Crypto users plan to buy more digital assets despite drops: Survey

Yahoo Finance’s Alexandra Semenova joins the Live show to discuss a BofA survey that indicated that crypto users are looking to buy more digital assets despite recent lows.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, we've been talking a lot about the sell-off of crypto, but it's certainly still peaking the interest of investors despite the massive route we've seen in the space. A new survey from Bank of America Global Research suggesting Americans are still looking to buy crypto in the next six months. Let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Semenova. When was the survey done is my question, and how much of this was before the recent sell-off that we saw?

ALEXANDRA SEMENOVA: Well, this was conducted in June, so not-- it's fairly new. I mean, it was conducted before this recent acceleration in the downturn that we've seen. But it's interesting, despite the meltdown, the majority of people are still crypto-curious and intend to invest in digital assets. 91% of people in the survey said that they would allocate to crypto in the next six months.

And I do want to point out an interesting component of the report. You know, anecdotally, we hear all these stories about retail investors allocating and losing tremendous amounts of money in crypto and that does happen. But the majority of respondents here said that it represents less than 10% of their investment portfolios. And the average transaction size is about $25. And also the survey found that PayPal and Coinbase were the most widely used exchanges, and Coinbase was the favorite.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, $25, not too much so understandably, not huge. Not many people putting all their money into crypto. But I wanted to ask, I mean, right now we're seeing Bitcoin falling, every other digital asset falling in price right now. Do a lot of people in the crypto world want to catch a falling knife here? Why do you think that there's still so much of an overwhelming interest in crypto despite the massive headlines that we've seen around the sell-off?

ALEXANDRA SEMENOVA: Well, the number one reason here that people reported is that they expect the price to go back up. So there's still very much this buy the dip mentality on it. Crypto is here to stay. There's a lot of money in it. A lot of institutional investors are still getting in on it, so they see that as room for upside in the space.

And then another reason was portfolio diversification, and the third reason was that people feel like they want to belong to a community. So there's a sense of FOMO there too, where people feel like this is a space that they're part of and they have these discussions on forums. And think Wall Street Bets here, you know.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if the community is so happy today.

BRIAN CHEUNG: I saw interestingly too, a lot of people still in Dogecoin or Shiba Inu apparently.

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, I was going to ask you that how--

BRIAN CHEUNG: It's not just Bitcoin.

AKIKO FUJITA: Are we talking about the largest cryptocurrencies? I mean, Doge-- Dogecoin is one of those.

ALEXANDRA SEMENOVA: In the survey specifically, Bitcoin and Ethereum were obviously the most popular. But people did report still allocating to Dogecoin and Shiba coin and a lot of these meme coins as well.

AKIKO FUJITA: $25, that's--

BRIAN CHEUNG: It's play money, yeah for some people, yeah.

AKIKO FUJITA: That made me feel a little better. You've heard these stories about people--

BRIAN CHEUNG: I'll just get one chipotle bowl instead.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, I think I might be with you. Coming up on the other side-- oh, thanks so much, Alexandra.

ALEXANDRA SEMENOVA: Thanks, guys.

AKIKO FUJITA: We didn't even thank you.