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Trust In Stock Market 'Greater Than Bitcoin' But Not By Much, Survey Says

This article is more than 6 years old.

A survey to gauge attitudes in the United States towards Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has found that a little over half of the sample either owned the digital currency or were considering an investment. And, of those polled most trusted the stock market more than Bitcoin - but not by a huge margin.

Conducted by Toluna, one of the world's largest market research companies that is part of the ITWP brand, the survey of consumers across the U.S. was conducted and from December 12 for a week. ITWP, which owns Harris Interactive Europe, was incorporated earlier this decade as a company and formed by Verlinvest, a significant investor in Toluna.

The findings came out amid Bitcoin hitting another record high this Friday in touching distance of $18,000 on crypto exchanges like Luxembourg-based BitStamp. So far this year the price has shot by a massive 1,700% and much of the recent uptick has occurred following several U.S. exchanges indicating that they would begin to trade Bitcoin futures.

In their debut on Monday earlier in the week, Chicago-based CBOE’s Bitcoin futures surged nearly 20% with over 4,000 contracts changing hands by the end of the 4.15 pm (EDT) settlement. And, this Sunday as the CME Group was to commence its own futures contract in the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was trading even higher at over $19,000 a pop.

Among the key takeaways was that most people are still only willing to invest $1,000 or less in Bitcoin, and ease of use and transferability is low on reasons for liking the digital currency.

Capped at 2,000 responses from people from Alaska to Wyoming - across the North-East of the U.S. (22.78%/457 respondees), the South (34.65%/695), West (21.04%), and Mid/West (21.54%/432), Toluna’s survey revealed that more than (57%/514 respondees) “trust the stock market” as against almost 43% (386) in Bitcoin.

Most bulk of responses came from the states of California (10.93%/205), New York (9.44%/177), Florida (9.44%/177), Pennsylvania (5.23%/98), and Texas (5.55%/104), Illinois (5.17%/97) and Michigan (3.09%/58).

In response to the question: Which of the following technological advances are you familiar with?, 44.87% (900) of the sample stated Bitcoin versus just over half - 51.15% for iPhoneX, 52.04% and 55.88% Smart Watches.

Out of 900 responses to date, while 26.33% (237) indicated that they own an amount of Bitcoin, almost a quarter of respondees 24.89%/223) indicated that although they do not currently own any of the ‘Big Daddy’ of cryptocurrencies they were thinking about investing.

Just over two-fifths (42.33%) revealed that they neither owned any Bitcoin and “do not plan to purchase.”

Although only slightly over a quarter of the sample cap (519) responded to a question on which attributes they felt make the cryptocurrency “an attractive investment,” being seen as anonymous currency garnered 292 responses or just over 56%. Its “digital” nature gained the most responses (68.02%) for the question.

An Attractive Investment?

It is an anonymous currency        56.26% (292)

It is global                                         68.02% (353)

It is digital                                        63.97% (332)

Ease of transfer/use                       42.2% (219)

Source: Toluna

In a related question and as to attributes that those polled “worry about when considering Bitcoin”, the anonymous nature of the currency (45.86%/238) and that it “can be easily deleted or somehow” (44.32%/ 230) were the two top concerns. This was followed closely by it not being regulated  at 44.32% and a little further back by unclear taxes on just under a third (30.44%) of those canvassed to the question from 519 responses.

While Bitcoin’s value has soared over the past year it has nevertheless witnessed some wild swings. Add to that Bitcoin exchanges and digital currency wallets have encountered technical issues such as outages, DDoS attacks and being hacked. And, some analysts think it will take some time before futures for the cryptocurrency really see a significant lift. Others have posited that the price of Bitcoin could decline significantly although not quite yet.

On the appetite for investment, of those answering a question on how much they would be willing to invest in Bitcoin, 42% responded by indicating $0-$1,000, almost 21% with $1,001-$5,000, 10.02% in the range of $10,001-$50,000 and 8.29% indicating over $100,000.

While the size of this survey and time it took to gather the results might make some ask how representative it really is and does it accurately gauge consumer attitudes across the U.S., it does at least provide a timely snapshot. But one is always going to get questions about how large and extensive the research should be.

One might also argue in respect of the question about trust in the stockmarket versus Bitcoin is somewhat broad as it does not drill down into preferences towards stocks (equities/shares), fixed-income securities (bonds) or other asset classes.

Of the entire sample, a little under two thirds of those canvassed were female (69.96%/1,283 respondees), with the age groups (male and female) - 18-34, 33-54 and +55 - fairly equally split with a third for each. In terms of the educational level of the survey's respondents, around two-thirds were collectively classified as Graduated 4-year College/University (25.1%), 24.69% having some College/University background and 18.5% Postgraduates.

The full findings of Toluna's survey, which provides bar and pie charts on the data, can be read here.

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