PremiumNEW DELHI : India ranks second in terms of crypto adoption worldwide behind Vietnam, but ahead of countries such as the US, UK, and China, according to the 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index by blockchain data platform Chainalysis.
This comes even as worldwide crypto adoption grew by 880% between June 2020 and July 2021, according to the report.
A report by US-based research platform Finder released this month corroborated that the top five countries in terms of crypto adoption were all from Asia.
The company surveyed 47,000 users worldwide and 30% of those surveyed in India said they owned cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is the most popular coin in India, followed by Ripple, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash, according to the report.
India’s “huge expatriate population" makes it the world’s number one remittance recipient in the crypto space, Finder said. India had the largest expatriate population in the world, with 18 million people from the country living outside their homeland last year, noted a January 2021 UN report.
Crypto adoption in India has also been led by smaller towns in the country. The largest crypto exchange in the country by trading volume, WazirX, said last week that it had seen more than 2,648% growth in user sign-ups from tier II and tier III cities in India.
The exchange has a claimed user base of 7.3 million users and said it has clocked more than $21.8 billion in trading volumes this year.
Competitor Coinswitch Kuber, which ranks among the top crypto exchanges in India by trading volumes, noted the same trend. It saw a 135% monthly growth in user sign-ups from smaller towns, which made up 61% of the exchange’s total business. Trading volumes from these cities in the last six months were close to ₹431 billion, said Sharan Nair, chief business officer of the company.
The interest is mostly driven by referrals, said Naimish Sanghvi, who has been running crypto information platform Coin Crunch since 2018. The fact that cryptocurrencies have made money for many individuals almost overnight has drawn more such users to the space, especially from smaller towns, he said. However, serious investors who will get in the space for the long term are yet to really take interest.
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