Bitcoin Returns Sway Crypto Investors, Study Finds
A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland sheds light on the psychology and demographics of US crypto investors.
The working paper, titled 'Do You Even Crypto, Bro? Cryptocurrencies in Household Finance,' was released on July 14, 2026. The authors used large-scale household surveys and an embedded experiment to map out who owns crypto, why they own it, and what happens when you feed them historical return data.
The study's most striking component is its experiment. Researchers provided a subset of survey participants with information about Bitcoin's historical returns. The control group got no such data.
Participants who saw Bitcoin's track record significantly increased their desired allocation to crypto. More importantly, those intentions translated into action: actual crypto purchases rose among the group that received the performance data.