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Fed Survey: 12% of US Adults Held Crypto in 2021
It marks crypto’s first appearance in the central bank’s “Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households” survey.
By Danny Nelson
Updated May 11, 2023, 5:22 p.m. Published May 23, 2022, 3:00 p.m.
Twelve percent of adults held cryptocurrency in 2021, according to a Federal Reserve study measuring the economic health of U.S consumers.
Released Monday, the annual survey of 11,000 people for the first time this year included questions on crypto ownership and adoption. It's the latest sign of the U.S. central bank’s growing interest in understanding how the booming crypto economy is (and isn’t) mixing into the picture.
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The data collected indicated that American consumers have little interest in crypto as a currency. They’re by and large investors, not transactors, and only 3% of respondents said they’d either paid in or sent crypto in the previous year. By contrast, 11% had held crypto as an investment.
Those users “were disproportionately high-income,” the report said: 46% of pure-play investors made $100,000 or more. Almost all of them had a bank account.
Of the 3% who actually used crypto for payments or transfers, 13% did not have a bank account.
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What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
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U.S. Regulator Pushes Back on Banks Fighting Crypto's Pursuit of Trust Charters
Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould spoke at an industry event in Washington, arguing that the OCC won't resist crypto because of banker complaints.
What to know:
- Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould delivered some pushback to the traditional banks that have tried to slow the industry's entry into banking.
- Up to 14 companies have applied for bank charters in the past year, including a number of crypto firms, Gould said.
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