There are nearly 300 million Bitcoin fans in the world or about 4% of the total Earth population. What unites these people besides the fact that they believed in the bright future of cryptocurrencies? Do you like risk and sex? The you might as well be interested in crypto.
Remember those classic Wall-street brokers? They are greedy, rude, heartless, and all about the money. At least, when portrayed by Michael Douglas or Leonardo Di Caprio.
But what do we know about crypto holders?
Given that most of them are the same brokers there shouldn’t be much difference.
But as it turns out a typical crypto fan is different animal. A recent study by Australian scientists have shown Bitcoin fans have quite an interesting set of personal traits.
Some of them quite scary by the way. Check it out.
Crypto is for risky
Most investment assets are risky. For example, people who bought the super stable plant in Ukraine didn’t know for sure that the war could occur there.
But buying crypto is a rather different story. Being an extremely volatile asset, any digital coin can really shake the bottom or go to the space in like hours.
That means you can earn a lot for nothing or unexpectedly lose a large amount of money. Just because some whale decided to withdraw a few billion of his savings.
So buying crypto is always tricky.
It’s worth mentioning all the digital assets are still in the grey zone in terms of regulation. There are just two countries with fully legalized crypto like Ukraine and El Salvador, but it’s only the evolving story in most parts of the world.
So crypto is mostly illegal and highly speculative.
How did it happen that 300 million people decided to invest?
Recent polls suggest 21% of Americans have dabbled in crypto. So it’s nearly a quarter of the US population. Most of them are Bitcoin fans.
Who are these Bitcoin fans?
Scientists from the Australian Queensland University of Technology and Macquarie University conducted a small research about crypto users’ character features.
They found that the crypto owners are very likely to have “evil” qualities and the “dark tetrad”. That refers to a group of four personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy plus sadism.
Quite critical, isn’t it?
But here is more: the scientists found that Bitcoin fans are likely to have extreme selfishness and take advantage of others without empathy.
“We identified two main areas of appeal. First, the high risks and high potential returns of crypto trading make it attractive to the kind of people who like gambling,” the authors wrote.
The second area is that cryptocurrencies are not issued or regulated by the governments like fiat. Well, most aren’t regulated as we found out. So scientists think that this fact makes crypto attractive to people who ‘distrust government’.
And that’s actually the first good feature the Australian researchers found in crypto users.
Personalities of Bitcoin fans
Having asked 566 people, the researchers also noted that crypto owners are likely to feel fear of missing out, have the tendency to be positive or optimistic in life and believe in conspiracy theories.
The most widespread grounding for buying crypto is making more money and having high returns on it.
The scientists think that crypto owners can be following Machiavellianism – the philosophy named after the Italian political Niccolò Machiavelli. This trait means being good at deception and interpersonal manipulation.
Machiavellians take a calculated approach to achieve goals, avoid impulsive decisions, and they are less likely to engage in problem gambling. While some experts think that buying crypto is gambling.
And Machiavellians also tend to believe strongly in government conspiracies so they distrust politicians and government agencies. Pretty much like the crypto community, right?
Well, some of these statements can actually be true as the genuine idea of crypto was to avoid corrupt and centralized financial government with people-owned secure money.
But why сrypto owners are also psychopaths and sadists?
That’s funny but apart from a narcissist and overconfident people scientists found that impulsive psychopaths are also like crypto.
“We found that impulsive psychopaths like crypto because they fear missing out on investing rewards that others are experiencing,” the researchers wrote.
They think that psychopathic people with their antisocial behavior are more resistant to stress and anxiety, so they like stimulation-seeking and risk-taking. While being very prone to gambling and gambling addiction.
Considering sadism is about enjoying other people suffering, even the internet trolls can have a bit sadists features.
And the research shows that crypto owners may feel pleasure from seeing another’s pain with losing their investment.
But possessing crypto also makes you popular!
Another survey found that 33% of Americans would be more likely to go on a date with someone who has crypto assets. Even if they are psychos.
So being a crypto enthusiast kind of pays off when you want to take care of your personal life. Bitcoin fans might as well have sex more frequently.
And that is not only about the traditional tokens: crypto exchange eToro found that nearly 20% of singles would be more interested romantically in somebody who has set an NFT as a profile picture on a social platform or dating site.
It seems like possessing crypto raises your chances of having sex. But it also raises your chances to have a mental disorder. Especially with current price fluctuations on the market.
Sources: The Conversation, Bitcoin.com, CNBC
