What Americans Want for Crypto and Blockchain Regulation

The XandY Poll | U.S. Adult Population | Nov. 2023

Abel Gustafson & Matthew Goldberg
January 2024

Right now, the most important developments in crypto are not happening in San Francisco. They are happening in D.C. Lawmakers, lobbyists, and government agencies are hashing out how crypto should be handled in terms of regulation, taxes, and oversight. The decisions made on Capitol Hill will have massive effects on the future for U.S.-based startups, venture capital, and everyday asset holders.

Amidst all of this, we have been collecting data on what the American public thinks about potential policy positions and government action. This is, after all, a democracy where elected officials do face some pressure to represent the views of their constituents. The figure below shows some of our findings from November 2023, in which we asked a representative sample of 1,527 U.S. adults to state their support or opposition toward four potential actions by the U.S. government.

A slim majority of Americans support—either “strongly” or “somewhat”—creating stricter regulations on transactions (53%) and on which technologies can be developed (52%). This support outnumbers opposition by more than two to one. Still, many Americans report they are “Unsure,” likely due to the fact that crypto is still an emerging, niche topic and is still relatively unfamiliar to most people.

This desire for stronger oversight does not imply opposition to crypto itself. In fact, the figure above shows that support outnumbers opposition when it comes to “helping blockchain technologies be more accessible to everyday people.” Taken together, this indicates that a large portion of Americans both want stricter regulation but also want a more streamlined onramp to adoption. This aligns with our other findings from this survey, such as that the crypto industry has a trust problem despite generally positive views about the underlying technology.

Voting Intentions for Pro-Crypto Political Candidates

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About The XandY Poll

SURVEY METHODOLOGY

The design, data collection, analysis, and reporting of this national survey were performed by XandY, an independent research and strategy firm. Exhaustive details of the scientific methodology of The XandY Poll can be found here. The following briefly summarizes key points of interest.

The survey responses were fielded from November 18 – November 21, 2023 using online recruitment methods to sample adult residents of the United States (N = 1,527). This survey used a nested quota sampling strategy to match U.S. Census proportions of age, income, race and ethnicity, gender, and political party affiliation. To further ensure the insights reported from these data closely resemble the U.S. population, the sample was weighted to match U.S. Census benchmarks.

Percentage points are rounded to the nearest whole number. When sums of two proportions are reported in text (e.g., “63% of U.S. adults say they either “strongly” or “somewhat” support…") we round the total value after summing. Sometimes, this creates an apparent error. For example, 41.4% + 20.4% = 61.8% which rounds to 62%. But in the figure, the values are individually rounded (41% and 20%) so it might appear that 41% + 20% = 62%.

MARGIN OF ERROR

Proportion statistics regarding the full national sample have an average margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The margin of error in subgroups is determined by the subgroup size.

CITATION

This paper and the insights it reports may be cited as:

Gustafson, A., Goldberg, M. H., & Wolfer, C. (2024). What Americans Want for Crypto and Blockchain Regulation. XandY. New Haven, CT. Retrieved from: https://www.xandyanalytics.com/crypto-support-regulation