Molly White's Citation Needed - Polling: Are Democratic voters really “increasingly gravitating towards crypto”?

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Paradigm has polled some Democratic voters about crypto and released a summary of their results. How does it stack up to other industry polls, which are often heavily manipulated to paint a deceptively rosy picture? Originally published on August 30, 2024.

I'm Molly White, and you're listening to the audio feed for the Citation Needed Newsletter. You can see the text version of the newsletter online at citation needed.news. Polling. Are Democratic voters really increasingly gravitating towards crypto? Paradigm has polled some Democratic voters about crypto and released a summary of their results. How does it stack up to other industry polls, which are often heavily manipulated to paint a deceptively rosy picture? This issue was originally published on August 30th, 2024. Audio listeners are going to have to bear with me a little bit on this one, because this is an annotation that I've created,

similar to the ones I've done in the past, with the New York Times' latecomers guide to crypto and one of Sam Bankman-Fried's blog posts shortly after the FTX collapse. This is my first time trying to create an audio version of one of these posts, so we'll see how it goes. It might be helpful to visualize how these appear online, where I have the original article published on the left side of the page with highlighted sentences that correspond to my commentary, which is on the right side of the page.

I'll do my best to be clear where I'm reading Paradigm's original writing and where I'm reading my own commentary. This is an annotation of a summary of a poll that was performed by Paradigm in late July and was published on their policy blog on August 12, 2024. Paradigm, a cryptocurrency-focused venture capital firm, has joined the ranks of cryptocurrency companies and blockchain advocacy groups that are commissioning polls ostensibly to learn more about crypto sentiment among American voters. A previous poll, commissioned by the digital currency group and published by the crypto lobbying group, the blockchain association, summarize their findings in incredibly misleading ways to try to pave the way for a narrative that there are a substantial number of single-issue voters who are likely to support pro-crypto candidates, regardless of other policy positions in upcoming elections. Another poll commissioned by Coinbase is the source of data on crypto ownership that has been repeated by the industry, its lobbyists, and lawmakers alike, despite being extremely dubious. Instead of seeking to understand voter sentiment around crypto, these polls were nakedly designed to solicit their desired responses.

The responses, in turn, were summarized by the crypto firms in reports that were clearly designed to try to convince lawmakers and candidates that cryptocurrency is a major voter issue, and that they risk losing potentially substantial support from their constituents if they fail to prostrate themselves before the industry. After all, these are hard numbers, and numbers are objective and concrete. Does this poll and the summary of its findings suffer from the same flaws? Let's dig in. Paradigm rights, Democratic voters are increasingly gravitating towards crypto. We'll come back to this. They continue, that's the primary takeaway of our new poll of registered Democrats,

the complement to our poll of Republicans from June. These results dovetail with recent reports that Democratic Candidate, for office and members of Congress are becoming pro-crypto, indicating that political figures are following the lead of their voters. Now, there may be reports, generally from the industry, that candidates and incumbent Congress people are, quote, becoming pro-crypto, but I would definitely like to see some better support for the claim that this is them, quote, following the lead of their voters, and not, oh, I don't know, related to the hundreds of millions of dollars available to candidates who are deferential to the industry. Paradigm writes, for this release, the poll was conducted with the

research firm Mercury Analytics. Mercury Analytics isn't listed on 538's pollster rating list like DCG's pollster was, but they also aren't a completely unknown quantity, having published research on topics ranging from vaping to 2020 presidential election debate sentiment. Their polls have been reported upon in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, although one such article noted some flaws with survey design. Their CEO's June 2024 article titled AI is revolutionizing the market research industry made me wonder if AI was involved in interpreting qualitative answers to this survey, as he advocated. But after speaking with Paradigm's policy team, I learned that no qualitative interviews were performed. Paradigm continues, our poll was in the field from July 25th until August 1st,

meaning that this data was collected in the days after President Joe Biden announced he would be stepping down as the Democratic nominee for president, and Vice President Kamala Harris effectively locked up the nomination. We polled 804 self-identified Democratic registered voters for this poll with a margin of error of 3.5%. We also oversampled Black, Hispanic, and AAPI Democrats, conducting 100 additional interviews with each of these audiences, to gain better insight into how non-white Democrats view crypto. I asked Paradigm for a little more detail about how the poll was conducted, and they informed me that it was conducted all online, unlike their June poll of Republicans, which was conducted by phone and online.

They do not publicly note this, nor does their poll summary address the skew this likely introduces. A May 24 online survey by the Federal Reserve notes, quote, because the survey is conducted online, the sample population may be more technologically connected than the overall population, which could increase the share of adults reporting use of emerging technologies such as cryptocurrencies. David Marker, fellow of the American Statistical Association and American Academy for the Advancement of Science and elected member of the International Statistical Institute, criticized the DCG poll for failing to include such a disclaimer, commenting, quote,

Online surveys into crypto ownership can skew or misrepresent true figures, and they're inherently limited, as they don't factor in the digitally excluded on a topic that is directly related to digital comfort. At the very least, Paradigm should have disclosed the method by which respondents were surveyed, and preferably also proactively noted the potential skew this likely introduces. For clarity's sake, I also verified with Paradigm that the oversample brought the total number of respondents to around 1,100 people. The 300 additional surveys were in addition to the 804 people surveyed, not a part of that number. Paradigm breaks their poll summary into several sections which they

title takeaways. They begin with takeaway one. Democratic crypto voters are up for grabs this November. They write, making inroads with crypto owners could help Vice President Harris win back some wayward Democrats and increase her likelihood of winning. They get right to the point about their goals with this survey. With polling that began just after Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee and immediately began picking up steam, this poll seems to have been commissioned, at least in part, in hopes of convincing the Harris campaign and those around her, that, quote, making inroads with crypto owners is somehow something she needs to prioritize.

It also fits with the timing of their previous poll, which was trying to convince Trump that he needed to attract Republicans who own crypto while he was leading in the polls. Paradigm continues, as of right now, there are 1 to 2% of Democrats who may be leaning towards Trump due to the Biden administration's hostility to crypto. This is a bit of an odd data point, and Otter still was the decision to highlight it as the very first finding, given it is also one of the one of the worst. weakest claims from this poll. First, let me remind you that they've just stated a paragraph earlier that the margin of error in this poll is 3.5%. Second, the math doesn't really work out. I've confirmed

with paradigm that they were calculating from the number of, quote, non-Harris voters, more on that in a second, who responded that the Biden administration was, quote, too hostile to cryptocurrency, and they munged those two responses together to conclude that this segment, thus, quote, may be leaning towards Trump due to the Biden administration's hostility to crypto. However, this figure actually comes out to about 2.7%, which is not within the stated 1 to 2% range. I was informed that they decided to provide a lower estimate in the summary than their polling suggested because 2 to 3% quote, felt too aggressive. But that raises the question, why bother polling if you're just going to change the numbers?

Third, they did not ask any questions about whether the Biden administration's perceived hostility might actually push these people to vote for Trump, nor do they provide any details about how many of these so-called non-Harris voters would consider voting for Trump in general. They follow this paragraph with a graphic showing the responses to the questions, quote, have you ever invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, which shows that 18% of so-called non-Harris voters responded yes. There's another graphic showing the responses to the question, quote, thinking about how the Biden administration has handled cryptocurrency,

do you think its approach has been? And then it shows responses from non-Harris voters, where 11% say too friendly, 16% say just about right, 52% say they don't know, and 21% say it's been too hostile. One thing I will note for the benefit of the audio listeners is that the first bar chart, which shows 18% yes responses, is represented by a blue bar that takes up roughly 60% of the available space. I note in the annotation, the scale on this first bar chart is hilarious, particularly juxtaposed above the chart just below it, which captures the full 100% of responses, while the same amount of space fits maybe 30% of respondents for this question.

I then show what the graphic would look like if you were to include a bar representing the remaining 82% of respondents, which would increase the width of the graphic by about three times, or what it would look like if you were to scale that 18% bar down to properly represent a proportion of the 100% of available space. I also note that in the second bar chart, the designers of this report have, for some reason, opted to place the 52% of don't know respondents between just about right and too hostile, as though don't know somehow signifies somewhat too hostile. Paradigm then continues with some bullet points. First, they write, of the 804 Democrats we

polled, 13% said they were not voting for Harris as they are either voting for Trump, a third-party candidate, or are still undecided. I verified with paradigm that this 13% undecided figure is indeed the proportion of people who indicated they would be voting for Trump, a third party candidate or had not yet decided, but that they had not polled on whether or not these voters would choose not to vote for Harris. In my opinion, it's misleading to suggest in the summary that these people are all not voting for Harris or to refer to them throughout as non-Harris voters, given that they did not indicate that, and some of these undecided voters may well end up voting for Harris,

as might some of those who indicated that they would vote for a third-party candidate who later dropped out. The next bullet point reads, Trump's supporting Democrats are far more likely to have bought cryptocurrency than the rest of those polled. 18% of non-Harris Democrats have bought crypto, and Trump's supporting Democrats have bought at two times that rate. Paradigm verified to me that 5% of the self-identified Democrats in this poll indicated that they would be voting for Trump.

The figure they provide on people who have bought cryptocurrency seems to come from the later question in Section 3 that asks, quote, have you ever invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum? I don't love these types of questions, because they include people like myself, who are highly skeptical of cryptocurrencies, but own or previously owned some for research purposes. It also includes those who purchased crypto and then got rid of or lost at all, those who have used crypto for a single transaction, those who have just received crypto in promotional deals, and so on.

This is not necessarily a great measure of people who have strong and positive feelings about crypto, or of people who would support the kinds of policies that are generally supported by the industry. Paradigm's final bullet point in this section reads, additionally, 21% of non-Harris voters say that the Biden administration has been, quote, a little too hostile, or, quote, much too hostile on crypto. If you were curious like I was, 7% of these so-called non-Harris voters responded much too hostile, and 14% responded a little too hostile. We're really in percent of a percent territory here. We're talking about seven people

and 15 people, respectively. It's pretty wild that they're looking at seven responses, or 22 if we generously count those who don't feel quite as strongly, from a poll of more than 800 people, and extrapolating that over the U.S. population to claim that Democratic crypto voters are up for grabs this November. Paradigm moves on to takeaway too. Democrats are worried about losing purchasing power and being cut off from the financial system. They write, a core goal of crypto, giving people greater ability to maintain financial privacy, resonates with Democrats. Now, this may be a stated goal, but it's far from a real-life feature of most popular cryptocurrencies. You can read my essays titled abuse and harassment on the blockchain, and

anonymous cryptocurrency wallets are not so simple, which go into more detail. But in short, while banks keep records of financial transactions that they may later share with law enforcement, data on public blockchains is visible to anyone, including to law enforcement without a warrant. Blockchain analysis firms, like chain analysis, which has earned more than $80 million from contracts with U.S. federal government agencies alone, not to mention contracts with state-level organizations and non-U.S. government and law enforcement clients like to brag about just how easy crypto tracing is for them. Paradigm continues, contrary to some suppositions, Democratic voters recognize the dangers of mass surveillance. Who is supposing this other than Republican talking heads?

Finally, paradigm writes, financial privacy is a core belief for Democratic voters, and they begin their bullet points, with 72% of respondents agreed that, quote, personal financial transactions should generally be kept private and only made available to government agencies when needed for specific purposes. Just 15% took the view that, quote, personal financial transactions should generally be recorded in a place where it is easy for government agencies like the IRS to review transactions. I would note that this 15% is going to love blockchains then. Cryptocurrency's reputation as a useful tool for tax evasion has primarily been a result of the IRS's lack of interest and resources to scrutinize once niche categories of transactions, and that is something that has been changing in recent times.

Notably, this poll did not ask any questions about respondents' opinions on using cryptocurrencies to achieve financial privacy, and instead is simply assuming that respondents who want financial privacy would support crypto and vice versa. paradigm then includes a graphic showing the responses to this question, which also includes a 13% who responded they were not sure. The next bullet point reads, additionally, 78% of respondents said it was extremely or very important that people have a way to pay for reproductive care without making their transactions known to their state government or the federal government, and only 6% of Democrats disagreed. The graphic shows the responses to the question have 53% saying extremely important, 25% saying very important, 16% saying somewhat important, 4% saying not that important, and 2% of people saying not at all important. This comes out to 94% of people saying they believe it is between somewhat and extremely important, and only 6% of people saying it is not that important or not at all important.

Okay, putting the sarcasm aside for a minute here, please, for the love of God, do not put your abortions on the blockchain. Do not try to pay for your or another person's abortion using crypto, or encourage others to do so. This is an incredibly dangerous idea, especially as states are working to criminalize not only abortion, but also punish those who try to provide aid to others who need them. While there are a handful of cryptocurrencies that seek to provide some, some privacy for those who transact with them, the vast majority of popular cryptocurrencies do not. Another thing. While it's good of paradigm to note the importance of financial privacy in situations where people are seeking medical care that has been criminalized or may be criminalized in the

future, they should perhaps consider also not funding the campaign of a candidate who has supported incredibly strict anti-abortion laws, described abortion rights activists as, quote, demonic, and said that abortion is a, quote, religious sacrifice to these people. Paradigm contributed $500,000 to the cryptocurrency super PACs, which have spent about $583,000 on Blake Masters' fortunately unsuccessful Republican primary campaign in Arizona's District 8. Paradigm continues, nearly all Democrats are also worried about protecting their purchasing power, matching the views of Republicans and independence. 80% of Democrats said it was, quote, very important, or, quote, extremely important,

that their, quote, money maintains its purchasing power over time. The graphic shows the breakdown where 44% responded extremely important, 36% responded very important, 16% responded somewhat important, and 2% each responded not that important and not at all important. This comes out to 96% of people saying it is between somewhat and extremely important, and only 4% of people saying it is not that or not at all important. I assume by now you have noticed the pattern in this section, which will continue throughout the rest of the poll,

where the poll asks a very broad question about a financial topic that few people would object to, then implies the response is an endorsement of cryptocurrencies. This was also a strategy in the DCG poll, which asked respondents to agree or disagree with statements like, quote, the current financial system lacks transparency, and, quote, the cost and rules for participating in the current financial system are not designed to benefit the average person. Paradigm moves on to Takeaway 3.

Crypto is most popular among Democratic voters of color. They begin, when Democrats come out as pro-Crypto, they are following the lead of their own non-white base voters who view critical. crypto positively. Paradigm seems to be using current or past ownership of cryptocurrencies as the metric by which they determine a person, quote, views crypto positively, which is flawed for reasons I've already described. However, even if we put that aside and assume that the 18% or between 15 and 27% when broken down by race actually represents support for cryptocurrencies, it would seem that Democratic politicians who, quote, come out as pro-crypto, would in fact,

act be failing to follow the lead of the remaining 82%, or 73 to 85% when broken down by race, of their constituents who don't view crypto positively. It's also possible they're reaching this conclusion from a later question, not captured in a graphic, which states that 13 to 32% of respondents say that, quote, crypto plays a positive role in the U.S. economy. If that is the case, the inverse is roughly the same. Sixty-eight to 87% of respondents, don't view crypto positively. Paradigm writes, previous paradigm polling has shown that crypto ownership and support is strongest among non-white voters, and that is also true among non-white Democrats. The March 24 paradigm poll, they're citing here, claimed that 19% of American registered voters

say they've bought crypto. It is generally an interesting exercise to compare crypto industry polling results to polls from outside the industry, though there are variations. in question formulation, namely with some polls asking about current crypto ownership versus the ones that ask if they have ever owned crypto. Some non-industry funded polls include one by J.P. Morgan Chase in 2022 that described 15% of American customers that have conducted transfers to crypto accounts. I suppose someone could argue that J.P. Morgan is an industry pollster given their forays into blockchain, but that is not their primary business. You can take this number with a grain of salt.

if you deem fit. Pew Research Center in March 2023 found that 17% of American adults have ever invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency, and the Federal Reserve reported that 7% of American adults held or used cryptocurrency in 2023. Out of the industry-funded polls, Andresen Horowitz reported that 20% of American registered voters own crypto as of December 2021. Coinbase has reported in polling from 2022 throughout 2024 that 18.2% of American adults own crypto, with numbers that vary over time between 16% and 22%. Paradigms March 2024 report that I mentioned above claimed that 19% of American registered voters have ever invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.

And the DCG poll of registered voters in April 2024 claimed that 14% of registered voters in six swing states currently own crypto, with 26% owning or having previously owned crypto. To their credit, Paradigm's March poll is reasonably close to the Pew and J.P. Morgan surveys, particularly when you compare it to crypto industry surveys that have polled current crypto ownership and come in way higher than non-industry polls. In this poll, Paradigm asks about the amount of cryptocurrency respondents currently own later on, revealing that 12% of their respondents currently own crypto, leaving 6% in the former owner bucket. This is still quite high compared to the Federal Reserve's numbers, but considerably lower

than the 20% figure that Coinbase and others like to throw around. Paradigm also claimed to me that they've found that providing examples of cryptocurrencies in their question results in higher affirmative responses. This is surprising to me, since it would seem to suggest a significant number of people hold Bitcoin or Ethereum, but don't view them as cryptocurrencies. Other recent polls, including Pews, have had similar findings to paradigms, that people of color are somewhat more likely to have owned crypto than white respondents. This is generally treated by the cryptocurrency industry as a positive thing,

and some influential crypto figures like to describe crypto as a particular opportunity for people of color to, quote, build generational wealth or access financial services they have historically not been able to access, sometimes using tactics that have been described as predatory inclusion. However, the higher crypto ownership among people of color is a fairly recent development, and one that means that many of these investors bought in at all-time highs in 2020 and 2021, with many later losing much of their holdings in the 2022 crash. Quote, recent polls show a sharp decline in the share of black Americans holding Bitcoin, indicating that many folks might have bought high and sold low,

reported Annie Lowry in the Atlantic in November 2022. Paradigm rights, to be clear, crypto is the most popular among non-white Democrats regardless of ownership. 28% of black Democrats, 32% of Hispanic Democrats, and 27% of AAPI Democrats say that crypto plays a positive role in the U.S. economy. This is a massive jump compared to 13% of white Democrats who said the same. With polls like these, it is often informative to invert the numbers used in the conclusions they're trying to draw attention to. These findings show that 68 to 87% of respondents do not agree that crypto plays a positive role in the U.S. economy. This is a significant

majority, and it's worth considering why the authors of this report chose to focus on the minority of respondents who do agree. Paradigm moves on to Takeaway 4. Crypto ownership is likely to grow among Democrats in the next 12 months. They write, more Democratic voters are saying they plan to buy crypto in the next 12 months than have ever bought it before. This is inaccurate. As the poll states in a bullet point below, 17% of non-crypto-holding Democrats say they

plan to purchase crypto in the next year, whereas 80s. 18% of Democrats overall have already bought crypto. I suspect this error is an artifact of an earlier error in the poll summary. Bullet point two originally read, this means about 27% of Democrats who haven't yet bought crypto are likely to buy in the next year. That seemed extremely high to me as a percentage of non-crypto-holding respondents, and after I inquired, Paradigm corrected the bullet point to read, 27% of Democrats are likely to buy in the next year, including about 17% of Democrats who have never previously bought. I suspect when they corrected the 17% figure below, they missed the conclusory sentence up here. Paradigm continues, if you needed additional proof that Democrats

are warming to crypto, this is a firebell in the night. Polling by morning consult, the firm that has been doing the polling for both Andres and Horowitz and Coinbase mentioned above, and so should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, has claimed that the percentage of respondents who were, quote, likely to purchase cryptocurrency in the next month has hovered relatively stably between 20% and 26% ever since they began polling in January 2022. However, the same polls also suggest that the percentage of respondents who hold crypto has remained relatively stable, with some increase going into April 2023 and some decline over the past year. The federal Reserve Survey shows declining cryptocurrency ownership from 2021 to 2023.

These polls suggest that far from being a firebell in the night, this question may just be a poor indicator of actual future adoption. Either that or people are getting out of crypto in such numbers that they are more than offsetting these supposed future adopters. Paradigm starts their bullet points with 9% of Democrats say they are very likely to invest in crypto in the next year, and another 18% of Democrats are somewhat likely to invest. Now, this is out of all respondents, including those who do not currently own cryptocurrencies. It's probably safe to assume that some, although perhaps not many, of these 9% very likely respondents, do not currently hold crypto. But even if we generously assume that every single

person in that 9% already holds, it seems noteworthy that at least half of the 18% of respondents who said they currently hold crypto, are at best lukewarm about buying more of it going into the next year. Paradem continues, 27% of Democrats are likely to buy in the next year, including about 17% of Democrats who have never previously bought. They include the graphic for the question, how likely are you to invest in cryptocurrency in the next 12 months? And the answer is where 9% reported they were very likely, 18% were somewhat likely, 18% were not. not that likely, and 54% were not at all likely. Again, the other numbers hidden away in the graphic here seem notable. A full half of respondents slammed the hell no button when asked if they

might like to try out crypto in the upcoming year. Almost three in four were varying degrees of unlikely to get involved. This roughly aligns with Pew's findings in 2023 that 75% of Americans who have heard of cryptocurrencies are not confident in their safety and and reliability. Paradigm moves to takeaway five. Crypto ownership among Democrats is approaching parity with stock ownership and continues to grow. Even assuming the numbers in this section are good, more on that later, it is not at all clear to me how 12% current ownership of crypto can be interpreted as approaching parity with 33% ownership of stocks. I guess if you had historical data that showed less than 12% current ownership, than any increase would be approaching parity, in a sense.

But Paradigm doesn't mention having any historical data. Besides the polls they conducted on different demographic groups earlier this year, and a poll from last year that did not ask about crypto ownership. Year-over-year data from other pollsters show crypto ownership remaining roughly flat if you look at the crypto industry polls, or decreasing, if you look at the non-crypto industry polls. As for the claim that crypto ownership continues to grow, it's not clear where this is coming from, given their lack of historical data. My best guess is they're just going off of the respondents who said they were likely to purchase crypto going forward, which, as I said, seems to be a dubious indicator of actual growth. Remember at the beginning when I said we would come back to

the opening claim that Democratic voters are increasingly gravitating towards crypto? This is that moment. Paradigm writes, based on our data, millions of Democratic voters own tens of thousands of dollars of crypto. These are significant holdings for any asset, the kind that drive voting behavior. The first bullet point reads, at present, 18% of Democrats have bought crypto, with 12% currently owning, and 6% having previously bought it, but no longer owning it. 33% of respondents currently owned stock. This 33% number is significantly lower than the numbers reported by Gallup, which showed that 61% of Americans owned stocks in 2023, with that number ranging between 50% and 60% over the past decade.

However, Paradigm's number is closer to the results for a question from a 2019 poll by Pew Research, which found that 35% of respondents directly owned stocks outside of retirement accounts, and 55% had IRAs, 401Ks, or similar retirement accounts. This makes me think that people may have been interpreting the question by paradigm in the latter way, but the definition probably should have been made clearer both in the question and in this poll summary. Paradigm continues, 8% of Democrats first bought crypto within the last year, with 3% having bought crypto in the past few months and 2% buying in the past few weeks. This is surprisingly high when compared to their finding that 12% own crypto currently full stop.

This may support the hypothesis I referred to above, that a substantial number of people who bought in a year or more ago have since sold off those holdings. The next bullet point reads, 8% of respondents say they currently own $1,000 in crypto. I wonder how many of these respondents could feasibly liquidate their crypto holdings for the dollar amounts they're estimating, and how many just have $1,000 on paper. The next bullet point reads, 5% of respondents own more than $10,000 in cryptocurrency. This figure doesn't really line up with other estimates, such as from a 2022 J.P. Morgan survey that claimed that, quote, the median gross amount transferred to cryptocurrency accounts over the period of 2015

through the first half of 2022 was approximately $620. They also found that out of people who hold crypto, about 11 to 15% of them have transferred 1,000 to 1% of them have transferred 1,000, months of income or more into crypto accounts, and four to six percent have transferred three or more months of income. Doing some extremely rough napkin math, the median monthly income is approximately $5,000. J.P. Morgan found that 15 percent of their sample had transferred funds to cryptocurrency accounts. 11 to 15 percent of that 15 percent is 1.65 to 2.25 percent of the total sample, who have transferred, based on median income, $5,000 or more.

4 to 6% of that 15% is 0.6 to 0.9% who have transferred, again, based on median income, $15,000 or more. The last bullet point reads, underscoring crypto's popularity among non-white Democrats, 10% of Hispanic Democrats polled own more than $10,000 in crypto, and 9% of AAPI Democrats own more than $10,000 in crypto. Paradigm then shows a graphic with the responses to the question, please indicate how much cryptocurrency you currently own. 88% of respondents responded that they do not own cryptocurrency.

4% say they own less than $1,000. 2% say they own between $1,000 and less than $10,000. 2% say they own between $10,000 and less than $25,000. 1% say they own between $25,000 and less than $50,000. 1% say they own between $50,000 and less than $100,000, and 1% say they own $100,000 or more. Is it just me, or do these seem like surprisingly round numbers? Usually things like this have a bit of a long tail to them, and it seems unlikely to me that there are really the same number of people who own between $25,000 and $50,000 of crypto

as there are who own more than $100,000. It makes me wonder if Paradigm is rounding each group up to the nearest whole number, and then compounding that error by adding the rounded numbers together to claim that 5% own $10,000 or more of cryptocurrency. Paradigm did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about this detail. Also, now that Paradigm is once again presenting figures in the 1 to 2% range, I am once again obligated to point out that the stated margin of error for this poll is 3.5%. Paradigm moves to takeaway six.

Much like Republican voters, Democratic voters are concerned about being cut off from the financial system, especially under a second Trump administration. Democratic voters are open to options outside the traditional financial system and want financial freedom as much as Republicans. The specter of another Trump administration is creating intense pressure on Democrats to find alternative means of protecting their access to financial services. bullet point one reads 62% of Democratic voters are concerned that they, their family, or their business, quote, may lose access to financial services as a result of their political views, with just 38% not being concerned. The graphic shows the breakdown of responses where 28% of people reported they were very concerned, 34% reported they were somewhat concerned, 22% reported they were not that concerned, and 16% reported they were not at all concerned.

This portion of the poll summary was by far the most surprising to me. I asked Paradigm for more details on this question, but they told me that they had not given respondents examples of what this might look like, nor did they collect open-ended responses or do interviews to get a better sense of what people were envisioning when they responded in this way. While it doesn't surprise me that there are many people who are concerned about losing access to financial services, generally speaking, or perhaps about cutbacks of programs like Social Security, food or housing assistance, or Medicare and Medicaid, I was surprised to see such a

high percentage of people who believed that, A, this would come as a direct result of their political views, and that B, it would affect them personally, versus some hypothetical, more radical person. For example, someone running an abortion fund who might end up in the crosshairs of a politically motivated debanking campaign. I wonder to what extent people are thinking less of politically motivated termination of financial services, as mentioned in the question, and are instead reflecting on their broader concerns about financial topics like inflation and housing affordability. Paradigm seemed surprised by the results as well. The next bullet point reads, 80% of respondents said they were concerned that a second Trump administration would cut off their family's access to financial

services. The graphic shows that 59% responded they were very concerned, 21% responded they were somewhat concerned, 13% responded they were not that concerned, and 7% responded they were not at all concerned. Continuing what I was saying above, I was really surprised at just how many people believe that they personally, or their family, might be cut off from financial services, versus agreeing that Trump is likely to cut off someone's access to financial services. But as I've mentioned previously, this is another one of those questions that implies that crypto is one of these, quote, alternative means of protecting their access to financial services that's mentioned above, without actually asking respondents about their opinions of crypto's viability for such a purpose.

The poll summary ends with Takeaway 7. Democrats want the United States to be a world leader in crypto. It seems to me that if you're looking to find out if, quote, Democrats want the United States to be a world leader in crypto, you should ask questions like, quote, how important is it that the United States leads the world in cryptocurrency? and not questions like what they actually asked. How important is it that the United States leads the world in high-tech software innovations,

such as cryptocurrency and fintech software for financial services like banking and investing? I, for one, think the U.S. has a long ways to go when it comes to fintech, which could be so much better. I'm not too precious about where that software is developed, but as an American, I'd sure love to be able to use it, instead of still having to write checks from time to time. So I'd probably answer somewhere in the important spectrum on a question like this. Does this mean I think the U.S. should be a, quote, world leader in crypto? No. Does it mean I think the way to make U.S. crypto and fintech firms, quote, world leaders is to slash regulations?

Also no. This section continues, Democrats want crypto innovation in the United States. The bullet points read, 43% of Democrats said it was either very important or extremely important that the, quote, United States leads the world in high-tech software innovations such as cryptocurrency and fintech, with another 38% saying it was somewhat important. Just 8% of Democrats said that the U.S. leading the world in these innovations was, quote, not at all important.

The graphic shows the breakdown with 19% saying extremely important, 24% saying very important, 38% saying somewhat important, 11% saying not that important, and 8% saying not at all important. Paradigm concludes, this is a strong sign that, contrary to actions by some Biden administration officials, Democratic voters want crypto innovations centered here in America. I would say it is not a strong sign. Paradigm continues, it also should give Democratic members of Congress and the Harris campaign confidence that Democratic voters want reasonable legislation passed crafting a regulatory regime for crypto.

The we're just trying to better understand Democrats' opinions on crypto mask slips again here, with paradigm making it pretty clear that they are not merely trying to be a neutral observer of the political landscape, but rather are working to craft a narrative that they think could push democratic lawmakers towards embracing crypto and passing the legislation that the industry has been lobbying for. As for the comment that Democratic voters want reasonable legislation passed, crafting a regulatory regime for crypto, statements like this are so irritating to me because they say nothing. Who doesn't want a reasonable regulatory regime? No one is going to raise their hand and say, actually, I think we should make our regulations less reasonable. But rather than actually

asking respondents about their opinions on specific regulatory proposals, paradigm is just concluding that they want, quote, reasonable legislation, which can then be defined, however, is most convenient for the industry at some later point. Altogether, this poll is a mixed bag. Compared to some of the other industry polls, Paradigm does seem to have paid more attention to ensuring a representative sample. The paradigm person I spoke to told me that they had taken care to ask some level-setting questions regarding things like who respondents had voted for in the past, which they were then able to compare with other polls to check that they were roughly aligned. However, as I mentioned in my commentary throughout, many of the questions seemed designed to a

elicit specific responses that could then be used in the summary to imply strong support for cryptocurrency, despite not mentioning the topic. While I have no issue with Paradigm deciding to poll about, say, financial privacy, attitudes about inflation, or concerns about access to financial services, they should not be using those responses to suggest that Democrats support cryptocurrency when they haven't actually asked the respondents about cryptocurrency in relation to those issues. Finally, Paradigm's bias as a cryptocurrency firm shines through this poll summary, much as has happened with other industry polls, making clear that the goal of these exercises is not to learn more about or educate people about attitudes towards cryptocurrency, but rather to try to convince people

that cryptocurrency is a major issue in the upcoming elections. While bias perhaps ought to be expected from industry-funded polling, these polls are often cited in the media and by politicians as if they were neutral, often without clearly disclosing the poll source. That is why I feel it is so important to expose the flaws and biases in these types of summaries. Even if it may not be possible to convince the industry to do more objective polling and critically write more objective summaries of their polls, I at least hope to inform people about the flaws and urge journalists and others to be extremely cautious about citing them. Thanks for listening to this issue of the citation needed newsletter.

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