The Bank of Canada has revealed in its Financial System Review that as many as 13 percent of Canadian citizens owned Bitcoin as of 2021. In 2018-20, this figure was just 5 percent.
This increase occurred after “widespread increases in the savings and wealth of Canadians during the pandemic,” the bank said in its report. Titled Private Digital Cryptoassess as Investment? Bitcoin Ownership and Use in Canada, 2016-2021, the report was released on October 12, 2022.
Canadian fintech firms have begun selling cryptocurrency alongside conventional goods. As such, more people now have access to a platform to learn about and invest in cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, the report said.
The Bank of Canada said that since 2016 it has been researching Bitcoin. It used polling to understand how Canadians felt about cryptocurrency as an asset class. According to the findings of the 2021 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey, the number of people holding cryptocurrencies in the country has increased since the outbreak.
Surprisingly, despite an increase in Bitcoin ownership in Canada, statistics show that more Canadians who own the cryptocurrency are not actually aware of it.
Despite the possibility of more people owning Bitcoin in 2022, it appears that these people do not “have as much expertise in the currency. Given that the use of cryptocurrency is expected to increase even more in Canada by 2024, this is something to keep an eye on, the report says.
According to the report, Ether, Dogecoin and Bitcoin Cash were the most frequently mentioned altcoins that respondents said they had heard of. However, the reported holdings in these were modest. Only 7 percent of Canadians owned Ether, and 4 percent owned either Dogecoin or Bitcoin Cash.
The report further revealed that in 2021, 90 percent of people surveyed reported having heard of Bitcoin and had some basic knowledge about it, indicating that awareness of Bitcoin is quite high in Canada.
The participants in the study also showed a wide range of knowledge levels. A whopping 40 percent of those who said they owned Bitcoin said they had little or no information about it.
Where does India stand?
According to data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), released in August 2022, over seven percent of Indians owned cryptocurrency in 2021.
Data from the United Nations on population share in the top 20 economies that owned digital currencies in 2021 found Ukraine at the top of the list. About 12.7 percent of the population had such digital currencies. India ranked seventh on the list.
