'Bengaluru has India's second highest number of crypto investors'

Out of the 19 million investors, women comprised of only 9%

India ended 2023 with nearly 1.9 crore cryptocurrency investors, out of which 8.3% were from Bengaluru, making it the city with the second interest in digital in the country, according to a report by domestic cryptocurrency exchange CoinSwitch. The top spot was taken by Delhi, which made up for 8.8% of investors, while Mumbai and Hyderabad followed suit. Together, the three cities made up for 20% of crypto investments in India.

Tier II cities like Pune, Jaipur and Lucknow also fared high on the list, indicating significant investor interest for the nascent asset class throughout the country. However, most investments went into big cap cryptocurrencies in India, mostly Bitcoin and Ether, which are coins having market capitalisation over $1 billion.

While the initial euphoria for digital assets witnessed in 2021-22 wore off this year, the market showed resilience with consistent growth in asset values. The top asset, Bitcoin, climbed up 150% in value in 2023 and stood at Rs 36.39 lakh at press time. Even then, Solana was the top performing coin in Indian portfolios, climbing 633% over the past year. Overall, the market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies touched a low of less than $1 trillion in June of 2022, but rose to $1.5 trillion by December.

Interestingly, female participation in the crypto market in India remained fairly low at 9%, the report said. At the same time, about 75% of investors were below the age of 35. Of the total, 34.27% investors were below the age of 26, 40.19% between 26-35 years and only 10.02% were aged above 46, highlighting the higher interest the risky asset class continues to command among the younger generation.

“Indian investors booked healthy profits from crypto towards the end of the year with several top coins growing at a healthy clip. While the ecosystem focused on building real world solutions using crypto, investors backed them with patience and traders reaped benefits from the volatility in the market. In 2024 approvals for Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs are highly anticipated events and could lead to more institutional capital coming into the ecosystem,“ as per Balaji Srihari, business head at CoinSwitch.