Report: 3.6 million Americans to use crypto for payments by the end of 2022

• By the end of 2022, 3.6M US citizens will use crypto assets to make purchases, a report by Insider Intelligence shows.
• The firm also predicts that the number of American adult crypto owners will rise to 33.7 million in 2022.

The number of Americans using crypto as a means of payment will increase to 3.6 million by year’s end. This is the prediction made by the research firm Insider Intelligence. 

Alleviated volatility is one of the main reasons behind the 70 percent hike, the company’s principal analyst David Morris notes. He adds that the reduction in volatility can mainly be attributed to stablecoins. The use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) is another motivator to use crypto to make purchases.

We also expect that more crypto options will be layered into how people pay, like cards and digital wallets. These factors should spur high crypto payment growth rates over the next few years.

Crypto payments expected to rise in the US

Several crypto payment infrastructures have been established in recent years. Litecoin, for instance, partnered with the traditional payments provider Visa for off-ramp payments. Meanwhile, El Salvador is using Bitcoin to make instant payments enabled by the lightning network.

Insider Intelligence also forecasts that by the end of 2022, the number of American adult crypto users will rise to 33.7 million. The firm further predicts that the figure will rise to 37.2 million in 2023. Of note, these figures are significantly lower than previous claims of 46 million Americans owning cryptocurrency. This last number came from a controversial survey conducted by the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG). Differently, the Gemini exchange estimated that 21.2 million Americans owned cryptocurrency in 2021.

Away from that, statistics show that the number of digital asset owners is already on the rise. In places like India, Brazil, and Hong Kong, crypto-asset investors nearly doubled in 2021. Additionally, over 50 percent of these investors got into cryptocurrency last year.

Cryptocurrency adoption by generation and gender

In terms of generations, cryptocurrencies come off as lucrative investments to millennials and generation Z. Additionally, more than 25 percent of US millennials plan to use cryptocurrencies to fund their retirement, as an Investopedia survey shows. The UK, meanwhile, is seeing an increase in the number of millennial millionaires following the increased uptake of crypto, tech, and meme stocks.

And in terms of gender, historically, women have been more averse to more risky investments, crypto being one of them. A poll by Arcane Research and Ernst & Young found that crypto ownership among Norwegian women rose to 6 percent this year from 3 percent in 2021. The rise was also noted among male digital asset investors; ownership rose from 6 percent in 2021 to 14 percent this year.