PERSONAL FINANCE
Cryptocurrency
Everyone expected a Bitcoin investing boom. Why it never came.
Daniel de ViséUSA TODAY
Updated July 26, 2026, 3:08 p.m. ET
Federal regulators and policymakers have shepherded cryptocurrency from the fringes of investing into the mainstream, introducing digital assets to exchange-traded funds and retirement accounts.
A new report suggests, however, that crypto investors remain relatively rare.
Roughly 17% of American adults have ever owned crypto, according to a July 9 report from the Urban Institute. But only about 9% of Americans own crypto now. In other words, nearly half of America’s crypto investors have bailed.
The report draws from a survey of more than 3,000 adults in January. It’s the latest reading on the reach of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency at a time when digital assets are accessible to any casual investor.
President Donald Trump has promoted crypto for ETF investors and retirement savers, pledging to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet.”
That campaign helped push the price of Bitcoin to record highs in 2025. But Bitcoin has shed roughly half of its value since then, and the crush of new crypto owners apparently hasn’t arrived.
“There’s not a big wave of new crypto investors,” said Alex Carchidi, contributing cryptocurrency analyst at The Motley Fool. “And in fact, many of the professional crypto investors … have been leaving the market or hibernating in some way since the market collapsed in October.”
Despite regulatory push, crypto remains on the margins
The Urban Institute’s findings align with previous research from the Federal Reserve, which has tracked crypto adoption on its survey of Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households.
The latest of those reports, from May, shows that 10% of adults used cryptocurrency in 2025. According to the Fed, crypto adoption may have peaked four years earlier, in 2021, when 12% of Americans bought, sold, held or otherwise used it.
The numbers suggest crypto may not be spreading across the investing landscape, despite an ongoing campaign to promote it.
“People still view it as a more specialized asset class,” said Amy Arnott, a portfolio strategist at Morningstar. “And I think that volatility and these periodic huge declines are still probably keeping people away.”
How crypto became available to everyday investors
Until 2024, everyday investors who wanted to trade digital currencies generally had to seek out crypto exchanges, a potential deal-breaker for unfamiliar investors.
That changed in January 2024, when federal regulators voted that ordinary American investors could buy and sell spot Bitcoin ETFs in the same way they trade stocks.
In a 2025 executive order, President Donald Trump called for federal regulation of digital currencies and spoke of creating a national cryptocurrency stockpile.
Trump is pushing cryptocurrency as his family businesses profit from it. In 2025, those businesses earned $1.4 billion from various crypto projects
Earlier this year, Trump’s Labor Department issued a proposed rule that would ease legal and regulatory barriers against adding crypto and other alternative investments to retirement plans.
Does crypto belong in retirement accounts?
Critics of that rule say cryptocurrency has no place in retirement accounts, because it is volatile, and because many Americans don’t really understand it.
“If you understand how crypto works, that’s OK,” said Luisa Godinez-Puig, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. “But for a lot of people, crypto is a bit of a mystery. It comes with a bit of a learning curve.”
The value of Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, has fallen from around $125,000 in October 2025 to about $65,000 in late July 2026.
If investors are shying away from crypto, its declining value could be a reason.
“By definition, that means that people are selling,” said Caleb Silver, editor in chief of Investopedia. “And that likely means that people who may have experimented in buying it have decided that they don’t want to own it anymore, because they’ve seen the price crash.”
Many crypto investors think digital currency is the future
Current crypto investors told the Urban Institute they own digital currencies as a way to diversify their investments (45%), or out of interest in new technologies (37%), or because they think digital currencies are the future (27%).
Former crypto owners, by contrast, seem less interested in the currency’s promise and more concerned with investment returns.
Roughly 8% of Americans surveyed said they no longer own crypto. By comparison to current crypto investors, former investors were more likely to say a primary reason for investing was to make money. They stopped investing in crypto primarily because they were losing money.
“There are many investors who bought crypto over the last 15 years who were simply chasing price,” Silver said.
Most people who own crypto have held it for several years, the survey found. Their balances are generally small: two-fifths of crypto investors own less than $250 in digital currency.
The study found that crypto investors are predominantly male. Asian Americans are far more likely to own crypto than people of other races. Crypto investors skew young.
Is crypto a good investment?
The Urban Institute report suggests that federal regulators should require banks, exchanges and other crypto providers to “provide clear, standardized disclosures” about the potential risks of crypto.
Some investment experts question whether crypto has much value to diversify an investment portfolio and to provide a hedge against stocks. Among other problems, Bitcoin’s price tends to sink when the stock market is falling.
“It’s also nearly impossible to pin down what its underlying value should be,” Arnott of Morningstar wrote in a 2025 post. “For those reasons, a portfolio weighting of 5% or less seems prudent, and many investors may want to skip cryptocurrency altogether.”
(This story has been updated with new headlines.)
