Indonesian Crypto Miracle: How Cryptocurrencies Became the Most Popular Investment Instrument In a Country with a 270M Citizens

After the Indonesian government legalized cryptocurrencies trading and classified cryptocurrencies as commodities, the interest in digital assets has skyrocketed. According to the Indonesian Ministry of Trade, the number of Indonesian crypto investors is twice the number of citizens that trade stocks.

Interest in investments

Indonesia is one of the major capital markets in the region which is still at an early age of its development: the share of retail investors among citizens is less than 1%. Nevertheless, it is growing rapidly: during four months from March 2020, the daily average number of Indonesian retail investors that trade stocks via the Internet grew more than 82%, from 52,000 to 93,000 investors.

In March 2020, due to the market crash foreign investors jumped to exiting but local investors seized the moment and bought assets at a lower price. Another driver of the current boom is the entrance of millennials that found themselves more vulnerable to pandemic-related unemployment but are more prone to use digital technologies.

The core reason behind it is a natural human pursuit of financial freedom. As a result of the tenfold fall of the Indonesian rupiah and increased unemployment rates, the need for financial independence has only grown.

A new way to financial freedom

The meteoric growth of the cryptocurrency market, the capitalization of which reached $2 trillion in 2021, has accelerated the interest in digital assets with every spike in bitcoin price bringing more fuel. It can be observed on Google Trends that in May 2021 has shown a peak in Indonesia.

In 2018, the Indonesian Ministry of Trade classified cryptocurrencies as commodities, in fact allowing investing in cryptocurrencies. In 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Supervisory Agency published a list of 229 cryptocurrencies that can be legally traded. Notably, Indonesia became the birthplace of the biggest crypto exchange in the Southeastern Asia Indodax with over 2 million Indonesians among users – twice the number of retail investors on the Indonesian stock exchange.

The interest in cryptocurrencies was accompanied by a demand for knowledge on cryptocurrencies which was partly satisfied by media or resources on crypto exchanges like Binance Academy. In relation to this, the market has seen the emergence of crypto clubs. So in Indonesia, a ROY club was born, the number of members of which exceeded 500,000 thousand in 27 countries by spring 2021.

A community of like-minded people

The ROY Club was founded by an international entrepreneur Vladimir Moshkin who was inspired by the fundamental idea of cryptocurrencies – a dream about financial freedom. According to Moshkin, the main goal of the ROY Club has always been mutual support and experience sharing:

“I aspired to create a unique community of like-minded people united by the interest in cryptocurrencies – not by greed for profit from cryptocurrencies but by the aspirations to change the world to the best, to help people acquire wealth. Cryptocurrencies are just instruments for reaching this goal.

I had always been interested in creating a community that would be free from the feud, quarrelling and lies. I was looking for trustworthy people and those first seven members became senior club curators. Now the total number of members is more than half a million. It shows that the demand is real”

ROY Club for the member

The ROY Club is a platform for experience exchange and mutual support in achieving financial goals. There are regular educational events with ROY School being a platform for those who make their first steps and ROY Academy – who aspire to learn more.

Every member participates in the club development: more experienced members share their knowledge on opportunities with new members as curators.

One of such opportunities is staking. In contrast with mining, it is enough to freeze coins in the wallet, no expensive equipment or special skills needed. Also, members with low-value bets combine their resources into staking pools to get more profits – since the higher the growth rate of the assets. Some ROY Club members launched their staking pools UMI – a decentralized universal money instrument used for free instant transactions. Thanks to staking, stakers make from 5% (< 50,000 UMI) to 40% (>1 billion UMI) monthly. One of the key advantages of UMI staking is that coins can be withdrawn anytime.

The ROY Club founder emphases that the community was not created for making profits but as a platform for like-minded people united by shared values where the greatest value is knowledge:

 “Values are always broader than any ideology. I am much more interested in showing people the capabilities instead of inflicting an ideology”.

Soon ROY Club plans to open offices in dozens of countries, launch communities in India, the Republic of South Africa and China.