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An interview with a representative from imToken, a Chinese digital currency wallet provider, has given rare insight into the cryptocurrency habits of the nation’s population. It appears that Chinese crypto asset enthusiasts have a tendency to prefer non-custodial storage solutions and that mobile-accessed wallets are by far the most popular over their desktop counterparts.
Chinese Cryptocurrency Users Love to Trade and Trust Centralised Storage
In an interview with Global Coin Research, Lucas Huang, business growth manager at the world’s largest Ethereum wallet provider, imToken, has offered insights observed about the nation’s digital asset habits from the company’s experience serving the market.
Live! with @imtokenofficial on the state of Chinese wallets and Chinese user behavior https://t.co/5ig4WzvIYG
— Global Coin Research (GCR) (@Globalcoinrsrch) August 9, 2019
In the interview, Huang details that Chinese cryptocurrency enthusiasts are most served by mobile wallets. This is due to the vast numbers of mobile phones compared to computer systems, particularly in rural areas.
He also revealed there is a tendency for Chinese crypto holders to prefer centralised storage solutions – the kind offered by exchanges. Huang opined that many investors and traders in the nation lacked the confidence required to set up adequate storage of their own.
He added that since there has still not been any kind of major exchange hack that involved many Chinese cryptocurrency speculators losing their holdings, there was little incentive to move funds from exchanges and into wallets under their own control.
Another cause for the large numbers of coins held on centralised exchanges might be the clear love of trading Huang has observed whilst working with imToken. He claims that the majority of people take up positions in cryptocurrency to trade and therefore wallets serving the nation are often optimised to reflect this.
Despite Huang’s observation that the second largest use case of Chinese cryptocurrency users was long-term speculation (simply holding) and that many users liked receiving various airdrops, there appears to be little holding of erc20 tokens. This is somewhat interesting, particularly given that Huang also stated that Ethereum had by far the most interest surrounding it of all smart contract platforms. He says the network sees the most decentralised application engagement from its users, despite imToken also supporting projects from other blockchains.
Elsewhere in the interview, Huang stated that the largest age group of Chinese cryptocurrency users was 18-34, there was around a 40/60 split in female versus male users, and that there is a general resistance to changing wallet providers.
He also stated that the company had seen wallet adoption plateauing in China. During the 2017 bull run, there were many new people coming into the market, he said. However, despite the recent price rallies, the same influx of new users has not been observed yet.
This lends weight to the popular theory that it is institutional investors driving the current price rise run. Other non-conclusive metrics, such as the lack of Google searches for terms like “buy Bitcoin”, also hint that there are not swathes of new investors flowing into the market as there was two years ago.
Related Reading: Bitcoin & Tether Trading at a Discount in China: What Safe Haven Narrative?
Featured Image from Shutterstock.
