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Consumers in the U.S. are still bullish on crypto and digital assets even as the decentralized market faces immense selling pressure in the face of persistently high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle, according to a survey of 1,013 users of crypto/digital asset exchanges conducted by Bank of America in early June when bitcoin (BTC-USD) was changing hands at ~$30K.
Despite a sharp correction in crypto valuations, 91% of survey respondents are expecting to buy crypto/digital assets in the next six months, the same percentage who said they purchased in the previous six months, BofA analyst Jason Kupferberg wrote in a note Monday.
By comparison, 30% are saying they do not plan to sell any of their crypto holdings over the next six months, unchanged from the 30% who said they didn’t sell in the last six months, as per the note.
For crypto exchanges, “respondents who favored Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) and Crypto.com (CRO-USD) averaged larger purchase sizes and higher income, while PayPal (PYPL), SoFi (SOFI), and Cash App (owned by SQ) users tended to have smaller average purchase sizes and lower income, on average,” Kupferberg said.
Separately, Oppenheimer analyst Owen Lau said “there is much optimism on the path to regulatory clarity, crypto adoption and expansion of use cases,” he wrote in a note dated June 12, citing key takeaways from CoinDesk’s Consensus conference in Austin, Texas last week.
Lau added that since the meltdown of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST-USD) and its sister token Luna (LUNA-USD), “sentiment has generally improved a lot.”
Meanwhile, crypto winter is taking hold as investors shun riskier assets. Bitcoin (BTC-USD -17.1%) is trading more than 65% below its all-time high in November 2021, cratering to $22.6K as of shortly before 11:00 a.m. ET. And ethereum (ETH-USD -20.4%) is also nosediving to $1.16K. The intraday weakness comes as crypto lending platform Celsius recently paused all withdrawals, followed by crypto exchange Binance’s move to halt bitcoin withdrawals.
Earlier, SkyBridge Capital founder said, “we’re in a bloodbath” for stocks and crypto, but you should be buying.