83% of French people don’t trust cryptocurrencies! Mistrust stems from their image as an insecure investment (82%), volatile (80%), purely speculative (76%) and a strong association with dirty money (74%).
Once a month, Mascaret (formerly Dentsu Consulting) and its partner ODOXA bring you a Innovation Barometer to explore the general public’s relationship with developments in this world. This month: cryptocurrencies, unloved by the French.
We share with you the “Expert’s Eye” section, in which Benjamin GRANGE details our analyses of social networks :
Cryptocurrencies still suffer from a very negative public perception.
With over 3 million mentions and and almost 11 million engagements over the last 13 months, the topic of cryptocurrencies is alive and kicking. However, the sentiment metrics that accompany these figures reveal a major perception problem. Indeed, while conversations tend to be positive the majority of the time (between 10 and 15% positive sentiment), this rate plummets as soon as the general public gets to grips with the subject. When a news item sheds light on the cryptocurrency ecosystem, mainstream opinion is particularly wary. While this year’s Terra-Luna scandal and its founder’s flight from international justice come to mind, it was above all the crash caused by the bankruptcy of the world’s second-largest exchange, FTX, and its high-profile founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, that unleashed the passions. It also provoked the largest share of negative sentiment: -35% on November 14, 2022.
An ecosystem still too immature for the media.
While this figure in itself is hardly encouraging for the mainstreamization so desired by cryptocurrency players, the context is even more so. In fact, almost all the crypto news that has attracted the attention of the general public has been negative. So, like the FTX case and their embezzlement, when the general public hears about cryptocurrencies, it’s on the occasion of a scandal. Similarly, the most popular publications on social networks concerning cryptocurrencies are still all too often dangerous content: scams, conspiracies, dubious competitions, lamentations of people who have lost their savings… Or as the object of mockery! The cryptocurrency media ecosystem is therefore – at least on social networks – still far from ready for the global adoption desired by these same players.
Find the full survey below or on the Odoxa website.