I am always curious. After I spent some time researching what crypto non-believers are saying I wanted to do the opposite. I was curious about which world region has the highest percentage of crypto users. I know crypto is big in North America and Europe. But, what I found on this infographic was totally opposite of what I assumed. I should have done better in guessing where the crypto market is flourishing. I have published a post a while ago on Leofinance that provided an overview of the total number of Metamask users around the globe. Even from that perspective, I should have guessed the innovation and adoption is happening in other parts of the world.
According to the Statista Global Consumer Survey 2020, Nigeria has the highest percentage (32%) of the population who owned or used cryptocurrency. The report suggests it could be due to
Reliance on remittances and the prevalence of peer-to-peer phone payments
https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoption/
This is huge because almost one third of the Nigerian population has, at some point, owned or used crypto currency. The report cites two major reasons behind this crypto adoption -
- The high cost to send conventional money across the border and the relative ease when it comes to cryptocurrencies
- The high adoption of mobile phones and the technological advancements in plug and play with crypto currencies
These reasons make sense as the traditional way of doing banking and money management is not efficient and cumbersome in any developing nations. People want efficiency and ease and they also don't want to pay higher fees. Individuals may also want to get rid of the unnecessary red-tape of the official paperwork when sending their hard earned money.
It is fascinating to see that the other top 5 countries mentioned in the report are developing nations and growing economies. This shows how crypto adoption is working and how the growing economies are leading the innovation. Vietnam, South Africa, Turkey and Peru are the top 5 countries on the list.
Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash
Only 8% of the Chinese population and the 7% of the US population has used or owned cryptocurrencies. I find that interesting given how BTC mining and crypto exchanges are concentrated around the developed economies.
The other thing that surprised me most was how India was not even mentioned in the report. There is a huge market and yet, the not so helpful government regulation has limited the adoption of this new technology in India.