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Survey: Younger Americans More Interested in Cryptocurrencies, ICOs
A new survey released today found that 31.6 percent of Americans have heard of ethereum, while only 22.1 percent have have heard of ripple.
By Nikhilesh De
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 7:06 a.m. Published Oct 31, 2017, 6:00 p.m.
Younger Americans appear to be more interested in cryptocurrencies compared to other age groups.
That's according to the latest survey published by digital student loan servicer LendEDU, which asked roughly 1,000 U.S. citizens about ether and Ripple's XRP token at the end of October. The questions ranged from whether people had heard of ether and XRP to if they would invest in the cryptocurrencies.
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According to the survey, 31.6 percent of respondents have heard of ethereum (with 18.2 percent planning to invest in it) while 22.2 percent have heard of XRP (with 14.8 percent intending to purchase some).
After breaking the results down by age, the data shows that roughly a third of respondents between the ages of 18 and 44 planned to invest in ether, while another third did not. The final third was uncertain.
A far smaller portion of adults aged 45 and up planned to invest in ethereum, with between 89–98 percent of respondents saying they were either not going to invest or were unsure.
The results of the research closely match LendEDU's previous survey, which instead took a focus on bitcoin. In that survey, the majority of respondents who had heard of bitcoin were also in the younger age ranges, while older respondents indicated less awareness of the cryptocurrency.
The latest survey also looked at initial coin offerings (ICOs), finding that roughly a quarter of respondents had heard of the blockchain funding model, while 75.1 percent had not. However, there was some uncertainty around the status of ICOs among even those who had heard of them.
LendEDU said of the results:
"In our September survey, we found that 10.69 percent of Americans believed that owning bitcoin was illegal in the United States. In our October survey, we found that 21.00 percent of respondents believe that investing in an initial coin offering is illegal. And, 61.10 percent of respondents were unsure about the legality of investing in an initial coin offering."
On the other hand, 15.1 percent of respondents said they plan to invest in an ICO in the future.
Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Ripple.
Survey image via Shutterstock
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