The survey of Household Economics and Decision making (SHED) recently published their survey results for 2023 on financial well-being of US citizens. The reports showed that the overall financial health of an average individual remains with that of 2022. However, it is lower than the highest marked in 2021.
72% of adults are doing okay financially which was 73% in 2022 and 78% in 2021.
Despite the moderate pace of inflation and increase in workforce, citizens are finding it hard to manage their funds because of the expensive child care, health care, housing and education.
The financial well-being is also different on the basis of demographic factors such as age, gender, disability, region and neighborhood.
Cryptocurrency being a comparatively newer asset class was as an investment or used as a medium for financial transactions. However, the usage of cryptocurrencies as both fell in 2023.
Highlights of the Investment and Usage of Cryptocurrencies
7% of adults held their investments in cryptocurrencies in 2023, 3% lower from 2022 and 5% lower from 2021.
The usage of cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange has also been reduced from 2% in 2021 and 2022 to 1% in 2023. Usage of cryptocurrency that has been developed in all these years was to transfer money to friends and family. However, these has not been very popular. It was majorly used to send money outside domestic boundaries of USA.
Diving deep into this usage more than 25% of the payments were made to international relatives.
Factors Promoted the Usage of Cryptocurrencies
– The receiver of the amount, be it business or individual, preferred cryptocurrencies over fiat currencies.
– Faster mode of money transfer across borders.
– It maintains higher privacy and protects the identity of sender and receiver.
– Transactions executed in cryptocurrencies are safe and secured.
– Lack of trust in banking transactions.
Source: Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2023
The percentage of the factors supporting the usage of cryptocurrencies are highlighted in the table above.
Demographic Factors Unveils Different Pattern of Usage
There were different usage pattens across demographic and socioeconomic factors.
Younger users were more readily accepting the usage of cryptocurrencies. And, men were more open to utilize cryptocurrencies as investment and a mode of transfer.
Cryptocurrency usage and adoption vary across age, gender, level of income, race and ethnicity. Adults with income above 100,000 have made more transactions than the lower income groups.
Other demographic factors such as race and ethnicity also differed in the usage as Asian adults were more readily using cryptocurrencies. Similarly, Black and Hispanic adults were making more use of cryptocurrencies than white adults.
The ongoing development in the digital asset ecosystem pertaining to the clarity in the regulation and the development of regulated products for underlying digital assets might boost the adoption and usage of cryptocurrencies.
