to bet 10% of their wealth for a chance of cryptos to appreciate into a larger sum of money.

China’s middle class, expanding at an unprecedented pace, is growing to be a big influencer as the mainstay of the country’s economy and culture. According to McKinsey & Co, by 2020 there will be nearly 400 million people in China fall into the middle-class category.

2017 saw a rush of substantial capital inflow into the cryptocurrency markets with the spiking of bitcoin price, and there’s no sign that the future will be any different as the well-educated class with the largest number in the country is beginning to see it as an alternative investment despite its government crackdown.

“1%-3% of the world’s household wealth will be invested in crypto assets, driving the cryptocurrency market capitalization above 10 trillion U.S. dollars in five years.” said a Chinese bitcoin whale this January.

Will middle class get more involved in bitcoin investment? Leave your comment below.