Two new polls from Bloomberg and YouGov have shed more light on the perception of bitcoin among the general public and the world of traditional finance.
Bloomberg’s poll revealed that the fledgling currency is having trouble shaking its bubble image and that many financial professionals remain sceptical. The majority of participants said bitcoin is currently trading at “unsustainable” levels.
The YouGov poll, conducted in partnership with The Economist, revealed that the average American is still in the dark about the digital currency. Out of a sample of 1,000 US residents, only 30% said they were familiar with bitcoin.
Awareness remains low
Although 30% sounds like a relatively low figure – a number closer to “some people” than “most people” – YouGov CTO Michel Floyd noted that there is still plenty of room for bitcoin to grow. He added that bitcoin’s reach, achieved without an advertising budget or any sort of corporate backing, is better than many established consumer products.
However, this 30% figure does not paint the full picture. Out of those “familiar with bitcoin” only 82% correctly identified it as a digital currency, while another 35% said it was an online payment system.
From the poll data Floyd was also able to draw up a rudimentary profile of the average bitcoin user, stating:
“Men are almost twice as aware of bitcoin as women, younger people are more aware than older people, and awareness is highly correlated with both education and income. In other words, people who are more like the Winklevoss twins demographically are more likely to be aware of bitcoin.”
The multiple choice question also resulted in some amusing answers, with 3% claiming bitcoin was a “small coin.” A further 8% described bitcoin as a payment system for hackers, while 25% said it was a way of transferring money anonymously.
YouGov’s poll revealed that usage statistics are significantly lower. Only 0.6% of all respondents said they used bitcoin and only 2% of those that were aware of it had actually used it. To put this in perspective, that would be just six people from a random group of 1,000.
Ten percent of participants said they plan on using bitcoin in the future, 51% said they would not use it, while 39% said they were not sure.
Floyd concludes:
“Bitcoin is fascinating on many levels: technical, societal, legal, financial, and human. It remains to be seen how governments will react to it and what regulatory barriers emerge to widespread usage. Certainly there’s much work to be done to popularize the system, but after all, PayPal was in a similar situation in its early days and eventually became ubiquitous.”
Bloomberg’s professionals are unimpressed
Bloomberg’s poll did not involve the general public, instead focussing on 562 investors, analysts and traders.
Awareness was not an issue, but 55% percent of those surveyed said bitcoin is trading at unsustainable, “bubble-like” prices. On top of this, 14% said the currency was on the verge of a bubble, while 6% said a bubble is not forming. One quarter said they didn’t know.
Bloomberg’s Olga Kharif argues that the results show scepticism even as “technology entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and hedge funds ploy money and effort into building [bitcoin] into a global payment system.”
A January poll by the organisation showcased further doubts from these players, with almost half of respondents bearish on the topic, saying they would sell rather than buy bitcoin. It is worth noting that bitcoin’s price was significantly higher in January.
Another Bloomberg poll took a look at the general public’s view of bitcoin in December 2013. The results indicated that 42% of Americans could correctly identify bitcoin as a digital currency, but the poll also revealed that many people who knew bitcoin harboured reservations about its legitimacy.
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Original author: Nermin Hajdarbegovic
