India has been taken aback by the popularity of cryptocurrency, with more and more people looking to hold it in their portfolios.
Since the cryptocurrency market is growing leaps and bounds every month, many young Indians are becoming more aware of what cryptocurrencies hold for their future.
This same sentiment has been found in the research done by a broker discovery and comparison platform BrokerChooser that has revealed that over 100 million Indians hold cryptocurrency.
The platform said that there are over 100.7 million crypto owners in India, followed by the US which came a distant second with just 27.4 million, Russia with over 17.4 million and Nigeria, which is the one of the fastest crypto growing nation in African continent with just 13 million crypto owners.
The numbers were contested
However, this number has been contested by many cryptocurrency experts. Recently, a crypto exchange founder said that these figures are incorrect as India today only has 15 million crypto owners, not 100 million as reported by BrokerChooser.
Giving out the reasons, the founder said that Indians only have an exposure of $7 billion, whereas, the overall crypto market is a whopping $2.62 trillion, how can this be possible. Adding further, he said that majority of Indian crypto owners are only airdrop earners and they have not invested a single penny in acquiring it.
Only a handful of High Net Individuals (HNIs) in India own Bitcoin which today commands over $61000 per token, where many small investors hold only a fraction of it.
Bitcoin alone has a market capitalization of over $1.19 trillion of the $2.62 trillion crypto market space.
However, this has no negative impact on new users from entering crypto space. Even though there has been a legal ambiguity on whether cryptocurrency investment is permitted in India and huge volatility in prices, the highest number of new crypto users are based in semi-urban and urban cities.
These users have developed a keen interest in cryptocurrency and have been investing their money in crypto to earn extra income.
Majority of the users are happy to take risk in investing in the crypto market, they are aware of the current crypto market and looking at the scope of decentralized finance and the alternative financial power it offers, crypto owners are open to take this risk.
Cryptocurrency is inclusive and popular
Indians working as software developers, content creators, and those working for global firms, are opting for getting paid in cryptocurrency over traditional money due to the ease of transferring it across borders, and lower transaction costs compared to bank transfers. The total volume of payments and transactions done in crypto has also increased by 30% in the last year.
Crypto owners have also surpassed the traditional stock investors that are registered with the Bombay Stock Exchanges (BSE) that has over 80 million users at present.
In terms of the number of crypto owners as a percentage of the total population, India stood at the fifth spot at 7.30%. Ukraine ranked first with 12.73% people of the total population owning crypto followed by Russia (11.91%), Kenya (8.52%) and the US (8.31%).
Commenting on this, another CEO of India based cryptocurrency exchange said that the digital assets have caught everyone’s attention not only because it has emerged as the best asset class of 2021 but also because other asset classes are not able to fulfill the aspiration of the smart investors who want their money to grow in tandem with global growth rate.
The world’s biggest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has gained more than 50% since the start of the year. The one-year gain stands at around 400%.
Cryptocurrencies have seen an exponential increase in interest even since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) banned it in 2018 and again when the ban was lifted in March 2020, with Indian exchanges clocking impressive user additions and a sustained surge in daily trading volumes.
There may be questioned raised by many on how many crypto owners we have, but the writing is on the wall, Indian users surely and Kleverly don't want to miss the opportunity to enhance their skills that will help them to become financial independent.
Entering Crypto space is a Klever idea!
Jagdish Kumar
Klever Writer