Luno, a global cryptocurrency company said it has grown its customer base to over 10 million spread across 40 countries. This represents an increase of 35 percent in one calendar year.
The company in a statement said it gained additional 1 million customers in just 6 months driven by the growing popularity of the cryptocurrency market and the adoption by institutional investors.
2021 was a defining one for the cryptocurrency market after the market capitalisation soared to an all-time high of $3 trillion in November 2021. However, the market fell to its lowest level in five months in January 2022 due to regulatory oversights and a challenging macroeconomic environment. In markets in like Nigeria, the Central Bank took drastic steps to curtail the growth of cryptocurrencies including banning financial institutions from providing support to crypto-based businesses.
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Luno and other market operators were affected by the ban leading to the shutdown of a significant portion of their operations. The company said it has since played an increased role in driving the adoption of cryptocurrencies across the world and it appears to be paying off with the growth in users. Also, the market cap once again crossed the $2 trillion mark in March 2022.
“There are an estimated 300 million people using crypto worldwide as of March 2022 – a figure that is expected to grow as global markets gain better access to the crypto ecosystem,” Marcus Swanepoel, CEO and co-founder of Luno. “Our mission is to put the power of crypto in everyone’s hands and reaching the major milestone of 10 million customers shows we are leading the way in this transition towards building a better, fairer financial system for the world.”
Indonesia saw significant growth with users growing to 83 percent.
However, Africa remains Luno’s strongest market, over 55 percent of the new customers added in the last 6 months are based on the continent. On average Africans deposit $53 when they open their account and tend to hold for seven months. 29 percent of new customers bought Bitcoin, while 9 percent bought Ethereum.
As of 12 March 2022, the average holding time for a Luno user in South Africa is over 7 months. South Africa is the company’s most active market holding for the longest time at an average of 10 months.
Singaporean users also had the highest value of first deposits, which stands at $76 across the previous 12 months, compared to Nigeria, one of Luno’s biggest markets which had an average first deposit of $10.
In its statement, Luno noted that it has enabled $52 billion in crypto transactions and customers can store in excess of $1 billion. It plans to bring crypto to over 1 billion people in 2031.
