The average Bitcoin investor is a financial genius of impeccable character, according to new research. Canadian investors, anyway.
Stefano Di Demonico, a behavioral scientist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, is finalizing a joint study on the “psychological makeup and financial literacy of Bitcoiners.” While the results have not yet been officially released, he previewed its findings at the Canadian Bitcoin Conference earlier this month.
Drawing on a sample of 500 Canadian retail crypto investors, the co-author noted that his findings contradicted common misconceptions about the demographic—often caricatured as immature “crypto bros” who are irresponsible with their money.
“Bitcoiners tend to be intellectually curious and emotionally stable,” Di Domenico wrote on LinkedIn regarding his findings earlier this month. “They value personal growth, relationships, community, and health over material possessions and having a ‘high-status’ image.”
The research survey included more than 350 questions intended to address more than a dozen hypotheses. Di Domenico acknowledged the input of "Bitcoin-agnostic colleagues" for “critical and open-minded contributions,” and noted that the findings are still being prepared for peer review.
“My colleagues and I are looking forward to finishing up our paper and sharing a fuller, more detailed set of findings,” Di Domenico tweeted today.
Even so, the study's early results provide a stark contrast from a high-profile study covered by the New York Post two years ago, which summarized its findings in a headline saying Bitcoiners are “psychopaths who don’t care about anyone.”
That study, conducted by scientists at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, said many crypto investors exhibited all four “dark tetrad” traits including narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. One of the authors admitted, however, that their survey of 566 people covered “only a subset of people interested in crypto who do have these traits.”