Everyone expected a Bitcoin investing boom. Why it never came.
In a 2025 executive order, President Donald Trump called for federal regulation of digital currencies and spoke of creating a national cryptocurrency stockpile.
Trump is pushing cryptocurrency as his family businesses profit from it. In 2025, those businesses earned $1.4 billion from various crypto projects, according to The New York Times.
Earlier this year, Trump's Labor Department issued a proposed rule that would ease legal and regulatory barriers against adding crypto and other alternative investments to retirement plans.
Does crypto belong in retirement accounts?
Critics of that rule say cryptocurrency has no place in retirement accounts, because it is volatile, and because many Americans don't really understand it.
"If you understand how crypto works, that's OK," said Luisa Godinez-Puig, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. "But for a lot of people, crypto is a bit of a mystery. It comes with a bit of a learning curve."
The value of Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, has fallen from around $125,000 in October 2025 to about $65,000 in late July 2026.
If investors are shying away from crypto, its declining value could be a reason.
"By definition, that means that people are selling," said Caleb Silver, editor in chief of Investopedia. "And that likely means that people who may have experimented in buying it have decided that they don't want to own it anymore, because they've seen the price crash."
Many crypto investors think digital currency is the future
Current crypto investors told the Urban Institute they own digital currencies as a way to diversify their investments (45%), or out of interest in new technologies (37%), or because they think digital currencies are the future (27%).
Former crypto owners, by contrast, seem less interested in the currency's promise and more concerned with investment returns.
Roughly 8% of Americans surveyed said they no longer own crypto. By comparison to current crypto investors, former investors were more likely to say a primary reason for investing was to make money. They stopped investing in crypto primarily because they were losing money.
"There are many investors who bought crypto over the last 15 years who were simply chasing price," Silver said.
Most people who own crypto have held it for several years, the survey found. Their balances are generally small: two-fifths of crypto investors own less than $250 in digital currency.
The study found that crypto investors are predominantly male. Asian Americans are far more likely to own crypto than people of other races. Crypto investors skew young.
Is crypto a good investment?
The Urban Institute report suggests that federal regulators should require banks, exchanges and other crypto providers to "provide clear, standardized disclosures" about the potential risks of crypto.
Some investment experts question whether crypto has much value to diversify an investment portfolio and to provide a hedge against stocks. Among other problems, Bitcoin's price tends to sink when the stock market is falling.
"It's also nearly impossible to pin down what its underlying value should be," Arnott of Morningstar wrote in a 2025 post. "For those reasons, a portfolio weighting of 5% or less seems prudent, and many investors may want to skip cryptocurrency altogether."
This article has been published in usatoday.com via Yahoo News.
Everyone expected a Bitcoin investing boom. Why it never came.
Trump made a big Bitcoin push, prices climbed, ETFs expanded and crypto enthusiasm surged. But many expected new investors never bought in. Here's why
finance.yahoo.com
