Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and chief executive officer of Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange FTX, speaks during the Institute of International Finance (IIF) annual membership meeting in Washington, DC, on Thursday. , October 13, 2022.
Dinh Than | Bloomberg | beautiful pictures
After a series of crypto crashes, scandals, and bankruptcies, Americans’ views of cryptocurrencies have taken a turn for the worse, with CNBC’s National Economic Survey found a strong majority in favor of regulation.
The survey found that 43% of the public has a negative view of cryptocurrencies, up from 25% in March. The percentage with positive views plummeted to just 8% from 19% and neutrals nearly halved to 18% from 31%.
CNBC’s National Economic Survey
It was a significant drop for an investment billed as its own asset class and featured a famous launch party on the global stage filled with Super Bowl commercials and human endorsements. famous. That popularity has drawn many ordinary Americans to crypto, and the survey found that 24% of the public have invested, traded or used crypto in the past, up from 16% in March. .
The nationwide survey of 800 Americans was conducted between November 26 and 30 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5%. (March results on crypto are from NBC News survey.)
According to the survey, 42% of crypto investors currently have a slightly negative or very negative view of the asset, matching the 43% result for all adults in the survey. Key difference: 17% of crypto investors are “very negative” compared to 47% for non-crypto investors.
But it could still be a problem for the cryptocurrency in restoring its credibility as reputation seems to be central to its valuation.
Brian Brook, CEO of Bitfury and former currency controller, said: “It’s a 90% retail market, which means retail investor sentiment is really real. importance. CNBC Financial Advisors Summit. “And so, when you read the stories about FTX on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, literally every day for the last 30 days… what it did to the relative newcomers, they feel scared. And as a result, liquidity is thinner than it would be and people’s willingness to invest is lower.”
Whether a respondent invests in crypto or not, they are likely to favor regulating it as rigorously as stocks or bonds. The survey found that 53% of the public said that cryptocurrencies should have the same or greater regulation and supervision as stocks and bonds, including 21% of all adults and 16% of crypto investors. want more regulations.
The negative view of cryptocurrencies comes at the same time that the public has become frustrated with stocks. Only 26% say now is a good time to invest in stocks, down two points from last quarter’s survey and the most pessimistic level on record in the survey’s 15-year history. 51% think it’s a bad time to invest, the third-highest percentage in the survey’s history, second only to the upbeat results of the previous two surveys.
