• 53% are moving crypto funds toward stocks, bonds & unit trusts

Middle East: Toluna, a leading market research, consumer insights, and technology provider, has conducted a comprehensive survey, the 5th wave of a cryptocurrency tracking study spanning multiple markets, to gain insights into consumers' investment habits, perceptions, and future purchase intentions..

The report indicates that public sentiments and perceptions towards cryptocurrency have continued to decline in Q1 2023 amidst the crypto winter. Since October 2022, perceptions of security and trust have declined slightly, particularly in developed markets. The security level registered 3.9, on a scale of 0 to 10, compared to 4.1 in October 2022 and the trust level declined from 4.8 to 4.6 in the same period. Fixed deposits, continue to be perceived as the safest and most trusted assets, both with an increment of 0.2 to reach 7.8.

As a result, investors in developed markets are less confident in recommending cryptocurrency as an investment, with this indicator declining by 0.3 in Feb 2023, compared to October 2022

The report also highlights that sentiments differ by market type, with developed markets showing more scepticism (+5% vs Oct '22) and less optimism (-2% vs Oct '22) towards cryptocurrency. In contrast, in emerging markets optimism is still on the rise (+2% vs Oct '22).

While global crypto penetration remained stable (+1% vs Oct '22), the momentum varies across regions, with new investors coming from emerging APAC markets (+5% vs Oct '22), while more investors from LATAM (-5% vs Oct '22) and EMEA (-4% vs Oct '22) and exited the market.

While penetration of crypto investments increased amongst emerging APAC markets, investors have downsized their crypto portfolio (-9% vs Oct'22) alongside EMEA (-5% vs Oct'22) at the start of 2023. However, developed APAC markets (+7% vs Oct'22) and LATAM (+5% vs Oct'22) investors continued expanding their crypto portfolios.

The report also shows that respondents’ plans to invest in cryptocurrency within the next six months have declined. Another key highlight is that more investors are selling off their crypto holdings: 45% in Feb vs Oct’ 43% and moving their funds to other financial products, with 53% mainly towards stocks, bonds, and unit trusts. However, investors from developed APAC markets (+7% vs Oct’22) and LATAM (+5% vs Oct’22) continued to expand their crypto portfolio while remaining wary. However, they also remain hopeful for an upcoming bull run in the second half of the year.

Despite the declining sentiment, investors, driven by emerging markets, appear unfazed and expect to increase asset allocation to crypto investments as opportunities arise.

Commenting on these findings, George Akkaoui. Enterprise Account Director & Office Leader MEA at Toluna, said: “As the cryptocurrency market experiences ongoing volatility, it is crucial for market participants to stay informed on evolving trends and consumer sentiments. Toluna's comprehensive tracking study provides valuable insights into the changing landscape of digital currency, highlighting the declining sentiments in developed markets. However, it is encouraging to see emerging markets continuing to show optimism towards cryptocurrency, and investors’ sentiment remaining less affected by market conditions”.

Furthermore, the report highlighted that social media, articles, and crypto-specified media remained the main players in shaping public sentiment with 60% in emerging markets versus 33% in developed markets.

The first wave of the study was conducted in December 2021, followed by subsequent waves in June, October, and August 2022, and February 2023, to provide a continuous understanding of the market outlook and the evolving landscape of digital currency. The study covered 19 markets, with a total of 10,500 respondents.

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About Toluna

Toluna is a leading market research, consumer insights and technology provider

We own the industry’s first end-to-end, single login real-time consumer intelligence platform, Toluna Start, which automates research and provides reliable consumer insights with speed and quality. Toluna Start can be used across market understanding (including U&A), brand health tracking, all the new product development stages and creative testing, online communities (qual focus groups), with results displayed instantly in flexible dashboards set up for deep data analysis.

  • Toluna has proprietary online panels in 70+ markets with 40 M+ highly engaged consumers.
  • Our team of 2,800 out of 24 offices delivers around 40,000 projects annually to many Fortune 500 companies (i.e. P&G, Colgate-Palmolive, BBC, Publicis Group, Dentsu, The Boston Consulting Group, Samsung, Qatar Airways, etc.).
  • We offer our clients the means to collect data and insights in-house, with our support and consultancy where needed, or a full-service agency-style approach with flexibility and agility to meet our clients project-based needs (i.e. questionnaire design, survey programming & hosting, sampling, analysis, reporting, etc).