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A survey found that 22% of U.S. adults say they have ever owned or used cryptocurrency, up from 18% in 2025, but usage over the past 12 months remains at 13%, with the growth primarily coming from those who previously used cryptocurrency but no longer do.
Only 19% of people believe the financial system is secure, while 63% say it needs upgrading to address threats such as artificial intelligence and cybercrime. However, only 4% trust cryptocurrency exchanges.
Only 2% of people are very familiar with decentralized finance (DeFi), but 40% say they would at least consider trying it if given the opportunity.
More Americans have tried cryptocurrency compared to a year ago, but far fewer continue to use it.
According to a national survey commissioned by the DeFi Education Fund, 22% of U.S. adults say they have ever owned or used cryptocurrency, up from 18% in 2025. However, the percentage of people who used cryptocurrency in the past 12 months remained unchanged at 13%.
Men were more than twice as likely as women to have used cryptocurrency in the past year, at 18% versus 8%; adults under 60 were also significantly more likely to have used cryptocurrency than older Americans. Curiosity remains the top reason people try cryptocurrency, cited by 34% of those who have ever owned it, followed by long-term investment at 25%.
The survey interviewed 1,545 adults from September 8 to 16 on Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, the same probability-based panel used by the Federal Reserve for its Annual Survey of Household Finances. The margin of error is ±2.8 percentage points.
The survey also found deep-seated concerns about the traditional financial system. Only 19% of Americans consider it secure, while 63% believe it needs upgrading to address threats such as cybercrime and artificial intelligence. Six in ten are concerned about data breaches at large financial institutions, and 54% doubt whether these institutions are prepared to protect their personal information from AI-driven threats. Financial privacy is important to 74% of people.
However, this skepticism has not translated into trust in cryptocurrencies. Only 4% of people have high trust in cryptocurrency exchanges, and 5% have high trust in decentralized platforms; in comparison, 42% have high trust in large national banks. Credit unions lead at 48%, but this represents a 5-percentage-point decline from last year.
Security concerns are not limited to banks. Hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger stated that all confirmed cases in a suspected $87 million funds loss incident involved hardware wallets sold by a Southeast Asian distributor. Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake recently warned that advances in artificial intelligence could crack the cryptography protecting Bitcoin and Ethereum sooner than expected.
The survey also revealed a significant knowledge gap among the public. Only 2% of Americans are very familiar with decentralized finance (DeFi), a category of crypto-native financial applications that allow users to buy, sell, or borrow digital assets without third-party intermediaries.
Only 6% of people could identify four characteristics of cryptocurrencies listed in the survey, while 35% were unsure how to describe it at all. However, 40% said they would at least consider trying DeFi if it were available. Among these individuals, more than eight in ten indicated they would use it to save money, earn interest, or send money to family and friends.