As cryptocurrency and blockchain adoption continues, the industry is registering exciting numbers and trends. While full adoption is still a long way out, statistics show interesting usage levels, with more expected this year. The following are a few crypto industry categories with impressive stats that point to bigger numbers in 2024.
Cryptocurrency Betting
Crypto adoption has spread to several sectors, including the online betting industry. Several BTC statistics point to increased crypto usage over time, with online betting service providers merging the advantages of internet betting access with blockchain technology. According to a study, the crypto betting market was more than $66 billion in 2020. A recent estimate for 2023 puts the global betting market size above $264 billion.
Furthermore, the value of betting-specific crypto assets crossed $150 million in 2021. Studies also show that the number of crypto bets doubled to about 6.3 billion in 2022. Interestingly, nearly 36% of all bets placed in the first quarter of 2022 were made using digital assets. In Q1 of 2023, crypto bets rose 44.6% from Q1 in the previous year. For Bitcoin precisely, the king coin controls 55.8% of the crypto iGaming industry, cresting at $250 million. The second largest is Ether (ETH), at 20%.
Cryptocurrency Mining
The high cost of mining new coins is a major criticism of the cryptocurrency sector. Crypto mining is integral to most proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains as it helps token production and network security. Unfortunately, this process is expensive for two reasons. Firstly, the miners and other hardware required for the process are costly and require heavy financial investments. Also, the equipment consumes vast amounts of electricity, increasing the cost of producing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
According to several reports, Bitcoin mining accounts for about 0.5% of global energy consumption. Some estimates put the energy consumption for one BTC transaction at 1,200kWh of energy, equal to about 100,000 VISA transactions. In addition, the amount of energy annually consumed by miners worldwide is about 91 terawatts of electricity, more than used by countries like Finland. Furthermore, the Bitcoin network uses about 2% of the electricity consumed annually in the USA.
Cryptocurrency Adoption
Several crypto statistics point to increased adoption of digital assets, especially since the US approved spot Bitcoin ETFs. Generally, estimates suggest that developers create about 33 new digital assets weekly, catering to a global market of more than 295 million crypto users. In the US, the entire set of crypto users is disproportionately skewed towards high-income earners. Also, studies show that people with an annual income of at least $100,000 make up 25% of crypto owners. Interestingly, they are only about 15% of the general public.
Another interesting fact is millennials make up about 57% of all crypto holders, much higher than Gen Xers, at 20%. Interestingly, the population of Gen Z crypto holders is lower, at 13%. For breaches, statistics show that the entire industry has lost $15 billion worth of digital assets to hacks, scams, and other exploits. This number jumped more than 400% to $77 billion by October 2023.
All the figures recorded in the crypto industry reflect the market’s potential for increased use cases across all sectors, from online betting to finance and supply chain management. Although adoption is still a work in progress, all of the events in the crypto industry this year, such as Bitcoin’s halving and the approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), point to larger figures expected before the end of 2024.
