In February 2023, six countries in the Middle East saw 300,000 daily active users on centralised crypto exchanges. But in the same month a year later, there were over 500,000. Bitget Research has attributed much of this growth to favourable local crypto regulations in the Middle East, the approval of Bitcoin ETFs, and the increasing attractiveness of digital assets amid a market upturn.
The UAE emerged as the region with the highest cryptocurrency adoption rate in the region, with 72 per cent of local users investing in Bitcoin. Twenty-nine per cent of UAE-based users surveyed believe that digital assets offer a more convenient way of holding assets. Meanwhile, 34 per cent of users are cryptocurrency traders, and 22 per cent use them for daily payments.
