Social media plays a huge part in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Blockchain companies themselves use the various platforms to communicate with their clients and investors and make announcements. Due to the ‘anything goes’ nature of social media it has also attracted a number of colourful characters, one of which is self-appointed crypto overlord John McAfee.
The anti-virus tech mogul has a big presence in crypto land, his once weekly altcoin shills resulted in no end of pump and dump action. McAfee has since moved on to ICOs, writing white papers, and is also conducting surveys. Over 400,000 votes were made in a nine part poll he ran on his Twitter feed over the past 24 hours. The results are quite revealing and give a good insight to the current climate in crypto land.
The first poll was on the ages of the crypto community and it came as no surprise that around half of the respondents were between 18 and 30. What was quite a shock though is that only 4% of those surveyed were over 50.
Who are we?
I am doing a series of polls to help discover exactly what the composition of the Crypto community is composed of. This is the first poll. What is your age?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) February 7, 2018
The second poll asked how often you buy and sell cryptocurrencies and 42% responded once a month or less indicating that they were hodling and investing rather than trading. Less than 20% of those that responded were trading cryptos daily.
Second poll.
How often do you buy or sell cryptocurrencies?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) February 7, 2018
The third question asked about the interest in the type of cryptocurrency and over 40% said that altcoins held the greatest interest for them. About a quarter each selected Bitcoin/Ethereum and all currencies and only 5% invested in ICOs.
Third poll.
Where is your primary interest in Cryptocurrencies?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) February 7, 2018
When asked what percentage of your total assets were invested in crypto it was very surprising to see that almost a third of those surveyed had over 50% of their total savings in crypto. To balance that out 35% said it was less than 10% which is a more comfortable number. It seems that millennials like a big gamble.
Fourth poll.
What percentage of your assets is in Cryptocurrencies?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) February 7, 2018
58% answered that their primary use for cryptocurrencies were for investment purposes with 38% using them for both investment and as a currency. This balance is likely to change as global adoption increases and it becomes easier, faster and cheaper to transfer them.
Fifth poll.
What is your primary use for Cryptocurrencies?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) February 7, 2018
When asked about their firm belief respondents largely agreed that crypto and fiat would co-exist. However 27% thought that crypto would eventually replace fiat.
Sixth poll.
What best describes your firm belief?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) February 7, 2018
It came as no surprise that 55% of those surveyed said that governments were the greatest threat to cryptocurrencies with 30% of the opinion that banks are.
Seventh poll.
What do you believe poses the greatest threat to crypto?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) February 7, 2018
When asked about barriers to trading or getting into crypto most people agreed that it was registering with exchanges. The only way crypto can truly thrive is when centralized profit making exchanges are done away with and the entire network is peer to peer.
Seventh poll.
What has been your greatest obstacle to buying Crypto?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) February 7, 2018
Each poll had an average of around 44,000 respondents, of those surveyed almost a third of them were students with a quarter having a technical background.
Last poll.
How would you classify yourself?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) February 7, 2018
Although this poll is very limited as it only includes Twitter users that have followed McAfee it does shed some light into the demographics of the crypto community. With 50% aged under 30, and a third of them being students, these guys are the future. This could go some ways into explaining why the institutional investing and banking dinosaurs that have already made their billions are so anti-crypto.