Nigeria led the top five countries adopting cryptocurrency globally, according to a report compiled by Binance, a leading crypto exchange platform.
Nigeria, a young population of about 200 million people with fast-growing smartphone adoption, led with 32 percent. It means 32 percent of the total number of Nigerians surveyed by Statista, data used by Binance, have used or owned crypto at some point.
Vietnam came second with 21 percent. Binance has this to say about Vietnam, “this economically fast-rising Southeast Asian nation of nearly 100 million has also seen huge demand in crypto, with activities varying from trading and P2P to payments and other utilities. According to Chainalysis, crypto traders raked in $400 million in crypto earnings in 2020.”
Philippines, Turkey and Peru followed with 20 percent, 16 percent and 16 percent, respectively.
Key Highlights
Binance noted that with about 4 percent of the world’s population or 300 million crypto users, crypto is gaining traction more than ever. However, there is still plenty of room for crypto to grow globally despite the ongoing achievement.
To give further context on how 300 million is still not enough, “that figure is just 3.8% of the world’s population (7.9 billion) or 5.8% of the total people on earth between the ages of 15 to 65 (5.1 billion). The good news is that crossing those percentages in terms of global usage is a significant feat that moves Bitcoin and blockchain technology past the innovation stage and into the early adoption stage.
“To recap, the technology adoption curve stipulates that global adoption of new technology like blockchain happens in five stages. At the first stage, only 2.5% of people try the new technology, the innovators or pioneers. Once you cross that threshold, you begin to get early adopters or the next 13.5% of the global population. Get past that, and you have the next 34% to introduce blockchain to, in order to hit majority usage.
“Once crypto hits 50% usage around the world (2.55 billion people between 15 and 65 years old), it will become one of the widest-used technologies in the world. For context, Google has nearly 4 billion users, while Facebook has almost 3 billion users.”
The report identified factors responsible for cryptocurrency adoption.
Institutional adoption
Several institutions jumped on crypto hype in recent months out of fear of missing out (FOMO) and have been dumping millions of dollars on crypto assets. A few numbers of them have even created crypto portfolio units to take advantage of crypto unrestrained volatility.
General adoption
More people are knowing about cryptocurrency, hence helping to push the crypto narrative mainstream. “Ultimately, the crypto industry owes its rise to the growing number of people who started trading, buying and using crypto in their everyday lives. According to TripleA, more than 18,000 businesses worldwide have accepted crypto payments at one point, from mom-and-pop shops to global companies like Tesla, further emphasizing how demand for crypto creates further adoption,” Binance stated.