1. The Survey's Core Finding on Financial Trust
When 1,000 randomly selected registered U.S. voters were asked which they trusted more for financial access — traditional banks or cryptocurrency — the answer was not close. Sixty-five percent chose banks. Only 5% chose crypto. The remaining respondents either trusted neither or held no clear preference. That 13-to-1 margin is significant because it arrives on the specific terrain where the crypto industry has most consistently argued its case in Washington: financial inclusion. The sector has spent considerable political capital on the narrative that blockchain-based financial services can reach underserved populations more efficiently and at lower cost than conventional banks. The survey suggests that narrative has not translated into public credibility, even among voters who are aware of what cryptocurrency is.
2. Conducted as Part of a Broader Midterm Survey Series
The data come from a survey conducted by research firm Public Opinion Strategies on CoinDesk's behalf in the final days of April 2026, as part of a multi-part series examining voter attitudes toward crypto and digital assets ahead of the November midterm elections. The sample of 1,000 randomly selected registered voters was evenly split between Republican and Democratic respondents — 41% identifying with each party — with a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.53 percentage points. The results were presented publicly at Consensus Miami on May 3. The survey is one component of a broader CoinDesk effort to document where crypto actually stands with the general electorate as the industry pursues its most ambitious legislative goals, rather than relying on the self-selected audiences and industry-friendly samples that tend to dominate crypto polling.
3. Most People Think Crypto Will Hurt the Economy
The preference for banks over crypto for financial inclusion sits within a broader pattern of economic skepticism that runs through the survey's results. Sixty percent of respondents believe crypto will be a mostly negative force in the economy — a finding that reflects not just distrust of specific assets or platforms but a generalized view that the sector's overall contribution to economic life is harmful rather than beneficial. That 60% figure is particularly striking because it comes from a sample that includes meaningful proportions of people who have interacted with or invested in crypto themselves. It is not exclusively the view of people with no exposure to digital assets — it is the majority view across a representative national sample that includes current and former holders, skeptics, and the simply uninformed.
4. Only Half Believe Crypto Is More Than a Fad — And That Doesn't Help
One additional data point contextualizes the economic skepticism: only 52% of respondents agree that crypto is more than a passing fad. The combination of that 52% with the 60% who think it will be economically negative produces a specific and uncomfortable verdict. A majority of Americans believe crypto is here to stay, and most of those same people believe it will be harmful. The outcome they are anticipating is not irrelevance but damage. That is categorically worse for the industry's public image than simple dismissal would be — dismissal can be overcome with demonstrated utility, but the expectation of persistent harm is a harder framing to dislodge.
5. Recent News Coverage Has Made Things Worse
The survey asked respondents whether recent news coverage had affected their view of crypto, and the results were unfavorable for the industry. More than half — 53% — said that what they had been reading and watching had given them a less favorable impression. Only a small proportion said coverage had improved their view. The early months of 2026 have not been kind to crypto's public image: the sequence of events including the $292 million Kelp DAO hack, insider trading scandals tied to prediction markets, the Gannon Van Dyke prosecution for using classified military information to trade on Polymarket, controversies around World Liberty Financial's governance, and the sustained price weakness across major digital assets has provided a consistent stream of negative coverage that the survey's respondents have demonstrably absorbed. The industry's argument that it is entering a new era of mainstream legitimacy is being made in an information environment where the headlines are still predominantly negative.
6. Forty-Six Percent Say They Don't Want Anything to Do With Crypto
The survey's most direct measure of the industry's consumer adoption challenge is the response to a question about personal involvement: 46% of respondents said they have nothing to do with crypto and do not want to. That figure — nearly half of the electorate — represents people who have made an active choice to remain outside the crypto ecosystem and do not express openness to changing that. The industry's practical market, by this measure, consists of the 54% of respondents who either already participate or have not yet ruled it out. Of that 54%, approximately 27% say they have not yet invested but are open to it — the addressable pool of undecided potential users whose conversion represents the most realistic near-term growth opportunity for the sector.
7. Who Is Open and Who Has Closed the Door
The survey's demographic breakdown of crypto sentiment reveals patterns that have significant implications for both the industry's commercial strategy and its political positioning. Negative views of crypto are most concentrated among voters over 45, with distrust increasing sharply with age. Males, Republicans, and minority groups show the most consistent affinity for crypto across the data — a combination that reflects the demographic profile of the sector's existing user base and its most reliable political supporters. Younger respondents are more open to crypto than their older counterparts, though the same generational pattern appears in attitudes toward AI: young people are more favorable than older people, but the enthusiasm that crypto advocates anticipated from younger generations has not translated into the kind of landslide demographic advantage the industry expected heading into a period of regulatory legitimization.
8. The Financial Inclusion Gap Is the Industry's Most Exposed Argument
The 65%-to-5% preference for banks over crypto on financial access deserves extended treatment because it directly undermines the most politically resonant argument the crypto industry has made in its Washington lobbying. The case for crypto market structure legislation has rested in part on the claim that digital assets can improve financial access for unbanked and underbanked Americans — a population estimated at tens of millions of people who lack access to basic banking services. The survey suggests that this population, or more precisely the broader electorate's view of it, does not see crypto as an answer to financial exclusion. The sense that banks are safer, more accessible, and more trustworthy for the people most in need of financial services persists despite nearly two decades of crypto's existence and billions of dollars of advocacy investment. That perception does not mean the underlying utility claim is false — but it indicates that the public argument has not landed in the way the industry believes it should.
9. The Policy Battleground: Banks vs. Crypto in the CLARITY Act
The survey's findings land at a moment of direct conflict between the banking lobby and the crypto industry over the CLARITY Act's stablecoin yield provisions — a fight that the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise text has partially resolved but not fully concluded. The banking industry's core argument throughout that fight has been that crypto-based financial products that resemble bank deposits threaten the traditional deposit-taking model and should be restricted. The public's sustained preference for banks over crypto — by a 13-to-1 margin on financial access trust — provides democratic grounding for the banking lobby's political position that is difficult for the crypto industry to counter with its own polling. An industry that most voters neither trust nor see as economically beneficial is in a weaker negotiating position than the industry's Washington presence and financial resources might suggest.
10. The Gap Between Political Success and Public Trust
The CoinDesk survey collectively presents a portrait of an industry that has achieved remarkable political success — regulatory appointments, a White House aligned on market structure legislation, a House bill already passed, and Senate committee momentum — without achieving commensurate public trust. The crypto sector has the backing of a president, the support of significant Congressional majorities on key votes, and more lobbying resources than almost any other industry category. What it does not have is the confidence of the voters those legislators represent. Sixty percent think it will hurt the economy. Sixty-five percent trust banks more than crypto for financial access. Seventy-three percent oppose government officials having financial ties to the industry. Only 30% view it favorably. These are not the numbers of an industry that has won the public argument — they are the numbers of an industry that has won the institutional argument while the public argument remains largely uncontested and mostly unfavorable. Whether the CLARITY Act's passage, if it occurs, begins to shift those numbers by providing regulatory legitimacy that reduces perceived risk, or whether the underlying skepticism persists regardless of legislative outcomes, is the fundamental question that will determine how broadly the next wave of crypto adoption spreads beyond the sector's existing base.