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A Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland experiment provides evidence that Bitcoin price gains can encourage new investors to enter the crypto market.

Researchers randomly exposed participants in a 2025 survey to information about

• Bitcoin,
• the S&P 500,
• GameStop or
• the Fed’s inflation outlook.

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Those shown that Bitcoin had gained 14.3% over the previous 12 months were about 2.4 percentage points more likely to report owning crypto in a follow-up survey – a roughly 23% increase from the 11% ownership rate before the experiment.

The effect was similar for participants shown a Bitcoin price chart.

The study also found that exposure to Bitcoin’s gains increased respondents’ desired crypto allocation by about 2 percentage points, from an average of 4.3% in the control group. Much of that allocation came at the expense of cash and bank deposits.

Expectations also shifted. Those shown Bitcoin’s positive performance raised their expected crypto returns over the following year by 3.2 percentage points while the price-chart treatment increased expectations by 1.2 points.

The effect was strongest among respondents who said they avoided crypto because they lacked sufficient knowledge about it.