Blockchain analyst firm Chainalysis has released its annual TOP 20 countries with the strongest bitcoin adoption. Vietnam is on the rise and China is back in the top 10.
The Chain Classification Method
It would be easy to rank countries based on the volume of bitcoin transactions and that’s it. Chains go further by weighting these amounts by purchasing power parity (PPP).
This is because it is clear that the number of rich countries will always be higher than that of a poor country. But that’s not the same thing, especially when it comes to acceptance. It is more interesting to relate these amounts to the total wealth of the country.
So the amounts in the chain analysis are compared in purchasing power parity per person. That is, using an exchange rate that equalizes the cost of living from one country to another.
In fact, a haircut costs much less in China than in New York if you take the official exchange rate into account. But why should we value the same service differently? This distortion of reality is erased thanks to purchasing power parity.
In other words, a Vietnamese has bought 0.01 BTC more than a French has bought 0.01 BTC. If two countries received the same amount of BTC, the country with the lowest GDP per capita would be the first.
The Chainalysis Global Cryptocurrency Adoption Index is a ranking of 146 countries based on five types of volume:
- Retail on exchanges
- Retail on DeFi
- Institutional on exchanges
- Institutions on DeFi
- The amount of cryptocurrency exchanges in P2P (depending on the PPP, but also depending on the number of internet users)
Both retail sub-indices complement BTC transactions worth less than $10,000. Each sub-index has a PPP weighting.
“While institutional action is important, we also want to highlight countries where there are individual investors [retail] most numerous”can we read in the report.
An average of those five sub-indices is then normalized to a scale of 0 to 1. The closer the country’s final score is to 1, the better:
Ways to take away a key from the 2022 Cryptocurrency Adoption Index
Despite the bearish market, Chainalysis believes so “Global adoption has stabilized over the past year after steadily increasing since mid-2019.” “However, global adoption is still significantly higher than before the 2019 bull market.”
Emerging markets also seem to dominate the ranking. Of the top 20 countries ranked:
- Eight countries have incomes slightly above the world average: Brazil, Thailand, Russia, China, Turkey, Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador.
- There are ten countries with incomes slightly below the world average: Vietnam, the Philippines, Ukraine, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Morocco, Nepal, Kenya and Indonesia.
- Two of them are high income: the United States and the United Kingdom.
- No low income countries
[À noter l’absence du Salvador du top 20. Probablement que le pourquoi du comment se trouve dans le rapport intégral qui sera publié dans quelque temps. Trouvez ici notre article sur le classement de 2021]
Chainalysis explains that cryptocurrencies are used to send small amounts abroad (remittances), to protect savings from inflation, but also from exchange rate fluctuations.
These countries also tend to be more dependent on bitcoin and stable than wealthy countries. Westerners prefer to speculate on shitcoins. The reason for this is that inflation or the impossibility of sending funds abroad is not a problem for them.
That said, inflation is starting to be felt even on the old continent. In this regard, it should be noted that the average inflation rate for the top 20 countries in the ranking is 17%. That is much more than the global average of 5%.
It should also be noted that China is back in the top 10. This is in line with the fact that 20% of BTC mining is still done in China despite the “ban”. This is judged by analysis “especially interesting in light of the […] the ban on cryptocurrency trading was announced in September 2021”. “Our data suggests that this ban is ineffective or poorly implemented. »
Ukraine’s third position is less surprising. Banks limit daily withdrawals It is also impossible to convert hryvnias into foreign currencies. In other words, Ukrainian bank cards do not work abroad. So the draw for BTC in this country where inflation reaches 24% per year is also…
It is very sad to see that Europe is lagging behind. However, Europeans, who thought that inflation only happens to others, may be more interested in bitcoin this winter…
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Journalist reporting on the Bitcoin revolution. My papers deal with bitcoin through geopolitical, economic and libertarian prisms.
