Skrill, the digital payments brand which is part of Paysafe, has released the results of a consumer survey, which uncover a number of trends on the rising popularity and adoption of cryptocurrency. 38% of respondents said they’d either invested in or bought a cryptocurrency, and 84% said they’d heard of at least one cryptocurrency, with 64% recognising Bitcoin.
Of consumers polled for the survey*, carried out between March and April 2021 by Sapio Research in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, Austria and Bulgaria, 20% said they owned Bitcoin now or had done in the past. Ownership climbs higher in the US (24%) and Bulgaria (36%). Beyond Bitcoin, the report showed that the most known currencies were Bitcoin Cash (31% of consumers), Ethereum (22%) and Litecoin (19%). Ownership rates followed a similar trend, with Bitcoin Cash (9%) slightly leading Ethereum (8%) and Litecoin (7%).
Of the remaining currencies, Ethereum Classic, Dash, and Stellar were recognised by more than 10% of respondents, though ownership rates were as low as 5% or less. With even less recognition, up to 8% of respondents were aware of Chainlink, Tezos, Atom, EOS, OMG, Kyber Network, and 0x.
Consumers’ knowledge and understanding of cryptocurrencies as a financial asset appears sharply divided, with 47% agreeing or strongly agreeing that they don’t know enough about them for use or investment, while 38% considered them too risky for investment overall. However, 28% already believe that cryptocurrencies are a good investment for the future.
That said, consumer understanding appears to be trending higher. Almost a third (29%) of respondents said they know more now about cryptocurrencies than the same time last year, with a quarter (26%) saying they are more likely to invest in cryptocurrencies today compared to 12 months ago.
There was no clear opinion on what makes cryptocurrency useful, with 27% considering them the future of payments, while 26% referred to crypto as a good store of value, and 26% said they are the future of banking. Nonetheless, only 17% said they used crypto for anything other than investment or speculation.
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Up to 9% of respondents had used crypto as a payment method in the past month, with almost all (97%) of these trying it for the first time in the last year; 59% of those that had done so in the past month say they are now using crypto to pay frequently, and 44% claim this is now their preferred payment method. However, overall, the vast majority of respondents currently use a combination of debit cards (54%), credit cards (52%) and digital wallets (43%). But overall, almost a quarter (23%) of consumers agreed that payment in cryptocurrencies would become mainstream.
“Cryptocurrency adoption has rapidly increased to heights nobody could have imagined even two years ago,” said Rossen Yordanov, Senior Vice President, Skrill and NETELLER, at Paysafe. “We’re seeing that crypto is no longer a niche phenomenon, and our research provides further evidence of that, but there’s a significant opportunity to grow awareness about its potential for payments and transfers. We are working hard to make it easier for people everywhere to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with Skrill and NETELLER.”
