Enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies has risen recently in Peru where more than 60% of the population has an interest in acquiring bitcoin (BTC) and other crypto assets. If this level of adoption is met, the South American country could climb to the top of the ranking of the territories with the highest acceptance of digital assets in the region.
Currently, more than 1.2 million people have cryptocurrencies in Peruaccording to a report of the Triple A firm. It means that at least 3.74% of the Peruvian population has crypto assets in their possession, but the trend is that the figures change radically this year, taking into account the high interest that residents have around digital assets.
From the year 2020 andhe country has recorded an 18.3% increase in the use of cryptocurrency wallets, while the volume traded on the Buda exchange, during the previous 6 months, grew by 613%, reveals the 2022 report for Latin America of Sherlock Communications.
The figures certainly show that Peru aims to become this year one of the countries in the region with the highest adoption of cryptocurrencies, climbing to the leadership positions that are currently held by Venezuela and Colombia. These register a level higher than 6% of the population that today owns bitcoin or other cryptoactives.
In addition to the cryptocurrency boom that Peru is experiencing, there is the initiative of the mayor of La Molina, in Lima, which is implementing andhe MoliCoin program that seeks to promote payments in BTC and cryptocurrencies to businesses in the area.
As reported by CriptoNoticias at the beginning of April, the MoliCoin program provides answers on how a restaurant or business can accept payments in bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, the correct choice and use of a wallet and various advice, according to the information offered by the Mayor’s Office. .
The high interest that Peruvians now have in bitcoin has prompted the government to move forward on the create your own currency digital central bank (or CBDC, for its acronym in English).
At the same time, the Latin American country is also moving towards the regulation of bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrencies. This, with a bill that seeks to provide a legal framework for the cryptoactive market, which was introduced in the Peruvian Congress.
Haiti is the Caribbean country with the highest adoption
In Haiti there are more than 107,000 cryptocurrency owners, a figure equivalent to 1% of the Haitian population, which makes it one of the countries with the most users in the Caribbean, as the Triple A report adds.
After Haiti seven other Caribbean countries are at the top of cryptocurrency adoption. Among them are Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Bahamas, Belize and Barbados.
That Haiti leads the top countries with the largest number of cryptocurrency users in the Caribbean it is not something that is coincidencebut on the contrary it can be attributed to its high volume of sending and receiving remittances.
For example, Haiti and Jamaica, whose share of remittances exceeds 23% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) respectively, now have the largest number of cryptocurrency users.
Remittance senders usually pay high fees for each shipment through different intermediary companies, so it could be thought that many users would be turning to cryptocurrencies to send funds with lower commission cost.
In fact, remittances sent to Latin American countries from the United States went from USD 100 million per month, between October 2019 and April 2020, to almost USD 400 million per month between April and May 2021, according to CriptoNoticias published in February of this anus.