A national survey by Ipsos for the DeFi Education Fund found that 22% of U.S. adults have ever owned or used crypto, up from 18% in 2025. However, only 13% used crypto in the past 12 months, unchanged from the prior year.
The growth came entirely from lapsed users. Among Americans who hadn't used crypto in the past year, those who had ever owned it jumped to 11% from 5%. Future purchase plans remained flat at 17% likely to own or use crypto, versus 16% last year.
Men were more than twice as likely as women to have used crypto in the past year, at 18% to 8%. Adults under 60 were far more likely to use it than older Americans. Curiosity drove 34% of those who tried crypto, followed by long-term investment at 25%.
The survey polled 1,545 adults from September 8 to 16 on Ipsos' KnowledgePanel with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
Trust in crypto remains low. Only 4% have high trust in crypto exchanges and 5% in decentralized platforms, compared with 42% for large national banks and 48% for credit unions.
Knowledge gaps are wide. Only 2% of Americans are very familiar with DeFi, and just 6% could identify all four characteristics of crypto listed in the survey. Yet 40% say they'd be at least somewhat likely to try DeFi if available, with more than 8 in 10 of those citing savings, earning interest, or sending money to family and friends.
Interest in learning more has declined. The share wanting to learn about stablecoins fell to 7% from 11%, and about DeFi to 8% from 11%.