A report compiled by Triple-A, a Sinagpore based digital currencies payment provider, has suggested that 21.2 percent of Vietnamese own crypto currencies. This has been widely reported in the media both abroad and in Vietnam, however, this seems far fetched–about 44 percent of Vietnamese are unbanked and just 6 percent of Vietnamese had a credit card according to a 2021 report from the World Bank. In this context, it seems unlikely that one in five people would own crypto currency.

So how did Triple-A reach this conclusion?

There are a number of problems with the way this report was put together. The crux of it, however, is that it took three metrics from the ‘Chainalysis 2022 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report’, specifically: the country on-chain cryptocurrency value received, the country on-chain retail value received, and the Peer-to-Peer exchange trade volume, and combined them together to get a score. It then took a Central Bank of Canada report that found 5 percent of Canadians owned cryptocurrency and Canada’s score of 152 on the aforementioned metrics and used this as a basis for extrapolating ownership rates for all other countries.

Using the survey results of one central bank for one country and then applying it to all countries doesn’t take into account a myriad of different factors that might impact crypto adoption. Disposable income for one which is likely much higher in a developed country like Canada than it is in a country like Vietnam. In this context, the results in this report are highly questionable.

Here is the Triple-A report’s methodology: Cryptocurrency Ownership Data – Triple-A