Data acquired from Statista indicates that one-in-three Nigerians held or used crypto assets in 2021. This analysis shows that Nigeria is the leading country per capita for Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto adoption. Over 30% of the sampled population indicated that they had come into contact with crypto assets last year.
Based on the survey, the pre-existing prevalence of phone-based peer-to-peer payments has made many Nigerians explore different digital assets. Statista also noted that many Nigerians responded that they had recently installed cryptocurrency payment applications on their mobile devices.
Furthermore, the same reports state that an increasing number of Nigerians are exploring crypto assets for international remittances. Adoption in the West African country shows no signs of slowing down. Demand for crypto assets is booming in Africa’s biggest population despite the Central Bank of Nigeria enacting a severe ban on banks offering financial services to cryptocurrency exchanges in the last two weeks.
On February 17, reports emerged that bitcoin was trading at a 36% premium in Nigeria. Based on Google Trends, Nigeria also dominates search traffic for the keyword ‘Bitcoin.’
Notably, crypto adoption is also growing in South East Asia, with around 21% of Vietnamese and 20% of Filipino participants saying that they had used crypto sometime in 2021.
Just like the case of Nigeria, Statista attributes a lot of the Filipino and Vietnamese demand for cryptocurrency to remittances. Currently, Vietnam ranks second by adoption despite its central bank avoiding and banning crypto assets. The bank has refused to recognize cryptos as a legitimate means of payment.
Vietnam’s government established a research group in May 2021 that was tasked with developing and reviewing policy proposals about digital currencies. This move suggests that the nation might soften its stand eventually
Peru and Turkey were found to be the fourth and third-ranked nations for adoption with around 16% of respondents from each of these countries directly engaging with cryptos in 2021. Switzerland comes in fifth with 11%.
These findings were based on Statista’s Global Consumer Survey, which featured participants from 74 countries. Despite all of its highly permissive crypto regulations, Japan ranked as the lowest globally for digital asset adoption, tying with Denmark with barely 4%.
