Seven million, then four and a half

The series

The Financial Conduct Authority has run a Cryptoassets Consumer Research survey annually since 2021, commissioning YouGov to interview a nationally representative sample of UK adults each summer. The published numbers form a clean longitudinal series.^[1][2]

In 2021, 4.4 percent of UK adults held cryptoassets, about 2.2 million people. By 2022, that had risen to roughly 10 percent, or 5 million. The 2024 wave, fielded in August 2024 and published the following spring, recorded 12 percent, extrapolated to 7 million. This was the figure widely cited through 2025 in professional commentary, including in the Holdfast Vol. I infographic dossier published earlier in the year.^[2]

The 2025 wave, published on 16 December 2025, recorded 8 percent, about 4.5 million UK adults.^[1] This is the first year-on-year fall in the series since the FCA began measuring. The decline is real, but the framing matters: 8 percent in 2025 is still nearly double the 4.4 percent baseline of 2021.

The shape of the fall

Two further FCA-published facts complicate the simple "ownership fell" reading.

First, awareness of cryptoassets among the general UK public remained at 91 percent in 2025, unchanged from 2024.^[1] The decline in ownership is therefore not a decline in visibility. People are still hearing about cryptoassets at the same rate; fewer of them are buying.

Second, and more interestingly, the people who remained owners in 2025 are owning more. The proportion of cryptoasset users with portfolios between £1,001 and £5,000 rose by four percentage points to 21 percent of users. Portfolios between £5,001 and £10,000 climbed to 11 percent. The share of users with very small holdings of £100 or less continued to fall.^[1] The 2025 picture is one of fewer holders with larger average positions: a market that thinned at the bottom and consolidated upward.

The concentration that matters

For the estate-planning question Holdfast tracks, the concentration story is the part that warrants attention.

Consider the headline calculation. In 2024, roughly 7 million UK adults held cryptoassets. The bulk of those holdings was in small positions, under £1,000 for the majority of users. The aggregate value at risk in the system was real but distributed thinly across a wide population. In 2025, fewer people hold, but those who hold hold more. The aggregate value did not fall in proportion to the headcount. The exposure per holder rose.

This is what the data is saying about the digital estate problem: the average UK cryptoasset holder in 2026 has more value to leave behind than the average holder in 2024. The number of estates affected is smaller; the size of each affected estate is bigger. From the perspective of an executor or a probate solicitor, this is the worse outcome of the two. A million small estates with £200 of crypto each is a different administrative challenge from a hundred thousand estates with £6,000 each, even if the totals are comparable.

What the data does not say

The FCA research is silent on three questions a digital-estate practitioner most wants answered.

It does not directly measure how many cryptoasset holders have arranged for the credentials to be passed on. The closest proxy is the STEP / Queen Mary University of London 2021 survey of estate practitioners, which found that around a quarter of practitioners had encountered client cases where digital access was the obstacle, and that close to half of practitioners had no organisational policies in place to assist clients with digital assets at all.^[3] The STEP follow-up publication Decoding Digital Assets in February 2024 reinforced the same picture: 60 percent of practitioners had clients ask about digital assets, 90 percent expected demand to increase, and roughly half had not prepared.^[4]

It does not measure the proportion of holders who have shared, in any form, a credential or a route of access with another person. There is no public UK figure for this. The closest available is the STEP-commissioned YouGov poll of 2,000 UK adults (2022): 64 percent rated their digital memories as important or very important, but 57 percent had made no plans at all for passing on their digital assets.^[5]

It does not measure what fraction of cryptoasset holdings are self-custodied (where the cryptography is the only access layer) versus held through centralised exchanges (where a recovery path of sorts may exist via the platform). This distinction matters enormously for what an executor can do, but the FCA research does not break it out.

The figure to carry

For practitioners advising clients in 2026, the working figure is approximately 4.5 million UK adults holding cryptoassets, with the typical holding rising. The 7 million figure circulating in professional commentary through most of 2025 is from the 2024 wave and is now superseded. The next wave will be published in late 2026.

For Holdfast's purposes, the most useful single observation in the FCA dataset is not in the headline number at all. It is the 91 percent awareness figure paired with the 8 percent ownership figure: roughly eleven UK adults are aware of cryptoassets for every one who actually holds them. The audience for digital estate planning conversations is therefore much wider than the audience for cryptoasset ownership itself, because the awareness gradient defines the conversation, not the ownership rate.