50 Percent of Americans Would Like to Buy Bitcoin

According to a new survey conducted by the analytics firm Harris Insights: 50 percent of respondents were deemed likely to enter the virtual currency market in the future. The cryptocurrency start-up known as Gem has also participated from this study.
Americans Ready to Try Bitcoin

As Fortune reported, 8% of the Americans invested in virtual currencies such as Ethereum (ETH) or Bitcoin (BTC), two of the most important in the market. But this is just a small percentage if we compare this number with those investors that own stock (52%).

The survey has been conducted during this year, which has been specifically negative for the cryptocurrency market in general. Most of the virtual currencies reached all time highs in January and now some of them have dropped over 90% or even more in the worst cases.

Additionally, regulators from all over the world are working day after day on how to better understand bitcoin and control the market.

The poll also shows that 41% of the adults that answered said that there is nothing that could motivate them to invest in cryptocurrencies. But the other half of the respondents would like to enter the market.

Gem founder and CEO Micah Winkelspecht, commented on the matter:

“We find that younger people with less income are more willing to put money in crypto. My guess is that crypto is of the digital age. And the younger generation is of the digital age and used to doing everything on the internet.”

The survey shows that those earning more than $100,000 dollars annually are less likely to invest in virtual currencies than those earning less than this amount. That is, 6% of those earning more than $100,000 per year own some cryptocurrencies. But 11% of those earning between $50,000 to $74,900 have already invested in cryptos.

“The cryptocurrency space is still in its Wild West phase, so there’s potentially some of that going on,” explained Mr. Winkelspecht. “When you have less to protect, you are more willing to take the risk.”

One of the key points of the survey shows that the lack of basic information about how cryptocurrencies work or what they are, is one of the biggest barriers to enter the market. Indeed, 20% of those surveyed answered that more information about virtual currencies could motivate individuals to purchase more cryptocurrencies.