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Crypto Adoption has surged in the UK in 2021, especially among the young....

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YouGov has been tracking how many people have bought into crypto in the United Kingdom since August 2019, and you see from the results on this interactive Viz here that crypto adoption has increased dramatically between January and July 2021....

8% reported having 'ever bought' crypto in July 2021 compared to only 5% back in January 2021.

The Methods

I really like the methods at work here - blissfully simple and representative.

YouGov simply asks one simple question:

Have you, or has someone you know, ever personally bought cryptocurrency (e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple)?

This question has been asked twice a year as part of YouGov's ongoing online surveys - only registered users are permitted to take part, and sampling is done via email (users can choose whether or not they do the survey) and this is probably mixed in with a range of other questions on various topics, as well as questions about demographic data (although these are only asked occasionally to confirm as YouGov already has these details on file, and they use this info to ensure a representative sample.

The results for each of the responses (which you can download from the above link) are as below.....

NB the figures from Jan 2020 and Jan 2021 are verified by the Financial Conduct Authority's annual survey - which has show broadly similar percentages for the population as a whole, so there's good reliability here.

The numbers vary enormously by age

The YouGov poll allows you to sort by age....

For 18 - 24 year olds, 17% had 'ever bought' crypto in July 2021

But for 50-64 year olds, only 4% had 'ever bought crypto' in July 2021

I don't really like the inclusion of the 'I know someone who has bought crypto currency' - it's not mutually exclusive with the first response - presumably someone who would rather keep their crypto ownership secret would tick that box instead? We just don't know.

NB - this other independent survey carried out by Interactive Investor, also in summer 2021, found that 20% of 18-29 year olds had bought Bitcoin, which is clearly based on a different sampling technique - whether their sample is more representative than YouGov's I don't know - it's possibly that the kind of people who register to take part in a professionally run survey might just not be the kind of people who would buy crypto?

So it maybe wouldn't surprise me if the uptake is slightly higher than YouGov's results?

Whatever results based on whatever methods you use, there has been a sharp increase in Crypto adoption by consumers in the first half of 2021!

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