Asia Leads NFT Adoption In 2022, New Report Shows

Central and Southern Asian traders make up the largest portion of NFT owners in the world, a report from blockchain data firm Chainalysis showed.

As of early-2022, nearly 30% of the market was dominated by Asian traders, the firm said. Asian dominance in the NFT space had surged to nearly 40% of the market during a mid-2021 boom in the space.

North American and Western European traders are the second and third-largest adopters of the space, Chainalysis said. Regions such as Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East are laggards among the space.

 While some regions certainly lag, the fact that no region has made up more than 40% of all web traffic since the beginning of 2021 suggests that, like cryptocurrency as a whole, NFTs have captured a global audience.

-Chainalysis

Which countries could be leading NFT volumes?

Under Central and Southern Asia, countries such as India, Kazakhstan and Pakistan appear to be the most likely to account for NFT trading. All three countries have emerged as major crypto hubs in the past few years.

An earlier report from Chainalysis showed that India was the second-biggest adopter of crypto in 2021, behind Vietnam. Pakistan was ranked third on the list.

Data from Chainalysis shows that retail traders account for nearly all NFT transactions- which fits in with the crypto trading demographics of both countries.

But while India and Kazakhstan saw a crypto boom over the past few years, strict regulation seems to have hampered further growth potential. Kazakhstan recently outlawed crypto mining, while India introduced steep taxes on crypto trade last month.

Pakistan recently established government committees to overlook crypto regulation in the country.

NFT markets stabilizing from 2021 boom

NFT markets appear to be stabilizing after seeing explosive growth through 2021, Chainalysis said. The biggest driver of growth in 2022 appears to be Yuga Labs’ metaverse project, which pushed up demand for its Bored Ape NFTs.

Transaction volumes have also wildly fluctuated since 2021, spiking sporadically across the year. But despite the volatility, Chainalysis sees the number of active NFT traders continuing to grow.