The number of United States adults reporting crypto ownership or usage dropped to around 18 million in 2023, according to the latest annual household survey from the Federal Reserve.
In the 12 months to October 2023, 7% of surveyed U.S. adults reported using crypto — down from 10% in 2022 and 12% in 2021, according to the Fed’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED) published on May 21.
Just 1% of adults said they use crypto as a payment method or to send money, down half from 2022, while 7% purchased or held crypto as an investment.
The Fed’s results are far below Coinbase’s long-touted claim in its lobbying efforts that 52 million Americans own crypto. Coinbase did not respond to a request for comment on how it arrived at the figure.
For the 1% that used crypto for a financial transaction, nearly 30% said it was because the receiving person or firm preferred crypto. The least cited reason was a lack of trust in banks.
The survey reported that individuals with annual incomes of $100,000 or more were more likely to have used crypto for any reason.
It also found millennials, those aged 30 to 44, made up the largest share of crypto users, followed closely by adult Generation Zs aged 18 to 29. Men were also three times more likely to use crypto than women.
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Black and Hispanic adults were the most common crypto users for financial transactions.
Asian adults were the largest demographic using crypto as an investment, while White adults were the least likely to use crypto for any reason.
The survey was conducted in October 2023 with 11,488 participanting U.S. adults age 18 and older. The Fed weighted the sample against the 258 million adults per the U.S. Census Bureau’s March 2023 current population survey.
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