Survey of Bitcoin Holders in the United States: Younger Men Hold More, BTC Has Appeal Across Political Factions

Original source: Troy Cross X account

Author: Troy Cross

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

I am very proud of this report on Bitcoin ownership. We surveyed 3,538 adults in the United States and found the following about Bitcoin ownership:

• It spans the entire political identity spectrum
• It skews younger and male
• It is weakly correlated with unique moral value configurations
• It is strongly correlated with Bitcoin knowledge

We wanted to understand who owns Bitcoin, who does not, and why. This requires in-depth research. Not just surface-level statistics, but a deep exploration of the roots of our psychosocial identities. Many frameworks claim to do this, but my research partner @andrewwperkins chose "moral foundations" and designed a comprehensive set of questions. We then hired a professional company to help us achieve a representative sample.

Every Bitcoin holder knows that true randomness is hard to achieve, but we believe that even visually, you can see that we did quite well across several dimensions, achieving a fairly representative sample. And the sample size is large, with 3,538 people.

Demographics

We found no strong correlations across many dimensions—race, ethnicity, religion, relationship status, income, education, or financial literacy—with Bitcoin ownership. Age and gender are exceptions. Bitcoin holders in the U.S. tend to be younger and male.

Politics

Part of what shapes American identity and behavior is surprisingly political orientation. Our political divides seem to be not only deepening but also becoming the most important fact about identity, surpassing all other factors. So we surveyed in five different ways:

The results we found were absolutely the most shocking. Like most people on this app, our media critics, scholars writing about Bitcoin, and almost all politicians, we assumed Bitcoin ownership would skew towards the political right and libertarianism. Wrong!

Bitcoin holders in our sample look almost identical to non-Bitcoin holders: most are moderates! They are still more likely to lean politically extreme, whether liberal or conservative (statistically significant but small).

Strangely, those who self-identify as "very liberal" or position themselves on the far left of a 10-point scale are, relative to other political identities, the most likely to own Bitcoin.

Note that the chart above does not say that there are more very liberal people among Bitcoin holders than among other political identities. That is not the case. Most Bitcoin holders are moderates. It means that if you randomly pick a very liberal person and a moderate person, the liberal is more likely to own Bitcoin.

In terms of "moral foundations," we know that liberals and conservatives have different values. For example, liberals place more emphasis on "care," while conservatives place more emphasis on "loyalty." We wanted to see which side Bitcoin holders lean towards. The results show a mix of both.

Finally, we explored whether people understand Bitcoin, trust Bitcoin, think Bitcoin is useful, and believe Bitcoin is good. We posed four questions for each aspect. The results show that Bitcoin holders differ significantly from non-holders across all political affiliations in these areas.

Specifically regarding trust and perceived morality, you can clearly see the stark contrast between those who hold Bitcoin and those who do not.

These four factors: trust, knowledge, practicality, and perceived morality, are the strongest correlations with Bitcoin ownership in our data. They are also strongly interrelated. Here, you can see a comparison of these factors with moral foundations.

To summarize our findings, I quote the conclusion of our report:

"From our polarized political discussions, one might think that Bitcoin ownership is an identity, especially one that reflects political leanings."

But we found that this is not the case. Bitcoin holders are politically similar to other Americans: most are moderates, with only a small number being conservatives and liberals.

Bitcoin holders are similar to other Americans in most demographics, with one significant exception: they tend to be younger and male.

What is most strongly correlated with Bitcoin ownership is not who you are, but how much you know about Bitcoin, and whether you think it is useful, trustworthy, and good.

It turns out that 14% of Americans who own Bitcoin do not belong to any specific political faction. Rather, they are ordinary Americans who take the time to study the technology and form a positive attitude towards it.

For the full report, please refer to: https://thenakamotoproject.org