Panic selling is crypto investors’ biggest mistake, new survey reveals

Out of 1,021 U.S.-based crypto owners, one-third have already fallen for a crypto scam via emails, websites and fake mobile apps.

The importance of storage and passwords is best known by crypto enthusiasts who know how easy it is to lose access to their digital assets. A recent survey conducted by Cryptovantage named “Coin Storage Security: A closer look at crypto storage and passwords” aimed to identify investors’ sentiment toward the safekeeping of their crypto investments. 

Based on 1,021 United States-based cryptocurrency owners’ responses, most choose to store their digital investments on crypto exchanges, with Coinbase sitting in first place at 34.7%. Wallets from Binance and Robinhood also hold a large user base for storing crypto at approximately 25% and 26%, respectively.

Some 73% of the respondents sided with American finance company SoFi to be the most secure crypto wallet, although less than 9% use it as their go-to wallet. Trying to understand investors’ take on storing crypto passwords, the survey found that “61% of respondents believed their crypto passwords were safe, while about 12% felt theirs were not.”

Surprisingly, crypto investors are widely divided in how they opted to remember passwords to their wallets. The top four methods to remember passwords included password managers (26.6%), handwritten notes (18.6%), password safes (15%) and taking screenshots (10.3%). The report read:

“39.7% of respondents had previously forgotten their crypto password. 95.6% of them were able to recover their investment.”

Out of the lot, 85.7% have used a recovery service to retrieve their lost or forgotten passwords, which highlights the “potential to seriously alleviate some fears and trust issues among current and potential investors.” The unfortunate investors who lost complete access to their crypto wallets ended up losing $2,134 on an average.

The survey also confirmed that roughly 33% of respondents had fallen for a crypto scam, which was mainly targeted through emails (47.7%), websites (45.2%) and fake mobile apps (44.6%).

In addition to scams and password mismanagement, the surveyed investors showed panic-selling as one of the biggest mistakes (38.2%) followed by investing everything in one coin type (32.5%). In this case, password loss amounted to 12.5%, making it the lowest among the group.

Related: New study reveals high demand for payments in cryptocurrency

Running parallel to the findings above, Cointelegraph reported a study on U.S. consumers’ sentiment toward crypto payments. Based on the 8,000 surveyors, 59% of consumers who have never held crypto are interested in using it to make crypto purchases.

Additionally, more than 60% of surveyed crypto owners indicated their interest in making online purchases through crypto.