Showing U.S. households that bitcoin BTC$77,553.91 had gained 14% over the previous year made them more likely to buy crypto, offering evidence that past returns can pull new investors into the market.
According to a Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland working paper, researchers randomly divided participants in a 2025 survey into a control group and six groups shown information about bitcoin, the S&P 500, GameStop or the Federal Reserve’s inflation forecast.
One group was told bitcoin’s return over the previous 12 months, while another was shown a chart of its price.
The bitcoin data increased the probability that respondents reported owning crypto in a later survey by 2.41 and 2.48 percentage points, respectively. About 11% owned crypto before the experiment, making the increase roughly 23% relative to the starting rate.
The ownership analysis covered 5,352 respondents across the second through fourth quarters of 2025 and controlled for whether they owned crypto before receiving the information. It measured self-reported ownership rather than transaction data.
The treatments also immediately raised respondents’ desired crypto allocation by about 2 percentage points from a 4.3% average in the control group.