CoinFund exec: Housing crisis drives Gen Z to high-risk crypto

Soaring housing costs and the collapse of traditional wealth-building methods are fundamentally changing how Gen Z invests, fueling rapid growth in the crypto derivatives market, Cointelegraph reported. Speaking at Consensus Hong Kong, David Pakman, head of venture investments at crypto investment firm CoinFund, noted that while Gen X and baby boomers faced average home prices around 4.5 times their annual salary, this ratio has surged to about 7.5 times for Gen Z. He argued this has effectively blocked the traditional middle-class path to wealth through homeownership, highlighting that only 13% of 25-year-olds own homes, whereas over half of Gen Z investors hold cryptocurrency. In this environment, it is not an irrational choice for Gen Z to invest in high-risk products like memecoins, zero-day-to-expiration perpetual futures, and prediction markets, Pakman added. He explained that when long-term wealth creation seems unattainable, a low-probability, high-return bet is perceived as a more rational alternative to a "certain, slow decline." Pakman pointed out that the perpetual futures market has reached a scale of approximately $100 trillion. He also noted that prediction markets have seen their trading volume explode from $100 million to $44 billion in just three years, with sports betting accounting for about 80% of this activity.