Introduction
Over the past two years you can say cryptocurrencies gained more followers and people aware of their existence, than over the past decade. Mainstream news publications really like to publish shocking news, clickbaits and anything scandalous. You know something is popular when various news portal that have nothing to do with finances proclaimed it dead over and over again. It also shows their lack of any basic knowledge about the market, blockchain itself, how are cryptocurrencies used and what do they even represent. So… Who does know? Who actually uses cryptocurrencies? There were various polls and surveys which tell us who actually uses and trades with cryptocurrencies. And we’ve checked out all of them to get a decent picture about it. So let’s dive in the demography of crypto population.
Cryptocurrency Statistics
It is a known fact that cryptocurrencies are decentralized and dont judge. So anyone can use them, no matter the age, race or gender. It is very hard to actually find out the exact number of cryptocurrency users. There are a lot of wallets which belong to the same person, thousands of coins and the market which also provides anonymity.
If you take a look at Etherscan for example, there are over 57 million Ethereum wallet addresses. Since there is no way to know which of these ETH wallets belong to the same person, it is hard to determine how much crypto users are there actually. Keep in mind, some addresses are used only for scams so that is also something to take into consideration.
According to statista.com, we ended 2018 with over 30 million Blockchain wallet users. Since the graph is already here, another interesting thing we can see is that there were only 3 million wallets in the Q1 of 2015. What a progress!
Average Cryptocurrency User
According to most researches, especially one ZeroHedge conducted, and there were a lot of them, average crypto user is:
- Male,
- Young adult (25 – 34 years old),
- American,
- Has a regular job,
- Has $50-100k income,
- Married or in a relationship,
- Non-religious,
- With liberal views and against capitalism.
This is also shown in the image above. Funny enough, as we check some of the things on the checklist… Yes, most of these fit a profile of the people we know are active in the crypto world. However, let us not stop at the average user of cryptocurrencies and dig a little deeper to find out more about the demography of crypto population.
World of Cryptocurrency Users
Women
It is a very popular opinion women are generally less involved in finances, technology and investing. With all that said, it is believed they are also less involved in blockchain and cryptocurrency investment than men. And of course, most known names in crypto world are men: Brian Armstrong, Gavin Anderson, Vitalik Buterin, Roger Ver… and so on. All men. And if we take a look at the statistics, the figures look bad. However, women are the growing audience in cryptocurrencies. In 2018 London Block Exchange had a study about women in crypto. The number of women who invest in crypto has doubled in 6 months, to 13%. Which would mean 1 out of 8 women is interested in crypto and blockchain.
We don’t think women in crypto are such a strange occurrence. If you take a look around Twitter, Youtube and other media, you will find a great amount of women who are expressing a great interest in cryptocurrencies. Also, these women are mostly young adults. Which leads us to our next group in the demography of crypto population.
Millennials
Millennials is a term for a specific population, mostly born in 80s and 90s. They are also a group of people who closely followed, from the young age, how technology is progressing rapidly and how everything changed at a fast pace. They had no other choice but to adapt to it and now this group is almost always very ready to embrace new tech and changes.
It is only natural millennial’s also embraced cryptocurrencies, like nobody else did. As an example, we have Erik Finman. He dropped out of high school, and became a millionaire by 18 just because he invested in Bitcoin when it was around $10. His investment was $1,000, which he got from his grandmother. One thing also worth mentioning is that he didn’t go into crypto blindly, but actually studied what Bitcoin is and fell in love with the potential cryptoassets offer. With one amount of his earnings, he opened an online education service called Botangle.
Chris Castiglione, who has Bitcoin and cryptocurrency courses via One Month also commented on the topic of millennial’s in the crypto world:
I think the crypto market is attractive to millennials because it’s a space with both a lot of growth and risk. People who are 40+ years of age are likely settled down with a career and family and less inclined to get into such a quick growth, volatile field. It’s been the same way with startup founders over the past 2 decades. Millennials also seem to be much more digitally literate than Gen X or baby boomers.
Financially Flustered
Financial problems, much like crypto, known no age. It is no secret how people are generally in debt, have issues with fiat, jobs that aren’t paid enough and also take loans they can’t afford. All this leads to bad personal finances. They have no financial freedom. Not to mention, not only people suffer this, countries do too.
So, many of them turn to cryptocurrencies during these rough times in hope of salvation. The most popular example of countries exploring other financial options with crypto is Venezuela. It is also a known fact that Greece decided to invest in cryptocurrencies in a hope to pull itself out of debt.
Whales
A couple of years ago Bocconi Blockchain Cryptocurrencies Association released a submarine wildlife definition in the crypto world and it soon became a meme. It actually shows where are you on the list according to the Bitcoin you own.
Jokes aside, whales are real in crypto and it is only natural we will mention them in the demography of crypto population. This is a term which is used to illustrate a cryptocurrency user who usually has a lot of Bitcoin. Owning a lot of Bitcoin isn’t an issue. The issue here is that by owning such a huge amount of cryptocurrencies they can potentially control and manipulate the market. Since crypto market provides anonymity it is impossible for us, or anyone else for that matter, to known which is the true age and identity of these whales. We are pretty sure they want to keep it that way.
True Believers
We believe this group is the crucial part of cryptocurrencies and that it is the key to any progress and mass adoption. In this group, sex, age and financial status don’t matter whatsoever. These are the people who are learning, discussing, exploring and developing in the world of crypto on a daily basis. Simply, they are living and breathing crypto. They will always seek new security measure to protect cryptocurrencies, they will spend hours on various forums discussing mining or the market state. Also, they can spot a scam or a ponzi scheme in crypto miles away. Sometimes it is hard to be a part of this group. You can hear a lot of negativity from various sources, news, family or acquaintances who doubt it because they read some silly article or because the bear market is very long. But it is important to stay calm, not get too emotional and just keep learning.
In other words, believers are in a serious relationship with crypto.
Conclusion
As we mentioned in the introduction, it is hard to determine any real statistics about cryptocurrency users. Few things are certain. If people are somewhat interested in technology, they have heard about crypto. If on top of that they have some kind of economic background, even more so. Generally, men are more interested in crypto, however, there are exceptions to this. And the number of exceptions is rising.
One thing we can point out is that the last group we mentioned in the demography of crypto population is the most important one – true believers. No matter what age, sex, race or nationality are you, if you want crypto to be a global success, you have to truly believe in it. Start using crypto and accept it as a payment method. Spread the word and educate anyone who is willing to learn and listen.
MyAltcoins team,
Ana & Petar
