Survey of Traditional Investors on Investing in Cryptocurrencies

In an effort to find out what it takes for retail investors to actively participate in the digital business, LendEDU, a US marketing agency, teamed up with The Daily Hodl, a cryptocurrency news site, to survey 1,000 American adults who invest in the traditional financial market through a brokerage account that does not offer cryptocurrency trading.

In the survey, 52% of respondents said they would use their brokerage accounts to invest in crypto assets if given the option, while 59% of such investors said they would reduce their investments in stocks, bonds and other traditional products to invest more in cryptocurrencies. Moreover, 41% of those surveyed said they trust traditional brokerage networks more than Coinbase or Robinhood, the leading digital exchange operator. 

Bad news for Coinbase: 39% would even trust Amazon.com more than Coinbase when it comes to handling cryptocurrency investments.

Michael Brown, an analyst at LendEDU, believes that “this has to do with the general perception of digital currency. There's still a dark cloud over the area and a lot of people don't fully understand what's going on." 

LendEDU also found that only 44% of respondents who indicated an interest in investing in cryptocurrency assets would do so outside of their traditional brokerage. As for trading digital tokens through Amazon, that could also be because of its reputation, Brown said. Amazon and brokerages have been leaders this year, creating a reputation for trust and convenience among their customers. Coinbase and Robinhood have not yet been able to earn a high degree of trust, despite the fact that the former has 13 million clients, and Robinhood already has 6 million.

Given the collapse of the crypto market, its highly volatile nature, increased regulatory scrutiny and hacks of cryptocurrency platforms, Brown was surprised that respondents not only wanted to invest in it, but also allocated part of the funds going to traditional investments to achieve this goal.