Crypto users cool with AI dabbling with their portfolios: Survey

A majority of crypto users are willing to allow artificial intelligence agents to manage part of their investment portfolios, according to the results of a recent CoinGecko survey.

Among the 2,632 crypto participants surveyed, 87% said they would let AI agents manage at least a tenth of their crypto portfolio, CoinGecko’s April 23 report shows.

Around half the respondents said they were willing to let an AI agent manage half their portfolio or less.

“This suggests that despite having doubts as to how safe or secure AI agents are, crypto users are still mainly curious about the technology and want to try using them for trading or investing,” CoinGecko research analyst Yuqian Lim said.

At the same time, around 36% of survey participants said they would allow AI agents to manage the majority of their holdings. A smaller group, roughly 14.5%, were willing to leave their entire crypto portfolio in the digital hands of an AI agent.

“In other words, 1 in 7 participants either think they can completely trust AI agents with all of their crypto, or believe the potential profits will outweigh the risks, or simply have a high risk tolerance for their crypto holdings,” Lim said.

Mixed opinions on human vs AI trading

However, opinions were mixed on whether AI agents would be better than humans at crypto trading and investing overall. There was a roughly even split, with half of the respondents saying AI agents would be better than humans at crypto trading and investing most of the time.

“That said, the remaining half of survey participants believed AI does not have an edge over humans in the crypto market yet, which suggests that opinions are still divided over this comparison,” Lim said.

About 13%, or 1 in 8, said they weren’t comfortable leaving any of their portfolios for management by AI or thought they could manage their crypto stash better than an AI agent.

The same survey found that participants had very mixed views on whether AI agents could be trusted with access to people’s crypto wallets.

“Specifically, 37.5% indicated that they do not trust AI agents with their crypto wallets, while a slightly lower 34.5% said they can be trusted and 27.9% were neutral on the matter,” Lim said.

Agentic AI is already being used to build Web3 applications, launch tokens, and interact with people autonomously. Some platforms have also been exploring the use of AI agents for trading.

Last December, crypto industry execs told Cointelegraph they expected AI agents to transform Web3 in 2025, flagging crypto staking and onchain trading as emerging early use cases. However, there was also speculation that AI would face headwinds, including technical challenges, regulatory hurdles, and centralization.