Number Crunch

Despite the Hype, the Vast Majority of Americans Don’t Seem to Care About Cryptocurrencies

Crypto is still pretty cryptic

84%: That’s the total percentage of U.S. adults who are “not interested in” (66%) or have “never heard of” (18%) cryptocurrency, according to Axios, citing data firm CivicScience. This is a surprising finding if you gauge the presumed interest in a subject by the number of headlines it generates: Media obsession with bitcoin and its carious cryptocurrency cousins has been rampant for years, and one-off events like Tesla’s decision to buy $1.5 billion in bitcoin can spawn days of hot takes.

So it seems remarkable that 18% of American adults have somehow managed to avoid hearing anything about this topic whatsoever. Perhaps they were trolling the surveyors, or just didn’t want to talk about it. As for the two-thirds of those polled who professed no interest in the subject, that’s easier to understand. Cryptocurrency can be tedious to comprehend, and despite the years of hype is still quite rarified as actual currency, instead having evolved into more of an investment vehicle. Axios says interest is “growing fast,” given that “the number of people investing in cryptocurrencies has risen 50%” over the last year. But to be clear, that rise is from 6% to 9%, so it’s not…