More than 45% of over 5,000 survey respondents from 17 different countries said they preferred Bitcoin (BTC) over investments in stocks, real estate, and gold.
The survey, which aimed to compare Bitcoin (BTC) adoption rates from 2017 to those in 2020, was performed by Tokenist, which describes itself as an independent media outlet focused on covering the latest Fintech and blockchain developments.
Sia Mohajer, a co-founder at Tokenist, told Crowdfund Insider that the survey was carried out by utilizing three datasets with more than 5000 respondents based in 17 countries. This allowed the researchers to analyze 2017 public sentiment towards Bitcoin and compare it to people’s attitudes towards the cryptocurrency right now.
Around 61% of the total respondents (and 78% of millennials) said they’re now “somewhat familiar” with BTC, and 14% of millennials claimed that they currently own the digital asset.
Approximately 60% of respondents believe that Bitcoin is “a positive innovation” in Fintech, which is an increase of 27% since 2017.
Interestingly, 47% of Tokenist’s survey respondents said they “trust Bitcoin over big banks, an increase of 29% in the past three years.”
Around 43% of respondents, and 59% of millennials, “feel that most people will be using Bitcoin within the next decade,” the survey revealed. About 44% of millennials now say they are “likely to buy BTC in the next five years.”
Approximately 33%, or one in three, millennials say they plan to “hold onto Bitcoin they are given, while a slightly smaller number (27%) would immediately sell it.”
Around 39% of male millennials now have “no problem with the intangible nature of BTC, and a quarter of millennials as a whole report the same attitude.”
Only 24% of millennials “think that Bitcoin is a bubble, though 50% of the over-65s do,” the survey revealed.
Although the survey’s results appear to suggest that Bitcoin adoption has increased, it’s worth noting that the BTC price has remained well below the $20,000 mark it almost reached back in December 2017. The overall market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market had skyrocketed to over $800 billion during late 2017 and early 2018, but then came crashing down during the extended bear market of 2018.
Recent data shows that only 0.5% of BTC addresses own more than 10 Bitcoins, an amount valued at around $88,000 at the time of writing. This also confirms that the vast majority of people still don’t hold their wealth in Bitcoin or other digital assets, which suggests that the public still doesn’t “trust” decentralized cryptocurrencies to the extent that it would lead to mainstream acceptance and adoption.
More details about survey methodology can be accessed here.