Federal Reserve data show that U.S. crypto engagement rose in 2025, but the market remains dominated by holding and investing rather than payments. The Fed’s latest household survey found that 10% of adults used cryptocurrency for either investment or transactions, up from 8% in 2024 and still below the 12% level recorded in 2021.
The split is decisive. Nearly one in 10 adults bought or held crypto as an investment, while only 2% used it to buy something or make a payment, and 1% used it to send money to friends or family. That gap shows crypto’s U.S. consumer role remains closer to portfolio exposure than everyday money.
Payments Adoption Remains Small
The transactional footprint is especially important for exchanges, wallets and stablecoin issuers. If only a small share of adults are using crypto for purchases or transfers, then product demand is still concentrated in custody, brokerage access and investment UX, not mainstream merchant payments.
The Fed also found that the most cited reason for using crypto in a financial transaction was that the recipient preferred it, at 26%. Faster settlement, privacy and lower cost followed, while distrust in banks was cited by only 7%, suggesting many payment flows are recipient-driven rather than consumer-led behavior.
Kansas City Fed research reinforces the same pattern. Its payments briefing found that the share of U.S. consumers using crypto for payments declined from nearly 3% in 2021 and 2022 to below 2% in 2023 and 2024, showing limited payment penetration even as crypto products became more visible.
Stablecoins Still Face a Real-World Usage Test
Stablecoins do not yet resolve the adoption gap. Kansas City Fed analysis of stablecoin usage found that payments remain a very small part of the stablecoin ecosystem, while crypto finance, transfers and idle balances account for much larger shares.
That matters for product strategy. Stablecoin teams may need to separate institutional settlement and treasury-transfer use cases from retail checkout narratives, because consumer payment adoption remains materially lower than investment participation.
The data point toward investor protection and custody standards as the immediate priority. Disclosure, safekeeping, fraud prevention and intermediary oversight are more relevant to the current user base than rules built on assumptions of broad consumer payment usage.
The next adoption signal will be whether stablecoin regulation, merchant acceptance or lower-friction wallets can shift crypto from holding to spending. Until then, U.S. crypto activity remains an investment-led market with a small payments layer.