The Cleveland Fed released a study titled 'Do You Even Crypto, Bro? Cryptocurrencies in Household Finance' that analyzes several waves of U.S. household surveys, with each round surveying up to about 25,000 households.

The researchers identify a clear gap between cryptocurrency investors and traditional asset investors. They find that expectations for future crypto returns explain ownership more than demographic factors such as age, income, or gender, and that holders anticipate roughly 22% returns over the coming year versus about 7% for non-holders. Holders also tended to rate crypto as less risky than non-holders do.

For every 1 percentage point rise in expected crypto returns, the likelihood of owning crypto rises by about 0.8 percentage points. Across the factors examined, return expectations and risk perceptions were stronger predictors of ownership than age, income, or wealth.

When compared with stocks, bonds, and gold, the study notes that traditional asset allocation is typically more closely tied to an investor's economic background. It also reports a randomized information experiment in which participants who saw Bitcoin's gains over the prior 12 months showed higher willingness to allocate to crypto assets.

In that experiment, the share planning to allocate to crypto rose by about 2 percentage points, and the probability of actually purchasing crypto rose by about 2.5 percentage points.