Over the past year, cryptocurrency adoption has grown by 880 percent globally , with Vietnam, India, Pakistan and other emerging regions as the leading countries, according to blockchain analytics platform Chainalysis .
In a report called the 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index, the company compared the speed of digital asset distribution across three main metrics. These are the cost of the transferred funds in the blockchain, the amount of funds received in the cryptocurrency networks by individual investors, as well as the trading volumes on p2p platforms from June 2020 to June 2021. Here are their findings.
Recall that Chainalysis specializes in data analytics about what is happening in the blockchain. Thanks to this, it also helps the governments of various countries to catch fraudsters.
Where are the most popular cryptocurrencies?
So, Vietnam is leading in the adoption of Bitcoin and altcoins, which means that the country is assigned an index of 1 in terms of the speed of this process. The next places in the rating are occupied by India, Pakistan, Ukraine and Kenya with indices of 0.37, 0.36, 0.29 and 0.28, respectively.
In this Chainalysis report, there is a significant difference from a similar document for the previous period, when it was Ukraine that received index 1 for the adoption of digital assets. At the time, Vietnam was only tenth with a score of 0.443, while Kenya was ranked 0.645 with fifth in the ranking. Accordingly, India and Pakistan made it to the top 10 for the first time this year.
Here are the experts’ conclusions in the form of a table.
Ranking of countries by bitcoin adoption rate
Ukraine and Russia were in the top of a similar ranking in September 2020. They became the leaders in the rate of adoption of cryptocurrencies among the population, along with Venezuela.
Analysts at Chainalysis noted that while the adoption of cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed over the past year around the world as a whole, this is especially noticeable in emerging economies. To a large extent, the trend is explained by the large volumes of transactions on local P2P platforms when taking into account purchasing power parity per capita and the total number of Internet users.
Bitcoin Acceptance Map Around the World
Here is a quote from a study published by Decrypt .
Our interviews with experts in these countries have shown that many residents use P2P exchanges as the main gateway for investing in digital assets. This often happens because they don’t have access to centralized exchanges. Unsurprisingly, regions with many emerging markets account for a huge chunk of P2P service website traffic.
As a reminder, p2p platforms allow users to exchange cryptocurrencies with each other with the participation of an intermediary. An example of such an exchange is LocalBitcoins, which we have already seen how it works.
The report indicates that in many emerging economies there is a massive devaluation of national currencies and this prompts people to look for alternative ways to store their funds. In addition, with digital assets, it is easier to make international transfers, which is especially important, since in different regions of the world there may be significant restrictions on the amount of funds sent to other countries.
But economic leaders, such as the United States and China, have dropped to lower positions in the ranking since the last study period. The US is currently ranked 8th (up from 6th in 2020) and China is 13th (4th last year).
Dynamics of the volume of exchange transactions on P2P platforms in China and the USA
This time Russia got 18th place with an index of 0.14. As you can see, the country lags significantly behind neighboring Ukraine in terms of the rate of integration of cryptocurrencies into internal financial relations. Earlier, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted a law on digital assets, according to which the crypt cannot be used as a means of payment on the territory of the country. Despite all efforts, the legal status of both individual coins and their mining is still not fully clear in Russia.
This rating makes it clear that cryptocurrencies are especially popular among residents of developing countries. Obviously, the idea of assets independent from the state seems interesting to them, and the current rise in coin rates is also making itself felt. We believe that this trend will become even more pronounced in the future. At least while bull run will continue in the niche.
