Number of cryptocurrency users increase by 189% to 101M in 2 years

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has forced most people to ditch cash which helped increase the cryptocurrency adoption. In fact, a recent study revealed that there are now more than a hundred million users of digital currencies worldwide.

To be exact, there are now 101 million users of cryptocurrency, according to Bitcoin.com. This was the figure given by the third “Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study,” which was just published this month.

The study was conducted by the University of Cambridge and the school’s Centre for Alternative Finance. The 71-page September 2020 third edition of the Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study examined various issues such as the crypto industry’s growth, regulation, user profiling, security, and mining.

Despite being known for the price volatility of cryptocurrencies, the number of crypto users actually increased by 66 million in just two years. “In 2018, the 2nd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study estimated the number of identity-verified crypto asset users at about 35 million globally,” the study said. “Applying the same methodology, an update of this estimate indicates a total of up to 101 million unique crypto asset users across 191 million accounts opened at service providers in Q3 2020.”

This represents a 189 percent increase in the number of cryptocurrency users since the previous report which was released in 2018. “This 189% increase in users may be explained by both a rise in the number of accounts (which increased by 37%), as well as a greater share of accounts being systematically linked to an individual’s identity, allowing us to increase our estimate of minimum user numbers associated with accounts on each service provider,” UC’s study added.

When it comes to crypto mining, Bitcoin (BTC) remains the most mined token followed by Ethereum (ETH). “The benchmark report notes that bitcoin (BTC) is the most popular coin with 89% of respondents mining the crypto asset,” the study wrote. “BTC is followed by ethereum (ETH – 35%) and bitcoin cash (BCH – 30%) respectively. Certain regions have different miner popularity ratings depending on the region and demographic.”

UC’s study noted that Ethereum (ETH) is more popular among Latin American cryptocurrency miners. On the other hand, Bitcoin (BTC) is more popular among miners located in North America and APAC.

There are also regional variations when it comes to the miming privacy tokens. “The mining of privacy coins in Western regions also differs from the global average: 28% and 19% of European and North American hashers report mining zcash, and as many North American hashers also engaged in monero mining,” the authors of the study wrote.

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