20% of Americans Are Watching and Waiting—The Secret to the Next Wave of Growth in the Crypto Market Is Here
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20% of Americans Are Watching and Waiting—The Secret to the Next Wave of Growth in the Crypto Market Is Here
The “potential holders” group is critical.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Kyle Saunders
Translated by Chopper, Foresight News
Most cryptocurrency research revolves around a simple question: Who holds it—and who doesn’t?
Admittedly, this is a reasonable starting point. Holding behavior is observable and quantifiable. Yet for a market valued in the trillions of dollars, it may not be the most central question.
If you follow market developments, regulatory policy, political discourse, or the future trajectory of crypto assets, a more practically relevant question emerges: Who is considering buying cryptocurrency?
Because adoption and mainstream acceptance are never binary choices—they are gradual processes.
Focusing solely on the final stage of that process means missing the entire chain of conversion.
Rejection → Consideration → Holding: The Three Stages of Cryptocurrency Adoption
In a new paper co-authored with Erin Fitz, we treat cryptocurrency adoption not as a black-or-white outcome but as a progressive process.
Between late 2024 and 2025, we conducted three independent, nationally representative surveys of U.S. adults. Based on responses, we categorized participants into three groups:
- Not holding cryptocurrency—and not intending to hold it
- Not holding cryptocurrency—but considering holding it
- Currently holding cryptocurrency
Our first finding is straightforward yet critical: Approximately one-fifth of U.S. adults do not currently hold cryptocurrency but are considering it.
This group is neither an insignificant niche nor a statistical anomaly—and certainly not a “predestined holder” cohort. Rather, it is a distinct segment characterized by unique psychological traits and behavioral patterns—making it critically important.
Why Is the “Potential Holder” Group So Critical?
Limiting analysis exclusively to the binary contrast between “holders” and “non-holders” implicitly treats everyone outside the market as a homogeneous mass.
Real-world behavioral choices, however, are never like that.
Classical social psychology theory—the Theory of Planned Behavior—posits that human behavior evolves through a sequence of antecedent stages: beliefs, attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and behavioral intention. One must first “consider,” then develop “intention,” and only then act. Crucially, progression from one stage to the next is never guaranteed.
In other words: All holders were once potential holders—but not all potential holders become actual holders.
When we treat engagement with cryptocurrency as an ordered, progressive process—not a binary trait—interesting insights emerge: The factors influencing “consideration” differ significantly from those driving “actual holding.”
This conversion pathway operates via successive filtering mechanisms.
Which Factors Influence “Consideration”? Which Drive “Actual Holding”?
Some commonly expected influences align with intuition: younger individuals, men, those more open to novel experiences, and those with higher tolerance for financial risk are more likely to cross both thresholds—“rejection → consideration” and “consideration → holding.”
Yet two distinct patterns deserve special attention.
Factors more strongly associated with “consideration”:
- A more conservative, pragmatic ideological orientation
- Support for AI technology development
These factors operate early in the adoption process—explaining why people might hold an open attitude toward cryptocurrency without necessarily taking the final step to actually hold it.
Factors more strongly associated with “actual holding”:
- Existing stock ownership
- A desire for chaos
Risk tolerance proves the most influential factor overall: Across its full spectrum—from lowest to highest—respondents’ behavioral choices shift dramatically: the probability of rejecting cryptocurrency drops by 32 percentage points, while the probability of actual holding rises by 27 percentage points.
Here’s a concise summary of the core differences:
Our survey data also closely mirrors real-world cryptocurrency market dynamics: Bitcoin dominates both the “potential holder” and “actual holder” groups (with Ethereum second), and many respondents express willingness to engage with multiple cryptocurrencies—a pattern confirmed by market reality itself.
To understand how this pattern fits within broader technology diffusion curves—and why the “potential holder” stage will determine whether cryptocurrency stagnates or scales—compare Bitcoin’s adoption trajectory with that of the early internet. Our survey data shows U.S. AI technology acceptance reached ~55% by 2026.
Moreover, the chart below illustrates how cryptocurrency adoption maps onto Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations curve:
This is an adaptation of Rogers’ 2003 Diffusion of Innovations curve. The solid orange line represents the S-shaped curve (i.e., cumulative distribution function; left y-axis scale). The blue area beneath the curve reflects the probability distribution across the five adopter categories in Rogers’ model—derived from standard deviations around the mean in a normal distribution. In a normal distribution, these regions represent each group’s share of the total population: Innovators (2.5%, from 0 to mean − 2 SD), Early Adopters (13.5%, mean − 2 SD to mean − 1 SD), Early Majority (34%, mean − 1 SD to mean), Late Majority (34%, mean to mean + 1 SD), and Laggards (16%, mean + 1 SD to 100%). The dashed black lines indicate self-reported cryptocurrency holding rates from our three studies (Study 1: 13%, Study 2: 18%, Study 3: 32%).
The Significance of These Findings Extends Far Beyond Cryptocurrency
You could narrowly interpret these results as consumer segmentation—but their implications run much deeper.
For Market Growth
Cryptocurrency market expansion does not hinge on converting staunch “rejectors” into holders. Instead, it depends on identifying what prevents potential holders from becoming actual holders. That barrier may not be ideological—it could stem from perceived lack of behavioral control, concerns about market volatility, or liquidity constraints.
For Regulatory Policy
If policymakers view only cryptocurrency holders as politically influential, they misread the landscape. The direction of digital asset regulation may well hinge on this large, open-minded yet undecided cohort of potential holders. Their preferences, risk profiles, and trust in institutions are pivotal—especially amid the emerging regulatory framework for cryptocurrency in 2026.
For Public Discourse
Online discussions often polarize: either pro-crypto or anti-crypto. Yet our survey reveals a large, psychologically distinct middle group. Historically, it is never the early adopters—but precisely this middle group—that determines whether an innovation achieves broad adoption, stalls, or triggers backlash.
Adoption and mainstreaming are inherently gradual processes.
The core insight of this research extends beyond cryptocurrency—to methodology and cognitive framing.
When we reduce complex behaviors to binary choices, we risk conflating stage-specific behavioral patterns. What makes people open to a new idea is not necessarily what drives them to act upon it.
This principle applies not only to cryptocurrency, but also to AI adoption, political participation, institutional trust, and numerous other behavioral domains explored in this column.
The overlooked intermediate stage often contains the most revealing behavioral patterns.
Cryptocurrency adoption and mainstreaming are never simply expressions of personality traits or ideological signals—they are sequential behavioral processes.
Ignoring the intermediate “potential holder” stage leads to simultaneous misjudgments of both the market’s true trajectory and the underlying political and social logic.
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