High adoption in emerging markets can be in part explained using crypto to conduct remittances in these economies, as well as their perceived utility as an effective hedge against inflation and political uncertainty.
Vietnam is seeing extremely high adoption across centralized cryptocurrency tools, decentralized finance (DeFi), and peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange, findings that corroborate other sources which have pointed out Vietnamese consumers’ rising penchant for crypto.
Vietnam has consistently ranked among the world’s top 10 biggest adopters of cryptocurrencies, according to Statista’s Global Consumer Survey, with about two out of ten people domestically either owning or using cryptocurrencies between 2019 and 2022.
Vietnamese consumers have also grown fond of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain gaming, which totaled a reported 2.19 million users, as of 2021. The number ranked Vietnam as the world’s fifth largest pool of NFT users in absolute number, behind Thailand (5.65 million), Brazil (4.99 million), the US (3.81 million) and China (2.68 million).
Data from the central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), have also revealed that crypto trading is booming. In the first half of 2021, the volume of crypto transactions grew 362% year-on-year (YoY) to nearly 20 million.
New rules are expected to be introduced soon to address challenges such as the use of crypto to launder money and fund terrorism, as well as proper crypto management.