Financial literacy, risk tolerance, and cryptocurrency ownership in the United States

Fumiko Hayashi and Aditi Routh

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 2025, vol. 46, issue C

Abstract: Cryptocurrency owners without sufficient financial literacy and risk tolerance may be financially vulnerable, as the cryptocurrency market is highly volatile and lacks consumer protections. Our study divides cryptocurrency owners based on their purpose for holding cryptocurrencies—investment only (investors), transactions only (transactors), and a mix of investment and transactions (mix users)—and examines how each group correlates with financial literacy and risk tolerance compared to consumers who do not own cryptocurrencies (nonowners). Using the 2022 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, we find that investors and mix users are significantly or moderately more financially literate and risk tolerant than nonowners, but transactors are less financially literate and slightly more risk tolerant than nonowners. We also find that the three groups of cryptocurrency owners vary by demographic and financial characteristics. Our findings highlight that transactors could be particularly financially vulnerable in the absence of consumer protections in the cryptocurrency market.

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; investment; transactions; financial literacy; risk tolerance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 D91 E42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214635025000413

Related works:
Working Paper: Financial Literacy, Risk Tolerance, and Cryptocurrency Ownership in the United States (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:beexfi:v:46:y:2025:i:c:s2214635025000413

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbef.2025.101060

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance is currently edited by Michael Dowling and Jürgen Huber

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().