Fed: 10% of U.S. Adults Used or Held Cryptocurrency in 2025

One in 10 U.S. adults said they bought or held cryptocurrency as an investment in 2025, according to a Federal Reserve study of the economic well-being of U.S. households.

That’s up 25% over the 8% that bought or held crypto in 2024. It’s still down from the 12% that bought or held crypto in 2021, before the FTX-induced crypto winter.

Just 2% of adults said they used cryptocurrency to buy something or make a payment. That held relatively steady over the past five years.

Using cryptocurrency for remittances by sending money to friends or family has held steady at 1% of the adult population.

Of those who used cryptocurrency to make financial transactions, far and away the most common reason — at 26% — was that the business receiving the money preferred cryptocurrency to other forms of payment.

That was followed by 19% who did so to send the money faster, 17% who did so for reasons of privacy, and 14% of those who said it was to send the money cheaper.

Remittances in cryptocurrency, including stablecoins, can take seconds and cost pennies to send, compared with several days and about 6% fees.

“Relatively few transactional cryptocurrency users indicated that either safety or a lack of trust in banks contributed to this choice,” the Fed said. “The use of cryptocurrency for financial transactions was more common among the unbanked as well as those who used nonbank check cashing and money orders. Six percent of unbanked adults used cryptocurrency for financial transactions, compared with 2% among banked adults.”

The Fed warned that because the survey is conducted online, the sample population may be more technologically connected than the general public, which could increase the share of adults saying they used cryptocurrencies.