US, Japan and South Korea lead the world in crypto interest: Report

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The U.S., Japan and South Korea lead the world in crypto interest. This is according to the latest study into cryptocurrency trends worldwide. The study, conducted by crypto outlet The Block, showed that five countries account for half the traffic for the 48 most popular digital currency exchanges.

The U.S. was the undisputed leader of the pack, the poll found. The country accounted for 24.5% of the total traffic to the exchanges over the six months that the poll was conducted. The country has always been a world leader in the adoption of new technology, and cryptocurrencies have proven to be no different.

In second place was economic giant Japan. The country, which was the first major economy to recognize cryptocurrency as a legal method of payment, had a 10% share of the traffic. South Korea at 6.5%, Indonesia at 4.5% and India at 4.2% rounded up the top five. China, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia and Brazil were the other countries in the top ten.

However, the rankings changed significantly when the researchers took the population of a country into consideration. With a population of 327 million, the U.S. was no longer at the top. Instead, Singapore came out top. The Asian country is recognized as one of the top global financial hubs and it has lived up to its name according to the study. In second place once again was Japan, with Switzerland ranking third.

The study also ranked crypto interest by regions and as expected, North America came out top. With Canada and the U.S. quickly taking to digital currencies, the regions is way ahead of its peers. Europe was second, with Oceania, Asia, South America and Africa rounding up the list respectively.

While the study provided an insight into the interest levels in cryptos, its data wasn’t a perfect representation of the crypto market. For one, in some countries, the cryptocurrency exchange industry hasn’t quite matured. Moreover, the established crypto exchanges have shunned some regions and thus crypto enthusiasts turn to peer-to-peer trading platforms such as LocalBitcoins. For instance, Coinbase still doesn’t provide its services to African countries despite expanding to 60+ countries globally.

The data was also skewed by the fact that some countries have either outlawed cryptos completely or have discouraged their citizens from trading. China is a prime example, with the country becoming hostile to cryptos in the past few years. Citizens in such countries turn to VPNs to avoid the censorship, skewing the data against them and for some other countries.