Central and South Asia lead the way in mass adoption of cryptocurrencies in 2023. India has topped the global list of countries with the highest adoption rate of digital assets, surpassing last year’s leaders.
According to the latest market research by Chainalysis, interest in crypto among citizens of lower-middle-income (LMI) countries has grown remarkably in 2023. The leader among the countries with the highest adoption of cryptocurrencies was India.
India surpassed all the leaders of last year’s ranking, taking the top spot in almost all categories. Residents highly appreciate both the local DeFi ecosystem and centralized services. Chainalysis analysts noted that this is due to the expanded opportunities to use the digital rupee and a new unique scheme of taxation of crypto transactions in the country.
The second place is taken by Nigeria, which rose by more than ten positions during the year. Notably, the country has become the world leader in terms of trading volume on P2P exchanges. Analysts attribute this trend to the rapid growth in the number of crypto users in Nigeria, as well as the active development of the digital naira project (eNaira). Last year, Nigeria was recognized as a leader in the level of adoption of crypto initiatives in the Sub-Saharan Africa region.
The top three countries with the highest rate of crypto adoption are closed by the 2022 leader, Vietnam, down two positions. The top five ranking also includes the United States, gaining one point, and Ukraine, losing two points. The Philippines, which ranked second last year, was only in sixth place in the current ranking.
Chainalysis noted that mass adoption of cryptocurrencies around the world is still declining, although the pace has slowed somewhat compared to last year, when the FTX crash affected the interest in crypto among ordinary citizens. What’s interesting is that the adoption rate was higher this year than in 2021 only in low-income (LI) and lower-middle-income (LMI) countries.
In 2021, the adoption rate of cryptocurrencies accelerated almost one and a half times and then began to decline rapidly in 2022.
