The Pew Research Center has recently published a survey of more than 25,000 Americans about their expectations, behaviour and results in the adoption of cryptocurrency, in other words, buying, exchanging and investing in crypto assets, which generally work on blockchain platforms or are attached to them.

The most striking insight from the survey, according to the authors, is the fact that, for many investors, the experience has been something of a financial setback. More than 40 per cent of those surveyed claim to have ended up worse off than they expected. This is probably related to market contractions (whether it was temporary or not) in what is known as crypto winter.

Beyond these short-term fluctuations, which are not particularly useful for assessing the health of blockchain technology, here at GDS Modellica, we wanted to take a look at other insights from the report that may be more useful in the future. Having condensed the information into a more digestible infographic, we can see that the report reveals the following key points to take away:

• It is still too early to talk about mass adoption: only 3 in 20 people have bought, traded or invested in crypto assets.
• Regardless of the point above, this is still enough uptake to consider it a live market.
• Contrary to popular belief about the crypto world, the “fast money” mentality is not the only reason for investing, nor is it the main reason.
• There is a significant gender gap among investors. The absolute difference in a market this small may seem insignificant, but if we look at relative differences, the male presence is more than double the female presence.
• As is to be expected, younger people invest much more than their parents or grandparents.
• The typical image of an investor in crypto assets is a Western white male, but nothing could be further from the truth. Black, Latino and Asian ethnic groups invest significantly more in crypto markets
• Lastly, whilst it might seem contrary to the previous point in a sociological sense, people with higher incomes invest significantly more than those with medium and low incomes.

Although this data is far from complete enough to define a detailed buyer profile, we can still see clear trends and market opportunities that a keen eye might know how to exploit. Crypto markets aimed at wealthy Latino women? Platforms aimed at financial curious people over 50 with average incomes? Non-fungible token environments oriented towards younger people with more resources?

We might be going through a crypto winter, but regardless of the speculation, the crypto market still offers extremely appetising business opportunities every day.