This is the third year Chainalysis, a blockchain market analysis company, released a Global Cryptocurrency Adoption Index (GCAI) report on blockchain usage and adoption across145 countries and territories.
In the first year, Vietnam was in 10th place, then suddenly jumped to the first position the year after and has retained its lead for two years.
Among the five sub-indexes (centralized service value received, retail centralized service value received, P2P exchange trade volume, DeFi value received, and retail DeFi value received), Vietnam scored high in purchasing power and population-adjusted adoption across centralized, DeFi, and P2P cryptocurrency tools.
Vietnam is one of the world’s first countries to have an official Blockchain association. Founded in May 2022, Vietnam Blockchain Association hopes to act as a bridge to connect communities and projects with the government to further push the digital transformation in the country.
In 2020, a survey by Statista showed that 21% of respondents who said to have used and owned cryptocurrency came from Vietnam. This figure is far higher than those of many developed countries, such as China (7%), the US (6%), or Japan (4%).
A similar trend is still reflected in the report of Chainalysis as out of the top 20 ranked countries, ten are lower-middle income, eight are upper-middle income, and only two are high income.
According to Chainalysis, users from lower-income countries tend to choose cryptocurrency to send remittances, protect their savings in times of economic crisis, or satisfy their financial demands. Bitcoin and stablecoins are more preferred in these areas than others.
Another reason for Vietnam's top position in this ranking is that developers are very quick to catch up with worldwide trends, like play-to-earn (P2E) or move-to-earn games (M2E). Local users have also welcomed and used apps like Axie Infinity, a Vietnam-based crypto gaming startup that has now become one of the top-grossing P2E games. Emerging M2E games are joining the race with notable names like StepN, Calo Metaverse, and Run Together.
In second place was the Philippines, which earned a score of 0.753, followed by Ukraine (0.694). The remaining positions in the top five were India (0.663) and the US (0.653). Despite the Chinese government's ban on all cryptocurrency trading in 2021, China was ranked tenth.