The last report published by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance concluded that there were more crypto traders than ever, with more than 35 out of 139 million cryptocurrency accounts ID-verified users, which could be considered as regulated exchanges’ users (Coinbase, etc.), and therefore considered as active crypto traders. This figure doubled since 2017 and cryptocurrency gained 17 million verified users last year. That being said, crypto traders’ activity is difficult to track, notably because the criteria that were used varied significantly.

That’s why our study intended to challenge the way crypto traders’ number has been estimated so far and to find another way to point out the global crypto traders — both established as well as new entrants.

Updated in October 2019 : Our new insights are the following:

We no longer have 42 but 50 million investors on exchanges. By including the 1/8 of investors off exchanges, we now end up with 56 million crypto traders instead of 51 million.

Also, since there are close to 18 million BTC in circulation – 20% are lost though – and that 10% of BTC are on exchange, it means that 50 million crypto traders hold altogether 1.8 m BTC.

A study by Patrick Bucquet, Marie Lermite and Ally Jo (June 2019 – updated in October 2019).

Download the complete study below.