Crypto Ready Nation - 2022

[romero121]

Worldwide crypto readiness is defined based on the number of blockchain startups in each country, the digital asset legislations and taxation rules, the number of ATMs, and the interest in the industry per capita.

Hongkong - 8.6 points out of 10
USA - 7.7 points out of 10
Switzerland - 7.5 points out of 10
Georgia
UAE
Romania
Croatia
Ireland
Czech Republic
Slovakia, Greece, Panama & Bulgaria shared 10th position.

Hongkong government is quite open to the sector and does not impose taxes on investors and businesses that generate profits from trading digital currencies. The density of crypto ATMs is among the highest, as there are two machines for every 100,000 people. This makes Hong the most Crypto Ready Nation.

USA was the leader on the list during the year 2021. Now it has fallen to the second position. Switzerland, one of Europe’s financial hubs does not tax crypto gains and is home to numerous blockchain startups. The authorities of the Southern Swiss city Lugano displayed intentions to introduce Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), and LVGA Points token as legal tender.

Interest different nations show towards digital assets based on the Google search data for "cryptocurrency".

Australia - 4,579 people out of 100,000 have searched “cryptocurrency”
Ireland - 3,472 people out of 100,000 have searched “cryptocurrency”
UK - 3,409 people out of 100,000 have searched “cryptocurrency”

Source : Most Crypto-Ready Nation in 2022 (Survey)

[jackg]

This is one of those lists that looks like it'll be interesting to come back to in a few years/a year to see if and how things have changed.

I think a lot of those countries are in Europe or like to adopt European legislation so it'll be interesting to see if Europe changes in either way (either becoming more or less accepting of crypto) what affect that'll have on the list as a whole (especially if they maintain a favourable relationship towards it).

[btc_angela]

Might be hard for Hong Kong though, sure they are already a sovereign nation. But for sure mainland China still has huge influence on them, the government, the people.

And we all know that the Chinese government is very hard on crypto specially bitcoin. So maybe the numbers might not be right after all. I'm not surprised by the 2nd and 3rd though, they have been in the limelight as far as crypto friendly is.

[pooya87]

Worldwide crypto readiness is defined based on the number of blockchain startups in each country, the digital asset legislations and taxation rules, the number of ATMs, and the interest in the industry per capita.

Only regulations make sense in this list, other criteria are not.
For example what do we consider "blockchain startup"? If there are a lot of scam ICO/IEO/DEFI/NFT/... shittokens coming from a country, we can't say that country is "crypto ready". I say that is the opposite, the more number of scams in that country the less ready they are for the blockchain technology.

Or the number of ATMs, due to their higher fees I don't see why would people want to use crypto ATMs instead of more P2P ways of exchanging their fiat and cryptocurrencies. Not to mention that companies may start mass-installing ATMs that aren't used like in India that they were even shut down after a while.

[so98nn]

I would rate 10 out 10 to Hong Kong because of the fact that they are not levying any taxes on the investors. Must have thought this through since you can fund the corporations in bitcoins, this could be pharmaceutical company or mechanical industry or IT sector but at the end these companies will be working for the nations development and at some point they will file the taxes from that business generated.

This keeps everyone happy, the bitcoin investor, the investor of big corporations and finally Government.

Wish has that liberty in our country.

[bittraffic]

Do you guys think it's worth investing in token projects based in Hong Kong?

Seem a good way to look at it when a place is ready for this kind of development when the future is to be considered. I have one token in mind but it's not very bullish.  The Latin countries were not listed but assuming they are all part of the USA, it means the US also going in crypto direction which they are just waiting for the regulation.

[slaman29]

I don't really trust some of these stats. Singapore is very crypto ready and I think for sure Indonesia Vietnam Thailand Malaysia, they had the facilities and even some crypto and blockchain use and ATMs years ago but no one used them to they just got out of order.

If I went to Bulgaria or UAE, and I have been UAE several times I honestly don't recall a single Bitcoin sign anywhere.

[Davidvictorson]

If the US senate passes the cryptocurrency regulation bill, it will topple Hong Kong to be at the top spot. One of the advantages that Hong Kong has over other nations is its small land mass and population when compared to the US. The US is already neck and neck with Hong Kong on the other factors that makes a country crypto ready. I wonder why crypto mining is not one of the factors to indicate a country's readiness.

[NotATether]

Worldwide crypto readiness is defined based on the number of blockchain startups in each country, the digital asset legislations and taxation rules, the number of ATMs, and the interest in the industry per capita.

Why are blockchain startups factored into the calculation? Sure, it makes sense to include the number of banks if you were trying to estimate worldwide banking readiness, but blockchain startups have almost nothing to do with the actual communities that use crypto.

Switzerland, one of Europes financial hubs does not tax crypto gains and is home to numerous blockchain startups. The authorities of the Southern Swiss city Lugano displayed intentions to introduce Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), and LVGA Points token as legal tender.

Oh god no.

Who on earth would make a cryptocurrency who may have insufficient reserves, whose supply and demand is controlled entirely by one company, and can freeze any address without warning, a legal tender? Just make your own CDBC and call it a day.

Never heard of the third one though (LVGA points), but you'd have to be really high on drugs to think that a points system as a legal tender is a good idea.

[Lucius]

Do you guys think it's worth investing in token projects based in Hong Kong?

Tokens and various altcoins for me personally are not a desirable investment anywhere in the world, and even less so in HK, which, like it or not, is part of China, regardless of the fact that it has the status of an administrative region. China can always change it and introduce rules and laws that apply in the rest of the country, and then the crypto game is over in HK.


Regarding the research methodology, for those who have not read the article, here is the direct link -> https://forexsuggest.com/worldwide-crypto-readiness-report/

Some things are still half-done because the zero capital gain tax infographic does not show Croatia, which has a similar law as Germany, with the difference that the tax is not paid after 2 years have passed since the purchase. Also, all crypto assets acquired before January 1, 2016 are considered tax-free.

[Coin_trader]

Vietnam is one of country that leads crypto adoption. They have there own group dedicated for the study of blockchain which called The Vietnam Blockchain Union which aims to increase crypto adoption in the country. There government is crypto friendly and open for blockchain adoption in there country.

They are just waiting for the government to pass a crypto-friendly just to make it official. But right now, Vietnam is the hotspot of crypto adoption in South East Asia.

You can read on the article how crypto friendly Vietnam is.


https://coingape.com/vietnam-could-pass-crypto-friendly-laws-soon-heres-why/#:~:text=Vietnam%20ranked%20first%20on%20an,and%20trade%20of%20crypto%20assets.


PS: Kardiachain is the number one contender for Vietnam government official blockchain.

[kryptqnick]

Legislation is a legit metric, but I'm not sure such overall criteria are helpful for crypto readiness. For that, Internet penetration and ownerships of smartphones are IMO very important to see if there's ground for adoption. The number of ATMs is probably not so relevant if there are convenient online exchanges instead. My question would also be crypto-ready for what, as adoption of Bitcoin as money is one thing, and blockchain businesses are quite a different thing.

[hugeblack]

I don't know that building outputs based on Google search or searching for specific words cannot represent a prediction or that these people are willing to invest based on Google search.
As for countries, they depend on regulatory laws, which may change governments and legislative systems, just as happened with El Sevador during a short period.

[savetheFORUM]

I would rate 10 out 10 to Hong Kong because of the fact that they are not levying any taxes on the investors. Must have thought this through since you can fund the corporations in bitcoins, this could be pharmaceutical company or mechanical industry or IT sector but at the end these companies will be working for the nations development and at some point they will file the taxes from that business generated.

This keeps everyone happy, the bitcoin investor, the investor of big corporations and finally Government.

Wish has that liberty in our country.

I think 8 or 9 is already better because they don't have anything like they haven't made btc a legal tender yet on their country. It is said that there are 2 atm's per 100k people. Isn't that too low? But I wonder why they call it the highest. I think that Honk Kong is also one of the richest or well-developed countries around the world so maybe that was the reason why they don't need a tax anymore for some other things like on crypto for example.

We shouldn't worry about it but it's also a good news at the same time for the people living on those countries because they can get all their crypto profits without any cut from the government. Don't worry if your country isn't like that but time will come that you can also see a big improvement.

[hatshepsut93]

It's pointless to talk about which nations are ready and which are not, because crypto adoption happens spontaneously. Governments can't force it, look how El Salvador tried to promote the use of Bitcoin and make it more convenient, and it still failed to make it a widely popular payment method. A nation with low Internet coverage and no crypto legislation can have higher rate of adoption than a country that made it a legal tender and promotes its use.

[pooya87]

Governments can't force it, look how El Salvador tried to promote the use of Bitcoin and make it more convenient, and it still failed to make it a widely popular payment method.

No country can ever make bitcoin the widely popular payment method regardless of what they they. That's the nature of adoption of a new payment method, it takes a lot of time. Add to that the volatility of bitcoin price and you can see that nobody expected mass adoption in El Salvador or anywhere else for that matter.

[Lucius]

It's pointless to talk about which nations are ready and which are not, because crypto adoption happens spontaneously. Governments can't force it, look how El Salvador tried to promote the use of Bitcoin and make it more convenient, and it still failed to make it a widely popular payment method. A nation with low Internet coverage and no crypto legislation can have higher rate of adoption than a country that made it a legal tender and promotes its use.

Maybe El Salvador is a specific country from which we expected too much when it comes to Bitcoin, but now we know that people still have a hard time accepting new technologies even if they are legalized by the government. However, there are two payment options in that country, and after 20+ years of using the US dollar as the official currency, the average person in that country trusts paper bills more than something that most people don't even fully understand.

As @pooya87 says, it will take a long time for Bitcoin to become more useful in that country, because everything will actually depend on the younger generations, and not on older people who hardly or not at all change their habits.

[TheNineClub]

Readiness and industry usage / startups / ATMs etc. are not correlated with one another. The legislation does not really seem to be on point in this list (Croatia for example has no better legislation than most of the EU), and that seems to be the biggest thing. Also, readiness would be more correlated to people using crypto on a daily basis, and not startups. I don't think countries are there yet nor are they close to being there.

[aoluain]

I have my own way of figuring if a nation is "Crypto Ready" and thats how relaxed or not
the regulations and particularly taxation is. For example in Europe I am aware of 3 favourable
countries when it comes to Crypto, they are Germany, Portugal and Malta.

As pooya87 says countries where questionable crypto companies and startups locate
would not be favourable in terms of "ready". There are countries in Europe which is actively
trying to create crypto environments for startups and industry but yea what is the nature of
those industries?