Binance’s institutional clients stay positive on crypto despite challenging market conditions.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by market value, has reported that its institutional clients are optimistic about the future of crypto for the next year and beyond, according to a survey conducted between March and May 2023.

The study, conducted by Binance Research and Binance VIP & Institutional team, surveyed 208 clients from March 31 to May 15. More than half of the respondents, 52%, had crypto assets under management (AUM) of less than $25 million, and 22.6% had AUM larger than $100 million.

According to the report, 63.5% of respondents said they have a positive outlook on crypto for the next year, and 88% said they are optimistic for the next decade.

The survey also found that despite negative market events in the past year, respondents maintained their crypto allocations. 47% of institutional investors kept their crypto allocations over the past year, and over a third increased their allocation. Only 4.3% said they expect to reduce their allocation to crypto in the next 12 months.

• Bitcoin remains stable around $31K after options expiry, while the dollar index increases ahead of crucial U.S. inflation data.
• CME Group to introduce ETH/BTC Ratio futures.
• Will more countries follow suit in reducing crypto income tax rates after Slovakia?

Institutional clients appeared positive in Binance’s survey despite the recent regulatory crackdown against Binance and Coinbase by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the continued bear market that started last year.

Read more: Kraken’s Head of OTC Options Trading: Investors Are Still Interested In Crypto, Staking

In terms of areas of interest for investing, 54% of investors found infrastructure to be the most important, closely followed by layer 1 and layer 2 projects with 48% and 44%, respectively.

Web3 infrastructure has been a favorite among investors since the beginning of this year, following the FTX implosion last year. The term “infrastructure” is used broadly and can range from inter-blockchain portals to on-chain wallets.

Read more: What Are VCs Funding After FTX? More Decentralized Infrastructure

Most recently, blockchain infrastructure provider LayerZero Labs raised $120 million in a Series B funding round at a valuation of $3 billion, tripling its valuation from its $135 million round in March 2022.

On the other hand, NFTs, the metaverse, and the gaming sectors were considered the least important by institutional investors, according to the survey.

NFTs and the metaverse experienced a significant rise in popularity during the bull market of 2021, with notable NFT sales like “Beeple’s Everydays: the First 5000 Days” and Facebook’s rebranding to Meta to focus on the metaverse. However, the hype has subsided due to the continued bear market, resulting in lower NFT trading volume and stagnant growth for the metaverse.

However, Apple’s most recent mixed reality headset has brought some short-lived optimism back to the metaverse industry.

Read more: Apple’s New Headset Could Change the Way We Design the Metaverse

UPDATE (June 30, 9:25 UTC): Adds link to report in first paragraph.

Edited by Aoyon Ashraf.

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