AI, Machine Learning Beat Cryptocurrency As Top Tech Choice Among Institutional Investors

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are among the top tech bets of institutional investors, seemingly suggesting that interest in cryptocurrency has slowly waned following the eventful 2022.

Traders placed their bets on artificial intelligence and machine learning as top technologies that will have the biggest impact on financial markets in the next three years.

In a recent survey carried out among traders by financial services giant JP Morgan, it revealed that more than half of the 835 institutional traders across 60 global markets believed in the future of artificial intelligence.

JP Morgan conducts this kind of research every year to assess the sentiments of traders across a wide range of asset classes and to uncover the "upcoming trends and the most hotly debated topics."

The latest survey concluded that 53% of institutional traders placed their bet on artificial intelligence and machine learning, saying that these two will be the most influential technologies in molding the future of trading, an interesting spike from its previous score of 25%.

"This trend toward automation is something we're seeing across the market now, and is expanding into the credit and rates side as well as commodities," said Scott Wacker, JP Morgan head of FICC e-commerce sales.

As AI came out as the clear winner in the recent survey, API integration ranked second with 14%. Blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) came third with 12%, followed by mobile trading apps which plummeted to 7% of the total respondents' votes.

Last year, mobile trading apps were hailed king with 29% of institutional traders' votes.

"People are amazed at what AI technology can achieve. Natural language processing is moving along at pace, but it's a little harder to configure right now. It's at the beginning of a journey," Wacker told Bloomberg.

Participants of the survey were also asked if they would invest in cryptocurrencies.

"72% of traders surveyed 'have no plans to trade crypto/ digital coin,' with 14% predicting they're not currently trading but plan to trade within 5 years. 8% are currently trading and 6% are not currently, but plan on within 1 year," the report concluded, noting that some of the respondents are still bullish toward crypto, with 64% of them saying that their activity would center on the crypto sphere by 2024.