According to a 2022 Crypto.com market sizing report, 119 million new crypto owners were added between January to December 2022. This figure represents a 39% surge, totalling the global owners to 425 million.
Those statistics are interesting because a reduction or at least a stagnation of crypto owners would be expected due to the market downturn of 2022. Surprisingly, more crypto owners were added in the brutal bear market of last year.
This trend signals the resilient nature of the blockchain ecosystem and the magnitude of acceptance it enjoys despite the volatility attached.
More on the Crypto.com report
According to the crypto.com report, global crypto owners increased by 39% in 2022, rising from 306 million in January to 425 million in December. A further breakdown shows that benchmark digital asset Bitcoin owners moved from 183 million in January to 219 million in December, representing a 20% increase. The largest cryptocurrency by market cap accounts for 52% of global crypto owners.
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Bitcoin’s strongest growth happened in April when the Central African Republic became the second country to adopt BTC as a legal tender after EI Salvador. There was also a spike in BTC adoption in November during FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022
Second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, grew from 24 million in January to 87 million in December, representing a 263% increase over the last 12 months. Data shows that the largest DeFi token accounts for 20% of global crypto owners. The top two cryptocurrencies(bitcoin and Ethereum, with a combined market cap of over $587 billion, continue to hold over 70% dominance of the total crypto market.
The crypto.com findings point to the Ethereum network Merge in September as the major catalyst behind the network’s high adoption rate. Recall that the upgrade, regarded as a landmark achievement for the crypto community, marked the completion of the network’s transition from a proof-of-work to an energy-efficient proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. Other factors that pulled traffic to the network also include interest from institutional investors and the popularity of ETH liquid staking.
The report from crypto.com substantiates the findings from an earlier report from Triple-A in 2022. The latter put global users at 320 million at that point and projected a rise beyond those figures before 2023. The Triple-A report then ranked the USA, Pakistan, India, Nigeria and Vietnam as the top 5 countries where crypto owners live.
Crypto growth trajectory
With the impressive growth rate in 2022, the number of crypto holders is also expected to increase significantly in 2023. The crypto adoption index reportedly represents around 4% of the global population. Not outrightly impressive, but the growth has been exponential, and there are indications that the trend will continue in 2023.
Lots of platforms have been integrating blockchain products. Most notable are Facebook and Instagram, which have tested NFTs on multiple smart contract cryptocurrencies. Also, free speech-focused social media platforms like Telegram and Signal have been integrating crypto features into their platforms with TON.
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According to Blockdata in October 2022, top institutions like Microsoft, Visa, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase & co, MasterCard, T-Mobile, Toyota, Alphabet, Chevron, Shell and many others utilise the blockchain for their day to day operations. These international companies have billions of users combined, and just a tiny percentage of crypto adoption by their users would continue to prove significant.
According to a report by Crypto.com published on December 20 2022, taking into account the growth rate and depending on the market conditions going further, the number of digital asset owners should reach anywhere between 600 million and 800 million in 2023.
2023 is a defining year for the blockchain, and enthusiasts are eager to see what the year holds for the industry.
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