Asia leads world in crypto investment, report says

Asian nations are leading the world in retail crypto investment, according to a recent report by Finder.com, which found that of 27 countries surveyed, the top five were all in Asia.

Fast facts

• Vietnam was by far the leader in crypto adoption, with 41% of respondents saying they owned at least one cryptocurrency. Indonesia and India were in second and third place, respectively, with 30% each, followed closely by Malaysia and the Philippines, which were only a couple of percentage points behind. The U.S. and the UK were at the bottom of the list, with 9% and 8% of respondents owning crypto, respectively.

• Surveying 42,000 people across 27 countries, the report was conducted via Google and sampled between 1,160 and 2,511 respondents per country. The report recognizes that due to varying levels of Google infrastructure in each country, all results may not be nationally representative.

• The findings come despite Vietnam’s central bank stressing that cryptocurrencies are not legally recognized in the country. Last month, Vietnam’s prime minister, Phạm Minh Chính, asked the central bank to pilot a cryptocurrency program from 2021 to 2023 as part of a broader strategy of moving toward digital government.

• The average level of crypto ownership among the countries surveyed was 19%, with men being more likely to invest, at 22% of respondents, compared to 15% of women. Countries such as the Netherlands and Singapore were most representative of the global average, with 20% and 19% of their citizens owning crypto, respectively.

• Although the 27 surveyed countries spanned the globe, there were some notable omissions from the list. Last year, Nigeria was found to be the global leader in crypto investment in a Statista Global Consumer Survey, with 32% of its population reporting present or past ownership of crypto. According to the Statista survey, Vietnam was in second place, with 21% of respondents owning crypto at the time, suggesting there has been a surge in investment in Vietnam in the past 12 months.

• The Statista survey was recently published in a report by Binance that found global retail crypto adoption had grown to 300 million people this year, representing 4% of the total global population.

• The only African nation to be included in the survey was South Africa, which the survey found had a 15% crypto user rate. According to earlier reporting by Forkast.News, Africa reportedly had the highest growth in peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading volume in the six months leading up to June this year. Although North America and Australasia both reported decreases over the period, African countries as a whole experienced a 15-30% expansion in crypto trading.