Crypto Influencer Marketing Statistics: 38 Sourced Figures for 2026

Influencer marketing market size and creator ad spend

Market sizing firms measure different things. The global figure covers influencer marketing; the IAB figures cover US creator advertising only.

• $32.55 billion: estimated size of the global influencer marketing industry in 2025, nearly twice the $16.4 billion estimate for 2022, per Influencer Marketing Hub (page updated August 2026).
• $37 billion: projected US creator economy ad spend in 2025, up 26% from $29.5 billion in 2024 and up from $13.9 billion in 2021, per the IAB Creator Economy Ad Spend and Strategy Report (20 November 2025).
• 72.2%: share of marketers answering the question who expect their influencer budget to rise by 50% or more, from a survey of 600+ marketing professionals in the Influencer Marketing Hub Benchmark Report 2026 (May 2026). This measures intent, not spend.

None of these figures isolates crypto. We found no publisher that releases a crypto-only influencer spend estimate with a stated method, so treat a single "crypto KOL market size" number with caution.

If you hire a crypto influencer marketing agency, ask it to plan from your own channel and conversion data rather than from a market total.

Crypto ownership and audience size

Ownership estimates depend on method. Crypto.com models on-chain data, while the national surveys below ask adults directly. Where sources disagree, both are shown.

• 741 million: estimated global crypto owners in 2025, up 12.4% from 659 million in 2024, per Crypto.com Research (16 January 2026).
• 560 million: Triple-A's estimate of global digital currency owners in 2024, an average ownership rate of 6.8% (Triple-A). For the same year Crypto.com estimated 659 million, so the two estimates are about 100 million apart.
• 17%: share of US adults who say they have ever invested in, traded or used a cryptocurrency, from a survey of 10,133 adults run 7 to 11 February 2024 (Pew Research Center, 24 October 2024).
• 42% and 17%: share of US men and women aged 18 to 29 who have ever invested in, traded or used crypto, in the same Pew survey.
• 30%: share of US adults, about 70.4 million people, who own crypto, from a survey of 992 adults published in January 2026 (Security.org). Pew asked about ever having used crypto, about two years earlier, which partly explains the gap.
• 22%: share of US respondents who owned crypto in 2025, up from 20% in 2024; across the US, UK, France and Singapore the share rose from 21% to 24% (Gemini Global State of Crypto, 27 May 2025; 7,205 consumers surveyed March to April 2025).
• 12%: share of UK adults, about 7 million people, who owned cryptoassets in August 2024, up from about 10% in 2022 (FCA consumer research, wave 5, March 2025).
• 94%: share of memecoin owners in Gemini's survey who also own other types of crypto; 55% of US crypto investors said they own memecoins (Gemini, May 2025).

Where crypto users discover projects

These surveys describe where people get crypto information, not which channel drove a purchase.

• 34.4%: share of 2,558 crypto survey participants who named X as their main source of crypto news and information, followed by YouTube (23.4%) and Telegram (16.0%), surveyed 25 June to 8 July 2024 (CoinGecko Research, which calls the results indicative).
• 41.7%: share of the same participants who considered X their main crypto social platform, ahead of Telegram at 21.5% and YouTube at 20.8% (CoinGecko Research).
• 19%: share of UK crypto users who first heard about cryptoassets on social media in 2024, up from 9% in 2021; friends and family were cited by 32% (FCA, wave 5, fieldwork 12 to 21 August 2024).
• 28%: share of UK buyers who used social media platforms to research before buying crypto, up 10 percentage points on the previous wave; online forums (38%) and friends, family and colleagues (36%) were used more often (FCA, wave 5).
• 44%: share of crypto-aware UK adults who recalled a crypto advert and said they saw it on social media, the most common place, with online advertising second at 33% (FCA, wave 5).
• 62%: share of UK 18 to 29 year olds who follow social media influencers, 74% of whom said they trusted their advice, as cited by the FCA in its financial promotions data 2024 (February 2025).

X, YouTube and Telegram carry most crypto information in these surveys, and buyers also check forums and people they know. The crypto KOL marketing agency page explains how 3betmedia plans creator campaigns across those channels.

Platform audiences: X, YouTube and Telegram

Platform audience numbers come in two forms: company statements and advertising reach taken from ad tools. Ad reach is not a count of monthly active users.

• 586 million: users X ads could reach in January 2025, down 33.0 million (5.3%) from January 2024, per Kepios analysis of X's own ad tools on DataReportal.
• 2.53 billion: users YouTube ads could reach in January 2025, up 39.7 million (1.6%) year on year, per DataReportal.
• 1 billion+: Telegram active users, as stated by founder Pavel Durov on 19 March 2025, up from 950 million monthly active users reported a year earlier (TechCrunch). This is a company statement, not an independent count.

Audience size on a platform does not set a creator's price. Our guide to crypto KOL marketing cost separates the fee layers you are actually paying for.

Creator disclosure rules and enforcement

Undisclosed paid crypto promotion is a legal issue. The figures below come from regulator releases.

• $1.26 million: amount Kim Kardashian agreed to pay to settle SEC charges over an Instagram post promoting EMAX tokens without disclosing that she was paid; she also agreed not to promote crypto asset securities for three years (SEC, 3 October 2022).
• 8 celebrities: charged by the SEC with promoting TRX or BTT without disclosing they were paid; six settled and agreed to pay more than $400,000 combined (SEC, 22 March 2023).
• 19,766: financial promotions by authorised firms amended or withdrawn after FCA intervention in 2024, up 97.5% from 10,008 in 2023, across all financial products, not only crypto (FCA financial promotions data 2024).
• 20 finfluencers: interviewed under caution by the FCA in October 2024, alongside 38 alerts against finfluencer social media accounts that may contain unlawful promotions (FCA).
• 650+ takedown requests: expected from 50 FCA warning alerts issued in a June 2025 week of action against unlawful finfluencers involving nine regulators; the FCA also made 3 arrests (FCA, 6 June 2025).
• 100%: potential capital loss that ESMA's finfluencer factsheet asks influencers to highlight for high-risk products such as volatile crypto-assets; it also says "not investment advice" disclaimers are not enough and paid content needs labels such as "advertisement" or "sponsored" (CONSOB, relaying ESMA, 12 January 2026).
• 14 August 2024: date the FTC announced a final rule that prohibits selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence, such as bot-generated followers or views used to misrepresent influence for a commercial purpose (FTC).

If you brief crypto creators, put the disclosure wording in the contract. Our creator ad disclosure examples show plain wording for each type of relationship. This page is not legal advice.

Scams, fraud and fake engagement

Fraud estimates come from blockchain analysis, police complaints and surveys, so read each one against its method.

• $14 billion+: received on-chain by crypto scams in 2025, which Chainalysis projects could exceed $17 billion as more wallets are identified (Chainalysis, 13 January 2026).
• $9.9 billion vs $12 billion: Chainalysis's first estimate of 2024 scam revenue and its later recalculation for the same year, which shows how much these estimates rise after publication (Chainalysis).
• $782 to $2,764: rise in the average crypto scam payment from 2024 to 2025, while impersonation scams grew more than 1,400% (Chainalysis).
• 3.59%: share of the 2,063,519 tokens launched in 2024 that showed patterns Chainalysis links to possible pump-and-dump schemes, 74,037 tokens in total (Chainalysis, 29 January 2025).
• $11.366 billion: losses in 181,565 complaints involving cryptocurrency reported to the FBI in 2025, up 22% on 2024 (FBI IC3 2025 Annual Report, April 2026).
• $7.228 billion: losses from 61,559 cryptocurrency investment fraud complaints in 2025; the FBI says scammers typically make first contact through text messages, social media, advertisements or dating apps (FBI IC3).
• 43%: share of UK crypto users who encountered or suspected fraud and said it involved social media scams, including fake endorsements or giveaway scams (FCA, wave 5).
• 56.5%: share of reported influencer fraud and quality issues that were fake or bot followers, across all industries, with only 10.9% of respondents selecting none of the issues listed (Influencer Marketing Hub Benchmark Report 2026).

Fake engagement and fake endorsements are a selection problem before they are a reporting problem. The crypto KOL due diligence checklist covers audience and identity checks, and the crypto creator claim review covers how to check what a sponsored post claims.

Influencer calls, returns and KOL pricing evidence

One academic study tracked what happened to prices after crypto influencers posted about tokens. On pricing, the only figures we could verify come from regulator findings.

• 1.83%: average first-day return after a crypto influencer tweet, turning into average losses of 2.2% by day 10, 6.5% by day 30 and 19% after three months, in a study of about 36,000 tweets by 180 influencers on over 1,600 tokens in the two years to December 2022 (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 7 April 2023).
• 58%: share of influencers in that sample who described themselves as crypto experts, analysts or educators; tweets from this group cost investors 4.5 percentage points more on average than tweets from non-experts (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge).
• $250,000: payment Kim Kardashian received for one Instagram post about EMAX tokens, which she did not disclose (SEC, October 2022). It is one documented celebrity fee, not a market rate.

We found no published crypto KOL rate dataset with a stated sample and method. One marketplace rate page we checked labels its crypto creator rates as modelled estimates rather than measured market data, so we left it out.

How to use these numbers

Cite the original publisher and the period measured, and link to it. A figure without its date and base is easy to misread.

Check the base before you compare. The FCA research figures are shares of specific groups, such as crypto users or buyers, and the CoinGecko survey covers people already in crypto.

Do not add or rank estimates that use different methods. Ad reach is not monthly active users, survey intent is not spend, and on-chain scam totals are revised upward after publication.

Methodology

We checked every source on 20 October 2026 and kept only figures printed on the source page itself. We preferred regulators, platforms, original surveys and academic research over aggregator blogs.

We excluded figures we could only find second-hand, crypto KOL rate cards without a stated method, and vendor engagement scores. Dates in brackets are publication dates; the period each figure measures is given in the text.