Bitcoin awareness, ownership and use: 2016–20

ABSTRACT

Since 2016, the Bank of Canada has conducted annual surveys to monitor awareness, adoption and usage of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This report incorporates results from the 2019 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey and the November 2020 Cash Alternative Survey. We find that between 2018 and 2020, the level of Bitcoin awareness and ownership among Canadians remained stable: nearly 90% of the population were aware of Bitcoin, while only 5% owned it. We find that about half of Bitcoin owners stated they usually obtained their bitcoins through mobile or web exchanges, while one-fifth used mining. Bitcoin owners were susceptible to certain risks, as evidenced by the fact that about half of current and past owners stated they had been affected by events such as price crashes, losing access to funds, scams or data breaches. The most commonly cited reasons for owning Bitcoin were related to its use for investment or based on interest in the technology. Bitcoin owners displayed greater knowledge about the Bitcoin network than nonowners, yet they scored lower on questions testing financial literacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Bank notes
• digital currencies and fintech
• econometrics, statistical methods

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• E4
• C12. O5

Acknowledgement

We thank Ted Garanzotis, Alejandro Garcia, Chris Henry, Kim P. Huynh and Francisco Rivadeneyra for their helpful comments and suggestions, and Heng Chen for providing methodological guidance. We also thank Bank of Canada survey partners at Ipsos: Shelley Edwards and Lisa Canini. We are also grateful to Colette Stoeber and Alison Arnot for excellent editorial assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

The data used for this study consists of data from the 2016–2019 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (BTCOS) and the November 2020 Cash Alternative Survey.

Details on the 2016–2019 BTCOS are available in the following Bank of Canada Staff Discussion Papers:

• Henry, C. S., Huynh, K., & Nicholls, G. (2017). Bitcoin Awareness and Usage in Canada. Bank of Canada Staff Working Paper 2017-56.

• Henry, C. S., Huynh, K., & Nicholls, G. (2018). Bitcoin Awareness and Usage in Canada: An Update (No. 2018-23). Bank of Canada Staff Analytical Note 2018-23.

• Henry, C. S., Huynh, K. P., Nicholls, G., & Nicholson, M. W. (2019). 2018 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey: Awareness and Usage. Bank of Canada Staff Discussion Paper 2019-10.

• Balutel, D., Felt, M. H., Nicholls, G., & Voia, M. (2022). Bitcoin Awareness, Ownership and Use: 2016–20. Bank of Canada Staff Discussion Paper 2022-10.

• Details on the 2020 Cash Alternative Survey Wave X are contained in:

• Chen, H., Engert, W., Felt, M. H., Huynh, K., Nicholls, G., O’Habib, D., & Zhu, J. (2021). Cash and COVID-19: The impact of the second wave in Canada. Bank of Canada Staff Discussion Paper 2021-12.

All papers released in the Bank of Canada Discussion Paper Series have an associated Metadata Repository which contains the raw data files and the associated computer programs to generate the data. Requests to access this data set can be directed to Ted Garanzotis, Senior Research Director, Currency Department, email [email protected].

Notes

¹ For international perspectives, see for instance: Austria (Stix 2021), Japan (Fujiki 2021), the US (Foster 2019; Schuh and Shy, 2016), Canada (Henry, Huynh, and Nicholls 2018, 2019 and 2020), Germany (Steinmetz et al. 2021), and the UK (FCA, 2020, 2021).

² Ibid.

³ Given that Libra is not a real coin but a project for a coin, answering ‘yes’ to its ownership will suggest a false or not thoughtful answer.

⁴ We keep the current composition (37% panel respondents and 63% internet respondents) for the 2019 BTCOS sample and settle on a similar mix (30% and 70%, respectively) for the 2020 CAS.

⁵ See Appendix A for a discussion on how financial literacy is defined.

⁶ Auer and Tercero-Lucas (2021) also find evidence of a widening gender gap in terms of cryptocurrency ownership in the United States. More broadly, using data from 28 major economies, Chen et al. (2021) find that men are more likely than women to use financial technology products and services.

⁷ This is done to increase the number of observations per group because the sample of Bitcoin owners is not large.

⁸ We also conduct a conditional analysis to see if there are significant differences when comparing access via ‘mining’ and ‘other’ means with the benchmark exchanges on websites and through mobile apps. See Appendix C-1.

⁹ Kahn, Rivadeneyra, and Wong (2021) show that customers will take little care about risks when liability is shared. Even when managing their balances individually and facing the entire risk of loss, they will still prefer the easier access found in using wallets, reusing addresses and relying on password aggregation programs.

¹⁰ Initial coin offerings (similar to initial public offerings) are a blockchain-based alternative for entrepreneurs to raise funds (e.g. see Howell et al. 2020). Some have been the subject of scams (e.g. see United States Department of Justice 2020).

¹¹ We estimated a multinomial logit model and found that, relative to the benchmark group (scamming and hacking), the patterns are similar to the ones described in Table 10. See Appendix C-2.