Worldwide Crypto Adoption Grew Over 2300% Since 2019, 880% In The Past Year

Jae Chia
August 20, 2021
1 min read

According to Chainanalysis, the world is adopting crypto at a very fast pace, at 880% more than in 2020. This was mainly thanks to P2P trading activity and the nature of Bitcoin as a store of value-free from government control.

At the end of Q2 2020, following a period of little growth, total global adoption stood at 2.5 based on Chainanalysis’ summed up country index scores. At the end of Q2 2021, that total score stood at 24, suggesting that global adoption has grown by over 2300% since Q3 2019 and over 881% in the last year.

According to the Global Crypto Adoption Index, Vietnam, India, and Pakistan rank as the countries with the highest rate of cryptocurrency adoption.

Research by Chainanalysis suggests that reasons for the increased adoption differ around the world — 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.

On the other hand, adoption in North America, Western Europe, and Eastern Asia over the last year has been powered largely by institutional investment.

The US and China also saw a dip in their rankings. Last year, China ranked fourth on our global adoption index while the U.S. ranked sixth. This year, the U.S. ranks eighth while China ranks 13th.

The biggest reason both countries dropped is that their rankings in P2P trade volume weighted for internet-using population declined dramatically.

The next wave of adoption

In the developed world, DeFi is driving cryptocurrency usage, while P2P platforms are driving new adoption in emerging markets.

The variation in the countries contributing to crypto adoption that show that cryptocurrency is a truly global phenomenon. It is interesting to see how this will evolve in the next 12 months.

For blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, it is seeing a faster growth trajectory than the growth of Internet in the late 1990s.

As far as adoption is concerned, Bitcoin had approximately the same number of users as the Internet in 1997. What is different however, is that Bitcoin’s adoption rate is much higher as compared to the Internet. It is projected that in the next four years, Bitcoin will have around 1 billion users.

Here’s a look at the technology adoption curve of crypto users versus the total global internet users: