A recent study has been released by crypto exchange and debit card provider Crypto.com estimating that the overall number of crypto users worldwide grew from 66 million in May 2020 to 106 million by January.
Given the difficulty of mapping unique crypto wallet addresses to the number of individuals, the technique of Crypto.com combines on-chain data with many blended parameters to calculate distinct market capitalization figures for the two main cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). This then yield an aggregate that can be used over time to track patterns in global user growth.
According to cointelegraph.com, over the last eight months, in June, August 2020 and January 2021, growth has been the strongest. As a general rule, Crypto.com reports that this growth correlates to the price strength of Bitcoin, but the breakdown of data between the two coins can provide more specific insights.
In particular, because of the popularity of decentralized finance, adoption in August 2020 was largely led by Ether. PayPal’s launch of support for crypto purchases for U.S.-based users in November 2020 and institutional adoption from Grayscale and Microstrategy in the autumn and winter months intersected with strong Bitcoin price performance to spur even wider adoption.
By January, the global number of Bitcoin users was estimated to be 71 million, as compared with 14 million for Ether. Each coin saw a tremendous surge in users that month — 30.2 percent and 13.1 percent , respectively.
