2021 Indonesia Cryptocurrency Investor Report Part 1: The Growth in Adoption of Crypto Assets in Indonesia
Tokenomy is excited to bring insights on the cryptocurrency investment climate in Indonesia through the 2021 Indonesia Cryptocurrency Investor Report.
This survey collected feedback from 21,052 users of Tokenomy and Indodax, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Indonesia with over 2 million users. The report will be delivered in three different sections:
- The Growth in Adoption of Crypto Assets in Indonesia
- Understanding the Technical Fluency of Indonesian Investors
- Broader Applications of Cryptocurrency
Welcome to Part 1, The Growth and Popularity of Crypto Assets in Indonesia. The following two parts will be published in the coming weeks.
Key Takeaways
- Indonesian investors are very bullish on the future of crypto assets. Their most common predictions for BTC and ETH target prices were $69,000 and $3,450 respectively
- The imbalance in respondent gender in our data highlights an important question across the crypto community: How do we break down the barriers to investment for women?
- News publications such as Coindesk, Cointelegraph, and Coinbase are the top tools used by traders to inform their decisions
- The top 5 coins preferred by respondents were: BTC, ETH, DOGE, LTC, and XRP
Breakdown of Survey Respondents
As mentioned above, all of the survey respondents are users of the Indondesian cryptocurrency exchange Indodax, so this sample should provide a good illustration of the typical Indonesian investor/trader.
Taking a look at the gender breakdown of respondents, 91% of respondents were male. This gender imbalance is similar to that found on other crypto trading platforms throughout the world. For example, Business Insider cites that 85% of crypto traders on Israel-based eToro are male. Looking at stock trading platforms such as Robinhood and eTrade, we see a similar slant towards male investors making up the majority of users (around 60–75% of investors), although not by as much as cryptocurrency platforms.
While potential reasons for the lower rate of participation in the market for females include the lack of exposure to investing and risk aversion, a big question here remains how to break down the barriers to investment for women.
Additionally, the ages reported point to the tendency of younger individuals to be the most likely to engage with cryptocurrency. As you can see from the chart below, Indodax users are concentrated in the 20–30 year old range. After age 30, the number of users sharply declines as age grows. The highest reported number of males (940) came at age 23 and highest reported number of females (96) came at age 30.
In terms of education, 48% of survey respondents cited their highest level of education as high school, followed closely by those that completed university at 44%. This rate of university graduation is high relative to the percentage of young adults that held a university degree in Indonesia in 2017 at 17%. Additionally, these numbers include hundreds of respondents age 22 or below that responded their current occupation was “college student,” so this is likely a better educated group than even these numbers show.
The top three occupations listed by respondents were private employee, entrepreneur, and college student.
Through taking in the demographic data, we start to paint a picture of the “typical” Indonesian cryptocurrency investor:
- Male, in mid to late 20's
- Likely completed, or in the process of completing a university degree
- Entrepreneurial
Awareness of Crypto Assets
Respondents in large part had heard of crypto recently, in the last couple of years. While there seems to be a particular tendency to hear about crypto for the first time in January, this is most likely just because respondents remembered the year they first heard of crypto, but not the month and then defaulted to putting January on the survey. Ignoring the January spikes, we can still observe patterns in awareness of crypto: every year the number of people that hear about cryptocurrency grows, with specific spikes in early 2018 and late 2020.
If we plot our data on the number of people that became aware of crypto next to the price of BTC, we observe a close correlation between the two. There is likely a positive feedback loop here: the more people are aware of crypto, the more the price of BTC rises; as the price of BTC rises, it appears more in the media and is spread by word of mouth, and so on.
Our data reflects what Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, observed:
“As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases. It has the potential for a positive feedback loop; as users increase, the value goes up, which could attract more users to take advantage of the increasing value.”
— Satoshi Nakamoto
There tends to be a lag between first hearing about crypto assets and making one’s first purchase. In the following chart there is again a spike in purchasing for the first time in early 2018, but most of the purchasing is concentrated towards the end of 2020. Our data shows that on average, respondents waited 539 days in between hearing about crypto assets for the first time, and making their first purchase.
A key question here that could be delved into more deeply: what causes people to buy for the first time? Our data found that 69% of respondents read crypto assets and blockchain related news on a daily basis. It seems likely that articles and publications put out by firms such as Coindesk, Cointelegraph, and Coinbase strongly shape the public’s perception of crypto.
The importance of online publications in the crypto market is further validated by our next question in the survey: What tools do you use to make decisions in buying / selling Crypto Assets?
As you can see, news publications are at the top, followed by more technical analysis and Telegram.
While Telegram may not be a dominant player in the U.S., it is one of the most popular messaging apps worldwide, behind Whatsapp, Messenger, and WeChat. It’s known for its focus on privacy, with about 500 million monthly active users as of January 2021. It has provided a popular platform for a number of groups focused on cryptocurrency-related news and analysis, a full list of which can be found here.
Crypto Compared to Other Asset Classes
Investing in cryptocurrency is often measured against other asset classes such as stocks, bonds, real estate, and commodities (gold, oil, etc.). The sentiment from all surveyed investors when asked about their preference between crypto and other assets is largely bullish. Real estate had the fewest percentage of respondents that agreed or strongly agreed that crypto assets were better at 64.4%, which still shows a strong preference for crypto assets!
Sentiment on the Future of Crypto
Our data paints an optimistic picture of crypto in the future. A few stats to consider from our 20k+ respondents:
- 79.6% state that they will be actively trading crypto assets in the next 12 months
- 71.1% believe that actively trading Crypto Assets is better than just buying and holding them.
- 78.7% believe in holding on to crypto assets for the long term
Respondents’ Target Price for BTC and ETH: 31 December 2021
Looking at a scatterplot of respondent’s predictions for the price of BTC and ETH at the end of 2021, two points stand out:
- While predictions look like they are most heavily clustered just to the left of the current price, the average of the predictions is BTC: $54,974, ETH: $2,925
- The mode (most common predictions) are: BTC: $69,000, ETH: $3,450
If we look at the predictions for BTC and ETH separately, we see that most of the weight for BTC is concentrated between $40–70k, and between $2000–3500 for ETH.
It is important to note that these predictions were made in January and February 2021 — when the price of BTC fluctuated between $30k and $52k, and the price of ETH hovered between $1000 and $1800. A similar survey conducted in late March 2021 may have more bullish predictions given the current prices.
The Top 5 Crypto Assets Mentioned by Respondents
When asked to name their top three crypto assets, respondents’ top 5 picks were: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Litecoin (LTC), and Ripple (XRP).
Dogecoin, originally created as a joke in 2013, has grown in popularity since influencers such as Elon Musk and Mark Cuban have tweeted it numerous times since early February. Whether it will become a leading cryptocurrency in the future remains to be seen, but it certainly has captured the attention of many recently — and the Indonesian market is no exception.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of our investor report: Understanding the Technical Fluency of Indonesian Investors!
Written by Jake Tennant, Data Analyst and Writer @ Tokenomy
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