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Estimate of the number of cryptocurrency users worldwide 2016-2020

Published by Raynor de Best, Feb 17, 2021

The global user base of cryptocurrencies increased by nearly 190 percent between 2018 and 2020, according to information from trading platforms and wallets. The increase in demographics might have been caused by both a rise in the number of accounts - which, according to the source, increased by 37 percent - as well as improvements in identification. More accounts in exchanges or wallets became systematically linked to an individual’s identity, which made it easier to estimate the minimum user numbers associated with accounts on each service provider.

Number of identity-verified cryptoasset users from 2016 to the 3rd quarter of 2020 (in millions)

	Number of cryptocurrency users in millions
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Source

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Source

Release date

September 2020

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

2016 to Q3 2020

Special properties

The source explicitly states the figures provided are estimates. More information can be found under the "Details" tab.

Supplementary notes

The figures have been taken from several publications.

The numbers shown here were collected by the source from "longitudinal account and user data of both small and larger service providers from publicly available sources such as press releases, news articles, company websites, and public forums. This dataset was combined with survey data from participating platforms and projects from 47 countries."

The source mentions the figures provided are the "lower-bound of the global cryptoasset unique user base" and adds the following information: "The analysis does not capture all accounts at service providers since no data was available for some major platforms (e.g. in China) or individuals who do not use service providers. Together, these would contribute to an underestimation of total users. On the other hand hand, there are no easy means to identify users with accounts at multiple service providers - a practice that would contribute to an overestimation. Overall, there are reasons to believe that the underestimation factors outweigh the overestimation factors, which suggest that the current figure is a conservative lower-bound estimate."