The European Central Bank published Working Paper No 3215 analysing crypto-asset ownership and payment use in the euro area, and how crypto interacts with euro cash, using microdata from the ECB’s 2022 payment survey covering 39,507 adults in 17 euro-area countries. The research concludes that the gap between relatively higher ownership and very low payment use reflects different user profiles, and that cash and crypto can look complementary in normal times but behave as substitutes when uncertainty rises. Crypto owners are typically younger, male and financially active, combining preferences for cash-like privacy with card-like speed and convenience, and are more likely than average to hold precautionary cash reserves. The smaller “crypto payer” subgroup shows a cash-centric transactional profile, with reported payment use linked to preferences for cash privacy and ease of use rather than classic digital-payment motives, and overall payment use reported as below 1.5% of the population. When the paper instruments cash-reserve behaviour using five COVID-19-era payment shocks, it finds a causal sign reversal: for individuals whose cash-holding responded to the pandemic, building cash buffers reduced the probability of crypto ownership by around 10 percentage points, consistent with a flight to central bank money under stress; the author notes these findings may inform crypto regulation focused on investor and consumer protection and CBDC design that benchmarks cash-like features such as privacy, simplicity and resilience.
European Central Bank 2026-04-07
European Central Bank working paper finds euro area crypto payers are cash-centric and crisis cash buffers reduce crypto ownership
The European Central Bank’s Working Paper No. 3215 analyses crypto-asset ownership and payment use in the euro area using microdata from its 2022 payment survey of 39,507 adults in 17 countries. It finds that while crypto ownership is relatively higher, actual payment use is very low and concentrated in a small, cash‑centric “crypto payer” subgroup, and that cash and crypto appear complementary in normal times but act as substitutes under uncertainty. Instrumenting cash‑reserve behaviour with COVID‑19‑era payment shocks, the study shows that building cash buffers reduced the probability of crypto ownership by around 10 percentage points, with implications for central bank digital currency design around cash‑like privacy, simplicity and resilience.