Only 1 in 7 Still Believe Satoshi’s ‘Bitcoin As P2P Cash’ Vision

What Is the Most Popular Bitcoin Ideology?

58.1% of survey participants indicated that they believe Bitcoin is a type of digital gold, making it by far the most popular ideological narrative. The notion of Bitcoin being like gold – namely, functioning as a store of value – has existed since the early days, in response to its scarcity design of 21 million maximum supply. Since then, the ‘Bitcoin as digital gold’ ideological narrative has become widespread, reinforced by its own catchiness, as well as Bitcoin’s price gains, Lindy effect and limited programmability.

On the other hand, only 14.9% of participants are still upholding Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision for Bitcoin to become peer-to-peer (P2P) cash. Satoshi’s whitepaper was literally titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” and his subsequent communications reiterated the idea of using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. However, this ideological narrative has been overshadowed with the emergence of more easily understandable framings of Bitcoin, as well as alternative blockchain-based payment solutions. 

Another 17.1% believe that Bitcoin serves as a bet on the crypto industry and blockchain technology as a whole. This ranks it as the second most popular ideological narrative by a small margin, with a slightly larger share of participants considering Bitcoin to be the proxy for a broader investment or trading thesis, as compared to Satoshi’s P2P cash vision.

Meanwhile, the idea that Bitcoin is a speculative high risk asset resonated with only 9.9% of survey participants. Even so, this points to a meaningful minority who still expect Bitcoin to be a high risk, high reward play, possibly because these participants anchor on the nonzero chance of BTC losing significant value.

Unsurprisingly, participants who self-identified as investors were more likely to believe in the ‘Bitcoin is digital gold’ (64.4% of surveyed investors) ideological narrative, compared to traders (47.9%) or builders (45.6%) in the crypto community:

Whereas traders and builders were more likely to believe in the other three ideological narratives. For example, traders were almost twice as likely as investors to view Bitcoin as just a speculative asset. 

It remains to be seen how institution-led mainstream adoption of Bitcoin and efforts to build on Bitcoin will impact the popularity of its ideological narratives over the next few years.

Methodology

The study examined 2,549 crypto participants’ responses in the anonymous CoinGecko Bitcoin Survey, which ran from August 22 to September 11, 2025. Survey results should be taken as indicative only.

Among the survey participants, 68% considered themselves as crypto investors with mainly long-term holdings, 20% identified as traders with mainly shorter-term holdings, 7% as builders and 5% as sidelined spectators. In terms of how long participants had been in crypto, 38% were in their first cycle (0 to 3 years in crypto), 41% in their second cycle (4 to 7 years) and the remaining 21% of participants were veterans with 8 or more years of experience. Geographically, participants were mainly from Europe (31%), Asia (26%) and North America (22%), while the rest were in Africa, South America or Oceania.

This study is for illustrative and informational purposes only, and is not financial advice. Always do your own research and be careful when putting your money into any crypto or financial asset.

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Curious to find out more about our previous research studies & statistics? Check out this one we did on the crypto community’s Bitcoin exposure.