November 29th, 2022, Rishad Dsouza
In January 2022, the share of Americans who viewed cryptocurrencies as an appealing investment stood at 15% to almost match the allure of gold. Back then, the crypto market had only just begun its descent after months of staggering gains.
But cryptocurrency values have continued declining thereon, exemplified by Bitcoin’s decline from over $64,000 in November 2021 to under $17,000 recently. Concurrently, the share of Americans saying they find cryptocurrencies appealing has halved to 7% in November 2022, shows YouGov’s consumer tracker. For comparison, the proportion of Americans expressing faith in gold and other precious metals has stayed in a tight range between 17% to 21%.
In Britain, the share of those who think cryptocurrencies are an appealing investment, has halved from a high of 8% in November 2021 to 4% a year later. For reference, the share of those who view gold as an appealing instrument has stayed steady at around 7-9%.
There is noteworthy variance in the level of declines in consumer sentiment towards crypto demographically. Among Americans aged 18-29, the share of those perceiving investment appeal in cryptocurrency has declined relatively modestly from a peak of 25% to 14%, whereas among those aged 30-44, the shares have plummeted from 31% in January 2022 to just 12% now.
Sizeable dips have also occurred among members of older age groups.
Among Brits, crypto appeal in the youngest age group has been hit more severely than among those aged 35-54. (Note that we’re looking at slightly different age groups here than the American ones). About a fifth of Brits aged 18-34 (18%) said they found cryptos appealing as an investment in December 2021, and the share has now dropped to under a tenth (8%).
Even among those aged 35-54, crypto appeal stands at 8% as of November 2021, but from a relatively lower peak of 13%.
YouGov will continue to monitor how these metrics shape up over the coming months, with a keen eye on things in the aftermath of the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX – the data for November 2022 in this piece is limited to the first 10 days of the month, so it doesn’t capture the impact on consumer sentiments of the November 12 development.
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