A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center suggests most Americans don’t feel confident about, nor do they feel safe using, crypto.
Survey: American’s Aren’t Confident Around Crypto
Between March 13 and 19 of this year, the Research Center asked a group of people about their feelings towards crypto, and roughly three quarters of the respondents (about 75 percent) suggested that their confidence in the space was lacking or nonexistent. For example, just under 40 percent of those taking part in the study said that they had zero confidence in the industry and didn’t feel comfortable in any way, shape, or form trading or using digital assets in any capacity.
Another 36 percent of the respondents, while their negative feelings weren’t nearly as large as the first group, said that their confidence was not particularly strong, and that it would take a lot to convince them otherwise. The most depressing part of the survey? Only two to four percent of those taking part said they feel extremely confident in crypto, while 18 percent said they only feel “somewhat” confident.
These kinds of numbers are a shame because despite all that’s been accomplished in the digital currency arena over the last ten years, there are still far too many people marred by recent incidents involving FTX and other faulty companies. Like we’ve mentioned in several articles in the past, the FTX debacle is likely to leave a long-lasting – if not permanent – stain on the face of crypto.
With so much fraud taking place throughout the departments of FTX, and many other forms of crypto-related heists and crime occurring, one can’t really blame people for not feeling as strongly about crypto as they should.
FTX, for example, saw more than $200 billion in crypto wiped from the digital slate, and it’s been alleged that customer funds were used by Sam Bankman-Fried and his fellow executive inappropriately (to either purchase luxury Bahamian real estate or to pay off loans for another company). This kind of fusing of both customer and company funds is illegal, and it casts a serious pall over the arena.
There’s So Much Fraudulent Activity
In addition, we’re constantly hearing about crypto cyberattacks and scams, the most common now being romance scams. There are so many people out there looking for love or significant others. In the digital age, they’re turning to the internet to find their perfect matches, but things are getting thwarted as many of those with online love profiles could potentially be crypto thieves that tell their victims to invest in criminal-controlled digital platforms.
Once they begin investing and trust that things are going well, they’re likely to encounter issues if they try to extract money from the platforms, and it’s not long before they realize they’ve been played.
