US Crypto Adoption Rises to 22% but Active Use Stalls at 13%, Ipsos Survey Finds

More Americans have tried cryptocurrency than a year ago, but far fewer are still using it, according to a national Ipsos survey conducted for the DeFi Education Fund. Some 22% of U.S. adults say they have ever owned or used crypto, up from 18% in 2025, while the share who used it in the past 12 months held flat at 13%. The growth came almost entirely from people who have stepped away. Among Americans who had not used crypto in the past year, the share who had ever owned or used it more than doubled to 11% from 5%. Plans to buy are also flat, with 17% saying they are likely to own or use crypto in the future versus 16% last year. Trust in crypto remains low: just 4% express high trust in crypto exchanges and 5% in decentralized platforms, compared with 42% for large national banks and 48% for credit unions. Only 19% of Americans consider the traditional financial system secure, and 63% say it needs an upgrade to combat threats such as cybercrime and AI. The survey polled 1,545 adults from Sept. 8 to 16, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.