The Israeli founder and chief executive of one of the world’s largest social trading companies has described the invention of cryptocurrencies and blockchain as “revolutionary - as important as the invention of electricity".

Yoni Assia, the head of eToro, an Israeli firm with more than 10 million registered global users, spoke at the UK-Israel Business chamber of commerce on Friday about the rise of trading in electronic currencies, known as cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain is the public transaction database technology which keeps track of cryptocurrency trades.

“Generation Y is the largest cohort of individuals in the world, and it’s just entering its investments phase,” Mr Assia told the JC.

The 36-year-old is part of that generation, which he defines as anywhere between 26 and the late 30s. EToro, he says, has 500 staff worldwide, with offices in the UK, Europe and Israel, and is involved in the transaction of several billion dollars of trading per day – and cryptocurrencies are now at the centre of this.

“Cryptocurrency has grown from less than five per cent of our clients trading cryptocurrencies to more than 80 per cent - in the last 18 months,” he said.

“There is a very high interest in investing in cryptocurrencies.

“If you look at previous generations you see that the impact of entering the prime investment of the time has led to significant changes in investment tendencies,” he said, citing gold and equities as two examples.

“So if Generation Y really takes a significant part of their investments into crypto, then it’s going to become a significant asset class world-wide.

“When you compare cryptocurrencies to other stores of value like gold and art, then it’s still a very small portion of the world’s stores of value, so it does still have significant room to potentially grow as a digital source.”