Kaspersky survey shows consumers embracing cryptocurrency

Woburn, MA – December 6, 2023 – 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 responsdents.

“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.

Also previously in November, Kaspersky conducted a survey, “The dark side of Black Friday: decoding cyberthreats around the year’s biggest shopping season,” dedicated to spam and phishing during Black Friday. Full report is available via the link.

 

About Kaspersky

Kaspersky is a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company founded in 1997. Kaspersky's deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into innovative security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company's comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a number of specialized security solutions and services to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Over 400 million users are protected by Kaspersky technologies and we help 240,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com.