Hong Kong retains top crypto-ready position for two consecutive years

Hong Kong was crowned the best-pre­pared juris­dic­tion for wide­spread cryp­tocur­ren­cy adop­tion in 2023, retain­ing its cryp­to-readi­ness prowess for the sec­ond year in a row. 

A study fac­tor­ing in the exis­tence and reach of cryp­to — via ATMs, busi­ness­es, acces­si­bil­i­ty and legal­i­ty — revealed stiff com­pe­ti­tion among the 2022 lead­ers as Hong Kong, the Unit­ed States and Switzer­land held on to the top three posi­tions.

While Hong Kong grabbed the top spot with a cryp­to readi­ness score (CRS) of 8.36, the Unit­ed States fell down a spot to third place after record­ing a fall of 6.5% in its CRS score — from 7.7 in 2022 to 7.25 in 2023. On the con­trary, Switzerland’s CRS score jumped over 9% — from 7.5 to 8.18 — to rank 2nd worldwide.

As pre­vi­ous­ly explained by Coin­tele­graph, fac­tors such as cryp­to ATM instal­la­tions, pro-cryp­to reg­u­la­tions, start­up cul­ture and a fair tax regime con­tribute to a country’s CRS. Slove­nia, Cana­da and Aus­tralia man­aged to squeeze into the top 10 in 2023, as shown below.

When it comes to the mass­es, the Dutch showed the most inter­est in cryp­to per per­son. The Unit­ed States is home to the largest net­work of Bit­coin (BTC) ATMs, how­ev­er, Hong Kong has the most cryp­to ATMs per square foot giv­en its sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er land mass.

Esto­nia, Sin­ga­pore and Switzer­land are among the busiest hubs for cryp­to and blockchain com­pa­nies. One of the pri­ma­ry dri­vers that can make or break mass cryp­to adop­tion is tax­es. There are 12 coun­tries that impose a 0% tax on cryp­to for indi­vid­u­als — includ­ing Ger­many, Pana­ma, and Por­tu­gal among oth­ers — who remain well-posi­tioned to climb up the ranks in the com­ing years.

In the US, New York became the most cryp­to-ready US state after record­ing CRS of 9.80 owing to numer­ous cryp­to-relat­ed leg­is­la­tion and a huge num­ber of cryp­to and blockchain busi­ness­es in operation.

Relat­ed: US ‘the only coun­try’ cryp­to star­tups should avoid, says Rip­ple CEO

India leads the glob­al cryp­to adop­tion in 2023, a recent Chainal­y­sis report revealed. Oth­er low­er mid­dle-income (LMI) nations, includ­ing Nige­ria and Thai­land, bagged the sec­ond and third spot in the report.

In addi­tion to lead­ing grass­roots adop­tion, India has also become the sec­ond-largest cryp­to mar­ket by raw esti­mat­ed trans­ac­tion vol­ume glob­al­ly, ahead of oth­er major economies.

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