Bitcoin Forum

Why do people own Bitcoin?
An important question in studying Bitcoin and other digital currencies is why people own
Bitcoin. The answer to this has implications for central banks as issuers of cash and as they
research the costs and benefits of central-bank-issued digital currencies (see, e.g. Engert and
Fung (2017)). The 2017 BTCOS aimed to delve a bit deeper into this question by asking how
often owners used their Bitcoin for two purposes: to pay for goods and services and to send
money to other people. For this section, we make the distinction between transactors—those
who used Bitcoin for one of these purposes at least once per year—and non-transactors—
those who used Bitcoin at most “once or twice, but not on a regular basis.” Bitcoin owners
were split roughly evenly between the two groups, with transactors and non-transactors each
making up about half the population.
If half of Bitcoin owners do not use it to transact, there must be other reasons to hold
it. To investigate this, the BTCOS asked Bitcoin owners to choose their main reason for
owning it from a predetermined list (Table 3a). In 2017, the driving motivation for Bitcoin
owners was to hold it “as an investment,” with 58 per cent of owners choosing this response.
In second place was “My friends own Bitcoin” at 12 per cent, and the other response options
were all below 10 per cent. These reasons provide an explanation for the large number of
non-transactors, who overwhelmingly held Bitcoin as an investment (77 per cent) compared
with transactors (38 per cent). Unsurprisingly, Bitcoin transactors stated that they own
it to buy goods/services on the Internet (12 per cent), but also because their friends own
it (11 per cent) and it is a cost-saving technology (11 per cent). Therefore, a minority of
respondents are using Bitcoin for transactions.

-snip-

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"The 12% who owns it because their friends use it" is the dangerous part.That kind of people only follow the hype and don't know with what they are dealing,usually this is the category of people who fall for bitcoin doublers/ponzis.. and get scammed/hacked because they didn't deepen their knowledge on Bitcoin and security measures.

"The 12% who owns it because their friends use it" is the dangerous part.That kind of people only follow the hype and don't know with what they are dealing,usually this is the category of people who fall for bitcoin doublers/ponzis.. and get scammed/hacked because they didn't deepen their knowledge on Bitcoin and security measures.

That is true imagine that these 12% got discourage because of the prices or if the market prices falls down again, these 12% will be the ones that will make the negativity in the market and contribute to the downtrend. But still considering the statistics that were provided it seams like Canadians do know the potential of cryptocurrency it is just up to then to educate the remaining 12% and hopefully it does not grow.

Even if there are signs of a "financial bubble," this is still considered to be positive and increasingly mature. One of the notable signs is that governments have recognized the potential and are increasingly interested in co-workers. Canada is a country with open policies with cryptocurrency and it is a right decision by the government of this country.

"The 12% who owns it because their friends use it" is the dangerous part.That kind of people only follow the hype and don't know with what they are dealing,usually this is the category of people who fall for bitcoin doublers/ponzis.. and get scammed/hacked because they didn't deepen their knowledge on Bitcoin and security measures.

I don't know that I'd equate participating in Ponzis or doublers with owning bitcoin on the recommendation of a friend.  That doesn't compute, at least not in my head.  This is Canada, not Indonesia or the Philippines, where entire families own bitcoin because they have careers in spamming bitcointalk.  I'd say it's more dangerous because they might own bitcoin solely as an investment, just like people who bought internet stocks back in the 90s, and they all sold at once when the market crashed.  That could be a bad thing if these Canadians (or people from any country) own a lot of bitcoin and decide to exit the market together.

But hey, it's all good.  I'm surprised the % aware of bitcoin is as high as 85%.  That seems inflated.

Thanks for sharing OP.
Sad to see a growing % of bitcoin holders not even interested in using it, but guess that was expected.


You could equally apply the same criticism to the most popular answer (58%) of "I hold it as an investment". If you only care about fiat value, you're less likely to do your homework (on security etc).

Yeah, but I am sure it's not only Canadian citizens. If the survey was targetting the worldwide population the trend would show a similar pattern.
It's something I often say here in the forum, Bitcoin is a (digital) currency and should be used as it. It's not like if you buy Bitcoin to become a shareholder. If everyone just holds their bitcoins then the ecosystem will never grow because for example if nobody wants to pay with bitcoin why a merchant should install an option to pay with bitcoin in his shop/e-commerce. People considering Bitcoin as an investment are somehow killing Bitcoin and its purpose.

I believe that the more people come to crypto, the sooner the society will be able to refuse the dollar standard and get out of a deep financial crisis. Now the world economy is stagnating and crypto can become a way out of the situation.

I think people who get paid in fiat are more likely to invest in Bitcoin long-term and not use it for daily transactions, because they already have debit and credit cards with cash back bonuses so it makes no sense to buy Bitcoin only to pay extra transaction fees for essentially the same thing. On the other hand people who acquire Bitcoin either through mining or doing odd jobs online etc. are probably going to spend some of their earnings for paying bills, buying stuff and so on. I would rather use my Visa and pay 0% transaction fees than spend Bitcoin and get screwed twice - once for buying Bitcoin and then for spending it. These taxes can add up quickly and you will lose money. And if Bitcoin goes down in value you will be royally screwed.
Let's see how much money we are going to lose by buying Bitcoin - bank fees for sending money to the exchange, exchange fees , transactions fees to get the coins out of the exchange, even more fees for sending money through our phone wallet for buying coffee. All this pain in the butt for what? No wonder the investors are 58% they are shrewd  Wink

This very good. It is not just Canada, I believe it is the world all over. People with bitcoin have really doubled globally in the last one year.

Well I don't think that this something that is only happening in Canada, the number of people intressted and involved in bitcoin has greatly increased and that is mainly to last year's price increase that lead to bitcoin becoming the main trend for the last 3 months of 2017, and people seeing how others were able to make huge profits from it in a short time and what bitcoin is capable of doing, people wanted to invest in it and jump on the profit train, and probably that is why the number of Canadian bitcoiners has increased.

With the last statistics I saw less than 5 percent of people in American even own bitcoin.

Well I don't think that this something that is only happening in Canada, the number of people intressted and involved in bitcoin has greatly increased and that is mainly to last year's price increase that lead to bitcoin becoming the main trend for the last 3 months of 2017, and people seeing how others were able to make huge profits from it in a short time and what bitcoin is capable of doing, people wanted to invest in it and jump on the profit train, and probably that is why the number of Canadian bitcoiners has increased.