Chainalysis 2022 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report - a TL;DR summary

Cryptocurrency analytics and tracing firm Chainalysis produce a lot of good reports which are pretty much essential reading to anyone working in crypto. Here are some bullet point summaries taken from their 2022 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report. With thanks to Chainalysis for putting the report together :)

Vietnam, Philippines, Ukraine, India- rank no 1-4 in overall crypto adoption?

India - no. 1 in the world for all crypto adoption for centralised use and DeFi for both retail and institutional use, the only thing India doesn't rank as no1 for is P2P exchange trade volume ranking where Seychelles is no. 1

Emerging markets still dominate for crypto adoption?

Users in lower middle and upper middle income countries often rely on cryptocurrency to send remittances, preserve their savings in times of fiat currency volatility, and fulfill other financial needs

Cryptocurrency-based gaming, including games following the play to earn (P2E) and move to earn (M2E) models, are particularly popular in Vietnam and SE Asia and are largely why crypto ranks so highly there

China still ranks surprisingly highly for crypto usage, especially use of centralised platforms, given the Chinese government’s crackdown on cryptocurrency activity, which includes a ban on all cryptocurrency trading announced in September 2021. It seems the market bounced back after an initial drop off indicating that the ban is loosely enforced

Central, Northern & Western Europe is once again the world’s largest crypto economy followed by North America

Germany's crypto activity grew by 47% in the last year, likely a byproduct of two recent decisions: (1) to enforce a 0% long-term capital gains tax, and (2) to allow many different types of asset managers to invest in cryptocurrencies

The UK leads Europe for DeFi

We’ve historically seen an outsized amount of ransomware and crypto-based money laundering in Eastern Europe. This trend has continued

Research shows that cryptocurrency markets likely aren’t liquid enough to support mass scale, systematic sanctions evasion in Russia

Both Russia and Ukraine saw an initial increase in cryptocurrency transfers in March 2022, soon after the war began on February 24.

“The major question not just for oligarchs but also ordinary Russians became, ‘How do you get money out of Russia?’”?

For Ukrainians, crypto use has gone up mainly for receiving aid donations in crypto?

Middle East & North Africa may be one of the smaller crypto markets, but it’s also the fastest growing. This is related to rapid fiat currency devaluations. The Turkish Lira has inflated by 80.5% in the last year; the Egyptian Pound has weakened by 13.5%.?

Also significant is Egypt’s remittance market. Remittance payments account for about 8% of Egypt’s GDP, and its national bank has already begun a project to build a crypto-based remittance corridor between Egypt and the UAE, where many Egyptian natives work.

The Taliban’s crackdown brings Afghanistan’s crypto markets to a standstill -dozens of crypto dealers have been arrested. Relatively small amounts of crypto are still used in money laundering, for bribes and drug money

Sub-saharan Africa accounts for the least cryptocurrency transaction volume, representing 2% of global activity

Africa contains some of the most well-developed cryptocurrency markets with deep integration of cryptocurrency into everyday financial activity, primarily in Nigeria and Kenya

Nigeria has a ton of highly educated young graduates with high unemployment rates, no jobs available — crypto to them is a rescue. It’s a way to feed their family and solve their daily financial needs

See the report in full at https://go.chainalysis.com/geography-of-crypto-2022-report/