August 19, 2021
Crypto adoption has been gaining widespread popularity across the world between June 2020 to July 2021.
US-based research platform Finder’s report mentions that 30 percent of its Indian surveyees confirmed that they owned cryptocurrency.
Several reports and surveys point to a pattern of crypto adoption being more popular in small towns in India.
A “huge expatriate population” and referrals through existing crypto users were among the reasons behind crypto adoption gaining traction.
The 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index by blockchain data platform Chainalysis has placed India in the second position worldwide with regard to crypto adoption, ahead of the US, UK and China, with Vietnam taking the first position. Peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange, trading volume, and value received were the three metrics on which the ranking was based. While it mentions that crypto adoption gained widespread popularity across the globe between June 2020 and July 2021, a report from US-based research platform Finder released in July backed the finding that the top five nations to adopt crypto currency were all from Asia. The survey involved 47,000 crypto users across the world.
According to the report, in India, 30 percent of the surveyees confirmed that they owned cryptocurrency, with Bitcoin being the most popular, followed by Ripple, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash. Having gained more traction in the smaller towns in the country, crypto currency had experienced growth exceeding 2,648 percent in user sign-ups from tier II and tier III cities in India, according to WazirX, the largest crypto exchange in the country, which also claimed to have a user base of 7.3 million users and clocked over $21.8 billion in trading volumes this year. Finder mentioned that it was India’s “huge expatriate population” which made it the world’s number one remittance hub in the crypto space.
The pattern of smaller towns dominating crypto adoption in India was also corroborated by Coinswitch Kuber, which is among the top crypto exchanges in the country in terms of trading volumes. It noted a 135 percent growth on a monthly basis in user sign-ups based in smaller towns, making for about 61 percent of the total business of the exchange. Sharan Nair, the company’s chief business officer, mentioned that trading volumes from these areas in the last six months amounted to almost US$ 5.79 billion. Naimish Sanghvi, an expert in the field and the creator of the crypto information platform Coin Crunchaffirmed that the increasing increasing in crypto adoption was mainly driven by referrals, given the fact that cryptocurrencies have enabled many individuals to make money almost overnight, drawing more users (especially from smaller towns) to the space.