(Bloomberg) — Global crypto adoption among ordinary investors has surged in the past year, according to crypto-analysis firm Chainalysis.
Using factors like peer-to-peer exchange trading volume and value received, Chainalysis said global crypto adoption has risen by more than 881% in the past year. While the firm sees professional and institutional markets as crucial, it aimed to highlight the countries with the greatest crypto adoption by retail investors — focusing on use cases related to transactions and individual saving, rather than trading and speculation. The top countries in the ranking are Vietnam, India, Pakistan and Ukraine.
“In emerging markets, many turn to cryptocurrency to preserve their savings in the face of currency devaluation, send and receive remittances, and carry out business transactions,” Chainalysis said in the report, “while adoption in North America, Western Europe, and Eastern Asia over the last year has been powered largely by institutional investment.”
Interest in cryptocurrencies has surged in the past year along with prices. Bitcoin has more than tripled in the past 12 months, while second-biggest crypto Ether is up about sevenfold — and many other top cryptocurrencies have registered strong gains as well.
The firm’s Global Crypto Adoption Index ranked 154 countries by three main metrics. China and the U.S. both dropped in the rankings, primarily because peer-to-peer trading volume declined.
Chainalysis took out one factor it had used in previous analysis: number of deposits by country weighted by number of internet users. However, the firm found that it skewed the rankings toward countries with comparatively more decentralized finance, or DeFi, users. Instead, it’s creating a DeFi Adoption Index that it said will be available in coming weeks.
“Growing transaction volume for centralized services and the explosive growth of DeFi are driving cryptocurrency usage in the developed world and in countries that already had substantial adoption, while P2P platforms are driving new adoption in emerging markets,’ the Chainalysis report said. “Our biggest question for the next 12 months is how much adoption will continue on those platform categories compared to new and emerging models we haven’t seen yet.”
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