We’re hearing a lot about Bitcoin these days. The stories range from fortunes made on the currency to the idea that this is the biggest bubble in history. What we’re not seeing much of are analyses of the Bitcoin market, and even less so of Bitcoin users. Now, in an article on the Fortune website, we read:

Nearly 60 percent of Americans have heard or read about the world’s largest cryptocurrency, according to a joint SurveyMonkey and Global Blockchain Business Council poll of more than 5,700 adults conducted in January. But only 5 percent of people actually own the digital coin.

Those few Bitcoin investors are of a fairly consistent demographic. An overwhelming 71 percent of them are male. The majority — 58 percent — are young, between the ages of 18 and 34 years old. And unlike the broader U.S. population, nearly half of them are minorities.

When asked why they bought the crypto asset, investors answered that a combination of a lack of trust and an opportunity for return are at play. About one-third of Bitcoin owners said it was a means to avoid government regulation — 24 percent also said they trust Bitcoin more than the U.S. government in a separate question — and about two in 10 saw it as a hedge against crashes in traditional assets. More than 60 percent also said that buying the digital coin was seen as a growth investment.

This shows at least one thing. It is generally easy to think that people are buying Bitcoin because they believe that the currency will become much more important in the future. We have seen a lot of statements along the like of “Investors believe in Bitcoin” or “Bitcoin will turn payments upside down.” What they mean is actually not clear. We, however, are inclined to go deeper as far as the forces driving the market are concerned, since we want to give you a clearer idea of what’s going on in the market.

If we indeed go deeper, then the facts that people buy Bitcoin mostly for capital gains and that the buyers are young suggest that if we see a sizable correction, the expectations of appreciation might evaporate and the investors might be impatient in such a situation, and behave emotionally. This is to say, they could leave the market in a hurry. This might not be what you hear in the media or on Internet forums but we’re not in the business of writing what’s convenient, we’re here to give you the facts.