Crypto Giggle
If you are reading this in English then there’s a good chance your country doesn’t crack the top three of most holders in a country by percentage. And while if this was trivia night at your local bar, countries like China, the US, and the UK would probably pop into your head as leaders in crypto ownership, right? Not so fast…. The good news is that after reading this article, you will be ready for your next crypto trivial pursuit session — just hope you’re not up against George Costanza. “The card says Moops!”
So which three countries top the list of money crypto ownership by percent of population?
It’s important to clarify that this metric is based on the percentage of the population. This means that even though a country may have more people overall who own crypto, it might not necessarily rank as high when you look at it from a per capita perspective.
So who tops the list?
The first two countries of the three are currently involved in a very serious global conflict, that being Ukraine and Russia (with Kenya surprising as number three on the list.)
Russia and Ukraine are no strangers to crypto, with both countries having a long history of being involved in the space. In fact, one of the most influential figures in the cryptocurrency space, Vitalik Buterin, was originally born in Russia, although the Ethereum co-founder is now of Canadian nationality.
Percentage of population
While other countries like India and the United States have more people overall who are involved in crypto, the fact that they have a higher population and ultimately a lower percent of overall population involved, they slip outside of the top 3.
Top 5 by percent visual
- Ukraine 12.7%
- Russia 11.9%
- Kenya 8.5%
- USA 8.3%
- India 7.3%
You’ll see that the aforementioned USA and India do make the top five list, even adjusted for percent of the population.
Kenya surprises
I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have guessed that Kenya would make the top three of this list, but it did. Again, much like Russia and Ukraine, Kenya surprisingly has a long history with crypto.
Cryptocurrency is attractive to Kenyans for a few reasons. One reason is that it is seen as a more secure way to store money than in the traditional banking system. Additionally, cryptocurrency can be used to conduct transactions without having to go through a third party, which makes it faster and cheaper. Finally, in Kenya at the time of this writing, there are no laws specifically regulating cryptocurrency, which provides more freedom to those who want to use it.
In fact, the continent of Africa has three countries in the top 10 with Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria all having 6% or more of their population owning cryptocurrency.
What is the most popular cryptocurrency amongst the top 3?
Kenya
You may not be surprised that Kenyans mostly own Bitcoin, but you may be shocked to find out just how much of a Bitcoin maximalist they are. When analyzing Kenyan’s search interests, we found that they search for Bitcoin 90% of the time when searching for crypto-related terms.
Ukraine
According to some recent research, it seems that the “stablecoin” Tether is battling Bitcoin for the number one adopted crypto in Ukraine. With the uncertainty surrounding their conflict with Russia, it makes sense that citizens may be looking for a way to store value in these uncertain times.
Russia
While current data from Russia is a bit murky, it seems that the two most popular cryptocurrencies in Russia are Bitcoin and Ethereum. This may be due to the fact that many ICOs have been done on the Ethereum platform or because of the growing popularity of DeFi (decentralized finance) applications built on Ethereum.
Takeaways
What can we learn from these findings? First and foremost, it’s important to remember that this data is based on a number of different factors and is subject to change. Additionally, even though a country may have a high percentage of crypto ownership, it doesn’t mean that everyone in that country is fully on board with digital assets. Most importantly, with the global average of ownership being approximately 15%, there is still so much more adoption ahead for this technology. We look forward to watching as this ever-evolving industry grows!
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