France are the best Bitcoin traders, with Europe dominating

This week, Invezz set out to compare data sets in an effort to determine which country are the best Bitcoin traders. 

We first took data from Chainalysis, which displayed the top 25 countries by realised Bitcoin gains in the world in 2020. This served as our sample set, so out of these top gainers, could be rank them in a way that determined who were the best?

As expected, USA led the way with $4.1 billion of realised gains. But with a large population, it’s not really a fair fight. So let’s dig a bit deeper.  

Combining Datasets 

We decided to come up with a weighted index, assigning each country a score based on three factors: 

• First, the amount of bitcoin gains realised in that country per capita. In other words, the above graph but adjusted to account for population
• Secondly, the percentage of citizens in every country who invest in crypto, with data coming from TripleA and Worldometers to ascertain where adoption is highest 
• Finally, the bitcoin gains per each investor

In such a way, we balance the amount of crypto traders a country has with the success of those traders. To note, we omitted China as we could not be confident enough in the data, and so the study was narrowed down to 24 countries. 

France rank in first place

Assigning each country a score rank from 1-24 based on where they ranked in each of the three metrics, we then averaged these three ranks to get an aggregate score. In such a way, the country with the lowest aggregate score was ranked first, with the second-lowest score ranked second, and so on. 

And the winner is….France. But let’s give a shout out out to Europe in general, claiming six of the top seven spots. Canada, in fourth place, are the only ones breaking up the euro party. US are in tenth, while UK are just ahead in ninth. The below table shows the overall rank of the 24 countries, alongside their placing in each of the three measurement criteria.

As you can see, France were 12th in the percentage of the country invested in crypto (3.3%), but an impressive third and eighth respectively in Bitcoin gains per capita and Bitcoin gains per investor. 

The below graph ranks the top 24 from left to right, with the percentage of each country invested in crypto, as well as the profit per each of those crypto traders, displayed. It throws up some interesting results. For example, Ukraine record the highest percentage of crypto investors at 12.7%, but a lowly profit mark of $72 per investor ruins their chances. On the other hand, Switzerland has the most profitable traders at $1,268 of gains per investor, however with only 1.8% of the country invested in crypto, they get knocked down to a sixth place finish. Czech Republic are similar.

But on an overall basis, the French lead the pack. And Europe is undoubtedly the dominant continent. 

Analysis

Interestingly, the correlation between the percentage of citizens investing in crypto, and the profit per investor, was negative at -0.5. While the sample space of only 24 countries could render the negative reading a bit spurious, we nonetheless thought it was interesting that there at least appears to be no positive correlation. 

Then again, the more investors, the fewer gains per investor makes sense on an intuitive basis, as one would expect the earliest adopters and most committed traders to make up a large portion of that country’s profit per investor when there are is only a small number of investors to begin with. 

For curiosity, we played around with the analyses a bit more to see what we could find. As can be seen below, the Czech Republic actually record the highest number of gains per citizen, and quite comfortably, at $61. Table-topping France, meanwhile, are third with $13, just behind Belgium ($17), while the Europeans again dominate, occupying the top six spots before Canada ($10) again provides some reprieve. 

Altering the above to Bitcoin gains per investor, rather than per citizen, Switzerland narrowly pip Czech Republic, with both countries showing savvy traders generating $1,268/$1,259 each. France trail in this metric, in eighth with $275 per investor, showing that the weighted component of our final rank means you must be a jack of all trades to top the rankings.

But like we said above, Switzerland and Czech Republic ranking 23rd and 21st respectively, out of 24 countries, for percentage of population invested in crypto (1.8% and 2.2%) ultimately kills their chances. Maybe those select few Czech and Swiss traders need to spread the love a bit.

So it is France who claim the title of best Bitcoin traders. But there must be something in water in mainland Europe, because their dominance of the top of the table is clear. 

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