Shane Neagle explores the results of a study into attitudes towards Bitcoin and what it could mean for the future of crypto.

You may have noticed that the stock market seems to retain remarkable resilience despite the cascading economic recessions affecting all developed nations whose economies have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown measures. This year has seen mass unemployment claims, obliteration of small businesses, and entire industries scrapped.

Amidst such a calamity, governments had little choice but to enter emergency salvage mode. In doing so, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury broke many people's conceptions of what it means to have money and incur debt. With trillions upon trillions of dollars pumped into the economy, and more on the way, it is easy to lose confidence in fiat currency.

For the time being, the Fed’s strategy rallied the stock market — but uncertain times lie ahead. Bitcoin (BTC) is emerging as the bulwarking choice against such uncertainty. More and more people view Bitcoin as an insurance policy against inflation. After all, BTC remains a unique alternative as it resides outside the ecosystem of governments, central banks and fiat currencies.

Updated BTC Adoption Survey Shows Increased Confidence

The Tokenist conducted an important comparative survey in April 2020, covering nearly 5,000 respondents across 17 nations. Surveying at the pandemic’s peak gives us an insight into people’s attitudes compared to three years ago, when BTC achieved its highest performance.

Speaking to Bitcoin’s increased credibility compared to traditional financial institutions, almost a third of respondents view Bitcoin with greater trust than in 2017:

Male and female millennials are tightly clustered together in the “more trustworthy” group. Covering all age groups, a solid majority of respondents, over 59% consider Bitcoin as a “positive innovation” in the realm of digital technology and finance. This represents a significant increase of about 27% compared to those surveyed three years ago.

Predictably, male millennials, with female millennials behind, report the most positive attitudes toward Bitcoin. Equally predictably, the age cohort over 65 shows little enthusiasm for Bitcoin. They are most likely to never use Bitcoin, no matter the degree of familiarity.

As far as millennials go, it bears noting that 44% of them would be interested in acquiring BTC in the next 5 years. Those older than 65 make for a stark contrast when expressing the same desire – merely 3% show interest in acquiring BTC in the next 5 years.  

Incidentally, we can see the same elderly reticence when it comes to cashless and contactless systems as a whole, with security concerns popping up as the main obstacle for adoption. Still, even when taking into account highly publicised crypto exchange hacks over the years, significantly fewer people across all age groups consider BTC to be some kind of “bubble” ready to pop.

Millennials appear to be far more confident in the fundamentals of BTC, with just 24% viewing it as a bubble. However, twice that many in the over-65 age group would agree with the sentiment that BTC represents a risky fad. Notably, BTC has a long road ahead to assuage people of its worthiness to replace fiat currency, as one-third of survey participants, spanning all age groups, report doubt.

Perception of BTC In Terms of Usage

Although Bitcoin has been integrated into major online stores as a payment method, among them Microsoft’s Xbox Store, Whole Foods, Starbucks, Overstock, and even some invoicing software making it a means of payment for small businesses, Bitcoin’s utility resides in the form of digital gold. Meaning, BTC serves as a store of value first and foremost. The recently popularized term “HODL’er” testifies to this trend, as it describes people who hold cryptocurrencies instead of selling them, no matter the weekly fluctuations.

As you can see from the graph below, over half of millennials show interest in holding onto Bitcoin, with 27% interested in selling it. The over-65 age group holds no such confidence, with only 13% showing interest in holding BTC and 44% suggesting they would sell it immediately.

The HODL trend has remained implacable recently, as both the KuCoin crypto exchange hack and CFTC coming after BitMEX resulted in no substantial BTC price drop. In previous years, each of those events separately would likely have caused a significant price disruption.

One could interpret such results to suggest that the perception of Bitcoin as an insurance policy against the ventures of central banks has become even stronger since this survey was conducted in April.

Conclusion

Having been conducted prior to June, when decentralised finance (DeFi) really took off from $1 billion to an over $10 billion valuation, this comparative BTC adoption survey is quite conservative. That is to say, the significant gains in BTC adoption from three years ago have likely jumped higher since.

When people witness trillions of dollars injected into the cracked economy, it brings a shock to the system. While some portion of the cryptocurrency sector may be manipulated by big crypto whales, BTC stands out as a haven for many in the upcoming financial storm.

Nobody is in a position to tell if the stock market can be kept afloat with further Fed interventions, or how the turbulent presidential elections ahead may impact it. What we can see is an indication that Bitcoin is seeing increased adoption. One would rationally think the current political and economic climate would only accelerate its adoption even more.