On a global scale, Australians are absolute fiends for crypto, judging by the results of a new survey published by the comparison site Finder.

Perhaps it has something to do with Australia’s government and regulators seemingly being open to crypto and blockchain industry growth. Or maybe it has something to do with us being a nation that historically loves a punt on an underdog or three.

Either way, according to the new research published a couple of days ago, Australia has the third-highest rate of crypto ownership in the world – based purely on those surveyed. It amounts to nearly one in five Aussies owning some sort of cryptocurrency.

The data and analysis is pulled from Finder’s Cryptocurrency Adoption Index, which measures the growth of cryptocurrencies across the world through a regular survey of 41,645 individuals in 22 countries.

 

Key findings related to Australia, as of October 2021, include: 

• Australia has the third-highest rate of cryptocurrency ownership – 17.7 per cent of those surveyed are Aussie-based HODLers.

• More than half of those crypto-owning Aussies (65.2 per cent) own Bitcoin — the fifth highest percentage of all 22 countries surveyed.

• And 26.4 per cent of these Australian crypto owners hold Cardano, the highest percentage for this crypto globally.

• Australian men are 1.5 times more likely to own cryptocurrency than Australian women.

 

Finder surveyed 1,003 adults in Australia and the country’s 17.7 per cent rate of crypto ownership puts it ahead of Indonesia (16.7 per cent) and Hong Kong (15.8 per cent), and well ahead of the global average of 11.4 per cent.

 

Popular cryptos with Aussies

As you might expect, the OG crypto, Bitcoin (BTC), is the most favoured crypto among Aussies. In terms of portfolio share, it’s followed by Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Elon Musk favourite Dogecoin (DOGE), and then Binance Coin (BNB).

 

 

That Bitcoin and Ethereum top the list here for most-favoured cryptos is no surprise. The other three, while all within the top 10 cryptos by market cap, are perhaps more interesting picks.

Cardano, currently the highest-valued proof-of-stake project in crypto, has hefty competition from other major layer 1 projects, including Ethereum, but also from Polkadot (DOT), Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), Fantom (FTM) and a few others.

 

More findings from the survey

• A little over one in 10 (11.4 per cent) of adults own crypto globally.

• Nigeria, Malaysia and Australia have the highest rates of crypto ownership among internet users, with the US ranking in 10th place.

• Japan has the lowest adoption, with only 4.6 per cent of adults saying they own any cryptocurrency.

 

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