CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey was conducted near the end of November, just a few weeks after crypto exchange FTX went bankrupt.
According to a new CNBC poll, only 8% of Americans have a favorable view of cryptocurrency as of the end of November, down from 19% in March.
CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey was conducted from November 26 to November 30. It should be taken with a grain of salt, however, because, despite its name, it had a relatively small sample size of 800 respondents from across the United States, with a margin of error of +/- 3.5%.
The survey was released on December 7, and CNBC noted that, in addition to the declining number of crypto-friendly respondents, the number of haters (those with negative crypto views) has increased rapidly, rising from 25% in March to 43% by November.
According to CNBC, the results show a “dramatic fall for an investment that was touted as its own asset class and had a celebrated global coming-out party with multiple Super Bowl ads and celebrity endorsements.”
“That popularity attracted many ordinary Americans to crypto, and the survey shows 24% of the public invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrency in the past, up from 16% in March.”
The survey also revealed that a significant number of crypto investors are losing faith in the asset class, with 42% expressing a “somewhat or very negative view” of crypto.
“According to the survey, 42% of crypto investors now have a somewhat or very negative view of the asset, compared to 43% of all adults polled.” The main difference is that 17% of crypto investors are very negative, compared to 47% of non-crypto investors, according to CNBC.
While the survey did not specify what caused the decline in sentiment between March and November, recent events in the cryptocurrency industry are likely to have played a role.
Do Kwon’s U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin Terra USD (UST) imploded in May, wiping $44 billion from the market. In July, crypto lender Celsius, among a few others, declared bankruptcy and froze an inordinate amount of customer funds.
The biggest surprise of the year came in November, when FTX, the third-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, declared bankruptcy on November 11, wiping billions from the market and locking up customer funds.
Brian Brook, CEO of crypto exchange Bitfury, stated this week at the CNBC Financial Advisor Summit that crypto is “90% retail market, which means the sentiment of mom-and-pop investors really matters.”
“And so when you read FTX stories on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, literally every day for the last 30 days… what it does is for relative new entrants, they get scared. “
“As a result, liquidity is thinner than it would have been, and people are less willing to invest,” he added.
That said, it’s not all doom and gloom, at least not for institutional investors.
According to a Coinbase-sponsored survey released on November 22 and conducted between September 21 and October 27, 62% of institutional investors invested in cryptocurrency increased their allocations over the previous year.
This week, Bitstamp announced that institutional registrations on its digital asset trading platform were up 57% in November, despite FTX dominating the headlines throughout the month.
