Meme coins, which are often considered as volatile and risky investments, remained among the favourites for Indian retail crypto investors in 2022. Two of the top four most-held crypto assets in India were meme coins, according to a report by crypto exchange CoinSwitch, which claims to have over 19 million users.
The report, published on Wednesday, said Bitcoin was the most held crypto asset, with 12% of users opting to invest in the world’s most valuable crypto asset. This was followed by Dogecoin, Ethereum and Shiba Inu, which saw investments from 11.54%, 9.43% and 6.92% users, respectively. Dogecoin and Shiba Inu fall under the category of meme coins, inspired by popular internet memes.
Experts have often noted that the appeal of meme coins mainly comes from popular culture, and their value can drop almost as fast as their rise.
In contrast, serious tokens like Ethereum and Bitcoin have underlying platforms that are being used to build other web3 applications, and hence derive value from such use cases.
The report found that Indian investors avoided panic selling despite the crash in crypto prices. Investors also built a crypto portfolio and added tokens to grow equity.
About 40% of crypto investments this year were made on tokens with utility, while meme coins comprised 13.14% of investments.
Only 6% of investments went to tokens related to metaverse applications such as Axie Infinity and Decentraland. The two metaverse games are driven by the AXS and MANA tokens which have gained popularity after Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook to Meta last year.
To be sure, even though Bitcoin remains the largest crypto asset by market capitalization, its price plunged to as low as $16,000 after the FTX collapse, a sharp fall from over $60,000 in the first half of 2022.
The CoinSwitch report also said that investors in the age group of 18-25 years, which includes GenZ population, accounted for the highest (45%) crypto investments, while 34% of the investors were millennials in the age group of 26-35.
Women accounted for only 8% of the total crypto investors in India. Though the share of women investors is low, it is growing, according to CoinSwitch.
The highest adoption in terms of value was in Delhi, followed by Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. In tier 2 cities, Jaipur, Lucknow, and Pune were the top adopters, it said.
Earlier this week, another Indian exchange WazirX, said in its year-end report that cryptos worth $10 billion were traded on its platform between January and November 2022. WazirX also added 2.1 million new users, despite seeing a decline in trade volume due to a 30% tax on virtual digital assets in India.
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