Consumers may not get crypto, but they are buying it
- With almost 2 in 10 people in the US owning crypto, crypto popularity continues to climb.
- But crypto knowledge seems to fall quite a bit behind crypto optimism. Only 4% of people in the US can pass a crypto literacy quiz.
This year has been a big one for crypto, with popularity and value reaching new heights.
More consumers seem to be hopping aboard the crypto train, with 13% of Americans buying crypto in the 12-month period leading up to July, according to a survey by NORC, a research group at the University of Chicago.
But while interest in cryptocurrencies is growing, consumer knowledge around crypto seems pretty weak.
Cryptoliteracy.org is a collaboration between CoinDesk, Coinme, Digital Currency Group, and Pantera Capital. The initiative was launched in November.
In conjunction with its launch, the organization also released the findings of a survey it conducted to measure people’s attitudes towards crypto and test their knowledge of the topic. The survey included a crypto literacy quiz, consisting of 17 questions.
The company found that while 17% of Americans own crypto, only 6% scored over 60% right on a crypto literacy quiz.
Among crypto owners, quiz results weren’t all that better. On average, crypto owners got 35% of the questions right.
When it comes to people’s confidence surrounding their understanding of crypto, most either recognize the name only or know very little about the topic. The group that said it know a lot about crypto was only 1% more than the group who had never heard of it before.
For Neil Bergquist, co-founder and CEO at Coinme, the thing he found most surprising was that while 50% of respondents said they’d use crypto as a store of value, 90% didn’t know that Bitcoin has a supply limited to 21 million.
“It's interesting how the brand and credibility for bitcoin as a store of value has grown so much that people may not understand the fundamentals, but they still believe it's a worthwhile investment,” said Bergquist.