A study by the University of Cambridge records 101 million cryptocurrency users worldwide. The study provides details on the growth of the industry, mining, off-chain activity, user behavior, security, and regulation.
Bitcoin remains popular with exchanges, payments, and storage service providers. This is due in part to how easy it is to convert sovereign fiat currencies and other cryptocurrency assets. While the popularity of the cryptocurrency has increased, support for it has dropped from 98% of service providers in 2017 to 90% in 2020.
According to The Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study,
“An updated estimate of the number of cryptoasset users indicates a total of up to 101 million unique users across 191 million accounts opened at service providers in Q3 2020. In 2018, the 2nd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study estimated the number of identity-verified cryptoasset users at about 35 million globally”
Previous research for The Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study has been carried out. The previous study was the 2nd Crypto Asset Benchmarking Study which found that the number of identity-verified cryptoasset users was 35 million.
The previous study focused on the following four market segments:
• Mining
• Payments
• Custody
• Exchange
Wallet providers, exchanges, miners, cloud mining providers, and cryptocurrency custodians took part in the study.
The previous study found Bitcoin to be the most popular cryptocurrency with the majority of surveyed miners mining the cryptocurrency. It also noted that while Bitcoin’s median on-chain transaction size has consistently grown since 2016, other cryptocurrency asset systems have experienced declining median amounts per transaction.
Users have different reasons for using cryptocurrencies. Service providers from North America and Europe report higher user activity. A significant proportion of firms found that 40% of total users are considered active.
54% of service providers defined users that log in or interact with the service at least once a month as active while 33% do so using a weekly timeframe.
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