India’s crypto market grew 641% over the past year: Chainalysis

India, Vietnam and Pakistan are substantially helping in expansion of the cryptocurrency markets in central and southern Asia, according to Chainalysis. India’s market grew 641% over the past year and Pakistan’s 711%, a report from Chainalysis showed, using a metric that estimates the total cryptocurrency received by a country.

India has a 59% share of activity taking place on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, with Pakistan at 33%, the report said, adding there’s been a significant increase in cryptocurrency-related entrepreneurship and venture capital investment in the region.

“Large institutional-sized transfers above $10 million worth of cryptocurrency represent 42% of transactions sent from India-based addresses, versus 28% for Pakistan and 29% for Vietnam,” the report said. “Those numbers suggest that India’s cryptocurrency investors are part of larger, more sophisticated organisations,” it added.

The past year has seen a number of twists and turns for India’s crypto market, including on the regulatory front, with some reports stating that the country might try to ban or otherwise restrict crypto. However, Chainalysis noted, more recently it looks as though the government may simply favor taxation.

Chainalysis is a New York-based blockchain data platform. They provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Their data powers investigation, compliance, and market intelligence software that has been used to solve some of the world’s most high-profile criminal cases and grow consumer access to cryptocurrency safely.

In an August 2021 report Chainalysis announced that India had ranked second in the global cryptocurrency adoption index. The report found that most of the top 20 countries were developing countries like Kenya, India, Nigeria and Tanzania. These countries have huge transaction volumes on P2P platforms when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita and internet-using population. Residents use P2P cryptocurrency exchanges as their primary on-ramp into cryptocurrency as they don't have access to centralized exchanges.