2021 has been a great year for the crypto space as the most prominent coins made gains leading to all-time-high values. A blog post published by the blockchain tracking company, Chainalysis shows that investors in the crypto space made a cumulative gain of $162.7 billion in 2021. This is far more than the $32.5 billion profit made in the previous year.
The Chainalysis study, which showed the profit made based on geographical location, also tracked the profit made by investors in different tokens or assets. According to the article, investors in the United States made the most gains in 2021 after cryptocurrency wallets from the country were analyzed.
US Wallets Made Most Cryptocurrency Gains
It shows that Americans made gains of $46.9 billion in 2021. They were followed by citizens of the United Kingdom who made gains of $8.1 billion. Gains of $5.8 billion were made by wallets in Germany while those in Japan made a profit of $5.5 billion. China, Turkey, Russia and France were in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth positions with gains of $5.0 billion, $4.5 billion, $4.2 billion and $4.0 billion respectively.
Outstanding Emerging Markets
The study showed that there are a number of countries that have shown signs of remarkable gains in the digital assets front despite low economic performance in the traditional markets. Some of these countries include Turkey, Vietnam, Ukraine, Czech Republic and Venezuela. All these countries have had some economic challenges recently, but the outcome of the analysis of wallet transactions emanating from these jurisdictions have been impressive.
The study shows that Turkey ranked 11th, rated by its $2.7 trillion GDP but made the 6th position in cryptocurrency gains ranking of $4.6 billion.
Vietnam has been in the 25th position with a GDP of $1.1 trillion but ranked 16 according to cryptocurrency gain of $2.7 billion.
Ukraine, the 40th ranked country with a GDP of %576 billion, scaled higher to the 13th position with a cryptocurrency gain of $2.8 billion.
Another country, Czech Republic is ranked 47th according to its GDP of $460 billion, but its cryptocurrency gains placed it at number 19 with $1.9 billion.
Venezuela, ranked 78 according to GDP of $144 billion ranked 33rd according to crypto gain of $1.1 billion.
The team behind the study stated that this result agrees with an earlier study that shows that emerging markets are increasingly adopting cryptocurrency as a tool for remittances in the wake of devaluation of their national currencies.
China Slowing Profit Rate
The study also shows that China has dropped in cryptocurrency gains relative to other countries. The $5.4 billion gain is a 194% increase from the previous year of $1.7 billion. Even though that may look impressive, it is actually lower than the rate of growth observed in countries such as the US, UK and Germany which saw profit growths of 476%, 431% and 423% respectively.
The study concluded that China’s slowing profit rate is the result of government crackdown on cryptocurrency-related activities such as mining and trading.
Gains According To Coins
The study shows that Ethereum was the most profitable coin in 2021, edging out Bitcoin. Ether gains in the year was $76.3 billion while Bitcoin gain was $74.7 billion. It concluded that this was the result of the rise in the demand for DeFi protocols.
The majority of these blockchain applications are built on the Ethereum blockchain. Since these protocols use ether, it is not surprising that most of the gains made reflect globally. An exception is Japan which saw more Bitcoin gains of $4 billion, compared with Ethereum which saw profit of $790 million.
In conclusion, the value of cryptocurrency assets is growing. The study shows that DeFi protocols have been instrumental in the gains made in the industry in 2021.
