The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency markets, with the volume of crypto received in the region jumping 48% in the year to June, Reuters reports, citing blockchain researcher Chainalysis.
Although the region remains one of the smallest markets globally for cryptocurrencies, its growth to $566 billion received in cryptocurrency between July 2021 and June 2022 shows adoption is rising rapidly, according to the report.
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,” Chainalysis said.
Saudi Arabia is the third-largest crypto market in all of MENA, and UAE is fifth, the report said.
“As key business hubs of the MENA region, the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman – seldom make it to the top of our grassroots crypto adoption index, as it weighs countries by purchasing power parity per capita, which favors poorer nations. Nevertheless, their role in the crypto ecosystem should not be underestimated. Saudi Arabia, for example, is the third-largest crypto market in all of MENA, and UAE is fifth. They also have deep ties to the global crypto markets: in our Sub-saharan Africa and Central & Southern Asia sections, we find that Dubai has become a hub for crypto companies that serve customers all across Asia and Africa, not just in the Middle East.”
