Bitcoin Forum

Users from the United States, South Korea, Japan, India, Mexico, and Indonesia generate about half of the bitcoin exchange traffic. The greatest interest in cryptocurrencies is shown by residents of Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and Venezuela. This data is contained in a new study by The Block (https://www.theblockcrypto.com/genesis/83999/south-korea-singapore-switzerland-and-venezuela-top-list-in-relative-cryptocurrency-popularity)

The traffic of cryptocurrency exchanges allows us to guess in which countries cryptocurrencies are used most actively, analysts are sure. According to them, the pseudo-anonymous nature of the blockchain on which digital assets are based does not allow us to find out directly.

The researchers used data from the Alexa and SimilarWeb services in October for the 30 most popular cryptocurrency exchanges. This approach allows you to evaluate the activity of retail investors, while large players often use the API.
Analysts noted the absence from the list of China and a number of other countries whose authorities block access using the Golden shield or its analogues. Residents of such countries are forced to rely on VPNs.

18.4% of the total traffic of bitcoin exchanges is in the United States; 11.4% - in South Korea; 8.5% — in Japan; 4.7% — in India; 4.3% — in Indonesia and 3.2% — in Mexico. In October, these countries accounted for a total of 50.5% of the 111.5 million visits.

https://i.ibb.co/1rYc1mb/2020-11-09-214149.jpg (https://ibb.co/CbpLgHW)

Binance had the largest number of visitors, almost 31.5 million (28.2%). Coinbase came in second with 22.9 million sessions (20.5%). All other exchanges in October showed less than 6 million visits.

https://i.ibb.co/VMBWJrQ/2020-11-09-232948.jpg (https://ibb.co/2cK7Wms)

The moment you read in their "study" that there is more traffic from Andorra than France and Spain, is the moment you print it and go to the bathroom to use it.  ;D

All the US and Singapore users could be binance to make up the 50% volume...

If Switzerland wanted bitcoin they could buy it they're wealthy? Not to mention that Germany has more nodes than the US when I last checked too (Germany have the most identified nodes by location but there are quite a few that aren't given a location).

It is a paid magazine with not a cheap price: $250 monthly. The article has poor quality that I don't mind to read. Traffic does not mean visitors or guests are using those exchanges for their trades.

The https://bitaps.com/ shows top three nations for bitcoin nodes are: the US, Germany, and France.

No doubt about users in the US or Japan, and somehow Singapore although it is a small country probably because Binance has headquarters there.
but how about China? I guess most of them using a VPN to access crypto or most of the users have left this country since a few years ago.
Since most of the traffic came from Binance and Coinbase, also many institutional-investors from the US, the conclusion is they have considerable influence on market prices.

I would not take the website visit statistic seriously because i believe very many people use VPNs. I personally use a VPN for most of my crypto related activities and guess what? In case my subscription has expired, default free available IP address locations include US, Germany, Canada, Netherlands...  :D

just to get the idea about this exchange traffic but dont really use it for accurate reference. but it shows that crypto users are growing in numbers, which is actually good for crypto community.


and one of the good things that happened during this pandemic is the increase interest of noncrypto users to take a look at crypto. as they have luxury of time to study and research about this digital currency during the lockdown period, some of them may actually have converted to be a crypto user. not full time crypto, but definitely some of them are looking at it as alternative payment method. and with the news coming from paypal, i guess the interest further increased.

I'm connecting to at least one exchange every day, with a Swiss IP, but I'm not there...

That list looks a lot more accurate!
The UK, Netherlands and Canada have some cultural similarities and population sizes so that makes sense.
Germany and the US have a higher global output afaik and a faster growing economy atm potentially so it makes sense they're at the top.


It'd scare me to connect through Switzerland, I feel they're small enough to have everyone looking at them by now and trying to track or reverse engineer somethibg.

Although I did still side with another European country to route my traffic through most of them are better for data privacy laws at least (whether you like to deselect those cookies or not you at least know they're there).

It's just a tip of what the Asian countries can do, countries like The Philippines as well are very active crypto users, maybe it wasn't there up with the top ten because they have their used local exchanges. But as far as activity and usage, the country has huge potential.

Germany should also be in the top list, there are a lot of online stores that accepts bitcoin as payment.

So I agree that the data set is not that accurate, but in any case, the numbers are pretty much telling us that Bitcoin is really growing.

I don't see China in the top 10. Are the average people there using a VPN to access the market so they won't be seen?
I think this country is one of the countries that has the largest crypto transactions in Asia.

So the world's second biggest population by country, the biggest middle class, doesn't even rank up there? Hard for me to believe. I think the node ranking we've known for a while, and US has been seeing its dominance chipped away, which is a good thing.

But traffic to exchanges don't mean much at all. Got to remember many of these exchanges advertise on CMC/CG/Brave etc and there are people clicking out of curiosity, not necessarily trading.

I've never signed up for any service I actually clicked from an ad, I don't recall!

It was indicated on the OP bottom part though that China have a law that restricting user to trade that's why most of Chinese are relying on VPN just to trade crypto. In reality, China is still one of the biggest traffic provider in exchanges of they don't use VPN and there government won't restrict there people. They want to focus on there own cryptocurrency and capitalize it that's why they are too strict on cryptocurrency. They want to apply tax to crypto.

Germany has always been underrated for wealth because of the conservative lifestyle of the wealthy but their investment strategy has been smart. The small countries in the list e.g Singapore, Switzerland still surprises me, they are also affiliated to retail investors. They got the money anyway and cryptocurrency is top of their investment. Unless we realize that bitcoin will always increase in price even Governments could be late to exploit the financial technology.

I did not expect that the bitcoin exchange traffic is only circulating in 6 countries. I find it surreal to the point that it looks like bitcoin global adoption seem impossible. I can see my country although it is not in the higher tier which is understandable. Mexico seems an unlikely candidate for the bitcoin traffic. I am not speculating nor discriminating but there is something fishy with that. We all know that bitcoin offers pseudo-anonymity which is very useful when it comes to money laundering. My hunch is that cartels are catching up to using cryptocurrency to transport their blood money without the fuss of using mules to deliver the money with the risk of having the border guards and customs seizing the contraband. I am speculating in regards to the ranking of Mexico and I am in no means discriminating or stereotyping.

Nope, not only circulating in 6 countries, it just 6 countries traffic of bitcoin exchange combines makes it slightly above 50% which is 50,5% as mentioned.
So, there is still the remaining 49.5% traffic from around the world, including from your country.
Nevertheless, it's not an accurate data, just a representation of exchanges traffic because there are countries block acces to bitcoin or simply banned anything related to cryptocurrency.

it's not an accurate data I think

Indonesia have more than 50% of BTC exchange traffic for bitcoin and altcoin but there are still illegal using bitcoin as payment currency transaction, although their people have look popular with bitcoin and altcoin still not get education for government how to adopt bitcoin as legal payment transaction. I think how much traffic for bitcoin and altcoin is not important until government wanna allow to use bitcoin and give guarantee for investor save their money as bitcoin and altcoin assets. I think most worry from government why bitcoin still illegal assets afraid when many people moving their money from bank saving become bitcoin and altcoin digital assets.

If smb is using VPN or proxy how does it count in the research? Many exchange users hide their countries of residence.

It will differ from time to time since there are a lot of factors that may affect the traffic in exchanges like the US election including the campaign period where US citizens tend to move some of their assets and the blocking of binance to US residence in their services.

We cannot conclude that these 6 countries are the main reason for the traffic besides the report was only made in a limited number of months that makes it inaccurate analysis.

Well for me, this may seemed to me not too reliable since the exchanges occur in every minute, -- and the moment they have published this in a split of seconds it could be different though. There are a lot of factors that any changes to this like the VPN and the possibility of the time difference in every country. That means it can be true that the traffic came from these countries yet only at a specific time that is why if we will check it on the other sites it will be different for they do it in another period of time.

And if those countries block anything related to bitcoin how do you expect that country to have anything close to significant in terms of usage and traffic?


Germany at least made it into the graph, but as I said, look for France and Spain which are not even there.
So you have a country with 70mil and a GDP per capita of 40k$ and another one with 45 mils and 38k/capita not listed there, but you have in top Andorra, a country squeezed between those, with an entire population that would make it the 98th largest town in Spain and the 65th in France.
And a lot, a lot of things that are at least weird, like Peru and Algeria going ahead of Germany and Italy combined.


But can you deal with the fact that 85% of the bitcoin ATMs are located in the US and Canada?
The numbers are indeed wrong because they tell only one part of the story, traffic, and you can have 100 people visiting the site and closing down without doing trade and you can have 10 making 1000BTC in trading a day.

Although I'm not sure the data in the opening post is accurate, I do believe Bitcoin exchange traffic is increasing in almost every country.
As for the percentage of the United States, it may be true, because I believe that there are many users doing Bitcoin transactions on the
exchanges, probably because most of the Bitcoin ATMs currently in circulation are in America. This proves a little that the demand for Bitcoin
in America is quite high, Moreover, with Paypal deciding to accept Bitcoin, the demand for Bitcoin in America increased significantly.

This clearly shows that this list isn't accurate,so there's no point of sharing it and discussing such misleading information.
It's not a secret that the majority of BTC miners are located in China.How would they move and sell their coins to crypto exchange platforms if they aren't using VPNs?
I really hope that China will,sooner or later, lift the ban over cryptocurrency trading.This will boost the Bitcoin price(and probably the altcoin prices too) really high.

Don't get bothered by what OP's had shown up, those presentation is changing this time.
Anyway, I'm not against that America leads the numbers as they are capable of but to find the rest country's position, that is something different.

It won't be very important anyway, the adoption continues, the number of users keeps growing, that something it fuels more traffic. But it won't wonder that those who belong to the 1st world country will be on the top while the 3rd world country will stay in the last position.

I don't believe US has almost 20% of bitcoin traffics, most exchanges know that there are large number of traders in that country so they won't ban it. Users outside that country would definitely know that so they would obviously connect in that country. That percentage is not exactly inside US only.

Thanks for interesting statistics! This data rises many socioeconomic tendencies all over the world, but surely should be accepted with other vital stats, such as exchange rate to population, total amount of BTC to population, poor-to-rich indexes, and mining capacity by country.

If Bitcoin is regulated in all countries, this number will be reduced.

hmm, sorry I am dumb.

I feel the exchange traffic is not good to express the usages of BTC exchanges. People can visit but they don't trade. They can visit to see price actions and even don't log in accounts. They can log in accounts but the amount of btc or crypto in their accounts are not reflected by exchange traffic. Two exchange users with same amount in balance have different trading volume in day or month (they are trader or investor so their trading activities on exchanges are different).

For some of the countries, I have a feeling that there may be under-reporting of data. For example, in India the local exchanges were closed down many months back and most of the trading occurs in peer-to-peer platforms. And most of these platforms may refuse to divulge trade volumes. The same can be said about other countries, such as China and the Latin American nations such as Brazil and Argentina.

when trades take place peer to peer then there is no volume being recorded anywhere to be reported later. there isn't exactly a platform to report it either, the "platform" is mostly a place where the two parties meet each other to make the trade in private without the rest of the world knowing about its details.
if it is any other way, then the method can not be called P2P anymore.

I think if you go to Statista or Investing websites you will get much more accurate data related to cryptocurrencies.

The data keeps on changing every now and then and at the same time it's difficult to keep a track of this , right now I do believe that the countries listed here are actively involving themselves in Bitcoins.
On the other hand there are countries where people hold the most number of Bitcoins for example:
USA
Romania
China
Spain
Switzerland
South Korea
Then we have countries with the most number of mining farms like :
Russia
China
Iceland
USA
Switzerland
Now these statistical data is taken from google from various websites but there is no way of telling how accurate that is. One should understand for a fact that these countries are actively involving themselves doesn't necessarily mean that they are bitcoin friendly countries. If we do have to take a country into account which is massively involved with cryptocurrencies I do believe we would have to take everything into account here.

But that's good that some developing countries are also involving themselves in Bitcoins.