• Cryptocurrency users worldwide 2021

The global user base of cryptocurrencies increased by nearly 190 percent between 2018 and 2020, only to accelerate further in 2021. This according to calculations from various sources, based on information from trading platforms and on-chain wallets. The increase in demographics might initially have been caused by both a rise in the number of accounts 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. In 2021, however, crypto adoption continued as companies like Tesla and Mastercard announced their interest in cryptocurrency. On top of that, El Salvador became the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender.

Number of identity-verified cryptoasset users from 2016 to June 2021 (in millions)

Characteristic	Number of cryptocurrency users in millions
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Release date

July 2021

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

2016 to June 2021

Special properties

Both sources explicitly state all figures provided are estimates, and each methodology used has its limitations

Supplementary notes

The figures have been taken from several publications:

Figures up to 2018 were from CJBS's 2nd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study - published 2018;
The figure for 2020 were from CJBS's 3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study - published in September 2020;
All figures for 2021 were from Crypto.com's second iteration of its On-Chain Market Sizing report - published in July 2021.

Crypto.com describes it completely revamped its methodology in July 2021 as opposed to its previous work from May 2020 - due to the acceleration of the crypto world. It remarks that it now uses on-chain data for Bitcoin and Ethereum, counting the number of on-chain deposit adresses found within the largest coin exchanges. That said, the source does openly state that its figures are "a proxy only and subjected to various limitations and caveats".

The numbers shown here from CJBS 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."

CJBS 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."