Crypto population doubled to over 200M users since January, report says

Cryptocurrency adoption has seen an accelerated growth this year, with the global crypto population doubling since January, according to a new report.

Major digital asset company Crypto.com released its latest study on measuring global cryptocurrency users on Thursday, discovering that the number of crypto users worldwide has more than doubled from 100 million in January to 221 million in June.

The firm pointed out that crypto adoption has been growing rapidly this year as it only took four months to nearly double the crypto population from 106 million in February to 203 million in May. For comparison, it took nine months for the number of global crypto users to reach 100 million from 65 million since Crypto.com started tracking crypto adoption levels.

The results show that Bitcoin and the second-most valued cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), have been losing their market shares in terms of the composition of crypto owners while the number of users holding other digital assets has been steadily growing.

The study also found that a massive surge in crypto users this year came alongside some notable growth in the popularity of altcoins or cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin (BTC). According to Crypto.com’s findings, the altcoin adoption was likely spurred by the influx of new users interested in altcoins like Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Token (SHIB) amid Elon Musk’s criticism of BTC mining over its alleged environmental harm.

Related: Crypto usage in Turkey increased elevenfold in a year, new survey shows

Crypto.com’s latest crypto population study comes after the company released the first-ever edition on measuring global crypto users in May 2020. The study methodology analyzes on-chain data combined with “additional blended parameters” to estimate the number of global crypto owners worldwide. The latest report includes data from 24 major global cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Huobi and others.