Vietnam, Philippines and Ukraine top 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index: Chainalysis

This year’s Global Crypto Adoption Index from Chainalysis names Vietnam, the Philippines and Ukraine as emerging market leaders in cryptocurrency grassroots adoption.

Vietnam takes the top spot for the second consecutive year due to its high purchasing power and adoption of centralised, DeFi and peer to peer (P2P) tools.

Ranking the countries by measuring where the most people are investing the biggest share of their money — rather than raw cryptocurrency transaction volume — the index reveals not only institutional activity but countries with high non-professional investor activity.

The index ranks 146 countries based on five sub-indexes, weighted by purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita.

• On-chain cryptocurrency value received at centralised exchanges
• On-chain retail value received at centralised exchanges
• P2P exchange trade volume
• On-chain cryptocurrency value received from DeFi protocols
• On-chain retail value received from DeFi protocols

In the case of Vietnam, the authors state, “cryptocurrency-based gaming, including games following the play to earn (P2E) and move to earn (M2E) models, are particularly popular in the Southeast Asian country. That goes not just for users, but builders too, as the top-grossing P2E game Axie Infinity is based in Ho Chi Minh City, with its success inspiring more crypto gaming start-ups to find success in Vietnam.”

The rest of the top ten include the United States, Pakistan, Brazil, Thailand, Russia and China.

“The United States moved up to fifth in our index rankings from eighth in 2021 and sixth in 2020. The U.S. ranks in the top three of each sub-index, with the exception of population and purchasing power-adjusted P2P exchange usage, where it ranks much lower at 111th. This isn’t surprising, as our research shows that P2P exchange usage tends to be highest in countries with low purchasing power,” the report states.

“Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the United States is by far the highest-ranked developed market country on our index, and one of only two to make the top 20 along with the UK.”

China also re-entered the top ten this year, moving up from 13^th place in 2021.

“Our sub-indexes show that China is especially strong in usage of centralised services, placing second overall for purchasing power-adjusted transaction volume at both the overall and retail levels. This is especially interesting given the Chinese government’s crackdown on cryptocurrency activity, which includes a ban on all cryptocurrency trading announced in September 2021. Our data suggests that the ban has either been ineffective or loosely enforced.”