A Quarter of US Investors Own Crypto: Survey

A new study has found that a majority of American believe cryptocurrency is a safe investment. Further, 25% already own crypto with another 27% saying they plan to invest this year. 

That’s according to a February survey of 30,000 people over the age of 18 conducted by Piplsay, a global consumer research platform. The findings fall roughly in line with other recent surveys. 

In October, Grayscale found that 55% of U.S. investors were interested in buying crypto. While Bitwise found 24% of financial advisers already owned bitcoin or some other crypto in a survey published in January. (Grayscale is owned by CoinDesk’s parent company Digital Currency Group.)

Bitcoin’s meteoric rise has put it among the top-performing assets of the last year and the past decade. This strong performance has attracted institutional players from MassMutual to BlackRock, and MicroStrategy to Tesla, though some argue that retail interest has not kept pace. 

Google searches for “bitcoin,” an adequate proxy for public interest, have yet to reach levels seen in 2017, the previous crypto market bullrun. 

Piplsay found that 41% of respondents think the stock market and cryptocurrencies are equally risky investments. Of those that believe cryptocurrency is not a safe investment, 27% were concerned about hacking or fraud, 22% about a lack of regulations and 20% crypto’s volatility. 

See also: Noelle Acheson – What Investors Get Wrong About Volatility (and Not Just for Crypto)

A separate question found that 30% of those surveyed said they do not understand crypto, while 13% said they never heard of cryptocurrency.

The words “we’re still early” did not appear anywhere in the survey.