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AppstoreSpy looked at how the “crypto winter” affected apps – the most popular exchanges and wallets on Android and iOS.
KONIA, CYPRUS, January 26, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ — There is nothing more natural than a “crypto winter.” Like any market, the cryptocurrency market is subject to boom and bust cycles. Still, due to its speculative nature and the lack of intrinsic value behind crypto assets, it is much more sensitive to various economic factors. Each “crypto winter” has essentially been a market bubble collapse, followed by a repeated decline in crypto values.
Over a year, the price of Bitcoin fell 2.8 times from $46.3K to $23.0K. The total value of coins tracked by CoinMarketCat dropped 3.5 times, from $3 trillion to $850 billion. Between May and December 2022, the average daily transaction value dropped from $131 billion to $57 billion. And if this were not enough, the “crypto winter” was supplemented by several dramatic events that affected the market as a whole.
In May, an $18 billion algorithmic stablecoin, TerraUSD, crashed along with its LUNA counterpart. In a few days, the crypto market lost a quarter of its value. Two months later, crypto bank Celsius Network, which held $20 billion in assets, went bankrupt. It later became apparent that Celsius misled investors and operated like a Ponzi scheme. Around the same time, hedge fund Arrows Capital collapsed along with crypto lender Voyager Digital, which gave the former a $664 million loan.
Finally, in November, users lost billions of dollars when cryptocurrency exchange FTX went bankrupt due to fraud by its founders and top management.
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AppstoreSpy, the mobile app market intelligence toolset, analyzed how the “crypto winter” affected apps – the most popular exchanges and wallets on Android and iOS.
Here are the findings.
NON-CUSTODY PORTFOLIOS
Popular non-custodial wallets follow the same pattern as cryptocurrency exchanges. On Android, global MetaMask and CoinBase Wallet downloads dropped by 75%, and Trust Wallet downloads halved. About 13.5% of MetaMask Android downloads came from the Philippines – the country ranks second in Chainalysis rankings for cryptocurrency adoption (ahead of the US, Ukraine and India). Nearly a quarter of new installs of the Trust Wallet app on Android devices come from Nigeria, one of the world’s leading countries for cryptocurrency adoption.
For Apple devices, US users account for between a quarter and a third of installs. New users from Russia have a share of around 5% for MetaMask and TrustWallet, and 7.5% for MyEtherWallet (MEW). Most centralized exchanges banned or limited Russian users, forcing them to switch to non-custodial wallets and decentralized exchanges (DeX).
Still, there was one app that benefited from the “crypto winter” of 2022. Ledger Live, a companion app for Ledger hardware wallets, saw an influx of users after every adverse event in the crypto world. The number of iOS downloads for Ledger Live increased by 2% in 2022 compared to 2021. Approximately half of the new users came from the US, UK, Canada and Germany.
Comparing free wallets and a companion app for an expensive device (starting at $59 for the Ledger Nano S) can be contradictory. Still, it highlights a significant trend: people are shifting from trading cryptocurrencies to holding onto them for better times.
CRYPTOCURRENCY EXCHANGES
Major cryptocurrency exchanges (see CoinMarketCap rankings) saw significant declines in installs, specifically in North America and Europe. For example, between November 2021 and November 2022, CoinBase dropped from 2 million installs on Android devices and 1 million installs on iOS to 300,000 installs on Google Play and the App Store. As cryptocurrencies have become less lucrative, retail investors in developed countries have switched to other assets.
Meanwhile, Binance and KuCoin received an influx of users from Turkey, Nigeria, Brazil, and other countries affected by high inflation rates. Users in Turkey (65% annual inflation rate) accounted for 9.7% new Android installs and 11.8% new iOS installs for the Binance App, excluding the separate Binance TR app). KuCoin saw 12.6% new Android installs in Turkey, 6.3% in Nigeria (21.34% inflation rate), and 6.3% in Brazil (which has also experienced high inflation rates in the last years). Cryptocurrencies also function as alternative and more profitable financial instruments.
nadia
App StoreSpy
nadia.oscar@appstorespy.com
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