Tag: chainalysis

A few notes from 2023 Chainalysis crypto geography report

It’s an emerging markets story aka “lower middle income countries”. For example defi:

Chainalysis Defi

India on par with UK! And Turkey dominates the Middle East

Chainalysis India Turkey

America is: More institutional capital; Stablecoins usage declining; Even in bear market, stables still lead, but alts beat ETH & BTC!

UK dominates in Western / Northern Europe

In Eastern Europe, it’s Russia, Ukraine, and Poland

Mainland China lags — but Hong Kong is promising

Chainalysis East Asia

“The promotion of Hong Kong as a potential crypto hub is not necessarily indicative of the Chinese government’s stance on crypto,” he told us. “However, we are seeing a number of Chinese state-backed entities indirectly supporting Hong Kong’s web3 ventures, and this could be viewed as an exploratory approach to understanding digital assets without loosening mainland policies.

India and SEA is all about centralized exchanges (CEX) — and look at gaming/gambling in Philippines and Vietnam

Chainalysis Asia

Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Nigeria growing despite the bear market:

Chainalysis Growth

Here’s the The 2023 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report.

Chainalysis crypto adoption report – Europe as leading hub + Emerging markets growth

Full report here.

Everything below is copied verbatim with exception of //

// emerging markets 👀

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Many emerging markets face significant currency devaluation, driving residents to buy cryptocurrency on P2P platforms in order to preserve their savings. Others in these areas use cryptocurrency to carry out international transactions, either for individual remittances or for commercial use cases, such as purchasing goods to import and sell.

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DeFi adoption, on the other hand, has primarily been powered by experienced cryptocurrency traders and investors looking for new sources of alpha in innovative new platforms.

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Simply put, more Americans are devoting a higher share of their purchasing power to cryptocurrency than in nearly every other country.

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DeFi whales turned Central, Northern, and Western Europe into the world’s biggest cryptocurrency economy

// this surprised me – Europe as a major hub for crypto (perhaps due to America’s unclear and changing regulatory environment )

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“Investing in equities in India is a long, painful process that requires you to sign lots of documents. It takes about three to four days. Investing in crypto takes less than an hour.” John estimates that there are 4x as many cryptocurrency investors in India as there are equity investors. […] But that’s just the high end of the market. On the lower end, John mentioned that many in India’s large freelance economy — mostly those doing technology-related work for employers abroad — have started to request being paid in cryptocurrency, due to both convenience and interest in the asset.

// I notice this in Vietnam as well – though it’s primarily stablecoins