Not Even One in 10 Americans Has a Stake in Cryptocurrency

March 22, 2018         By: Steven Anderson

There are those out there who suggest that bitcoin, and those like it, are just a bubble, and that eventually everyone who put money into cryptocurrency of any stripe will be sobbing into their beer soon enough. Yet a new study from Finder suggests that, if this is indeed a bubble, it’s not being inflated by many.

The Finder study found that, based on a study of 2,001 American adults, just 7.95 percent actually copped to owning cryptocurrency. Considering the buying frenzy we heard about just a few months ago when we heard about people mortgaging their houses to buy in, that’s a shockingly low number.

So what’s stopping Americans from buying in? As it turns out, quite a few reasons. Forty percent of respondents figured that there just wasn’t a need to buy in, or they weren’t particularly interested. Thirty-five percent considered the risk too high, and 27 percent just straight up didn’t understand the concept. Eighteen percent thought it was a scam outright, and 16 percent were “waiting for the bubble to burst.” Just under six percent thought there were too many fees involved.

Demographically, the young have bought in first; 17 percent were millennials, nine percent Generation X, and just over two percent were baby boomers. Men were twice as likely to buy in, and men buy around twice as much on average. When considering which to buy, 41.5 percent bought based on what coin did well for friends, and 40 percent were checking news reports to see which coin was most often mentioned.

This makes for an interesting case; how exactly do you have a “bubble” when not even one in 10 Americans are buying in? Granted, these numbers are bigger elsewhere—Asia seems to be pretty bullish on crypto based on how hard the Chinese and South Korean governments cracked down—but still; even in the 1920s, around 16 percent of US households were invested in the stock market.

There’s a lot of people out there who have never bought so much as one dogecoin, despite the fact you can pick up about 300 for a buck. This may mean bigger gains to come, or a meme about to die, and only time will tell which.