Nigeria Ranks Second in 2024 Crypto Adoption Index Despite Regulatory Challenges

Blockchain research firm Chainalysis has released its 2024 Global Crypto Adoption Index. The metric provides insights into how countries globally are embracing the crypto market.

This year’s report shows Nigeria retaining its second-highest position among countries adopting crypto globally, trailing India. Interestingly, the African country’s record comes amid significant regulatory hurdles the government has posed on digital assets adoption.

Nigeria Retains Second-Largest Position

Chainalysis’ report tracked how investors in various countries are interacting with centralized services, retail centralized services, decentralized finance (DeFi) services, and retail DeFi services.

Nigerian investors engaged the most with retail centralized services and DeFi services, which ranked second and fifth, respectively, after India and Indonesia. The African country also emerged as the third and fifth largest country interacting with Retail DeFi services and centralized services, respectively.

Interestingly, Nigeria emerges as the only African country among the top 20 countries adopting crypto. It is also worth noting that the African nation ranked as the second-largest country adopting crypto in Chainalysis’ last year report.

Unlike last year, Chainalysis excluded the peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange index, citing reduced engagement with the service between July 2023 and June 2024. Nigeria scored #1 in the P2P service from last year’s study. The service was subject to criticism from the country’s government, causing several prominent crypto exchanges like Binance and OKX to halt P2P operations for Nigerian investors.

Despite the hardships imposed by the Nigerian government, including bans, restrictions, and attempts to control cryptocurrency usage, Nigerians remain undeterred in embracing the digital asset market.

India Takes Leading Position

India emerged as the highest-ranked country in the Chainalysis index, similar to last year’s record. The resilience shows that local investors continue to invest in crypto despite high taxes and strict regulations aimed at discouraging crypto transactions.

Central & Southern Asia and Oceania emerged as the third-largest region where crypto was adopted, accounting for seven of the top 20 countries embracing the digital asset market. Investors in the region have injected $750 billion into the crypto market.