Boomers and bitcoin
According to data gleaned from the recent Global Crypto Literacy Survey, crypto literacy drops off with age. The study found that 67 percent of Baby Boomers couldn’t answer basic cryptocurrency-related questions.
The skew of crypto knowledge towards younger generations makes sense — after all, it follows the same adoption path as other tech trends. New technology is often adopted first by young people and then the curve starts to grow among older generations.
Consider this growth chart from Pew Research illustrating social media adoption by age group over time.
Of note, there is a lag of adoption, but eventually the curve starts to grow. You can actually see the growth happen in waves based on age.
This trend repeats itself among other kinds of technology too, including major shifts like internet use and mobile phone adoption, which is to say, the generational differences in the adoption of crypto rates make sense. And that it’s only a matter of time before there is more crypto adoption, and literacy, in older age groups.
Bitcoin ETF and retirement savings
One interesting development in regards to demographic shifts is the recent availability of exposure to bitcoin via traditional U.S. equities markets.
The October 2021 launch of a bitcoin futures ETF was met by historic enthusiasm and demand. What the bitcoin ETF allows is for people to get exposure to bitcoin’s price movements via traditional investing accounts — like retirement funds, for example.
This means of investing in bitcoin — or at least the price movements of bitcoin — becomes attractive for many people who are still unsure about how to buy and secure bitcoin through crypto wallets and crypto exchanges. You can imagine, too, that having the ability to invest in bitcoin via traditional accounts also appeals to members of older generations — who are the people that presumably already have retirement savings and are active with other mainstream investment services.
In some regards this opened up a new avenue for more bitcoin literacy and adoption. As people become more familiar with bitcoin via traditional investing, they might begin looking for other opportunities and find other ways to get involved in crypto markets.
Learn more about this and other topics by taking courses in the bitcoin, NFT, DeFi, and security sections of the site. And be sure to take the crypto literacy quiz.
