Overview
- The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland circulated a working paper published July 14, 2026, that used a randomized information experiment to test how showing Bitcoin’s recent returns affects U.S. households.
- In the experiment conducted in Q2 2025, showing participants Bitcoin’s trailing 12‑month return raised their desired crypto allocation by about two percentage points and raised the likelihood of later buying crypto by roughly 2.5 percentage points.
- Surveys in the study found large belief gaps: crypto owners in 2021 who gave forecasts expected about 22% annual returns versus about 7% for non-owners, and expectations explained ownership more than age, income, gender, or wealth.
- The paper links crypto gains to small real‑economy effects — doubling Bitcoin’s price made a household fully invested in crypto about 1.4 percentage points more likely to buy a durable good — and interprets this as gains sometimes being treated like windfalls rather than permanent wealth.
- Authors stress the results are preliminary, are based on Nielsen Homescan Panel waves of 15,000–25,000 responses, and suggest the combination of attention, expectations, and purchases could create a demand-driven feedback loop that merits further study rather than immediate policy change.