The world’s leading cryptos gained all-time highs last year. And so did the multiple crypto investors, especially the ones from the United States, says blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.
According to their latest report, the U.S. crypto investors made over $46.9 billion in realized cryptocurrency gain last year, while multiple other countries lagged far behind.
The United States saw estimated realized cryptocurrency gains grow 476%, from $8.1 billion in 2020 to $47 billion a year after, the company says.
United Kingdom ($8.1B), Germany ($5.8B), Japan ($5.5B) and China ($5B) are the nearest top countries, although their realized gains from digital currencies are from almost 6 to 9 times lower compared to the American crypto investors.
Despite the fact, their cryptocurrency gains grew at similar rates to US’s. The UK crypto investors saw a 431% increase, while Germans witnessed 423% higher gains throughout the year.
In the meantime, crypto investors from China suffered a visibly lower growth rate of 194%, from $1.7 billion in 2020 to $5.1 billion in 2021. According to Chianlysis, this is a slower growth rate compared to other countries.
China, previously known as one of the leading Bitcoin mining countries, faced a severe cryptocurrency crackdown last year after the local government applied strict cryptocurrency restrictions on crypto miners, traders, developers, and the whole ecosystem of digital assets.
More Gains From Ethereum
Chainalysis noted the increased role of Ethereum (ETH) in terms of the realized cryptocurrency gains by different coins.
According to their data, Ethereum surpassed Bitcoin in total realized gains on a global scale, accounting for $76.3 billion in total. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s gains were $74.7 billion or $1.6 billion lower.
Chainalys says, the ETH dominance tendency reflects the increased demand for the second biggest coin due to the impressive rally of DeFi ecosystem in 2021, which in a major part is built on Ethereum’s network and uses ETH coins as their primary currency.
The world’s largest economy, the United States, however, ranked 5th in terms of which percentage of the population was involved with digital currencies last year. According to the Global crypto adoption index, around 27.5 million or 8.31% of the US citizens were using digital currencies.