Hootsuite report: 11% of Indonesians own crypto

According to a recent report by Hootsuite, around 11% Indonesians own some form of cryptocurrency. The country is ranked sixth in terms of crypto adoption following the Philippines, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, and Nigeria. As the native fiat currency of Indonesia, Indonesian rupee (IDR) is slowly devaluing and more citizens are choosing to hold crypto. Since the beginning of 2020, USD/IDR surged by about 20%, which is quite a lot for a fiat pair. Most of the losses have been suffered in March amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The credibility of the report remains disputed. When the report was discussed on Twitter, some locals said that it’s unlikely that 11% of the Indonesians own crypto. 

Douglas Tan, an Indonesian citizen, tweeted:

Indonesian here. The numbers are pretty misleading i think, as they might take 2017 bull run into account for calculating the 11%. In actual, there are so many fake accounts who signed up to the largest crypto exchange back to 2017, just to receive an airdrop. # sud be below 0.5% @DouglasTan30

The same report also said that seven percent of the world population owns at least some Bitcoin or altcoins. This means that over 546 million people across the globe own cryptocurrency. This figure is way higher than other estimations. For instance, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says that there are only 50 million crypto users worldwide.