Summary:
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For the first time, a clear political split in cryptocurrency usage in the US reflects online culture trends.
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Republicans lean towards crypto more than Democrats, a shift from five years ago when both parties were equal.
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Despite stalled growth, the White House under Trump turned crypto from a subcultural signal to national policy.
For the first time, there is a clear political divide in who uses cryptocurrency in the United States, and it maps almost perfectly onto the online spaces where crypto culture has been loudest for years.
A Pew Research Center survey of 8,512 U.S. adults, conducted Jan. 20-26, 2026, found that 22% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they have ever invested in, traded or used cryptocurrency. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, that number sits at 17%. Five years ago, both parties were essentially tied — 16% and 17%, respectively. The split is new.
Crypto has been a fixture of right-leaning online culture for years, living comfortably alongside the influencer networks and platforms that amplified it. Elon Musk’s takeover of X was a before-and-after moment, expanding the reach of those communities considerably. Musk himself has spent years publicly boosting Dogecoin, with accusations that his statements on X directly moved the coin’s price — a dynamic that made crypto feel less like a financial product and more like a participation badge for a certain kind of online identity.
Crypto has been marketed as a way for individuals to demonstrate stereotypically masculine traits, including mastery of complex systems and defiance of existing power structures, all in service of a narrative that ends with getting rich. Andrew Tate’s entire brand was built inside that overlap — his online “Hustlers University” course, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, taught drop-shipping and crypto trading as core “passive income” schemes — while one report linked $40 million in crypto-related activity to manosphere influencers specifically.
Then the White House made it official. Trump campaigned on a pledge to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world” and signed an executive order in his first days in office designed to support the domestic crypto industry. In March 2025, he signed a second executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile. What had been a subcultural signal became national policy.
What the data also makes clear is that crypto’s overall growth has stalled. About 19% of U.S. adults report having ever used cryptocurrency today, compared to 16% in 2021. For an asset class with years of Super Bowl ad budgets, celebrity endorsements, high-profile collapses and a sitting president actively backing it, that is a remarkably flat line.
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Men ages 30 to 49 lead all groups at 40%, compared to 17% of women in the same bracket. Among adults 18 to 29, 38% of men have used crypto versus 15% of women. That gap has shown up in every survey cycle without moving.
On income, crypto is trending in the opposite direction of what the industry long promised. Upper-income adults now report use at 27%, up from 17% in 2021. Middle-income use climbed from 17% to 20%. Lower-income Americans went from 15% to 16% — essentially flat. The “financial equalizer” pitch has not shown up in the data.
The Pew Research Center survey was conducted Jan. 20-26, 2026, among 8,512 U.S. adults who are members of the center’s American Trends Panel.
