A Harris Poll look at U.S. voters concluded interest in crypto is on the rise, and 33% said digital assets will figure into their support of candidates.
Just about everybody knows what a bitcoin is, now, and a lot of people reportedly think cryptocurrencies will figure into their financial futures.

One in three U.S. voters said they'll consider a political candidate's position on cryptocurrencies before making a voting decision, according to a new Harris Poll examination of likely U.S. voters.

While those 33% are taking a keen interest, the online survey of more than 1,700 people – funded by bitcoin ETF issuer Grayscale – found 77% said a U.S. presidential candidate should at least have an "informed perspective" on crypto. And they're evenly split on which political party is the leader in digital assets issues.

The new polling followed up on a similar round of questioning late last year, concluding people are increasingly likely to believe that crypto will eventually wind up in their investment portfolios (47%), which could further explain their political interest.

"Likely American voters from across the political spectrum indicate a heightened interest in investing in crypto assets and in supporting candidates well-versed in the emerging technologies,” said Zach Pandl, Grayscale’s head of research, in a statement.

Almost everybody – all but 2% – had at least heard of bitcoin (BTC). A wide segment of voters claimed they're also familiar with Ethereum's ether (ETH), with less than half (46%) saying they'd never heard of it. About 17% of voters say they've invested in bitcoin, putting that asset nearly as high as those who say they have bonds, and significantly higher than those who invest in exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

In a point that could be especially interesting to the firms winning preliminary approvals last week on their efforts to build ETH ETFs, 24% in the survey said this new option would make them more open to investing.

And 44% of the voters think to some degree that "crypto and blockchain technology are the future of finance" – up four percentage points from responses to the same question asked last year. But they want government oversight, with 52% of respondents saying they'd be more likely to put their money into digital assets if the field gets more regulation.

This latest poll showed a larger segment of the voting population keenly interested in candidates' crypto views than another recent poll of swing-state voters, which had put that level at 21%.

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Jesse Hamilton

Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.