What does a top-tier crypto economy do? A number of factors, for sure. These can range from the number of Bitcoin nodes and crypto ATMs in a country to regional regulations and wallet availability.
Crypto exchange aggregator Coincub carried out its ranking of crypto countries for the final quarter of 2021. But despite the huge amount of data to analyze, there appears to be a clear winner.
Let’s take a closer look at the data
To cut to the chase, the winner is none other than Singapore. The Southeast Asian country topped a number of metrics such as institutional acceptance, exchange and wallet availability, regulation, financial services, transparency, cryptocurrency spending, and crypto bank activity.
Noting that 9.4% of the country’s 5.6 million people have crypto, the exchange aggregator noted,
“To maintain its competitive position, Singapore offers strong but clear legislative guidance with a low tax on crypto profits combined with a progressive attitude within the financial sector and a lot of retail buy-in.”
However, one area in which Singapore was lagging behind is the uptake of DeFi. The report stated:
“Decentralized finance is behind the rapid interest and growth of cryptocurrencies and is supported by blockchain technology. The central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, is looking at new financial sector regulations that include stricter standards for cryptocurrency service providers and increased requirements for technology risk management in financial institutions. “
Other winners on the top five list were Australia, the US, Germany and Canada. However, it is worth noting that the previous winner was knocked off his pedestal by “regulatory crackdowns” on cryptocurrencies.
This was the United States of America.
Source: Coincub.com
Also, if you’re curious, the country at the bottom of the ranking was China, due to its ban on crypto transactions. Other low-performing countries were Russia, New Zealand, and Nigeria.
At press time, Singapore had Bitcoin ATMs / ATMs in approximately nine locations. However, Coincub noted that mining was far from profitable in “Ciudad León” due to high tax rates.
Huobi to the Hawker Center
Just a few weeks earlier, crypto exchange giant Huobi Group decided to establish its regional headquarters in Singapore. However, earlier that month, Huobi had added Singapore to its “restricted jurisdictions” list.
So the question is: while Singapore might seem like the crypto hub of the future, how accessible is it to its own residents?