How Gen Z Are Turning Crypto into Disciplined Investing, Not Just Quick Bets

India now ranks first in Chainalysis’ 2024 Global Crypto Adoption Index, scoring top across retail, institutional, and DeFi usage, which means more everyday Indians use crypto than in any other country on a grassroots basis. That scale alone tells you this is no fringe experiment any more, especially when you remember that much of this activity comes from individual users rather than just institutions.

What’s really interesting, though, is how young Indians are making the most of current cryptocurrency prices. Recent data from major Indian exchanges and global research groups suggests a change from one-off punts toward structured investing habits that look a lot like what many of us already do with mutual fund SIPs.

In this article, we’ll look at that change through three lenses: the rise of crypto SIPs, the role of Gen Z and diversification, and the growing participation from smaller cities combined with more structured products such as DeFi lending and yield-bearing stablecoins.

100x Dreams to Monthly Debits

If you’ve grown up hearing about mutual fund SIPs, the idea of setting aside a small fixed amount every month already feels familiar and reassuring. That same discipline is now entering the crypto world in India. Major platforms are showing active crypto SIPs have risen roughly 623% year on year, with many plans starting at very low ticket sizes that fit within a normal monthly budget.

That kind of growth comes from people who want a structured way to handle volatility. Indian mutual fund SIP flows already run into tens of thousands of crore rupees each month, after nearly three decades of building trust in the idea that small, regular contributions can compound into meaningful wealth. When the same investor base discovers that they can apply rupee-cost averaging to a crypto basket, it turns crypto from a one-time bet into one more line item in a broader, carefully planned savings routine.

If you already use SIPs for equity or hybrid funds, you’re not starting from scratch here; you’re simply extending a method you know into a more volatile asset class, with the option to cap your crypto allocation at a level you’re comfortable with. That mindset alone reduces the emotional rollercoaster and makes it easier to treat crypto as a long-term experiment rather than a make-or-break gamble.

Gen Z’s Crypto Report Card

A lot of the energy behind this more methodical approach comes from India’s youngest adult investors. A recent report on “India’s Crypto Portfolio” shows that Gen Z, aged 18 to 25, now accounts for about 37.6% of its crypto investor base, slightly ahead of millennials at 37.3% and well above the 36–45 group at 17.8%. In other words, early-career Indians are no longer just testing crypto; they’re leading it.

What they’re doing inside their portfolios matters even more. Further analysis finds that around 43.3% of holdings on major platforms are in non-Bitcoin Layer‑1 networks, while Bitcoin’s share is about 26.5%, with the rest spread across categories such as meme tokens. For a typical young user, that means a basket built across several themes instead of a single all-or-nothing position, which is a basic principle of portfolio construction taught in any finance textbook.

Global market data from Binance Research helps explain why this instinct to diversify is sensible. In one recent week they tracked, Bitcoin slipped roughly 1%, Ether dropped about 4.1%, gold gained 3.9% to a fresh high, and the S&P 500 rose 0.3%, all based on the firm’s compilation of price and index data. Once you see those numbers side by side, the idea of spreading risk across assets and sizing positions carefully feels far less theoretical and far more practical.

An interesting way to look at Gen Z is not through the usual “too risky” label but as the first Indian generation learning portfolio management directly on their phones before many of them ever meet a traditional advisor. If exchanges keep nudging this group toward SIPs, diversification tools, and clear risk warnings instead of pure hype, their hands-on experience might end up doing more for real-world financial literacy than any formal course.

Binance’s monthly research adds another layer here: it estimates that DeFi lending total value locked has increased about 72% this year, with Aave alone holding around 54% of that segment, based on aggregated on-chain data. That growth points to a crypto environment where credit-style, yield-oriented products are maturing around the coins Gen Z holds, creating more ways to think in terms of steady returns and risk management, not just price charts.

Crypto and “Bharat”

This story isn’t confined to Mumbai or Bengaluru. Multiple reports from Indian exchanges and business media show more investors coming from Tier‑2 and Tier‑3 cities, with mid-sized cities such as Indore sometimes showing a higher proportion of residents investing in crypto than some metros, based on platform penetration estimates and city-level user rankings. As smartphone access and UPI familiarity grow, crypto simply becomes another option on the same devices people already use for payments and small investments.

At the same time, the global product set they plug into is broadening. Binance Research notes that the USDe stablecoin’s supply grew about 43.5% in August 2025 alone to roughly 12.2 billion dollars, giving it around 4% of the total stablecoin market and marking it as the fastest asset to reach 10 billion dollars in supply, at about 536 days compared with 903 for USDC and 2,000 for USDT. For an Indian investor, especially outside the metros, instruments like yield-bearing stablecoins can act as a steadier anchor within a crypto allocation, complementing more volatile positions.

That combination of smaller-city participation and access to structured products points toward a future where crypto investing for many Indians looks much closer to ordinary financial planning than to speculative trading. You can imagine a salaried professional in a Tier‑2 city simply adding a modest crypto SIP to a list that already includes PPF, EPF, and mutual fund SIPs, using the same monthly routine and the same budgeting discipline. The real question is whether the story of India’s crypto future will end up being shaped more in those households than in any trading group online.

To move in that direction, a few practical habits go a long way. Limit crypto to a clear percentage of your overall investments, use SIPs instead of lump sums, spread holdings across a small basket of higher-quality assets, and choose platforms that share transparent data, compliance information, and risk disclosures from reputable research partners.

India’s Next Great Money Habit

India leads the world in grassroots crypto adoption, and does so across every major segment of usage. Within that broad user base, young investors are embracing SIPs, diversified portfolios, DeFi lending, and even yield-bearing stablecoins in ways that make crypto look less like a one-off bet and more like one component of a structured financial plan. “Crypto isn’t just the future of finance – it’s already reshaping the system, one day at a time,” as Binance co‑founder Yi He puts it, a line that fits the way young Indians are weaving crypto into everyday money habits rather than treating it as a side bet.

The most constructive path from here is not to reject crypto outright or to rush in without limits, but to borrow the habits that already work: clear goals, small and regular contributions, sensible caps on allocation, and a willingness to learn from data published by serious research groups and regulated platforms. If those habits built India’s mutual fund culture over decades, there’s every chance they can shape a more mature way for you to approach crypto today, too.

So as you think about your own money choices, it may be worth asking yourself one simple question: if disciplined routines have already helped you in other parts of your financial life, how far could that same mindset take you in the world of crypto? 

(Disclaimer: Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)