Consumers from countries in Africa, Asia, and South America were most likely to be an owner of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, in 2025. This conclusion can be reached after combining ** different surveys from the Statista's Consumer Insights over the course of that year. Nearly one out of three respondents to Statista's survey in Nigeria, for instance, mentioned they either owned or use a digital coin, rather than *** out of 100 respondents in the United States. This is a significant change from a list that looks at the Bitcoin (BTC) trading volume in ** countries: There, the United States and Russia were said to have traded the highest amounts of this particular virtual coin. Nevertheless, African and Latin American countries are noticeable entries in that list too. Daily use, or an investment tool? The survey asked whether consumers either owned or used cryptocurrencies but does not specify their exact use or purpose. Some countries, however, are more likely to use digital currencies on a day-to-day basis. Nigeria increasingly uses mobile money operations to either pay in stores or to send money to family and friends. Polish consumers could buy several types of products with a cryptocurrency in 2019. Opposed to this is the country of Vietnam: Here, the use of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a payment method is forbidden. Owning some form of cryptocurrency in Vietnam as an investment is allowed, however. Which countries are more likely to invest in cryptocurrencies? Professional investors looking for a cryptocurrency-themed ETF were more often found in Europe than in the United or China, according to a survey in early 2020. Most of the largest crypto hedge fund managers with a location in Europe in 2020, were either from the United Kingdom or Switzerland - the country with the highest cryptocurrency adoption rate in Europe according to Statista's Global Consumer Survey. Whether this had changed by 2025 was not yet clear.

Bitcoin's blockchain size was close to reaching 664.32 gigabytes in August 2025, as the database saw exponential growth by nearly one gigabyte every few days. The Bitcoin blockchain contains a continuously growing and tamper-evident list of all Bitcoin transactions and records since its initial release in January 2009. Bitcoin has a set limit of 21 million coins, the last of which will be mined around 2140, according to a forecast made in 2017. Bitcoin mining: A somewhat uncharted world Despite interest in the topic, there are few accurate figures on how big Bitcoin mining is on a country-by-country basis. Bitcoin's design philosophy is at the heart of this. Created out of protest against governments and central banks, Bitcoin's blockchain effectively hides both the country of origin and the destination country within a (mining) transaction. Research involving IP addresses placed the United States as the world's most Bitcoin mining country in 2022, but the source admits IP addresses can easily be manipulated using VPN. Note that mining figures are different from figures on Bitcoin trading: Africa and Latin America were more interested in buying and selling BTC than some of the world's developed economies. Bitcoin developments Bitcoin's trade volume slowed in the second quarter of 2023 after hitting a noticeable growth at the beginning of the year. The coin outperformed most of the market. Some attribute this to the announcement in June 2023 that BlackRock filed for a Bitcoin ETF. This iShares Bitcoin Trust was to use Coinbase Custody as its custodian. Regulators in the United States had not yet approved any applications for spot ETFs on Bitcoin.

FTX's collapse in November 2022 meant that the market share of Binance and other leading crypto exchanges changed significantly from one month to the next. Binance, for instance, regained some of the market share it had lost between September and October 2022, growing by 0.8 percentage points in the month of November. Kraken, especially, was affected as the increase of one percentage point is the largest it had seen since 2021. The strong market position of Binance can also be observed when investigating the trading for crypto pairs on such exchanges, such as for Bitcoin - with trades on Binance that involve both Bitcoin and stablecoins being common. News that Binance was to take over FTX in 2022 initially led to a crypto trading volume that was two to four times higher than it was in the previous days.

Blockchain and crypto attracted significantly fewer investments in 2024 than they did in 2021, as the value of deals declined. In 2021, these sectors attracted over 32 billion U.S. dollars globally - including venture capital, private equity, and mergers and acquisitions deals. Previously, the highest value of investments concentrated in this fintech branch was recorded in 2018, when this figure amounted to about seven billion U.S. dollars.

The number of active wallets involved in NFT trading declined by more than 25 percent between Q2 2023 and Q3 2023. This is a notable decline from the end of 2021 — when the number of users was estimated at nearly two million. NFT trading surged at various moments. The first moment, in 2017, was connected to the popularity of collectible CryptoKitties whereas the second moment, in March 2021, had to do with media reporting the largest NFT sales to date. Activity in August 2021 was likely caused by sales of Axie Infinity, an NFT game that got so popular in Southeast Asia it even attracted the attention of the Philippine government. NFTs focus mainly on art and gaming Originally gaining prominence with art projects and tradable pictures, monthly NFT sales within art declined significantly as 2023 progressed. Largely this is an adjustment to the initial popularity of NFTs. By 2023, some main collectible art projects — such as CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) — still ranked among the top 50 NFTs based on market cap. Noticeable is the high number of NFTs that are based on gaming. These tokens typically involve in-game rewards that can be traded for cryptocurrency. Tokenization solutions — such as virtual plots of land in metaverses like The Sandbox or Decentraland — ranked comparatively lower. OpenSea no longer the biggest NFT marketplace One of the standout developments in NFTs in 2023 was Blur taking over the position of biggest NFT marketplace worldwide. For years, this position belonged to OpenSea, with Blur taking over in February 2023 after debuting its stablecoin BLUR. This project launched only five months after Blur was established, and involved the airdrop of 300 million worth of BLUR tokens to potential clients. This, combined with declining interest in crypto or NFTs after multiple scandals in both 2022 and 2023, led OpenSea to announce in November 2023 it would lay off half its workforce. As of Q4 2024, the number of active wallets involved in NFT trading is 160,058.

During an early 2024 survey, 77 percent of responding game developers worldwide indicated that their studios were not interested in using blockchain technologies such as cyptocurrency, NFT, and Web3. Only two percent of respondents stated that their studios were already using such tools to support their games.

Real estate is expected to become the largest type of tokenized asset in 2030, taking up nearly 30 percent of the overall market by then. This is according to a forecast made in 2023, which assumes that real-world asset (RWA) tokenization will take up less than one percent of the entire RWA market. The topic of tokenization is connected to both NFTs - most notably the digitalization of art pieces or digital variants of shoes - and the metaverse - with virtual real estate in online environments like Decentraland. Consequently, tokenization is a potential use case of blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology is forecast to increase to nearly 1,000 trillion U.S. dollars by 2032, but this was lower than in a previous forecast. This is according to a market research forecast, focusing on blockchain with cloud applications for specific business segments. The numbers do not include decentralized applications such as blockchain gaming. Originally, a forecast from June 2022 predicted "blockchain technology" would reach 1,235 billion U.S. dollars by 2030, at a CAGR of 82.8 percent. A newer forecast from December 2023 predicts a value of 943 billion U.S. dollars in 2032 with a CAGR of 56.1 percent. The source does not explain this difference.

Being able to track in-game purchases on the blockchain is not a mainstream draw for gamers. A March 2024 survey of digital content buyers in the United States found that for only three in ten respondents interest would increase regarding the purchase of virtual goods if the goods were tracked on the blockchain. However, 60 percent of respondents stated that this would not affect their in-game purchases.

Most of the largest NFTs in September 2023 are those that received lots of media attention in 2022. Examples include art collections CryptoPunks - the only NFT with a market cap of over one billion U.S. dollars - and Bored Ape Yacht Club - which revolve around randomly generated pictures of digital avatars and virtual monkeys, respectively. Metaverse related NFTs - The Sandbox and Decentraland, which represent virtual land and real estate inside those two worlds - also ranked relatively high. Talin, by comparison, is a more unknown NFT in this ranking. The 3D art piece collection focuses on spiritual talismans.

In 2024, the total blockchain gaming investment value in the video games industry amounted to 1.6 billion U.S. dollars, representing a nine percent increase in value compared to the previous year. There were 282 disclosed blockchain investments in video gaming companies in 2024.

In 2023, IT professionals in various industries reported difficulties in hiring various IT roles in their organizations. 5G specialist positions were the hardest to fill, according to around 48 percent of respondents, while around 44 and 41 percent reported challenges in recruiting data engineers and data scientists, respectively.