As the cryptocurrency scene keeps heating up with a host of financial institutions realizing the need for the blockchain, industry heads and shot callers have continuously stirred up matters by making notable pronouncements. Ambitious pronouncements by industry authorities such as Tim draper, Tom Lee and Arthur Hayes have stirred up the industry giving crypto enthusiasts hope despite discouraging market trends. The most recent commentator to stir up the industry was Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, who started a social media storm through his twitter by tweeting that, despite the fact that 63% of the world’s adults own smartphones only a paltry 8% of adults in the United states and 1% of the world’s adults own crypto currency.
These statistics are mind-blowing since they reveal a potential market that is 60 times larger than the existing one. Some tweeters who were chiming in on the conversation agreed that the statistics showed an inevitable crypto adoption boom that most of the world was yet to take notice of as yet. Another tweeter chimed in by tweeting that it was more sensible for users to hold on to their crypto assets other than selling them. Though a lot of tweeters agreed and expressed genuine surprise at Balaji Srinivasan’s tweet, some others contested the statistics.
Some contributors in the tweet questioned the accuracy of crypto ownership placed at 8% of the United States adult population. Others also questioned Balaji’s assertion that smartphone ownership had a direct link to crypto ownership. The part of the tweet where Balaji mentioned the percentage of crypto ownership among American adults was supported by a Finder survey that was conducted on 2001 American citizens whose inferences showed that only 8% of the world’s population owned crypto currency.
The finder survey offered intriguing insight into most Americans’ attitude towards crypto currency. Other than revealing that only 8% of American adults possessed crypto holdings, it also revealed that 7.76% of those who didn’t own any crypto were planning to purchase crypto at some point the future. The survey also disclosed the most popular reasons given by most Americans as to why they hadn’t purchased them. Some attributed it to a lack of interest while others thought it was too risky to venture into crypto. A good number also attributed their reservations to thinking it’s all a scam while others found the whole crypto talk to be too difficult to understand. Some respondents who had gained a bit more insight on crypto said that they thought crypto was too hard to use with a lot of fees on top of it to be paid.
The Coinbase CTO is not new to controversy. 2 years ago, he famously stated that private block chain consortiums were a stumbling block to block chain adoption since they served to bring together actors that couldn’t be trusted.
