BPI: Digital gold was Bitcoin's least popular angle as narratives define adoption

A national study released by the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) shows that Bitcoin’s most repeated selling line, which is that it works as “digital gold,” barely lands with everyday Americans.

Studies by the Bitcoin Policy Institute and the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank suggest that Bitcoin’s growth runs on storytelling and trust.

What will make Americans buy Bitcoin?

Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) has published the results of a national study, which shows that referring to Bitcoin as “digital gold” is a bad angle to market to Americans from.

The project was run by BPI with the polling firm Cygnal and the group Neighborhood Bitcoin. It lasted three phases between March and June 2026 and started with a survey of 1,516 registered voters aged 18 to 64.

32% of the participants were sorted into the Curious Fence-Sitters group, Ideological Rejecters were near 30%, while Financially Stressed Disengaged came to around 20% of the participants. Active Believers were the smallest group at about 18%.

Phase 2 involved researchers holding eight focus groups with about 80 people who did not own Bitcoin but could be persuaded to buy. Sessions were held in Columbus, Ohio and Nashville, Tennessee with each session lasting about 95 minutes, led by Cygnal’s CEO Brent Buchanan.

In the final phase, researchers conducted a message-validation survey from May 29 to June 2, 2026. The survey included 1,000 registered voters aged 18 to 64, with the results having a margin of error of plus or minus 3.10 percentage points.

Respondents said that control was their biggest concern regarding the digital asset, followed by its proven performance, security, access, and ease of use.

Taglines that were built on control made the strongest impression, including lines like “You decide how much” and “You can track the activity yourself.” Tags like “freedom money” describing Bitcoin as savings no bank or government can freeze or inflate also did well.

The “digital gold” comparison, however, did not make the list of strong taglines.

The study also found that the next wave of buyers is much more comfortable hearing about Bitcoin from an ordinary holder, such as a friend, a relative, or a financial advisor recounting their own experience. That conclusion came out of the survey and was also observed across all eight focus groups.

Notably, after voters saw 19 tested messages, the share saying they were “not interested at all” in owning Bitcoin dropped from 39% to 32%, while the “very or extremely interested” group rose from 19% to 24%.

What encourages Bitcoin ownership?

A separate academic work published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland in July 2026, and written by Michael Weber, Bernardo Candia, Olivier Coibion, and Yuriy Gorodnichenko, referenced Nielsen Homescan Panel surveys from 2018 through 2025, with 15,000 to 25,000 households per wave.

The paper “Do You Even Crypto, Bro? Cryptocurrencies in Household Finance,” found that the returns people expect from Bitcoin explain more of who owns it than every demographic variable combined. For example, in 2021, holders expected a 22% annual return while non-holders expected just 7%.

In a 2025 experiment, researchers told one group of participants about Bitcoin’s 14.3% return over the previous year.

Compared to a control group that did not receive that information, these participants increased their planned crypto investment by about 47%. They were also about 23% more likely to actually buy crypto in a later survey wave. U.S. household ownership also climbed from under 2% in 2018 to about 12% by 2025.