A DeFi Education Foundation and Ipsos poll shows more people have dabbled in crypto, while regular usage, trust and political appeal lag behind
More Americans have dipped a toe into crypto. Fewer seem interested in staying in the pool.
A new national survey from the DeFi Education Foundation (DEF) and Ipsos found that 22% of US adults have owned or used crypto at some point. That’s up from 18% in 2025. Active use within the past 12 months, however, held steady at 13%.
The numbers behind the plateau
The poll surveyed 1,545 adults between September 8 and September 16, 2026. The results were released on October 27, 2026, only weeks ahead of the US midterm elections.
The headline gain is a four-point jump in lifetime ownership or use, from 18% to 22%. By the standards of annual consumer surveys, that’s real movement.
The flat 13% active-use figure tempers the celebration. Plenty of newcomers apparently tried crypto, then drifted away or simply stopped touching it.
Familiarity remains thin. Only 9% of respondents described themselves as very or extremely familiar with crypto.
DeFi fares even worse on that front. Just 2% said they feel very familiar with decentralized finance, the corner of crypto that uses software on blockchains to offer lending, trading and saving without a traditional bank in the middle.
Yet the appetite to experiment is surprisingly healthy. Some 40% said they would be at least somewhat likely to try DeFi if it were available to them.
When asked what they might use it for, respondents most often pointed to saving money and sending funds within the US.
A trust gap with a branding problem
The survey’s most striking findings concern confidence in the existing financial system. Only 19% of Americans consider it secure.
A much larger share, 63%, said the system needs an upgrade to defend against threats such as cybercrime and artificial intelligence.
Only 5% reported high trust in decentralized platforms. By comparison, 42% said the same of large national banks, and 48% expressed high trust in credit unions.
The political findings sharpen the point. Support for candidates who emphasize innovative financial technology came in at 35%.
When the question specifically mentioned blockchain, crypto and DeFi, support fell to 13%. That’s a 22-point drop triggered by vocabulary alone.
For an industry that has invested heavily in its political presence, that gap is uncomfortable. The underlying concept of modernizing finance polls reasonably well. The crypto label drags it down.
What this means for the industry
The 40% openness to DeFi is the most encouraging number in the report for the sector. It indicates a meaningful pool of potential users who aren’t hostile, just unfamiliar.
The catch is that the same respondents report almost no trust in decentralized platforms. Willingness to try something and willingness to park savings in it are very different thresholds.
On the political side, the 22-point gap between generic fintech messaging and explicit crypto messaging carries practical implications. Candidates sympathetic to the industry may find it more effective to talk about financial innovation in broad terms than to lead with the word crypto.
It’s worth noting the survey’s sponsor. The DeFi Education Foundation is an advocacy group focused on decentralized finance, so it has an interest in highlighting both the openness to DeFi and the need for clearer messaging.
Still, several of the findings cut against the industry’s preferred narrative. Stagnant active use and rock-bottom trust aren’t the kind of numbers an advocacy group would invent to flatter itself.
The key metric to watch in future surveys is whether that 13% active-use figure finally moves. Equally telling will be whether trust in decentralized platforms climbs from its current 5%.
