Nobl Insurance explores the future of crypto and its current levels of adoption.
At nobl this year, we’ve commissioned two pieces of original research looking at current behaviour and attitudes towards cryptocurrency in the US. In the first piece, we surveyed the biggest sample to date of American crypto holders, exploring ownership, exchange usership and attitudes about security. Online panels are the best way of sourcing crypto owners due to their high levels of internet usership. With a robust sample of 1,044 Americans who either hold crypto or are thinking of buying in the next 12 months, we’ve been able to state with confidence the demographic profiles of users, which digital assets are held and where.
What is harder to estimate is how many Americans hold crypto. Online methodologies tend to inflate incidence levels for the same reason that they are so popular to use. Respondents to online panels are more likely to be heavy internet users and so are crypto adopters. This is an essential problem with much of the data about ownership published on the internet using online panels. They are cost-effective but not, in this case, accurate.
In the last few weeks, Finder, an Australian-owned comparison site, has published the results of a survey of 2,068 participants. The survey suggests the number of Americans who own cryptocurrency has almost doubled, from 7.95% in 2018 to 14.4% in 2019, an increase of 81% in one year. That means roughly 36.5 million Americans own some form of crypto. As Finder has not published its survey methodology, this data may well suffer from ‘online inflation’.
Meanwhile, YouGov, the popular online pollster, reported in September that 81% of Americans are familiar with at least one kind of crypto and that, of these, 18% say they’ve purchased cryptocurrency in the last year. That gives a penetration of 14.5%, reinforcing the Finder data, but again with the online caveat.
THE CURRENT LEVELS OF DIGITAL CURRENCY ADOPTION…
So, to overcome the problems associated with internet surveys and calibrate ownership levels, we turned to the tried and tested traditional methodology of telephone interviewing. We commissioned Engine’s Telephone CARAVAN Omnibus Survey to assess crypto ownership. Telephone CARAVAN is America’s longest continually running omnibus survey of its kind and is conducted among 1,000 interviewees, covering approximately 97% of US adults. .
Regardless of which survey method or outcome you choose, one thing these surveys share in common is that crypto is growing; it’s growing fast and showing no sign of slowing down. In fact, YouGov reports that nearly a third of all Americans (32%) believe cryptocurrency will become widely accepted as a means of transaction in the next 10 years. It’s a vote of confidence in crypto from a sizeable portion of the American public.
Our survey was conducted in August 2019 and estimates crypto ownership at 6.8% of the US population, representing 16 million US adults — with a further 5% of Americans considering buying crypto in the next year. This is an increase over the 5% level of ownership reported in a joint survey of 5,761 Americans by Global Blockchain Business and Survey Monkey in January 2018. In this research, 21% were considering adding cryptocurrency to their portfolios, although no time frame was provided. This gives a market adoption growth of 36% in 18 months.
Published at Thu, 12 Dec 2019 02:11:58 +0000
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