The leaders in the distribution of digital assets were Vietnam, India, Pakistan and Ukraine. At the same time, China and the United States have noticeably lost ground amid increased regulation by local authorities.
Analysts noted two main trends: the acceleration of the spread of cryptocurrencies in general and an increase in the activity of markets, which until recently did not show much interest in financial technologies.
The global reach of cryptocurrencies has increased 23 times over the past year, according to a new report from Chainalysis.
As part of the Chainalysis study, attention was paid to the activity of ordinary users, and not of institutions, which usually account for the vast majority of trading volumes. Three metrics were taken into account: the volume of incoming transactions at the blockchain level; the volume of retail investor transactions (less than $ 10,000); and trading volume in peer-to-peer markets.
Russia was ranked 18th. According to the first two parameters, it is in the top ten, however, the volume of transactions in the peer-to-peer market Chainalysis was estimated only as 122nd in the world. A similar situation is observed in the United States, which in peer-to-peer exchange dropped from 16th to 109th place, while China moved from 53rd to 155th. In order to compile the rating, peer-to-peer trading volumes were estimated relative to the total number of residents of the country using the Internet.
“P2P transaction volumes in the US and China have been moving roughly in line with global trends until June 2020. Subsequently, they began to fall, while they grew throughout the world. This activity may indicate an increase in professionalism and institutionalization of cryptocurrency trading in the US, while the situation in China may be related to the ongoing prosecution of cryptocurrency trading by the authorities. «
Analysts believe that the interest in cryptocurrencies in developing countries may be associated with the desire of their residents to avoid the depreciation of national fiat currencies, the need for money transfer services, as well as tools for carrying out commercial transactions. Chainalysis explains the high activity in the peer-to-peer market in countries such as Nigeria and Venezuela by the limited access of their citizens to centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
“In many emerging markets represented here, there are restrictions on the withdrawal of the national currency from the country. Cryptocurrencies give their residents the ability to circumvent these restrictions to meet their own financial needs. «
From these observations, analysts draw the following main conclusion:
«The spread of cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed over the past 12 months, and the variety of countries contributing to this dynamic suggests that cryptocurrencies are truly a global phenomenon.»
