New user registrations for crypto grew faster in non-metros in 2021

Chennai: Largely driven by first time users — despite a lingering regulatory deadlock — 2021 turned out to be one for crypto adoption in semi-urban and rural India.

For Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX new user registrations from tier-2 & 3 cities saw a 1851% growth, compared to 1759% growth among metro cities in 2021, over the previous year. The high percentage number indicates the low base of the users.

Its founder Nischal Shetty said crypto trade adoption was higher among females. “The growth in the number of new female users was up by 1009%, as against an 829% growth recorded in an increase in male sign-ups,” Shetty said.

Another crypto exchange, CoinDCX saw increased crypto adoption in cities like Indore, Lucknow and Agra, compared to metros. These crypto investors largely consist of a younger audience — 18 to 34 age category — accounting for more than 70% of the total user base. In terms of regional penetration of the currency, users with native language of Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali and Telugu seem to be the top five languages, after Hindi.

Sumit Gupta, co-founder and CEO at CoinDCX said, “Among the top geographies, northern region was a key driver of the new currency traffic through a mix of tier-1 and tier-2 cities. Among tier-2 cities across regions, Pune, Patna, Jaipur, Indore and Agra fall in the top 15 overall cities, besides Lucknow”.

One of the key developments in 2021 was the acceptance of crypto as a store-of-value asset, traditional institutional investors offering crypto services to their clients. “In terms of top crypto portfolios bought by users, legacy and established tokens like BTC and ETH remain in top five choices, followed closely by meme and utility tokens. In December, 2021, we have also seen keen interest in the audience to explore metaverse based crypto tokens,” said Gupta. Exchanges also said there seems to be a growing interest in crypto amongst women which can be attributed to the growing number of new users, almost 75% of which are women.