16% of Americans say they have invested, traded or used cryptocurrency

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A smartphone app displays cryptocurrency exchange rates in April. (Chris Delmas / AFP via Getty Images)

The vast majority of American adults have heard at least a little about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ether, and 16% say they have personally invested, traded or used another, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center. Men between the ages of 18 and 29 are particularly likely to say they have used cryptocurrencies.

Overall, 86% of Americans say they have heard at least a little about cryptocurrencies, including 24% who say they have heard a lot, according to the survey of American adults, conducted September 13-19, 2021. Some 13% say they haven’t heard anything at all.

In 2015, the Center asked Americans various questions focused exclusively on Bitcoin. At the time, 48% of adults said they had heard of Bitcoin (to any degree), and only 1% said they had ever collected, traded, or used it.

Pew Research Center has conducted several studies on Americans and cryptocurrency. This survey was conducted among 10,371 American adults from September 13 to 19, 2021. All participants are members of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through a national random sample. residential addresses. This way almost all American adults have a chance to be selected. The survey is weighted to be representative of the adult United States population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, and other categories. Learn more about the ATP methodology. Here are the questions used for this report, along with the answers and its methodology.

This survey includes a total sample of 362 Asian Americans. The sample includes only English-speaking Asian Americans and, therefore, may not be representative of the entire Asian American population. Despite this limitation, it is important to report the views of Asian Americans on the subjects of this study. As always, responses from Asian Americans are incorporated into general population counts throughout this report. Due to the relatively small sample size and reduced precision due to weighting, we are unable to analyze Asian American respondents by demographic categories, such as gender, l age or education.

In the new survey, certain demographic groups are particularly likely to say they have used cryptocurrencies, with some of the biggest differences by age and gender.

About three in ten Americans aged 18 to 29 (31%) say they have ever invested, traded, or used a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ether, compared to smaller proportions of adults in older groups. Men are about twice as likely as women to report ever using cryptocurrency (22% vs. 10%).

These differences are especially pronounced when you consider age and gender together. About four in ten men aged 18 to 29 (43%), for example, say they have ever invested, traded or used a cryptocurrency, compared to 19% of women in the same age group. For both men and women, the likelihood of having invested, traded, or used cryptocurrency decreases with age.

Asian, black, and Hispanic adults are more likely than white adults to say that they have ever invested, traded, or used cryptocurrency. There are no statistically significant differences by household income.

While majorities across all demographics say they have heard at least a little about cryptocurrency, smaller shares say they have heard a lot about it. For example, adults under the age of 50 (31%) and men (35%) are more likely than older Americans (16%) and women (15%), respectively, to say they have a lot. understood.

The share of adults who have heard a lot about cryptocurrency also varies by race, ethnicity, and household income. For example, 43% of Asian Americans say they have heard a lot about cryptocurrency, compared to 29% of Hispanic adults and about a quarter of black or white adults. Americans with higher incomes (31%) are more likely than those with middle (25%) and lower incomes (21%) to have heard a lot about cryptocurrency.

These findings emerge as government leaders and others debate the regulation of cryptocurrency – which has been defined as a digital, encrypted and decentralized medium of exchange, with no central authority that manages and maintains its value. Financial regulators have expressed concern about the control of cryptocurrencies and have expressed concerns about the long-term viability of such currencies, such as Bitcoin.

China recently banned transactions using cryptocurrencies. U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell said this summer that these currencies need more regulation and that the Biden administration is trying to tackle ransomware by cracking down on cryptocurrency payments. At the same time, El Salvador in September became the first country to declare Bitcoin as legal tender.

Note: Here are the questions used for this report, along with the answers and its methodology.

Andrew Perrin is an Internet and technology research analyst at the Pew Research Center.

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