2% of Russians Claim to Have Invested in Bitcoin to Date: National Polling Institution

Only 2% of Russians have invested in Bitcoin (BTC) so far, according to a new survey by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) published on April 9.

The VTsIOM, the oldest polling institution in post-Soviet Russia, revealed that Bitcoin has not gained popularity in the country, with two thirds of Russians considering a purchase of the cryptocurrency as a bad investment.

The research center has not provided either a time frame for the poll, or the number of total respondents involved in the survey.

With that, 56% of Russians claimed that they were aware of Bitcoin, while 18% said that they have only heard of Bitcoin, the survey notes. However, the VTsIOM assessed the factual knowledge to be quite low, with 12% of those who claimed to be aware of Bitcoin stated that Bitcoin is banned in Russia.

The Russian government has not officially enforced federal crypto regulation to date, although the Russian parliament passed a crypto bill in the first reading in May 2018. The draft bill was sent back to the first reading stage in late 2018, following reports on the lack of a number of key concepts, including crypto mining. In late February, Russian President Vladimir Putin set another deadline for the state to adopt crypto regulations by July 1, 2019.

According to the poll results, only 9% of Russian citizens possessed a detailed knowledge about Bitcoin. The awareness rate is significantly higher among Russia’s male population, people under 25-years-old, people with higher education, as well as residents of the country’s two biggest cities — Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

In November 2018, Forbes Russia reported that 5% of Moscow residents who use non-cash methods of payment were ready to start using cryptocurrencies to pay for their purchases.

Previously, American bank Wells Fargo published a poll claiming that only 2% of United States investors owned Bitcoin, while 26 said they were intrigued by it. According to the poll data, 96% of investors said they heard of Bitcoin, but only 29% said they knew something about digital currencies.

Recently, Cointelegraph reported that the vast majority of respondents to a survey by the United Kingdom central bank claimed that they would prefer to receive a gift of money in a digital currency.