Crypto wallets reach 36M high. More dormant crypto holders are turning into active users, participating in blockchain protocols.
The number of mobile cryptocurrency users has reached a new all-time high, with growing numbers of passive cryptocurrency holders becoming active users, demonstrating broader mainstream adoption.
Coinbase’s quarterly crypto market report, published on Jan. 29, showed that mobile cryptocurrency wallets surpassed their previous all-time high, reaching more than 36 million in the fourth quarter of 2024.
“Mobile wallets will be critical to converting passive crypto owners into active crypto users,” wrote Daren Matsuoka, data scientist at a16z Crypto.
Crypto users are those who do more than just hold on to tokens, as they actively engage with decentralized finance (DeFi) or other blockchain-based applications.
According to the 2024 Cryptocurrency Ownership report by Triple-A, there were approximately 560 million crypto owners globally, versus 36 million active crypto wallet users.
Current users are on track to become three times the number of cryptocurrency holders in just two years, according to Pavlo Denysiuk, CEO of crypto payments firm Lunu.
Crypto wallets reach 36M high. Stablecoins are crypto’s new “killer app”
According to Coinbase’s report, stablecoins became crypto’s new “killer app” in 2024 between greater liquidity in the crypto markets and increasing use of crypto as a means of payment and for cross-border transactions:
“Behind this growth is one simple but powerful fact: stablecoins can help make it faster and cheaper for businesses and individuals alike to move money around the world.”
Stablecoins are threatening fiat money dominance in Eastern Asia
Stablecoins and cryptocurrencies are threatening the fiat currencies of countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, which shows the importance of these digital assets in underdeveloped economies.
The region was the sixth largest crypto economy in 2024, making up more than 8.9% of total value transferred in crypto globally from June 2024 to July 2023, according to a Sept. 17 report from Chainalysis.
Maruf Yusupov, co-founder of Deenar, a digitized stablecoin backed by physical gold, believes that the proliferation of crypto and stablecoins solves the desperate situation of countries with constant fiat currency devaluation and high inflationary rates.
Slowly but surely, stablecoins are becoming a cheaper and faster way to transfer money around as well. For 2024 remittance fees were around 7.34% on average if the transactions were bank account transfers (Statista).
Onchain returned $400 billion over 12 months from June 2024 to July 2023, to East Asia.