Fed Survey: 12% of US Adults Held Crypto in 2021

Twelve percent of adults held cryptocurrency in 2021, according to a Federal Reserve study measuring the economic health of U.S consumers.

Released Monday, the annual survey of 11,000 people for the first time this year included questions on crypto ownership and adoption. It’s the latest sign of the U.S. central bank’s growing interest in understanding how the booming crypto economy is (and isn’t) mixing into the picture.

The data collected indicated that American consumers have little interest in crypto as a currency. They’re by and large investors, not transactors, and only 3% of respondents said they’d either paid in or sent crypto in the previous year. By contrast, 11% had held crypto as an investment.

Those users “were disproportionately high-income,” the report said: 46% of pure-play investors made $100,000 or more. Almost all of them had a bank account.

Of the 3% who actually used crypto for payments or transfers, 13% did not have a bank account.