When Tony Richards, the Head of Payments Policy at the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), read the recent survey results from Finder’s Crypto Report saying that almost one in five Australians owned crypto, he didn't believe it for a second.
However, the results had already been widely published around the country, gracing headlines for weeks. They even made their way into the recent Senate Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Center’s final report in October.
Welcome to the statistically dubious world of cryptocurrency surveys — an easy way for companies to get publicity by hawking survey results, but not necessarily a great way to stay informed.
The Finder survey from August claimed that 17% of Australians own at least one cryptocurrency — 9% own Bitcoin, 8% own Ether and 5% own Dogecoin.
Richards called these figures into question in his address to the Australia Corporate Treasury Association on Nov. 18, saying that he finds them “somewhat implausible.”
“I cannot help thinking that the online surveys they are based on might be unrepresentative of the population,” he said.
The Reserve Bank of Australia’s head of payments policy Tony Richards said that the growth of crypto in 2021 was “no doubt fuelled by influencers and celebrity tweets.”
— CoinzProfit (@CoinzProfit) November 19, 2021
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