Survey: Retail investors remain bullish on crypto, institutions wary

Despite the crypto bear market in 2018, investors of all stripes remain optimistic for the future. The mid-year survey from SharesPost found 72% of consumers and 59% of accredited investors plan to increase crypto holdings in the next 12 months. Still, the downturn has affected sentiment with just 27% of the investors seeing mainstream crypto adoption by 2020 — a sharp drop from the 51% who believed same in the earlier survey. Both consumers and retail investors have pushed out their forecasts for mass use of crypto toward 2025 though consumer sentiment leans toward the earlier end of the forecast.

Majorities of both consumers and investors see education as the top barrier to wider crypto and blockchain use. Still while lack of awareness of the sector continues to be small, with just 3% of consumers not clear on what crypto is, only 7% see it as an investment. Currently, 35% consider crypto a hobby, up from 24% with most of those hobbyists having held no crypto as recently as January. SharesPost surveyed 2,490 consumers and 528 individual accredited and institutional investors.