EU Investors Rank Crypto Above Retirement Plans: OKX Survey

Nineteen percent of European investors named cryptocurrency their top tool for lasting wealth creation, more than double the 8% who chose traditional retirement plans, according to a survey published Thursday by exchange operator OKX. The finding inverts the American order: 21% of US respondents picked retirement accounts, against 12% for digital assets.

Pollfish conducted the survey between Oct. 14 and Oct. 18 across the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland, questioning 1,932 adults aged 18 to 88. Every participant had previously invested in crypto — a sample design that flatters the asset class and limits what the numbers say about the general population.

Real estate still led everywhere. Thirty-four percent of all respondents picked property as the asset most associated with lasting wealth, ahead of both digital assets and retirement accounts.

What explains the European reversal?

The generational split is the story's core. A May 2026 survey by Debating Europe, the citizen-engagement unit of the think tank Friends of Europe, found 43% of 2,000 Europeans aged 18 to 35 expect their pensions to fall short of their income needs. Faced with that doubt, younger Europeans appear willing to rank a volatile asset above the traditional retirement vehicle — though ranking is not the same as holding, and neither survey reports portfolio weights.

OKX Europe CEO Erald Ghoo read the data as structural. "When investors under 45 on both sides of the Atlantic treat crypto as part of their long-term wealth, it tells you crypto is now part of how people look at their finances," he said. He added that crypto's place in wealth plans will become "more important" as these investors age and grow wealthier — a projection, not a survey result, and one the exchange has an obvious commercial interest in.

Who plans to buy more?

Allocation intentions skew toward expansion. Across all age groups, 51% of respondents expect to increase their crypto allocation over the next five years. In Europe, 47% plan to add to holdings, including 13% planning a significant increase. Excluding boomers, US investors are more aggressive: 55% expect to raise their allocation, with 22% planning a significant increase.

Boomers dissent. Fifty-five percent of all boomer respondents said crypto is not important to generational wealth, and US boomers are the most dismissive cohort: 65% called it not at all important, versus 44% of European boomers. The survey does not say whether younger respondents' optimism survives contact with a sustained drawdown.

How does Washington fit in?

American sentiment data cuts the other way. An August survey from the National Institute on Retirement Security found 77% of Americans consider crypto in workplace retirement plans risky, including 46% who view it as very risky. The OKX sample, by contrast, screens for prior crypto exposure — the two polls measure different populations, and the gap between them is itself a measure of how unevenly the asset has penetrated US households.

Policy has moved regardless. In May 2025, the US Department of Labor rescinded crypto-specific guidance that had urged 401(k) plan fiduciaries to exercise "extreme care" when considering cryptocurrency investments, returning to a neutral posture that neither endorses nor discourages crypto. In August 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to expand access to alternative assets in 401(k) plans, including digital-asset exposure through certain investment vehicles.

The Labor Department followed with a draft proposal in March 2026 to widen 401(k) investment options to include crypto and alternative investments. Opposition arrived in June 2026, when Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, together with Representative Bobby Scott, urged the department to withdraw the proposal, arguing it would "expose retirement accounts to exceptionally volatile assets, like digital currency."

The regulatory window, in plain terms, remains open in Washington but no longer unchallenged, and the fate of the 401(k) proposal will test whether surveyed enthusiasm among crypto-holders can survive the fiduciary standard.