Around 90 million users flocked to crypto bandwagon in March 2022: Report

• India is one of the fastest-growing crypto markets globally.
• The country-wide lockdown and global pandemic did not dampen the spirit of crypto traders in India.
• In fact, the crypto market was almost immune to the coronavirus and the havoc it wreaked across the world.
• According to analytics firm Comscore, the cryptocurrency market in India grew from 17 million users in March 2021 to almost 90 million users in March 2022.

Digital currency exchanges and India’s cryptocurrency market, which were non-existent a decade ago, have grown leaps and bounds in the last three years.

Despite the global pandemic and highly volatile nature of the market, the popularity of cryptocurrencies seems to show no signs of slowing down.

According to a new report by measurement and analytics firm Comscore, the cryptocurrency market in India grew from 6 million users in March 2020 to 17 million users in March 2021.

It further grew by 421% from 2021 to 2022 and touched 90 million users in March 2022, making it one of the fastest-growing crypto markets in the world.

Almost 90 million users used a cryptocurrency exchange platform in the month of March 2022 alone. This number could be higher if you consider the users who access foreign trading platforms over virtual private networks (VPN).

India is second only to Vietnam in the number of cryptocurrency users.

In addition to the massive jump in user adoption, the report shows that users spent over 6.1 billion minutes on crypto exchange platforms in March 2022, up from 1.7 billion minutes in the month of March 2021.

Source: Comscore

Citing the possible reason behind crypto’s user growth globally, the report said that the financial crisis of 2008 was one of the biggest factors that led to the rise of Bitcoin. This alternate currency was designed to function without any intervention from central authorities.

The growth of the cryptocurrency market in India, the report further said, was accelerated by several factors including increased awareness due to heavy marketing campaigns targeting Gen-Z users, user-friendly app launches, the Bitcoin bull run in late 2021, listing of Shiba Inu coin on WazirX, among others.

“The pandemic in 2020 wreaked havoc across the world, the effects of which were felt by the global economy. This caused several commodities and assets to start losing their value and led to people to look for alternate assets to invest in. Owing to the fact that the cryptocurrency market was almost immune to the Coronavirus, this became one of those assets that people trusted, especially in India,” said Visakh Vijayakumar, client insights partner in the report.

Crypto exchanges race for a position at the top

Cryptocurrency’s growing success in India has spawned several successful home-grown exchanges, such as WazirX, ZebPay and CoinDCX. It is becoming increasingly mainstream now.

As per Comscrore’s report, CoinDCX was the largest cryptocurrency exchange platform in India with over 40 million users in March 2022, followed by WazirX and CoinSwitch with 31.7 million and 30.1 million users respectively. Top fourth player Binance attracted about 27.6 million users.

From April this year, cryptocurrency gains are being taxed at 30%, the highest tax bracket, and a separate 1% tax on ‘source on all transactions,’ which might impact crypto’s growth in the country this year