With overall crypto trading volumes increasing over 500 per cent in 2021, last year also brought record cryptocurrency gains for the average crypto investor. Researchers at TradingPedia combined multiple datasets to provide a thought-provoking view on the crypto profits dynamic. It turns out a significant amount of crypto investors started to earn enough to secure the necessities of life in 2021.
The company mapped recently-released data for estimated cryptocurrency gains per country by Chainalisys with a dataset, showing the world’s crypto adoption rates. This gave the estimated profit an average digital currency holder made in 2021, grouped by country. TradingPedia then went a step further and compared that to the Median Income per country, drawing it on a map. The results vary substantially and give a glimpse at how well different crypto investors did across the world, with Europe clearly taking the lead:
Europeans making the most out of crypto trading in 2021
Looking at the world map, the only region where crypto investors have earned over 30 per cent of their country’s Median Income in 202, is Europe. Furthermore, the average rate in the Old World is a staggering 46 per cent, compared to 9 per cent in the US, 17 per cent in Canada and 14 per cent in Australia.
“With the increased interest in Decentralised Finance (DeFi) we are also seeing an upsurge in malicious intent toward exploiting DeFi services for illicit financial gains. This upsurge is so substantial, that about 97 per cent of all crypto stolen in Q1 of 2022 is attributed to DeFi protocols. This is leading to fear and uncertainty in existing and prospective customers, clearly indicated by the drop in new DeFi users – the first quarter of 2022 is the first to see a single-digit percentage of user growth on a quarterly basis since the “early days” of 2019,” said Brian McColl, a fundamental and technical analysis expert at TradingPedia.
He continued: “Europe is traditionally lagging behind the US, where cryptocurrencies initially found early adoption with the first bitcoin transaction for physical goods taking place in Florida on May 22, 2010. The early adopters are always tech-savvy, highly educated IT professionals and enthusiasts. This explains their better performance when it comes to trading crypto.”
