Eight percent of US adults own cryptocurrencies

Almost 8% of Americans have purchased cryptocurrencies, a new survey, commissioned by Finder.com has revealed.

The survey, which was conducted among 2,001 American adults, shows that 7.95% of the adult population of the US have bought Bitcoin or other digital coins. The results also show that men are more than twice as likely as women to own virtual tokens. Some 4.27% of the women participating in the survey said they owned crypto, compared with 11.86% of male respondents.

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According to the survey, cryptocurrency investments are most popular among the youngest American adults – 17.21% of millennials claimed to own cryptocurrencies, compared to only 8.75% of Gen X and 2.24% of baby boomers.

Bitcoin appears to be the most popular cryptocurrency, with 5.15% of respondents owning an average of $3,453.89 in the coin. Ethereum has attracted 1.80% of the respondents, who have invested $1,243.42 in the coin, on average. Just under 1% have put money into Bitcoin Cash, the cryptocurrency that came into existence via a hard fork, executed on the legacy Bitcoin blockchain last August

Some 54% of owners have chosen their token after conducting their own research.

The survey also explores the reasons why the vast majority of Americans are still reluctant to invest in cryptocurrencies. The most popular reason among both men and women is that “there is no need or they are disinterested”. Another big group of respondents consider these investments to be too risky. Meanwhile, a relatively low percentage – 6.2% of male and 5.37% of female respondents – cite “too many fees” as the reason for staying away from the market.

Still out of the 92.05% of Americans that have not purchased crypto, 7.76% said that they had plans to buy digital currencies in the future. This suggests that the number of crypto owners in the US could nearly double in a not so distant future.