Cryptocurrency adoption in the United States is increasingly divided along political and gender lines, with Republicans embracing digital assets at higher rates than Democrats and men continuing to dominate participation in the market, according to new survey data and political analysts, CNBC reported on Sunday.

About 22% of Republicans said they have invested in, traded or used cryptocurrency such as bitcoin or ether, compared with 17% of Democrats, according to a Pew Research Center survey published earlier this month. The poll of 8,512 U.S. adults was conducted in late January.

The findings mark a notable shift from previous years, when Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were about as likely as Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to report owning digital assets. Since 2021, Republican participation has risen six percentage points from 16%, while Democratic adoption has remained largely unchanged, according to Pew.

Analysts say the growing partisan divide has coincided with President Donald Trump's return to the White House and his increasingly close ties to the cryptocurrency industry.

"[Crypto] has always had a libertarian streak, and its early adopters tended to align with that ethos — skepticism of centralized power and government solutions," said Colin McLaren, head of government relations at the Solana Policy Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for the crypto industry, CNBC reported. "That ideological DNA maps more naturally onto the right's instincts, so it's not surprising to see Republican ownership tick up as the technology goes mainstream."

Morning Consult data show the partisan gap emerged in mid-2023 and accelerated around the 2024 presidential election.

"There's a massive, massive partisan gap," said Eli Yokley, a U.S. politics analyst at Morning Consult.

Yokley attributed much of the shift to Trump's embrace of digital assets, a significant reversal from his first term in office. In 2019, Trump said he was "not a fan" of cryptocurrencies, citing concerns about regulation and illicit activity.

Since then, Trump and his family have become active in the digital asset sector. Trump launched a collection of nonfungible token, or NFT, trading cards in 2022 and later backed additional NFT offerings, the World Liberty Financial crypto venture, and the $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins.

The administration has also pursued policies aimed at expanding the industry, including efforts to position the United States as the ‘crypto capital of the world’ and to ease pathways for crypto firms to enter the banking sector.

By the second quarter of 2025, the share of Republicans who had bought or sold cryptocurrency during the previous year reached 27.9%, compared with 17.3% of Democrats, according to Morning Consult. While the gap has narrowed somewhat, Republicans still maintain a significant lead, with 23.6% reporting crypto activity versus 17.7% of Democrats.

"It's hard to decouple the rise of GOP crypto adoption from the Trump family's embrace of it," Yokley said. "There's no Obama coin. There are Trump coins and Melania coins."

Others argue that the industry's policy priorities have naturally aligned it more closely with Republicans.

"Even as the crypto sector claimed to be bipartisan, its priorities — deregulation and withdrawn enforcement — always leaned toward corporate-friendly policies that are mostly, though not exclusively, associated with Republicans," said Rick Claypool, research director at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

Despite the growing political divide, analysts say gender remains an even stronger predictor of cryptocurrency participation.

According to Morning Consult data, about 74% of crypto traders are men.

"Women's more cautious approach to speculative investing explains much of this," Yokley said. "Crypto traders carry significantly higher consumer confidence and risk tolerance than the general population, and that skew is overwhelmingly male."

Young men have emerged as the most enthusiastic crypto adopters, mirroring trends seen in sports betting and other speculative activities.

Between 2022 and 2026, men under age 45 traded cryptocurrency at rates ranging from 38% to 42%, compared with 13% to 16% for women in the same age group, according to Morning Consult.

The trend also reflects broader shifts in investing behavior among younger Americans, who increasingly have embraced speculative assets such as meme stocks, leveraged exchange-traded funds, prediction markets and cryptocurrencies.

Some economists and market observers have described the phenomenon as "financial nihilism," driven by younger investors seeking outsized returns in an environment marked by economic uncertainty and concerns about long-term wealth accumulation.

At the same time, surveys indicate younger men have become more politically conservative relative to their peers, potentially reinforcing the overlap between political identity and crypto adoption.

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