According to data from Data report the number of people who own some form of cryptocurrencies has increased by a whopping 37.8% this year. One in ten internet users between the ages of 16 and 64 currently own some form of cryptocurrencies.
Crypto in developing countries
Owning crypto is especially popular in developing countries, and especially in countries where the currency is more sensitive to large exchange rate fluctuations. For example, Turkey’s currency, the Turkish lira, has lost about half of its value against the US dollar. At the same time, the number of people who own crypto in this country increased by a whopping 86%. Where previously only 10% of the Turkish population had bought crypto, it is now 18.6%
Turkey ranks fifth behind South Africa, Philippines, Nigeria and Thailand. Thailand ranks first with a whopping 20.1% of the population having purchased and owned digital currencies.
The Netherlands is in twelfth place, with a percentage of 13.1%. This would make it, after Turkey, the highest score of all European countries.
Skewed distribution of crypto owners
The data also showed that it is mainly men who own crypto. In addition, cryptocurrencies are also a lot less popular with the older generations. Fewer than one in twenty internet users between the ages of 55 and 64 own digital currencies. The men dominate crypto holdings in each of the five age groups.
Earlier you could read in the bitcoin news that one in ten women chooses crypto as their first investment. This emerged in the study of ‘Women x Crypto’ by lending platform BlockFi.
An earlier study by Charles Schwab, an American financial services company, also showed that there is a clear difference in the interest in crypto between different generations. Of Gen Z people (born between 1996 and 2010) and Millennials (born between 1980 and 1995), 43% and 47%, respectively, want crypto to be part of their retirement plan. With the older generations this was a completely different story: from the people of generation X and the boomers 31% and 11% respectively want digital currency to be part of their retirement plan.
So the fact that men and younger generations dominate crypto ownership came as no surprise.