Which country really has the most crypto holders by population?

[Kelvinid]

I was reading a recent ranking that listed Singapore and UAE as the most “crypto-obsessed” countries. What stood out to me was not just the hype, but the actual percentage of people who hold crypto:

UAE → ~25.3% of the population
Singapore → ~24.4%
U.S. → ~15%
Turkey → ~14%
Canada → ~13%

When you look at it this way, it’s not about which country has the biggest market in raw numbers, but which one has the highest adoption relative to their population.
To make it clearer, I even made a simple graph for illustration:



Curious to hear your thoughts: is percentage adoption in small countries more significant, or does sheer volume of holders in big countries carry more weight?

[Alvin_talk]

UAE → ~25.3% of the population
Singapore → ~24.4%
U.S. → ~15%
Turkey → ~14%
Canada → ~13%

All bitcoins are crypto but not all crypto are bitcoins that means out of the percentages of crypto these countries hold respectively some could be altcoins. As you know, altcoins still have alot of cockroaches in their cupboard, so it is better to narrow down to bitcoin only.

When you look at it this way, it’s not about which country has the biggest market in raw numbers, but which one has the highest adoption relative to their population.

Raw numbers do count, remember majority always carries the vote. It will be better if populated countries like US, China, India and Russia fully adopt bitcoin as this will make global adoption even faster compared to if  lesser populated countries adopt it first.

We can't neglect countries adoption of bitcoin by population but I think it will be more pronounced if it is coming from densely populated countries.

[adaseb]

How are these polls conducted? Because I think the numbers are way way too high.

If they are conducted using surveys of financial services such as someones doing their own investing such as with Robinhood markets, then the results are skewed because those are usually younger individuals which dont represent the general population.

Most baby boomers have never head about bitcoin, yet alone hold it. It seems to be fairly popular with the younger crowd mostly. I also find it hard to believe the UAE has such a huge percentage.

[Roberto888]

Percentage adoption shows real grassroots penetration and cultural acceptance. Sheer volume in big countries moves markets, but high adoption rates signal where crypto is becoming mainstream fastest. Both matter, but for different reasons.

[john_egbert]

How are these polls conducted? Because I think the numbers are way way too high.

If they are conducted using surveys of financial services such as someones doing their own investing such as with Robinhood markets, then the results are skewed because those are usually younger individuals which dont represent the general population.

Most baby boomers have never head about bitcoin, yet alone hold it. It seems to be fairly popular with the younger crowd mostly. I also find it hard to believe the UAE has such a huge percentage.

And if they were done by these services - they would be mostly centralized, imo.

So the number of people would still be not that close to the real one.

[Taskford]

How are these polls conducted? Because I think the numbers are way way too high.

If they are conducted using surveys of financial services such as someones doing their own investing such as with Robinhood markets, then the results are skewed because those are usually younger individuals which dont represent the general population.

Most baby boomers have never head about bitcoin, yet alone hold it. It seems to be fairly popular with the younger crowd mostly. I also find it hard to believe the UAE has such a huge percentage.

With this statistics given by The Chainalysis they determine the methodology they use to get the data's of Bitcoin global adoption see it here https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2025-global-crypto-adoption-index/

These also shows that the statistics by generation or age https://coinlaw.io/crypto-user-demographics-statistics/

Only few baby boomers knows about Bitcoin but its good that this technology already exist since for sure there would be some time that they would discover it, especially that Bitcoin is already in the mainstream.

[henry_of_skalitz]

How are these polls conducted? Because I think the numbers are way way too high.

If they are conducted using surveys of financial services such as someones doing their own investing such as with Robinhood markets, then the results are skewed because those are usually younger individuals which dont represent the general population.

Most baby boomers have never head about bitcoin, yet alone hold it. It seems to be fairly popular with the younger crowd mostly. I also find it hard to believe the UAE has such a huge percentage.

With this statistics given by The Chainalysis they determine the methodology they use to get the data's of Bitcoin global adoption see it here https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2025-global-crypto-adoption-index/

These also shows that the statistics by generation or age https://coinlaw.io/crypto-user-demographics-statistics/

Only few baby boomers knows about Bitcoin but its good that this technology already exist since for sure there would be some time that they would discover it, especially that Bitcoin is already in the mainstream.

The younger always get to something new faster than the older ones: it's the natural way of things.

And that doesn't mean that some baby boomer doesn't know about BTC nor that any younger man knows about BTC for sure - but it's a trend that continues on for quite a while.

[_act_]

Curious to hear your thoughts: is percentage adoption in small countries more significant, or does sheer volume of holders in big countries carry more weight?

Everything is important. Another one that I know of is the percentage number of people that hold most crypto. In that case, it is United States and the second country is far below United States if they are both compared.

All these information are important. The countries with the largest markets are also very important because it shows how useful crypto is in such countries.

[hugeblack]

With this statistics given by The Chainalysis they determine the methodology they use to get the data's of Bitcoin global adoption see it here https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2025-global-crypto-adoption-index/

This data appears to any extent that Chainalysis gets data from the central exchanges and services that process user data (KYC)
privacy has become very difficult.

[FortuneFollower]

With this statistics given by The Chainalysis they determine the methodology they use to get the data's of Bitcoin global adoption see it here https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2025-global-crypto-adoption-index/

This data appears to any extent that Chainalysis gets data from the central exchanges and services that process user data (KYC)
privacy has become very difficult.

Indeed.

Nowadays, every centralized place would want to have crypto services - and older generations flock to it, giving the sources to work around with such data, while also exposing yourself to such analysis.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

This data appears to any extent that Chainalysis gets data from the central exchanges and services that process user data (KYC)
privacy has become very difficult.

It is like user data uploaded to centralized exchanges then was forwarded to third party companies for KYC verifications, eventually was sold to Chainalysis. It can be a kind of partnership between CEX and Chainalysis but by whatever scheme, it is not accepted as it does not obey GPDR.

As users, we can not know whether our personal documents were leaked, hacked, sold and used by many other companies from original platforms where we did KYC. It's dangerous and again, it's worth to share why KYC and CEX are dangerous.

Why KYC is extremely dangerous – and useless
Events made you scare about custodial wallets, centralized exchanges.

[Moreno233]

I was reading a recent ranking that listed Singapore and UAE as the most “crypto-obsessed” countries. What stood out to me was not just the hype, but the actual percentage of people who hold crypto:

UAE → ~25.3% of the population
Singapore → ~24.4%
U.S. → ~15%
Turkey → ~14%
Canada → ~13%

I was expecting to see El Salvador as the number one country since Bitcoin is legalized there but unfortunately, they are no where to be found and I don't know if poverty is the reason or not. I rather found it surprising to see UAE and Singapore at the top with such huge percentages which means one in every 4 persons is holding cryptocurrency, that is very shocking to me. I don't know how they were able to track the data and I was expecting to see Nigeria there because a huge percentage of Nigerians also hold cryptocurrency.

[henry_of_skalitz]

I was reading a recent ranking that listed Singapore and UAE as the most “crypto-obsessed” countries. What stood out to me was not just the hype, but the actual percentage of people who hold crypto:

UAE → ~25.3% of the population
Singapore → ~24.4%
U.S. → ~15%
Turkey → ~14%
Canada → ~13%

I was expecting to see El Salvador as the number one country since Bitcoin is legalized there but unfortunately, they are no where to be found and I don't know if poverty is the reason or not. I rather found it surprising to see UAE and Singapore at the top with such huge percentages which means one in every 4 persons is holding cryptocurrency, that is very shocking to me. I don't know how they were able to track the data and I was expecting to see Nigeria there because a huge percentage of Nigerians also hold cryptocurrency.

As of 2023, I can see that there were 46,15 ATMs for 100,000 adults in El Sal, and this number would be bigger now (as its population is around 6 mil people), however, even if it's bigger, that wouldn't be the numbers like in the reports we are talking about..

So that may be the case of why it wasn't on the lists at least there.

[taufik123]

-snip-
As users, we can not know whether our personal documents were leaked, hacked, sold and used by many other companies from original platforms where we did KYC. It's dangerous and again, it's worth to share why KYC and CEX are dangerous.

Why KYC is extremely dangerous – and useless
Events made you scare about custodial wallets, centralized exchanges.

In fact, if you look at some of the news that has emerged, more personal data is leaked and also used by other people
and even KYC that is done on the Exchange, some of which comes from leaked data that is sold and bought by other parties who use KYC to register on the Exchange.

There are so many such incidents that data on crypto holders based on which country's population is more cannot be said to be valid data,
because indeed crypto is vast and more people do not do KYC as crypto holders.

Especially now that DEXs are more in demand and have become a new meta where DEXs are quite hype now and Dex users don't need to do KYC and so on.

[Perfectbaby]

I am shocked to see that the above country mentioned are the biggest crypto holder precisely Bitcoin.
Now, how authentic is this data or what method do they use to the collection process?
Usually, we can assumed most of the data or information shared across to be random assumptions of data without real facts.

[Lucius]

I am shocked to see that the above country mentioned are the biggest crypto holder precisely Bitcoin.
~snip~

Why are you shocked that such rich countries are at the top? Those who have the most money invest the most, and surely El Salvador will not be on the first place of such a list when they have a poverty rate of over 30%. Anyway, I think that these kinds of studies are mostly exaggerating and that their goal is to encourage people to invest in cryptocurrencies, and the articles from shitytelegraph are mostly low-grade journalism.

At the end of the day, I guess everyone should care about how much they personally have, not what others have.

[examplens]

This is pure guesswork and speculation. I assume that all those who claimed Pi coin were taken into account, because it is one of the potential sources of information.
How many individuals have not publicly confirmed that they own crypto?
What search activity do have with crypto holders?

btw

The study measured each country’s engagement across four indicators: ownership rate, adoption growth, search activity and ATM availability, ApeX said in the report shared with Cointelegraph.

[Dunamisx]

I also have to suspect on the information provided because of the percentage given is too high, aside this, there is no doubt that Bitcoin adoption has ever been increasing from one stage to another, while seeing Singapore being the second in line for the highest country of crypto population shows that all the information gathered here are not strictly on Bitcoin, but maybe all the altcoins were added and sum up, I remember seeing a recent statistics that claims about 3.5% of the world population are using bitcoin already.

[Natalim]

This is pure guesswork and speculation. I assume that all those who claimed Pi coin were taken into account, because it is one of the potential sources of information.
How many individuals have not publicly confirmed that they own crypto?
What search activity do have with crypto holders?

btw

The study measured each country’s engagement across four indicators: ownership rate, adoption growth, search activity and ATM availability, ApeX said in the report shared with Cointelegraph.

That’s how they measured it according to one article I read too. Of course, data like this isn’t totally accurate, but as long as they’re transparent about the factors they use, it’s fine. At least it gives us a close picture of reality. since it’s based on population percentage, we can actually compare it better.

United Arab Emirates (UAE): ~9.5 million people
Singapore: ~6.0 million people
United States: ~341 million people
Turkey: ~87 million people
Canada: ~40 million people

The US still has the highest number of Bitcoin holders - 15% of its population is about 51,150,000.
Meanwhile, UAE’s percentage is higher at 25.3%, but in actual numbers that’s only 2,403,500.

[MinoRaiola]

I was wondering where Germany was in the overview... on 6 place behind Turkey and Canada. That is not bad, but I thought there would be more hodlers. And also Nigeria is not in the overview, as the local community is very active here in the forum and there are many users. Than Russia also not in the overview, maybe there are many more hodlers in some countries, but nobody knows. It is good that no one cant see everything, that is one of the best things about it.