The generation that grew up with cryptocurrencies is investing like their grandparents

• 77% of Generation Z's stock accounts are net accumulators.
• ETFs already capture 21.9% of net capital inflows from Generation Z.

Generation Z, consisting of investors aged 18 to 29, has entered the markets with bitcoin (BTC), trading apps, social media, and immediate access to financial products. Everything seemed set to make them the most speculative generation.

However, the data is starting to show something much less frantic: they buy more than they sell, trade less frequently, and direct an increasing portion of their capital towards unleveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This does not mean they have lost their appetite for risk.

This is precisely where the difference lies: young investors can choose more aggressive assets while simultaneously managing them with behaviors traditionally associated with long-term investing.

Binance Research found that 77% of Gen Z's stock accounts are net accumulators, meaning they bought more than they sold. In bStocks ---tokenized stocks--- the proportion reaches 76%, and in TradFi-Perps, it is 60%.

The report summarizes it directly: "When young people invest capital instead of trading it, they tend to be buyers."
Gen Z appears as the cohort with the highest proportion in bStocks and reaches 77% in stocks. Source: Binance.

The signal becomes more striking when observing those who have never sold directly. In stocks, 22% of the analyzed Gen Z accounts only made purchases. The study itself states that <>.

The bStocks accounts that only buy perform an average of 1.63 trades per month, compared to 3.45 for the typical user.

The risk lies in what they buy, not in how much they move {#h-the-risk-lies-in-what-they-buy-not-in-how-much-they-move}

Lower activity is also evident when comparing young investors with previous generations. The report indicates that this sector records about 13 monthly trades in TradFi-Perps, compared to 17 for millennials; about 3 in bStocks, compared to 5; and 8 in stocks, compared to 10 for millennials. Binance Research defines it as <> in the three analyzed products.

The following chart compares the average number of monthly trades and the proportion of high-frequency users among Gen Z, millennials, Generation X, and baby boomers (the generation born during the post-World War II demographic boom).
Younger investors record about 13 monthly trades in traditional finance. Source: Binance.

However, interpreting these numbers as a sign that Gen Z has become conservative would be going too far.

The Next-Gen Investors report, published by the CFA Institute (Chartered Financial Analyst Institute), an international organization linked to training and professional standards in the investment industry, allows us to see the other half of the picture.

Analysts from the CFA describe young people as having an "openness to emerging products, technologies, and asset classes." They also note a greater exposure to cryptocurrencies, ETFs, investment real estate, and alternative assets compared to previous generations. In other words, they can invest with a logic similar to that of their grandparents, even though their portfolios are very different.

The contrast is clearly observed in cryptocurrencies. Research collected by the CFA shows that 57% of investors in Canada, 55% in the United States, and 50% in the United Kingdom reported owning them.

The speculative impulse has not disappeared either. The CFA warns that "more than half of the surveyed Generation Z and millennials claim to have made a specific investment due to FOMO." Among those who acknowledged acting out of fear of missing out, cryptocurrencies were the most frequently mentioned investment.

Specifically, 53% of investors aged 18 to 29 admit to having invested at some point due to FOMO (fear of missing out), compared to 38% of Gen X and 30% of baby boomers.

The two reports thus allow for the separation of two behaviors that are often confused: choosing a risky asset does not imply trading it constantly.

ETFs Show Where Money Starts to Stay

This difference also appears with leverage, a strategy that allows increasing exposure to an asset using borrowed capital, as explained by CriptoNoticias.

In July, leveraged and inverse ETFs represented around 9.2% of the volume traded by Gen Z, although they captured only 3.9% of their net capital inflows. In August, those shares dropped to 6.2% and 2.8%, respectively.

Binance Research interprets this explicitly: "Generation Z does not seem to be investing capital in leveraged instruments; they use them as short-term tools and liquidate them."

One thing, then, is what generates trades. Another is where the money ends up staying.

Non-leveraged ETFs captured 18.5% of Gen Z's net inflows in June and 21.9% in July. At the same time, the share of individual stocks fell from 77% to 74.2%.
Non-leveraged funds already capture around one-fifth of the inflows. Source: Binance.

In July, moreover, the total net investment in Gen Z stocks fell by 17.4%, while inflows into non-leveraged ETFs decreased by only 2%. It was also the only generation whose base of ETF holders increased during that period.

The report associates these funds with "a more persistent holding behavior" and argues that these investors present the profile most similar to that of an asset allocator.

A Generation Less Simple Than It Seemed

In this sense, the CFA Institute describes young people as a cohort that is "confident, empowered, and diverse," although it warns that these qualities do not eliminate behavioral biases, risk-taking, or emotional decisions.

Additionally, it summarizes their appetite for new instruments with a simple phrase: "More is better." This refers to the fact that young people want innovative products, more alternatives, and greater possibilities for diversification.

There probably lies the key to the two reports. Young people do not seem to be abandoning risk, but rather learning to separate it from the constant movement.

They can choose cryptocurrencies, tokenized stocks, and other assets that previous generations would hardly have considered, but manage them with a much more familiar logic: buy, diversify, and wait.

Generation Z may be rediscovering the long term. Only they are doing it with the assets of their own generation.

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