--- title: Investors Don't Trust Crypto, But They're Buying It Anyway description: New survey data shows trust in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, dogecoin and ether has fallen amid price swings, hacks and regulation talk. authors: - name: Adam Hardy role: Lead Data Reporter url: https://money.com/author/adam-hardy/ bio: Adam Hardy is a lead data journalist at Money, where he frequently reports on financial barriers that affect low-income Americans. Adam’s work has also appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Nasdaq, The Penny Hoarder, Yahoo! Finance and more than a dozen local and regional newspapers. education: University of South Florida, BA, Magazine Journalism at_money_since: 2021 articles: 501 covers: - Investing - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Debt - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Pets - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology also_seen_in: - The Penny Hoarder - Forbes Advisor - Creative Loafing - The New York Times - The Washington Post - Bloomberg - Harvard Law School - The Federal Register - National Consumer Law Center - CBS News - Becker's Hospital Review - Business Insider - Mother Jones - The Week - Fortune - The Philadelphia Inquirer - National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NAFSAA) - Education Advisory Board (EAB) - The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) - This Morning with Gordon Deal - Empower - Reddit social: - https://www.x.com/hardyjournalism - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hardyjournalism/ editors: - name: Julia Glum role: Managing Editor url: https://money.com/author/julia-glum/ bio: Julia Glum joined Money in 2018 and specializes in covering financial trends that affect everyday Americans' wallets. She also writes Dollar Scholar, a weekly newsletter that teaches young adults how to navigate the messy world of money. education: University of Florida at_money_since: 2018 articles: 453 covers: - Investing - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Debt - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology also_seen_in: - Newsweek - International Business Times - CBS News - Good Morning America - WUSA9 - Pix 11 - The New York Times - Mashable - The Washington Post - CNBC - Politico social: - https://x.com/superjulia - https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-glum published: '2022-05-04T15:30:23.000Z' modified: '2024-02-18T13:36:08.000Z' section: Investing tags: - crypto - News word_count: 499 canonical: https://money.com/trust-in-crypto-low/ type: NewsArticle source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Illustration of a bitcoin surrounded by many dollar bills](https://img.money.com/2022/05/News-Losing-Trust-Crypto-Investing-Anyway.jpg?crop=0px%2C152px%2C2880px%2C1620px&quality=85) So far in 2022, cryptocurrency prices have taken investors on a bumpy ride, hackers have stolen more than a billion dollars worth of crypto since we rang in the new year, and President Joe Biden has stepped up plans to regulate digital currencies. It’s no shocker, then, that trust in [crypto](https://money.com/what-is-cryptocurrency/) in general fell between January and April this year, according to data released Tuesday by the research firm Morning Consult. Some coins suffered more of a trust fall than others. Morning Consult reported that among [bitcoin](https://money.com/what-is-bitcoin/), [dogecoin](https://money.com/how-to-buy-dogecoin/) and [ether](https://money.com/what-is-ethereum/), trust in ether — the newest of the bunch, having launched in 2015 — fell the most. Confidence in bitcoin fell the least. (The drop in trust for dogecoin mirrored the same 8-percentage-point drop in trust cryptocurrency saw overall.) People might not believe in crypto's credibility, but that's not stopping them from [investing in it](https://money.com/crypto-market-doubled-value-whats-next/). Despite the steep across-the-board drop in trust, the share of adults who said they’re planning to buy a cryptocurrency within the next month (24%) remained almost unchanged from January (26%). Furthermore, some 21% of respondents who said they’re likely to purchase crypto within the next month explicitly stated that they don’t trust it. Even with [plummeting faith](https://money.com/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-buy-the-dip-2021/) in crypto, the world of digital currency is functioning as intended. Charlotte Principato, a financial services analyst for Morning Consult, wrote in a summary of the findings Tuesday that nobody should be surprised crypto ownership remains steady. She said that, by design, crypto and the blockchain are sort of “trustless” technologies that don’t operate under a centralized authority — "not in the traditional sense of the word, but trustless in that consumers don’t *need* to trust it because they can verify ownership and transactions themselves,” Principato added. Many crypto enthusiasts ascribe to this notion. Exchange platform Coinbase, for example, [says that because the technology that underlies crypto transactions encrypts and anonymizes payments while cutting out middlemen like banks, people don't have to trust the recipient — or typical financial institutions at all — for a transaction to safely go through.](https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-cryptography) Crypto skeptics, however, have chipped away at these assertions. A [2018 study](https://repository.law.umich.edu/mttlr/vol25/iss1/2/) published by a University of Michigan law journal found that, rather than being trustless, crypto requires people to supplant their trust in less-regulated and less-accountable parties. As a result, "everyone is always vulnerable; predators are everywhere, and the slightest mistake is enough to create catastrophe," its author wrote. Still, to become widely adopted, more people must trust in crypto insofar as they believe it’s a worthwhile investment. As it stands, Morning Consult said 19% of U.S. adults own cryptocurrency. (The White House puts this number around 16%, or approximately 40 million people.) According to Morning Consult's data, two major barriers are keeping it from [wider adoption](https://money.com/financial-advisors-cryptocurrency-bitcoin/): No. 1, most people don’t understand crypto, and No. 2, they don’t trust it, either. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/trust-in-crypto-low/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Investing", "item": "https://money.com/investing/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Cryptocurrency", "item": "https://money.com/cryptocurrency/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Investors Don't Trust Crypto, But They're Buying It Anyway" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/trust-in-crypto-low/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/trust-in-crypto-low/", "name": "Investors Don't Trust Crypto, But They're Buying It Anyway", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2022-05-04T15:30:23.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/trust-in-crypto-low/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/trust-in-crypto-low/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-02-18T13:36:08.000Z" }, { "@type": "NewsArticle", "headline": "Investors Don't Trust Crypto, But They're Buying It Anyway", "articleSection": "Investing", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2022/05/News-Losing-Trust-Crypto-Investing-Anyway.jpg?crop=0px%2C152px%2C2880px%2C1620px&quality=85", "width": 1012, "height": 569, "caption": "News-Losing-Trust-Crypto-Investing-Anyway" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Adam Hardy", "url": "https://money.com/author/adam-hardy/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/adam-hardy/#author", "description": "Adam Hardy is a lead data journalist at Money, where he frequently reports on financial barriers that affect low-income Americans. 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