Note that the study used a weighted index to assign ranking scores to countries based on the amount of Bitcoin income per capita, the percentage of citizens investing in cryptocurrencies, and income per investor. The focus was on the top 25 countries in the aforementioned indicators, excluding China and Taiwan.

In other words, the approach was weighted. However, it is important to understand that it is impossible to get an absolutely accurate result in this study – at least because some traders use decentralised exchanges without identity authentication and while using a VPN. Accordingly, it is simply impossible to determine their real location.

Who makes money from cryptocurrencies

France ranked first in terms of investment in cryptocurrencies. And while it ranks 12th for the percentage of the population investing in digital assets, the country also ranks in the top 3 for BTC earnings per capita and holds the eighth spot for BTC earnings per investor.

Ranking of countries with: percentage of people in the country investing in cryptocurrencies, income in BTC per capita and income in BTC per investor

The Czech Republic and Belgium were also in the top three, CryptoSlate reported. The Czech Republic ranked first in BTC revenue per capita and second in revenue per investor. Belgium, on the other hand, came second in terms of profit per capita and fourth in terms of profit per investor. However, the low percentage of citizens trading crypto in both countries had a negative impact on their final ranking score.

Returns in BTC per investor

Switzerland, which has the most profitable investors, ranked sixth overall, as only 1.8 percent of its residents actively invest in crypto. But the country still managed to rank fifth in terms of per capita profits. Per capita crypto profits in France are only $13, while the profit per investor was $275. The most “savvy” investors were just the Swiss and Czechs with profits of $1,268 and $1,259 respectively.

Total cryptocurrency returns by country in 2020

According to the report, while many other countries ranked well in certain categories, France was the only country with above-average performance in all three of the aforementioned parameters. This helped the country achieve the highest aggregate ranking and claim the title of best in terms of crypto trading prowess.

Percentage of people investing in cryptocurrencies and income in BTC per investor

Unfortunately, the success of Europeans in crypto trading could soon be overshadowed by new European Union decisions to ban Bitcoin mining and trading. These were discussed at a recent EU meeting, according to news outlet Cointelegraph. Most disturbing from the cryptocurrency community’s point of view, the comments are contained in a document detailing some of the minutes of the EU meeting with Swedish financial watchdog and environmental agency representatives.

Officials suggested that regulators should put pressure on Bitcoin investors to switch to the cryptocurrency’s less energy-intensive Proof-of-Stake algorithm. Here’s a quote voiced at the meeting.

Etherium has started to move to PoS because of its community. If there is such a precedent with Etherium, we can legally demand the same from Bitcoin. We need to “protect” other coins that are energy resilient. We see no need to “protect” the Bitcoin community.

This quote proves a misunderstanding of what is happening in the cryptocurrency niche on the part of officials. Firstly, investors may have absolutely no regard for the Bitcoin protocol if they invest through centralised cryptocurrency exchanges and do not hold a network node. Second, moving such a large-scale and global blockchain to a different consensus algorithm requires not only years of development, but also testing, which could prove unsuccessful. Finally, thirdly, most users of the network could trivialise such requirements and keep things as they are. And given the dislike of decentralisation fans for the authorities, this is likely to be the case.

Another unnamed speaker suggested that the EU could justifiably impose a blanket ban on trading in any crypto-assets using the Proof-of-Work algorithm. However, thanks to the same decentralised exchanges and VPNs, it will definitely not be possible to ban it completely.

Fortunately, it is too early to panic about such radical restrictions on the crypto market in Europe. All statements are still at the proposal stage. In addition, in the history of crypto market Bitcoin has been proposed to be “closed” hundreds of times, but the main cryptocurrency still operates without any problems, which only proves the advantages of decentralization.


We believe that the officials' comments once again prove that many of them do not understand the details of what is going on in blockchain and the blockchain community. Therefore, their proposals and ideas become irrelevant to the cryptocurrency world in advance. I would like to believe that as time goes by, there will be more and more decentralisation experts among politicians who at least understand the basics of the field.


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