Chainalysis Report Reveals NFT Leads Largest Crypto Adoption in Central and South Asia

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JAKARTA - Non-fungible Token (NFT) is the biggest driver of crypto adoption in Central & Southern Asia and Oceania (CSAO), the third largest cryptocurrency market in Central, South, and Oceania.

The report shared by Chainlaysis entitled “Crypto Adoption Steadies in South Asia, Soars in the Southeast” revealed, in Q2 2022, 58 percent of web traffic to crypto services in the country was NFT-related. Another 21 percent went to play-to-earn blockchain gaming websites.

"For countries with high web traffic to the NFT market, particularly Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, most of the NFT-related traffic may come from blockchain gamers," the report said.

The report also shows how play-to-earn games are related to NFT. In most blockchain games today, in-game items are NFT, such as Axie's pet in Axie Infinity which can be resold in a number of different NFT marketplaces, such as MagicEden and OpenSea.

The blockchain game Axie Infinity is very popular in the Philippines, although the game has seen a sizeable drop in users in recent months as crypto prices have fallen. In terms of crypto adoption, the Philippines is second only to Vietnam.

Overall, Chainalysis found that citizens in the country received a total of 932 billion US dollars in cryptocurrency value as of July 2021 to June 2022. That makes it the third largest crypto market the company has indexed.