By Jasper Hamill
A global study has named the countries in which interest in crypto has grown the most over the past year.
Coinformat, an Australian crypto platform, analyzed a number of data points to draw up a “crypto interest index” which shows increases in Google search volume, the number of articles written each year, total engagement with these articles, and the percentage of the population which owns crypto.
The study named Indonesia as the world’s “crypto hotspot of 2021” because it experienced the second-highest increase in Google searches for crypto-related terms in the last twelve months and the largest increase in engagement (1,772%) with articles about crypto. All of this suggests a growing number of people talking and thinking about blockchain worldwide.
There are an estimated 7.3 million crypto owners in Indonesia, with local exchange Tokocrypto rumored to be planning a stock market IPO (initial public offering).
Chile was found to be in second place, followed by Argentina, Bulgaria, and Finland.
“Interest in cryptocurrencies has surged right across the world in the last twelve months as the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of payments, and technology is improving at a rapid rate,” Coinformat wrote.
“While some still treat cryptocurrencies with a level of skepticism, many are embracing the opportunities they present, with more crypto exchanges to choose from than ever before.”
Chile was placed in the median range of the percentage of its population that owns crypto, yet had the highest growth of crypto-related Google searches in the world, with the number of searches jumping 707.1% over the past year. Chile also had the fifth-highest increase in the number of articles published this year, finding itself the “second most buzzing hotspot for crypto overall in 2021 with the number of crypto owners set to soar”.
Argentina scored highly across many data points, with a “dramatic increase” in the volume of articles related to cryptocurrency and an “astounding” increase in the number of people engaging with crypto articles.
“Cryptomining has experienced something of a boom in recent years in the country, supposedly fuelled by the ultra-cheap residential energy costs in Argentina,” Coinformat wrote.
Another interesting finding from the report is the observation that Finland has seen a 725.7% increase in the number of crypto articles published in the last year, which increased from 136 to 1,123.
The country with the largest proportion of crypto owners is Ukraine, where 12.73% of the population own crypto. India has the highest actual number of crypto owners.
“Ukraine’s government has been very accepting of cryptocurrency so far, which explains why just so many people have adopted it,” Coinformat added.
Singapore, Keyna, and the USA followed behind Ukraine in the ranking of nations with the highest percentages of crypto ownership.
Before you despair about the US crypto scene, it’s worth remembering that America consistently ranks number one for each measure apart from crypto ownership, which means it is arguably the world’s most important crypto hotspot, even though interest is growing faster in other nations.
You can read the full study here.