TradingView, the social charting network for investors and traders – one of the 100 most visited websites in the world thanks to the retail trading boom – has dived into its search and user data to offer a unique insight as to where in the world cryptocurrencies are most popular.
The data, gleaned from 27m search enquiries from its 100 million users between November and January – and covering more than 6,000 cryptocurrency pairs – has highlighted some fascinating trends.
Understandably, the US has the most total cryptocurrency enquiries due to the sheer volume of cryptocurrency traders, followed by Germany, Turkey, UK, and France to make up the top five.
But when the data is analysed as a percentage of all enquiries made in that country (i.e. the number of cryptocurrency enquiries relative to stocks, shares, forex and other tradable assets) a different picture emerges.
Cuba is the only country in the world where over half of all inquiries (50.4%) were made about cryptocurrency assets, an increase of 12.2% on last year. Countries which rank lower on The Human Freedom Index, or which are politically turbulent for other reasons, feature frequently in the top 10.
Libya (42.2%), Ukraine (41.9%), and Palestinian Territory (38.7%) all feature in the top five, while the Syrian Arab Republic (36.9%) is tenth, suggesting that countries with high levels of instability are proportionally more interested in digital assets than more developed nations.
The top 10 cryptocurrencies as a percentage of total enquiries are:
- Cuba – 50.4%
- Finland – 46.0%
- Libya – 42.4%
- Ukraine – 41.9%
- Palestinian Territory – 38.7%
- Slovenia – 38.4%
- Faroe Islands – 38.3%
- South Korea – 37.9%
- Georgia – 37.5%
- Syria – 36.9%
The bottom 10 cryptocurrencies as a percentage of total enquiries are:
- Tanzania – 10.2%
- Lesotho – 10.2%
- Swaziland – 9.8%
- South Sudan – 9.8%
- Botswana – 9.7%
- Malawi – 9.7%
- Malaysia – 9.6%
- Macao – 8.9%
- Djibouti – 8.0%
- India -6.7%
India is the outlier in the research – while it is one of the most active countries to use TradingView, with millions of active users, and indeed, millions of crypto enquiries, its interest in cryptocurrencies as a proportion of the total enquiries made is muted. This is most likely due to proposed laws, due to be debated any day now, which ban cryptocurrencies while creating a framework for an official digital currency to be issued by its central bank.
James Maddison, Head of UK at TradingView, said: “Bitcoin, in particular, has always had its critics, but you can’t ignore the fact that this data suggests countries experiencing hardship right now seem to be the ones most interested in cryptocurrency.
“If everyday people in those countries are getting a real-world use from cryptocurrency, and they’re using our platform to actively gather more information about them as a result, we think that’s great – more power to them.
“What we shouldn’t do is overlook or pooh-pooh cryptocurrency just because it’s still an unknown quantity to many still. Everything was new once upon a time.”