TLDR
- A Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland working paper found that information about Bitcoin’s past returns can raise how much crypto U.S. households want to own.
- Crypto owners expected 22% annual returns in 2021 surveys, compared with 7% among people who did not own crypto.
- Households shown Bitcoin’s trailing 12-month return raised their desired crypto allocation by about two percentage points, a 47% jump from the control group.
- Actual crypto purchases rose about 2.5 percentage points among people who saw Bitcoin performance data in a later survey.
- The paper is preliminary research and does not represent official Federal Reserve policy.
A new working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland looked at how information about Bitcoin’s past performance changes household behavior. The paper was published on July 14, 2026.
Researchers Michael Weber, Bernardo Candia, Olivier Coibion and Yuriy Gorodnichenko used surveys with between 15,000 and 25,000 responses per wave. The data came from the Nielsen Homescan Panel.
The team ran a randomized experiment during the second quarter of 2025. Some participants were shown information about Bitcoin’s returns while others saw data on the S&P 500, GameStop, or inflation forecasts.
What The Survey Found About Crypto Owners
People who already owned crypto had very different expectations than those who did not. In the third quarter of 2021, owners expected an average return of 22% over the next year, while nonowners expected just 7%.
Uncertainty was common across both groups. About 87% of nonowners said they did not know what return to expect, compared with 54% of owners.
By 2025, expectations had dropped for both groups but the gap remained. Owners expected a 13.8% return, while nonowners expected 4.7%.
The researchers found that expected returns predicted crypto ownership better than age, income, gender or wealth. Each extra percentage point in expected return was linked to a 0.8-percentage-point rise in the chance of owning crypto.
How Bitcoin Information Changed Real Purchases
In the 2025 experiment, participants shown Bitcoin’s 14.3% prior-year return or a price chart raised their desired crypto holdings. This came partly at the expense of cash and savings accounts.
Those same participants also raised their desired stock holdings, suggesting the information encouraged demand for riskier assets in general.
Later survey responses showed actual crypto purchases rose by about 2.5 percentage points. Before the experiment, roughly 11% of participants already held crypto, so this represented a 23% increase in the chance of buying.
The effect was strongest among nonowners who said they avoided crypto because they did not understand it. People who viewed crypto as a poor investment showed little change.
The authors described this pattern as a possible mechanism for price feedback. Rising prices can raise expectations, which then encourages more buying and further price gains. They were careful to note this is a possible bubble mechanism, not a prediction that every rally will repeat.
The paper also studied spending habits. It found that doubling Bitcoin’s price made a household fully invested in crypto 1.4 percentage points more likely to buy a durable good like a computer or refrigerator.
There was little change in everyday, nondurable spending. The researchers said this suggests some households may treat crypto gains more like a windfall than lasting wealth.
The paper is preliminary and has not gone through the same review as official Federal Reserve publications. The findings represent the authors’ own research and are not a statement of Fed policy.
