Crypto's Massive Marketing Efforts Have Drawn Few New Investors

Over the past year, crypto companies like FTX, Coinbase and Crypto.com have shelled out tens of millions of dollars to attract new customers. "Fortune favors the brave," Matt Damon famously said in a Crypto.com TV spot as he tried to induce Americans to open their digital wallets. Now a core metric of how successful they were has been returned, and experts say it's an eye-opening one: not successful at all. From a report: The number of people who invested in crypto has not expanded since last September before the push began, according to a new study led by Pew Research Center. The results, released Tuesday, build off an initial survey in September. Back then, Pew researchers asked 10,371 Americans if they have "ever invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency." Some 16 percent said they had. Last month, the nonprofit asked another sample group -- slightly smaller, at 6,034 Americans -- the same question. The number hadn't grown, with the same 16 percent saying they had at some point invested or traded in the alternate currency. The results suggest that, despite numerous splashy campaigns by crypto interests, the great majority of Americans remain immune to their sales pitches. "It's pretty striking that for all the spectacular commotion around crypto in the last year, the number of people who invest or trade in crypto didn't budge," said Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center's director of internet and technology research, who spearheaded the study. "Attempts to bring in new buyers to the market didn't seem to move the needle at all."

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