From Decrypt · By Decrypt Staff
In brief
Some 22% of U.S. adults have ever owned or used crypto, up from 18% in 2025, but past-year use held at 13%, and the growth came mostly from lapsed users.
Only 19% say the financial system is secure, and 63% say it needs an upgrade to combat threats like AI and cybercrime. Yet just 4% trust crypto exchanges.
Only 2% are very familiar with DeFi, though 40% say they’d be at least somewhat likely to try it.
More Americans have tried crypto than a year ago. Far fewer are still using it.
Some 22% of U.S. adults say they have ever owned or used crypto, up from 18% in 2025, according to a national survey conducted by Ipsos for the DeFi Education Fund, a crypto policy advocacy group. But the share who used crypto in the past 12 months held flat at 13%.
Myriad: Who will win the midterms? Click to make your prediction.
The growth came almost entirely from people who have stepped away. Among Americans who hadn’t used crypto in the past year, the share who had ever owned or used it more than doubled, to 11% from 5%. Plans to buy are flat, too: 17% say they’re likely to own or use crypto in the future, compared with 16% last year.
Men were more than twice as likely as women to have used crypto in the past year, 18% to 8%, and adults under 60 were far more likely to have used it than older Americans. Curiosity remains the top reason people tried crypto, cited by 34% of those who have owned it, followed by long-term investment at 25%.
The survey polled 1,545 adults from Sept. 8 to 16 on Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, the same probability-based panel the Federal Reserve uses for its annual survey of household finances. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
It also found deep unease with the traditional financial system. Only 19% of Americans say it’s secure, while 63% say it needs an upgrade to combat threats like cybercrime and AI. Six in 10 worry about data breaches at major financial institutions, and 54% doubt those institutions are ready to protect their personal information from AI-driven threats. Financial privacy matters to 74%.
BitcoinBTC · USD$81,674−3.56%Oct 21Oct 23Oct 25Oct 27Oct 28$84.8k$83.1k$81.3k$79.6k24h HighHigh$81,63624h LowLow$80,334VolVol$1.0B→Buy Bitcoin with USDTPowered by JupiterPrice data by CoinGeckoCoinGeckoMore Bitcoin news and projections →That skepticism hasn’t translated into trust in crypto. Just 4% have high trust in crypto exchanges and 5% in decentralized platforms, compared with 42% for large national banks. Credit unions led at 48%, down 5 points from last year.
Security worries aren’t limited to banks. Crypto wallet maker Ledger said all confirmed cases in a suspected $87 million drain involved hardware wallets sold by a Southeast Asian reseller. Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake recently warned that advances in AI could break the cryptography securing Bitcoin and Ethereum sooner than expected.