Vietnam named top country in CSAO report for strong crypto adoption

Vietnam has been found to be one of the countries located within the Central and Southern Asia and Oceania (CSAO) report produced by Chainalysis to have been showing strong performances in regards to cryptocurrency adoption, which has subsequently been shared with Forkast.News.

In addition to revealing that Vietnam was amongst one of the countries to show a high level of strong grassroots adoption, a number of nations from the CSAO region analysed have each shown some rather encouraging numbers.

According to the report and study conducted, Chainalysis were able to determine that the region has been able to grow by 2% in regards to global market share between July 2020 and June 2021, whilst it was also found that there was a 706% growth in terms of raw value, leaving the region behind the Middle East and Central, Northern, Western Europe for total crypto growth for the year.

This means that the CSAO region has become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency market in the world, with more than US$572.5 billion in value being sent during the year, therefore making it account for 14% of total cryptocurrency transactions all over the world.

Much of the growth was found to have been driven by the strong grassroots adoption in a number of key countries that are found within the CSAO region, with the three top countries in regards to the Global Crypto Adoption Index, with Vietnam, India and Pakistan taking those spots. Additional countries found in Chainanlysis’ report include Thailand and the Philippines, which were recorded to be in significant positions.

In Vietnam’s case, the strong adoption rates that have been experienced could be down to a number of reasons including the fact that there are a number of crypto gambling opportunities offered by the best bitcoin casino for Vietnam players. It’s one of the top choices at the moment as bettors are able to enjoy a number of benefits.

Indeed, Binh Nguyen, who is a fintech-crypto hub coordinator at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Vietnam (RMIT), likened the crypto activity to have been experienced within Vietnam down to the fact that gambling is popular within the country.

In the report, he stated: “Most forms of gambling are popular in Vietnam, and I think that’s one reason people here are willing to invest in high volatility assets like cryptocurrency. Low financial literacy is a driver of excessive risk-taking and may create lucky financial rewards for crypto investors during a bull market.”

It has also been suggested that another reason that high levels of crypto adoption may exist within the CSAO region could be down to the prevalence of unbanked populations. 290 million of the world’s estimated 1.7 billion unbanked people are thought to be located in Southeast Asia, with 71% of the Philippines’ adults not having access to a bank account; more than 51 million people.

Figures from 2017 found in a report by the World Bank about Pakistan showed that 100 million of its 220 million population were unbanked, whilst India is only second to China in regards to the total number of unbanked people within the country, as 190 million of the 1.4 billion people have no access to financial services.

Southeast Asia has been able to account for plenty of growth recently, with non-custodial crypto wallet Metamask revealing recently that it had grown 1,800% this year, with 20% of its 10 million active monthly users being located from the Philippines. A lot of this has been driven by the popularity within the country for the non-fungible token (NFT)-based game Axie Infinity.

DeFi has become incredibly important within the region as it comprises a significant portion of the total crypto value within these countries as Chainalysis’ report found that it accounted for 50% of all crypto transaction volume by February 2020, with the value surpassing all other services types to be worth more than US$60 billion in the region by the middle of this year.