The results are in..
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--> Raw data <--
General Stats
Total Responses: 104
Responses Used: 103
Highest education:
30.1% Bachelor's degree
21.4% Some college
17.5% Master's degree
10.7% Highschool graduate
6.8% Trade/technical/vocational
5.8% Associate's degree
3.9% Doctorate degree
3.9% Some K-12 or equivalent, no diploma
Age:
30-34: 20.4% | 25-29: 14.6% | 35-39: 13.6% | 40-50: 11.7% | 23-24: 9.7%
As expected, lots of early & mid 20s, early 30s. I realize now that the ranges I used were very poor for this question, and the representation of data looks bad.
Country of residence:
Surprisingly to me, only about half of the responses came from the US. Crypto really is a global phenomenon.
With a little over 100 responses, we can only accurately draw conclusions with a margin of error around ±10% since the sample size is over 100,000+.
General Understanding of Cryptocurrency Concepts
Average 3.45 | Median: 4 | Mode: 4 | Std. Dev.: 1.152
5-6 of the lowest responses were majority ETH holders with 1 more being majority BCC.
From my experience, I'd say these scores are skewed upward by about .5 points. Cryptography is offered as an junior / senior level math course at most universities, and it is that level of understanding that should've gotten a full 5/5 response. I think that most people in crypto do have a decent understanding of cryptography and what hashing algos are, but definitely not how/why they work.
Average 1: 3.83 | Median: 4 | Mode: 4 | Std. Dev.: 1.070
Average 2: 4.09 | Median: 4 | Mode: 5 | Std. Dev.: 0.961
Similar results with these questions. Most people believe they have a solid grasp of the fundamental technology behind cryptocurrency.
Average: 3.70 | Median: 4 | Mode: 5 | Std. Dev.: 1.282
Nearly 38% of people were not confident about how wallets work. This, in my opinion, is a very unfortunate situation. Part of it is probably because of the way wallets are described and how differently they can work. I plan on addressing this in a future post.
Average: 2.77 | Median: 3 | Mode: 2 | Std. Dev.: 1.323
Consensus algorithms are not a simple subject. They're also not very necessary to understand if you just want to buy/trade crypto, so I don't find it surprising that most people do not have a great understanding of them. Still, I find consensus algos to be one of the most fascinating parts about cryptocurrency.
Security Concepts
Average: 4.08 | Median: 5 | Mode: 5 | Std. Dev.: 1.258
This is another very high score, and for good reason. Something to note though, most people who disagreed with this statement and gave scores of 1-2 are also people who scored the next question highly in the 4-5 range. Frankly, I don't think you can say that you are both aware of the security risks and don't think security is a major issue, especially because security in cryptocurrency covers much more than just owning coins.
Average: 4.07 | Median: 4 | Mode: 4 | Std. Dev.: 0.889
Significantly higher hardware wallet usage than I was expecting. If these numbers hold up, and ~37% of people are really using hardware wallets, then we are in pretty good shape security-wise. Still, the majority are using software wallets (online) or exchanges to store their crypto. This result means that it's still very possible that a large-scale breach, similar to the original DAO hack, could happen.
Average: 3.84 | Median: 4 | Mode: 4 | Std. Dev.: 0.767
It's good that people generally feel like their crypto is safe. Given the above results about how people are storing their crypto, I'm happy to see that the super safe 5 rating is still only 16.7%. Security is a journey, not a destination.
Bitcoin and Ethereum
Average: 4.21 | Median: 5 | Mode: 5 | Std. Dev.: 0.978
Encouraging results here as most people say they do understand how Bitcoin and Ethereum differ. This result is important going forward to the next questions.
Coexist: 80.4% | ETH>BTC: 8.8% | BTC>ETH: 5.9% | Other > ETH or BTC: 2.0%
Overwhelming support on the opinion that BTC and ETH can coexist with both coins being useful in their own right. Unsurprisingly to me, the next most popular opinion is that ETH is making BTC obsolete.
BTC: 51.0% | ETH: 41.2% | BCC: 2.9% | None: 2.0%
I posted this survey to steemit and the ethtrader, ethereum, ethereumnoobies, btc, bitcoin, and cryptocurrency subreddits. There were similar amounts of upvotes on both sides, so I expected about a 50-50 split. It looks like alt coins are taking a bite out of the ETH holders money, which makes a lot of sense. The timing of this survey was at the early stages of BCC, so I expect that number is much larger now.
What is your favorite "alt coin" besides BTC or ETH?
| LTC | 16 | GNT | 2 |
| XMR | 8 | DASH | 2 |
| BCH | 7 | ICN | 2 |
| XRP | 6 | CORE | 1 |
| NEO | 5 | STEEM | 1 |
| DOGE | 5 | BAT | 1 |
| OMG | 3 | SONM | 1 |
| EOS | 2 | LBC | 1 |
| MIOTA | 2 | OMNI | 1 |
| FCT | 2 | VTC | 1 |
| ARK | 1 | QTUM | 1 |
| DGB | 1 | BTS | 1 |
| DICE | 1 |
Lots of Litecoin, Monero, and Bitcoin Cash supporters. I'm happy to see Dogecoin up there too. Again, this survey was done before 0x had hit, and I expect OMG is higher now due to its recent news. I was originally surprised by the low turnout on great projects like BAT, SONM, and NEM, but I'm guessing there are few people who actually hold these coins/tokens.
ICOs, Alt Coins, and Trading
3-5: 3.9% | > 5: 3.9%
Looks like ICOs are still something for the minority. Skepticism, being new to crypto, legality, and the overall complexity associated with them helps explain this.
Although most people have never participated in an ICO, many have owned coins other than BTC or ETH.
For those investing in alt coins, about half are in it for the long run. Many people are expecting the pump & dump and are just looking to ride that initial wave. The fact that people are doing this makes it a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Still, ~44% of people are investing in projects they support and want to see do well.
The other reasons people provided included: better privacy, long term holding (not better than ETH or BTC), "Hodl", and to access a service (Steem).
Over 30 other exchanges were submitted, but were used by 0-1% of people. Looking at how many people own coins other than ETH or BTC, and taking into account how few have participated in ICOs, it would seem that exchanges are at the center of cryptocurrency. As decentralized exchanges and projects like 0x gain popularity, I'm hopeful that this centralized entity is moved more to the sideline.
This post is over a week late from when I planned it, and for that I am truly sorry. I plan on doing similar surveys periodically so I can compare how things evolve throughout the crypto ecosystem.
Hey @tomshwom! Very informative. I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve. Even though the results may be pretty unreliable, it would be very interesting to ask every participant not only of which currency they own 'most', but also how much they own in any currency.
I'm going to have a look at the raw data some time soon. There's just one thing I want to suggest: For visualizing the age of participants or 'how many alt-coins have you owned?' it might be better to use histograms as well. For the age you might even consider assuming a Gaussian distribution.
I'm really tired, so I apologize if this post does not make as much sense as it could...
The problem with the age data is that I used terrible answer choices that weren't sized properly. Same for the alt coin question. They should've been drop downs with single numbers from 0 to 100 or something.
As far as asking people how much they own, that's generally a question I advise people not to answer since it can lead to spear phishing attacks. Even if you don't hold enough to be a worthwhile target, answering that kind of question normalizes the practice and ends up making people think it's a harmless thing to do. I take the same stance on sharing public addresses since it's roughly equivalent. This is one reason I don't like giveaway posts where people have to share an address - very few will create a separate one that doesn't have transaction history to one or more of their "main" addresses. It's pretty easy to look at an address and follow the transaction trail. Lots of software can make a nice web linking addresses together with transactions, making it very easy to see where it all ends up (a cold storage address). You can also deduce which exchanges they use and at what times they are active (time zone info). Pair this info with the deluge of personal info people inadvertently post on their reddit, facebook, whatever, and you've got a very good idea of the risk/reward ratio of targeting this person.
Anyway, I'm both tired and full of tasty beer, so you'll have to excuse my 'noidedness.
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I love your post, thanks for sharing! I gave you a vote. I hope you enjoy it.
Another great, informative post by you. I just noticed you had an ENS address that is set up. You should check out how few people do, it's mind boggling.
It's definitely an underutilized system, hopefully it will have an easier interface soon.
what it persentation of BITCOIN???
Bitcoin, if I read an article about bitcoin, in my mind is always born thinking like this "Can I earn income from Bitcoin?" But how, from where and when ???. Often I read an article about bitcoin but I do not know how to get it, even I myself once shared an article about bitcoin which I myself have not been able to adjust to the bitcoin. At a glance about bitcoin I know that bitcoin is a new payment system and money is completely digital and can be termed like cash in the internet world. And who knows who invented or created bitcoin itself, this is my inner question, and concentrate for a moment my thinking time and time again who is controlling this bitcoin ??? And how does the bitcoin work, whether from a computer or hp application? And is this bitcoin a lot of people use as payment of goods or services ?. I continue to explore the meaning of this bitcoin, somehow I continue to try to plunge into this bitcoin world. Your article adds my new insights on how I get the bitcoin and thank you.
This is the best comment I've ever read on any website ever.