Normally, when things start going south for an industry, investors tend to pull away as prices plummet. However, the crypto market of 2018 seems to have adopted its own new growth model. While the market has basically gone through a ringer, the user base has been expanding throughout the first 3 quarters of the year. That’s according to a report released by the University of Cambridge.
139 Million Users
The study group surveyed over 180 crypto entities across 47 countries. In the survey, the companies targeted answered four pertinent questions encompassing exchanges, mining, storage, and payments. The team then used these four metrics to derive empirical evidence that established the growth dynamics of the crypto industry.
One fact to note is that the number of transactions and users in the market is of integral value when determining the industry’s growth. At the peak of the crypto surge of late 2017, the total number of crypto users quadrupled. This figure went on to double in 2018. At the moment, the total number of crypto users is around 139 million people. About 38% of these people are active in the market, and the majority of them are individual crypto holders as opposed to merchants and hedge funds.
Increased Adoption
Although the crypto market has largely been looked at as a speculative market, gears are finally changing as adoption takes root to accord top cryptos like Bitcoin the coveted status almost equal to money. This is especially where cryptos aid in solving liquidity issues in cross-border transactions.
Also, the increase in the number of transactions has contributed to the increase in job opportunities in the crypto market. In 2017 alone, the number of employees in the industry shot up by 164%. Again, the figure increased by 78% in early 2018. This sharp increase is mainly due to the emergence of various popular crypto storage facilities and exchanges that recruit workers into the industry. This, in turn, has expanded the market in such a good way that it has popularized cryptos and led to more adoption. As is the case, the more the adoption and use cases, the more the users.
Regulatory Policies
As with any industry seeking to operate within legal limits, various important players within the crypto space have stepped forward to liaise with authorities in a bid to streamline the industry to make it more acceptable and trustworthy to the masses. With a consequent firm legal framework governing the crypto industry, adoption should peak and bring in even more users. Indeed, the trick is already working.
