Understanding Bitcoin Adoption in the United States: Politics, Demographics & Sentiment
"One might be tempted to think that Bitcoin ownership is a kind of identity that reflects political orientation. We found that not to be the case. Bitcoin owners are politically just like the rest of America: mostly moderate, with smaller conservative and liberal contingents."
- The Nakamoto Project surveyed 3538 adults to conduct the first population-level study that seeks to understand the factors that matter when it comes to predicting Bitcoin ownership in America.
"We aimed to identify key factors influencing the adoption and ownership of Bitcoin in the United States. Partnering with Qualtrics, we achieved a U.S.-representative sample of 3,538 adults, collected in two stages: an initial sample of 3,022 in November of 2023 and a follow-up sample of 516 in March of 2024," state the report authors.
Here are some of the key findings:
- Demographics. "We found no meaningful differences between Bitcoin owners and non-owners in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, relationship status, income, education, or financial literacy.* Demographically, the two groups look similar on most measures, but they do differ in age and gender: Bitcoin owners tend to be younger and male."
- Politics. "We found that Bitcoin ownership is not meaningfully related to political orientation. Like Americans in general, American Bitcoiners can be found across the political spectrum— but they tend to be moderates."
- "We found only one correlated factor of Bitcoin ownership in the political sphere: identifying as libertarian was moderately correlated with Bitcoin ownership. However, since the absolute number of libertarians in the general population is so low, only 3% of Bitcoin owners are libertarian while 97% are non-libertarians."
- Moral foundations. "Bitcoiners look like a blend of liberals and conservatives, although they are slightly higher on the equality, proportionality, loyalty, cultural liberty, and purity moral foundations."
- Ownership predictors. "Major ownership predictors: knowledge, utility, trust, and morality. By far, the variables that correlated most strongly with Bitcoin ownership were: knowledge about Bitcoin, belief in the utility of Bitcoin, trust in the Bitcoin protocol and asset, and the perceived morality of Bitcoin. Each of these—knowledge, trust, utility, and morality—was highly correlated with the others and highly correlated with ownership."
- "Non-owners either do not trust Bitcoin or are neutral about its trustworthiness. Bitcoin owners are quite different: while some are neutral, most indicate trust in the Bitcoin technology. Similarly, non-owners tend to indicate neutrality with respect to the morality of Bitcoin, with responses skewing somewhat negative. By contrast, Bitcoin owners indicate that they perceive Bitcoin to be morally good."
