Crypto-asset users’ number skyrockets to 101 million globally

The University of Cambridge found that the number of cryptoasset users worldwide has exceeded 101 million — this was unveiled in their 3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study that collated date from entities operating in four main segments of the industry: exchange, payments, custody and mining.

The growth for crypto

The number above is almost three times that number of cryptocurrency investors that were active in 2018; at that time, there were around 35 million of them. Since then, there has been a growing inclination towards crypto assets like Bitcoin — as reported by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance researchers. Their findings correlate with a recent study done by Glassnode, who are an on-chain market analytics firm. Their data indicated that the amount of Bitcoin wallets that are transferring funds to crypto exchanges has doubled since the beginning of 2020. Additionally, Glassnode stated that this trend also shed light on the increase in the number of people who are investing in Bitcion thanks to the sharp devaluation of the US dollar, which is no small measure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Cambridge study acknowledges that the 189% of increase is, on the one hand due to the rise in the number of accounts (those have increased by 37%), on the other hand, a a greater share of accounts being systematically linked to an individual’s identity. This allowed the researchers to increase their estimate of minimum user numbers that are associated with accounts on each service provider.

Links to other studies

A study that was commissioned by the UK financial regulator also estimated an increase of 78%, so the Cambridge studies’ findings basically correspond with those of others’ studies in the field. As far as service providers are concerned, the ones operating from Europe and North America observed the highest user activity, with the median firm having 40% of active crypto asset users.