Crypto Land

According to a Swyftx poll, 1 mn Australians will start using cryptocurrencies in the coming year

According to a recently published survey, over the course of the next 12 months, over one million Australians will buy cryptocurrencies for the first time, bringing the country’s total number of cryptocurrency owners to over five million. The results came from the second annual Australian Crypto Survey by Swyftx, an Australian cryptocurrency exchange, which was carried out by the polling company YouGov. Early in July, a poll of 2,609 Australians over the age of 18 was conducted; 548 of the sample were found to be current cryptocurrency owners. According to the analysis, Australian cryptocurrency ownership has increased 4% year over year, reaching 21% in 2022, despite the current “Crypto Winter,” which has seen around $2 trillion in assets erased from the market for digital assets over the course of the last year.

This number is expected to rise by another million new cryptocurrency owners in 2023, according to the report, and at least one-quarter of Australians plan to purchase cryptocurrency in the coming year, with millennials, Gen Zers, Australian parents, and people who work full-time.

This result broadly agrees with recent data from a Bitcoin processor that suggests widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies is not being hampered by the so-called “crypto winter” and comments made by the head of content at the cryptocurrency exchange CoinJar, Luke Ryan, who asserts that sports sponsorship is helping to legitimize cryptocurrencies in Australia.

In response to the upbeat adoption and ownership statistics for cryptocurrencies, Swyftx’s head of strategic partnerships, Tommy Honan, told Cointelegraph that “we expect half of the adults under 50 in Australia to own or have owned crypto within the next one to two years based on current growth trajectories in the use of digital assets.” The anticipation is that crypto will enter the regulated arena next year, and all other things being equal, you’d expect that to stimulate growth in adoption. But it isn’t a given, according to Honan, who also noted that many variables make estimating adoption “fiendishly tough.”

According to Honan, if market conditions improve, the rate of adoption may drop over the following 12 months before picking up again. “Confidence has taken a hit from the bear market. We will have to wait and watch how quickly the market stabilizes because confidence may go up the stairs and down. According to the survey, coupled with a lack of understanding of how crypto works and general market volatility, a lack of solid regulation is the biggest barrier preventing people from investing in cryptocurrencies. Recent remarks from the former head of risk at Credit Suisse, CK Zheng, who thinks the next crypto Bull Run would be brought on by “regulatory certainty” in the United States, support this conclusion.

Swyftx co-CEO Ryan Parsons noted in a response to Cointelegraph that although the survey demonstrates a definite interest among Australians to buy and utilize cryptocurrencies, regulation continues to be a “substantial issue” in people’s hesitation. “If adoption of digital assets continues to rise at its current rate, there will be an increasing demand for established norms. This study demonstrates that there is a noticeable demand for crypto among Australians. We must responsibly satiate this need.”