Cryptocurrencies have been one of the biggest revolutions in finance in recent years. What is it that attracts people to these digital, anonymous, and decentralized currencies? In part, it seems to be a question of character. And in particular, a personality driven by the so-called “dark triad”: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. At least that’s the conclusion of a study just published in the journal Plos One, which investigated the personality, political positions, and social conditions of over 2,000 American adults.
Since the explosion of bitcoin in 2009, cryptocurrencies have seen a growing diffusion throughout the world. And if at the beginning they were a somewhat anarchic technology, which aimed to remove economic transactions from the control of banks and traditional economic institutions, over the years they have become increasingly accepted by the world of mainstream finance. And that is why researchers at the University of Toronto wanted to investigate what kind of people are attracted to the world of cryptocurrencies today.
To do so, they relied on a survey involving over 2,000 American adults. 30% of respondents revealed that they own, or have owned in the past, cryptocurrencies. Analyzing the ideological tendencies of this subgroup, cryptocurrency lovers seem to be divided fairly evenly at both ends of the political spectrum.
The characteristics that allow us to identify cryptocurrency lovers more precisely would also be gender, male, the massive use of poorly controlled social media (such as Telegram, Reddit or X) as a source of information, being polemical and averse to authoritarian forms of government, and a tendency to believe and spread conspiracy theories. On a psychological level, moreover, a connection has emerged between the propensity to use cryptocurrencies and the so-called dark triad, that is, three personality traits, narcissism (sub-clinical), Machiavellianism and psychopathy (here too, sub-clinical), which characterize, with different nuances, the propensity to insensitivity, egocentrism and manipulation of others.
The results – warn the study’s authors – should be considered preliminary, because they are based on a small sample of people. And it is not certain that they are also representative of the population of other nations, having been obtained by studying only American adults. For this reason, the researchers from Toronto hope that the topic will continue to be studied. “Governments around the world are working to increase controls on cryptocurrencies, and in some cases to emulate them – they write – and for this reason, it will be important in the future to understand what attracts people to these digital currencies”.