Finder, a comparison website operating in over 80 countries, has published a crypto report aimed to establish cryptocurrency adoption rates around the world, showing that emerging Asian economies are leading crypto adoption.
The report surveyed over 42,000 people across 27 countries with a minimum of 1,160 respondents per country.
The survey found that Vietnam was the country with the highest percentage of people who already owned cryptocurrency (41%), with the United Kingdom being last in the survey with 8%.
Vietnam (41%), Indonesia (30%), India (30%), Malaysia (29%), and the Philippines (28%) were the top 5 countries in the ranking, showing an increasing interest in crypto by Asian emerging markets.
When referring to Vietnam, the report attributes this trend by claiming that remittance payments could be the most significant driver behind it, especially among expats.
In Latin America, Brazil led the continent with 22% of the respondents claiming to hold crypto, followed by Colombia (14%) and Mexico (14%).
While these were the only 3 countries in the region surveyed in the report, adoption by individuals and companies in the region is boosting the importance of crypto in the continent.
Crypto Is Favored By Young Adults And Men
The survey also found that men are more likely to hold cryptocurrency than women, with 22% of all men surveyed owning crypto compared to 15% of women.
In none of the countries surveyed did crypto adoption by women surpassed the percentage of men who had invested in the crypto market, with South Korea showing the smallest gender gap with only 1.1% separating them.
When it comes to age, the survey found that those between 25 and 34 years old were more likely to invest in cryptocurrency with 21% of holders belonging to that group, with a progressive decrease as age increased.
Studies have shown in the past that younger generations are more likely to make riskier investments in exchange for higher rewards, which is consistent with the volatility of crypto’s price.
This trend is especially noticeable at a time when Non-fungible tokens and blockchain gaming continues to increase in popularity, boosted by influencers and celebrities.
Southeast Asia’s Largest Financial Institution Is Doubling Down on Crypto
DBS, the largest financial institution in Southeast Asia, has received regulatory approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the country’s central bank to expand its cryptocurrency-related services.
While the regulatory approval is preliminary, the bank is working on fulfilling all the requirements necessary to obtain a full license from Singapore’s Central Bank.
The approval will allow DBS to provide digital payment token services as a major payment institution, as well as operating its crypto exchange “round-the-clock” instead of being limited to Asian trading hours.
According to the institution, its cryptocurrency exchange has been well received by institutional and accredited investors, seeing an increase of over 1000% in trading volume.
At this time, the exchange is only offering support for 4 fiat currencies (SDG, USD, HKD, and JPY) and 1 Cryptocurrency (XRP).
The bank referred to this success by stating,
“Around 400 investors have been onboarded to trade on Ddex as at end-June 2021. Ddex recorded close to SGD 180 million [$132.49 million] in total trading value in Q2 2021, more than five times the value traded in the previous quarter. DBS has over SGD 130 million in digital assets in its custodial services.”
With western and eastern financial institutions continuing to expand their crypto-related services, regulators are more likely to create a friendlier regulatory framework for crypto to incentivize revenue generation.
In addition to being free from inflation, XRP offers some major advantages over fiat currency.
XRP can be sent in a matter in seconds globally, and is actually a deflationary system. In contrast to fiat currency, which is being created in huge amounts, and is cumbersome to use globally.
