After years of hype, ads, and Super Bowl spots, you would expect a lot more Americans to own crypto by now. They don't - about 1 in 5 adults have used it, almost exactly where things stood in 2021.
Crypto Use Has Stalled
Crypto use has barely moved in five years. About 19% of adults have used or invested in it.
That is up just a bit from 16% in 2021. Crypto means digital coins like bitcoin and ether, the coin behind Ethereum.
Even with all the ads, owning crypto has not gone mainstream. But the crowd using it has changed.
For the first time, there is a clear political split. Republicans are now more likely than Democrats to have used crypto.
The gap is 22% to 17%. That split did not exist before this year.
Republican use climbed from 16% in 2021, while Democratic use stayed flat. The numbers come from the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 8,512 adults in January.
Crypto adoption is starting to look less like a growing wave and more like a fan base. It is not getting much bigger, it is just getting more partisan.
This tracks with how crypto turned political. The Trump team has said it wants to make the U.S. the "crypto capital of the world."
It has even pushed to let crypto firms become banks.
We track shifts like this - who's buying, who's selling, and why - every morning in Market Briefs, and joining comes with a free investing masterclass.
Who Is Actually Buying
Zoom in, and the typical crypto user looks pretty specific. Young men lead by a wide margin.
The gender gap is wide. About 27% of men have used crypto, versus 11% of women.
About 40% of men ages 30 to 49 have used crypto. For women in that same age group, it is 17%.
Older adults mostly sit it out. Just 10% of people over 50 have ever used it.
Among men under 30, the figure jumps to 38%. Age splits the picture as sharply as gender.
Money matters too. Higher earners are the most likely to have bought in, at about 27% of upper-income adults.
That share has jumped since 2021, when it was 17%. Lower-income use has barely budged over the same stretch.
Middle-income use sits in between, at about 20%. There is also a smaller gap by race.
About a quarter of Asian adults have used crypto, the highest of any racial or ethnic group.
White, Black, and Hispanic adults are now all close, near 1 in 5.
White use has crept up too, from 13% in 2021 to about 18% now. Overall, crypto is still mostly a young man's game.
Worth Noting
For most of crypto's life, owning it said little about your politics. Now it does.
The technology has not changed much, but the crowd holding it has.
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