Indonesia and Chile lead global digital currency interest: report

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Indonesia has emerged as the country with the highest interest in digital currencies, ranking ahead of Chile and Argentina, which are in second and third place respectively. The country saw a 1,770% rise in total engagement and close to 600% spike in total Google search volume.

Data by Coinformant showed that Indonesia had over 10,400 articles on digital currencies, a 132% rise in the past year. The Southeast Asian country, which banned digital currency payments this year, had over 7.2 million digital currency owners, making up 2.66% of the total population. Indonesia scored 5.73 out of 10 in aggregate digital currency interest score, the highest globally.

Coinformant, an Australian digital currency resources platform, used Google searches, ownership, articles and total engagement in its rankings. It gathered its data from Google Ads’ Keyword Planner as well as from BuzzSumo, a cloud-based engagement platform.

Chile ranked second with an aggregate score of 5.26 out of 10. The Latin American country had the highest growth in Google search volume at 707%, with total engagement growing at 639%. At over half a million, digital currency owners in Chile make up 2.62% of the total population.

Argentina was third with a score of 4.79, with Bulgaria being the highest-ranked European country at fourth and with a 4.69 aggregate score. Finland, Singapore, India and Romania were next, respectively.

Kenya, at ninth, was the highest-ranked African country, with a score of 4.18. The East African country was recently ranked fifth globally for adoption and first for peer-to-peer volume for the second year in a row. At 8.52%, Kenya had the second-highest proportion of digital currency owners in the top 10 after Singapore with 9.04%.

As Coinformant revealed, the data and rankings focused mostly on growth of the four metrics over the past year, and not purely at absolute numbers. The U.S. still ranks highest when considering absolute numbers.

“This report is about countries with the highest increase of these measures this year and it’s worth noting when looking purely at volume, the USA consistently comes number one,” Coinformant stated.