Monitoring crypto adoption also helps assess whether cryptocurrencies are fulfilling their promises, such as providing economic empowerment to people with limited access to the traditional financial system and fueling a new type of internet where users own their data.

Analytic firms regularly track different aspects of crypto adoption, use, and awareness – another important metrics that helps estimate the future adoption.

Here are some recent insights that can give us an idea of the state of crypto.

Crypto adoption is difficult to measure

The pseudonymous nature of blockchain and the absence of a central authority make data collection painstaking and inexact. However, some companies venture into this territory, developing methodologies to estimate the number of crypto owners by analyzing various data sources.
Triple-A is one such company, and it has recently published a report measuring global crypto ownership. It estimated that over 420 million people owned crypto, which is 31% more than last year’s estimation.

This number is obtained by using:

  • country weighted scoring by Chainalysis (based on the received on-chain value),
  • global crypto ownership report by the University of Cambridge,
  • specific research and data sampling for China and India, due to their size,
  • 16 studies and surveys by different entities (research companies, banks, exchanges, etc).
  • A comparable study was published in January by crypto.com, and it counted 425 million users in 2022, showing that we might be looking at more or less realistic numbers.
  • This would mean that over 5% of the global population owns crypto.

Crypto use

As shown by Glassnode, the number of active Bitcoin addresses is now around 990k, and the number of daily transactions ranges from 350k to 680k.

However, it is virtually impossible to measure all Bitcoin-related activity, because a big part of it happens on the Lightning Network, a scalability solution designed to process small transactions off-chain, fast and cheap.

The use of web3 can be better documented. The DApp (decentralized application) industry has reached an average of almost 2 million daily unique active wallets in May, as reported by DappRadar.

This activity mostly concerns the crypto gaming and DeFi (decentralized finance) sectors, which represent 36% and 31%, respectively. Social DApps come third with 12% of activity, and the NFTs now generate only 8%.

Crypto awareness

For quite some time, crypto-related news have been making headlines, albeit often in a negative way. Nevertheless, this exposure has contributed to the growing global crypto awareness, as well as monetary challenges in some countries.

A recent study by Consensys and Yougov found that a large majority (92%) of people said they were aware of cryptocurrencies. Of those, at least a half claimed to understand what they were.

Yougov interviewed 15,158 people aged 18 - 65 across 15 countries (Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea, The Philippines, the UK, the US, and Vietnam). Unsurprisingly, the countries with the worst monetary conditions have shown the highest levels of knowledge: in Nigeria, almost 80% of respondents said they understood the nature of cryptocurrencies, while in the European countries only 40% of people could say so.

When it comes to web3, however, the awareness is still limited. Only 34% of the surveyed were more or less familiar with the concept, and this despite the fact that most of them acknowledged the problems underlying its very purpose.

Indeed, 67-83% of people agreed on the following statements:

  • Data privacy is important to me,
  • I should have a share of the profit that a web company makes using my data,
  • I would like to have more control over my online identity,
  • I believe I should own the things I make on the internet.
  • These issues are among those that web3 tries to answer, but apparently, it still lacks in truly successful applications.

Crypto adoption is often compared to the internet adoption, and so far, their curves are almost identical. In 2000, the internet was also used by 5% of the population, and some countries actively debated its utility. Future will tell if crypto enjoys the same trajectory.

Written by D.Center