Consumers are
losing their fear of cryptocurrency, as gamers lead the way toward its
normalization, a new survey has revealed.
The global
survey "The Super Sale
Game: who's the winner? A study on how we shop and pay," conducted by
Arlington Research and Kaspersky, explored consumers' views and attitudes
towards cryptocurrency.
According to the research, 81 percent
of gamers currently own digital currency, while 55 percent of the study's
subjects describe themselves as "very knowledgeable" or "extremely
knowledgeable about cryptocurrency." Another striking finding is that the
knowledge gap between men and women has narrowed since 2022. Forty-one percent of women say they know a
lot about crypto, compared to 46 percent of men - a gap that has shrunk
year-on-year. The study also discovered that almost half of consumers
believe cryptocurrency is the future of shopping and would be happy to use it
as a payment option in their daily life. Thirty-eight percent would even use it
to buy groceries.
Global surveys have
shown that there is a very high level of awareness about cryptocurrencies:
92 percent of respondents have heard about them. Fifty percent stated that they
have heard about them, and understand what they are. In fact, worldwide the top association with cryptocurrencies is that they
represent the "future of money," despite some countries remaining skeptical.
Considering this, Kaspersky explored users' behavior and attitudes towards the
use of cryptocurrency.
According to the
study results, almost half of all respondents believe that crypto payments will
become a common choice for online shopping (44%), and 40 percent of respondents
would use it more, given more opportunity. The majority (87%) said they would
feel comfortable paying for online purchases with digital money, and 86% said
they would even feel comfortable using it to pay in a physical store.
Gamers, of
course, said they would use cryptocurrency to buy items related to gaming (65%
on games, 54% on equipment and 47% on in-game items or upgrades). Gamers also
said they would use cryptocurrency for clothing (46%) and groceries
(38%).
Interestingly,
gamers were less ready to go as far as to purchase extremely high-value items
such as a house (24%) or cars (31%) using cryptocurrencies.
As for concerns
and risks related to crypto, scams were named by 40 as a concern by percent of
respondents. Volatility was also listed as a concern by 40 percent of
respondents.
"Our survey
results show users' understanding of cryptocurrency has grown over last few
years," said Marina Titova, vice president, consumer product marketing at
Kaspersky. "Now more than a half of respondents (55%) are sure that they are
extremely or very knowledgeable about digital money. We support the needs of
the crypto community by adding special protection features to our comprehensive
security solutions such as Kaspersky Premium, so our customers can work with
cryptocurrency without risking their money and personal data in cyberspace."
The full
report, "The Super Sale Game: who's the winner? A study
on how we shop and pay" is available here.