Having Many Expatriates, India Named The Second Largest Crypto-Adopting Country

Bitcoin is the most popular coin to own in India. (photo: executium/unsplash)

JAKARTA - India is now ranked second in terms of crypto adoption worldwide. They are behind Vietnam but ahead of countries like the US, UK, and China. This assessment is according to the 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index by blockchain data platform Chainalysis. According to the report, worldwide crypto adoption also grew by 880% during this year.

A report by US-based research platform Finder this month corroborated that the top five countries in terms of crypto adoption all hail from Asia. The company surveyed 47,000 users worldwide and 30% of those surveyed in India said they own cryptocurrencies. According to the report, Bitcoin is the most popular coin to own in India, followed by Ripple, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash.

Finder says its “large expatriate population” makes India the world's number one recipient of remittances in the crypto space. A January 2021 report from the United Nations noted that India has the world's largest expatriate population, with 18 million people from the country living outside their homeland last year.

However, crypto adoption in India is also being led by the country's smaller cities. The largest crypto exchange by trading volume, WazirX, said last week that it has seen over 2648% growth in user registrations from Tier II and Tier III cities in India. The exchange has a claimed user base of 7.3 million users and says it has recorded more than $21.8 billion in trading volume this year.

Competitor Coinswitch Kuber, which ranks among the top crypto exchanges in India by trading volume, is also noting a similar trend. The company saw a 135% monthly growth in user registrations from smaller cities, and that made up 61% of the exchange's total business. Sharan Nair, the company's chief business officer (CBO), said the trade volume from these cities in the past six months was close to Rs. 431 billion.

Naimish Sanghvi, who has been running a crypto information platform called Coin Crunch since 2018, said the interest was largely driven by referrals. He said that the fact that cryptocurrencies have made money for many people almost overnight has attracted more such users into the space, especially from smaller cities. However, serious investors who will enter the space for the long term are not really interested.

“Young adults are the most likely to own cryptocurrency with 32% of those aged 18-24 having invested in cryptocurrency, followed by 29% of those aged 35-44, 27% of those aged 45-54, and 25% of those aged 25-34 years. and 55-64,” the Finders report quoted above states.

The growth in crypto adoption is also at odds with the growing interest in venture capital (VC) in crypto companies. According to data from Delhi-based data intelligence platform VCC Edge, 13 deals worth more than $176.9 million have been completed in 2021 so far, more than double the 10 deals worth $44 million seen last year. . Mumbai-based CoinDCX is also India's first unicorn of the crypto industry.