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1. What the new crypto survey found
A national crypto survey conducted by Ipsos for the DeFi Education Fund, a policy advocacy group, found that 22% of American adults have at some point owned or used cryptocurrency, up from 18% in the previous edition. The share who used crypto during the past year did not move, staying at 13%. The results were published on October 28.
Taken together, the two figures describe a market that is getting wider at the edges without getting deeper in the middle. More people can say they have tried digital assets, but the group actively holding or spending them has not grown. The survey therefore points to a pool of curious newcomers and former users rather than a surge of new committed participants.
The poll also covered attitudes toward the traditional financial system, trust in crypto platforms, and awareness of decentralized finance, commonly shortened to DeFi. On each of those themes the data suggests that skepticism toward both old and new financial institutions remains high, even as interest in alternatives persists.
2. Who is behind the growth in people who have tried crypto?
The increase in lifetime use came almost entirely from people who had already stepped away from crypto. Among adults who had not used it in the past year, the proportion who said they had ever owned or used it more than doubled, rising from 5% to 11%. In other words, the pool of lapsed users expanded, while the number of people currently engaged did not.
That pattern matters because lapsed users and active users represent different commercial and policy realities. A person who bought a small amount of bitcoin during a rally and later sold it counts toward the lifetime figure, but contributes little to ongoing activity on exchanges, wallets or decentralized applications. A lifetime measure can only rise or hold steady over time, whereas a past-year measure shows whether people are still participating.
Forward-looking intentions were also flat. Some 17% of respondents said they are likely to own or use crypto, compared with 16% a year earlier, a difference too small to suggest any shift in momentum.
3. Men, younger adults and the reasons people try crypto
The survey shows a clear gender gap. Men were more than twice as likely as women to have used crypto in the past year, at 18% versus 8%. Age also mattered: adults under 60 were considerably more likely to have used digital assets than older Americans.
Motivations were mostly exploratory. Among people who had owned crypto at some point, curiosity was the most common reason for trying it, cited by 34%. Long-term investment came second at 25%. Curiosity-led adoption tends to be fragile, since a person who buys out of interest may leave once the novelty fades or a price decline erodes the account balance.
These results help explain why lifetime ownership can climb while recent activity stays level. A product that attracts people mainly through curiosity must convince them of a practical reason to remain, and the data suggests that, for many, such a reason has not materialized.
4. How reliable is the poll?
Ipsos surveyed 1,545 adults between September 8 and 16 using KnowledgePanel, a probability-based panel in which participants are recruited through random sampling rather than by volunteering. The Federal Reserve uses the same panel for its annual survey of household finances, which gives the methodology a degree of familiarity among economists. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
That margin is worth keeping in mind when reading year-over-year changes. The move from 18% to 22% in lifetime use is larger than the margin and is therefore likely to reflect a real change, while the one-point shift in purchase intentions, from 16% to 17%, falls well inside it and should be read as essentially unchanged.
It is also worth remembering who commissioned the work. The DeFi Education Fund advocates for policies favorable to decentralized finance, so the questions it chooses to ask, such as those about privacy and DeFi familiarity, reflect its areas of interest. The sampling method, however, is the standard used in major public opinion research.
5. Is the traditional financial system seen as secure?
Not by most respondents. Only 19% said they consider the traditional financial system secure, and 63% said it needs an upgrade to defend against cybercrime and threats powered by artificial intelligence. About six in ten said they worry about data breaches at major financial institutions, and 54% doubt that those institutions can protect personal information from AI-driven attacks.
Financial privacy ranked as a widely shared priority, with 74% saying it matters to them. For an advocacy group that promotes decentralized systems, such answers support an argument that consumers want more control over their data. They do not by themselves show that consumers believe crypto delivers that control.
The concerns arrive against a backdrop of recent security incidents across the industry. Ledger, the maker of hardware wallets, said every confirmed case in a suspected $87 million drain involved devices sold by a reseller in Southeast Asia. Separately, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has warned that advances in AI could break the cryptography that secures Bitcoin and Ethereum sooner than many expect. Such episodes show that worries about security are not limited to banks.
6. Why do so few people trust crypto platforms?
Trust in crypto businesses remains very low. Just 4% of respondents said they highly trust crypto exchanges, and 5% said the same about decentralized platforms. By comparison, 42% expressed high trust in large national banks, and credit unions led all categories at 48%, although that figure was down five points from the previous year.
The gap is wide even though conventional financial institutions are themselves viewed as vulnerable. Respondents appear to separate the question of whether a system is secure from the question of whether they trust the institutions operating it. Banks and credit unions benefit from long track records, deposit protections and familiar customer service, advantages that most crypto firms have not yet built.
For exchanges and wallet providers, the finding is a reminder that technical safeguards alone may not change public perception. A low level of trust can discourage retention, which fits the survey's central pattern of many tried-it users and few current ones.
7. What do Americans know about DeFi?
Familiarity with decentralized finance is thin. Only 2% of Americans said they are very familiar with DeFi, a term that refers to crypto-native applications that let users trade, borrow and lend assets without a traditional intermediary such as a bank or broker.
Basic literacy about crypto itself is also limited. Just 6% of respondents could correctly identify all four listed characteristics of cryptocurrency, and 35% were not sure how to describe it at all. A technology that most people cannot define faces an obvious obstacle when it asks them to place money in it.
Yet openness exists alongside the ignorance. About 40% said they would be at least somewhat likely to try DeFi if it were available to them, and more than eight in ten of those respondents would use it to save money, earn interest, or send money to family and friends. These are everyday financial tasks rather than speculative trades, which suggests that practical uses may attract more interest than price-driven narratives.
8. Is interest in learning about stablecoins and DeFi fading?
Yes, by this measure. Interest in learning about stablecoins fell to 7% from 11% a year earlier, and interest in learning about DeFi dropped to 8% from 11%. Both declines came even after the GENIUS Act established federal rules for stablecoins, a development that supporters had expected might encourage mainstream curiosity.
The decline sits uneasily beside the 40% who say they might try DeFi. One reading is that many people would use such products if they were simple and trustworthy, yet do not wish to spend time studying them. Consumers rarely learn the mechanics of the payment systems they use, and the same may apply to crypto if it becomes embedded in familiar apps.
For the industry, the practical lesson is that education campaigns may matter less than product design and credibility. The survey indicates a public that is willing to experiment, wary of institutions of every kind, and not especially eager to become expert.
9. What the findings mean for the industry
The central message is that sampling crypto and sticking with it are separate behaviors. Lifetime use rose four points to 22%, but past-year use remained at 13% and intended future use barely moved. Exchanges, wallet makers and DeFi developers looking to grow will have to turn short-term curiosity into lasting use, and the numbers on trust and literacy show how large that task is.
Policymakers can read the results in more than one way. Advocates may point to the high share of respondents who worry about financial security and privacy as support for alternatives. Critics may point to the very low trust in crypto platforms and the limited understanding of the technology as evidence that consumers need strong protections before wider adoption.
The next edition of the survey will show whether the pool of lapsed users keeps growing and whether any of them return. Until then, the data describes an American public that is more familiar with crypto than before, no more active in it than a year ago, and still undecided about whom to trust.
In short, the survey records growing familiarity without growing commitment, and that distinction is likely to shape how companies, advocates and regulators describe the state of American crypto adoption in the months ahead.