Middle East and North Africa dominate the global crypto market growth, study reveals

The cryptocurrency sector is continuously growing around the world, with the region of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) standing out over the past year, due to recording the highest crypto transaction volume growth year-on-year (YoY) compared to all other regions.

As it happens, the Middle East and North Africa region has recorded an increase in crypto transaction volume of 48% in the period between June 2021 and June 2022, the largest in the world, according to the new ‘The 2022 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report’ published by crypto analytics platform Chainalysis on October 20.

MENA countries lead the way

In second place is Latin America with YoY crypto transaction volume growth of 40%, followed by North America with an increase of 36% and Central and Southern Asia at 35%. Eastern Asia has recorded the slowest growth of only 4%.

According to the report, MENA’s growth can be attributed to the use cases in three of the region’s leading countries in crypto adoption. As it highlights:

“MENA is also home to three of the top thirty countries in this year’s index: Turkey (12), Egypt (14), and Morocco (24). Use cases around savings preservation and remittance payments as well as increasingly permissive crypto regulations help explain why.”

Egypt running the show in the region

Among the MENA countries, Egypt is the one with the highest crypto transaction growth, as it recorded a surge of a whopping 221.7%, followed by Saudi Arabia at 194.8%, and Lebanon with 120.9%.

As the report stresses:

“Egypt’s position at the intersection of growing crypto remittances and increased inflationary pressures help explain why it’s the fastest growing crypto market in all of MENA this year. Between July 2021 and June 2022, transaction volume in Egypt tripled compared to the preceding year.”

Turkey, on the other hand, “remains the largest cryptocurrency market in the region, its citizens having received $192 billion from July 2021 to June 2022, but has seen much slower YoY growth.”

Crypto value received still low

That said, the region of MENA accounts for only 9% of cryptocurrency value received worldwide, falling far behind the world’s largest crypto economy Central, Northern, and Western Europe at 21.9%, North America at 19%, and Central & Southern Asia and Oceania at 15.8%.

These poor results can partially be attributed to the crypto crackdown by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which has witnessed the arrests of several dealers of crypto tokens who disobeyed the instructions to stop any cryptocurrency trading and effectively shutting down decentralized finance (DeFi) in the country, as Finbold reported.