Bitcoin Around the World

Bitcoin's Global Adoption: Where the World Stands

In Lagos, when the Nigerian government froze bank accounts of #EndSARS protesters in 2020, Bitcoin donations kept the movement alive. In the Philippines, overseas workers sent home US$35.6 billion in cash through banks in 2025, according to preliminary figures from the central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas; worldwide, sending $200 home costs 6.36% on average in fees and exchange-rate margins (World Bank, Q3 2025). These aren't edge cases. This is Bitcoin's primary use case for most of the world.

Bitcoin isn't just a Silicon Valley investment trend. It's a genuinely global phenomenon — adopted differently in different places, for different reasons, by people with very different needs. In wealthy Western nations, it's largely an investment asset and inflation hedge. In Nigeria, it's a lifeline against currency collapse. In El Salvador, a 2021 law made it legal tender; a January 2025 amendment made accepting it voluntary. In Iran, it's an escape from sanctions. Bitcoin's use cases are as diverse as its users.

Global Ownership Estimates

Exact ownership is impossible to measure, but credible estimates as of 2026 suggest:

• ~300 million people globally own some cryptocurrency (majority is Bitcoin)
• Largest absolute user bases: USA, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Turkey
• Highest per-capita adoption: emerging markets facing currency instability
• All 7 continents have Bitcoin users and nodes

Different Needs, Different Use Cases

Bitcoin adoption in wealthy countries vs. developing ones looks very different:

• Developed world: store of value, inflation hedge, portfolio diversification
• Developing world: currency debasement protection, cross-border payments, banking the unbanked
• Authoritarian regimes: capital flight, financial freedom, evading censorship

Top 10 Bitcoin Adoption Countries (2024)

Sources: Triple-A Global Crypto Ownership 2024 · Chainalysis Geography of Cryptocurrency 2023 (as of 2023)

"For people living under authoritarian governments, Bitcoin can be a valuable financial tool as a censorship-resistant medium of exchange. […] To be sure, Bitcoin is still a nascent technology, and doesn’t offer cutting-edge usability, speed, or privacy." — Alex Gladstein, Human Rights Foundation, in TIME, December 2018

Want to go deeper?

• Bitcoin adoption resources — lopp.net
• Human Rights Foundation — Bitcoin for freedom

El Salvador: The World's First Bitcoin Nation-State Experiment

On September 7, 2021, El Salvador became the first country in history to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. President Nayib Bukele introduced the Bitcoin Law, which required businesses to accept Bitcoin when a customer offered it (those who clearly lacked access to the technology were exempt) and made it legal tender alongside the US dollar. Bukele said the law would create jobs and widen access to financial services; at the launch, AP reported that surveys found most Salvadorans disagreed with it. Five years on (2026), the sections below cover what the law did, what changed in 2025, and what researchers found.

What the Law Did

• Made Bitcoin legal tender alongside the USD (El Salvador has used USD since 2001)
• Launched the government's "Chivo" wallet with $30 in BTC for every citizen who signed up (by October 2026, majority ownership of Chivo had passed to a private operator, per the IMF)
• Installed government "Chivo" Bitcoin ATMs (the government promised 200 for the September 2021 launch)
• Made Bitcoin payments legal for all debts, taxes, and contracts (a January 2025 amendment made accepting it voluntary and ended tax payments in Bitcoin)
• Announced "Bitcoin City" (November 2021): a planned city near the Conchagua volcano, to be powered by geothermal energy. A CoinDesk reporter who visited in January 2025 found no construction, El Diario de Hoy reported in August 2025 that nobody in the area had seen progress, and we found no report of construction since (checked October 2026).

What Actually Happened

Adoption was slower and more complicated than the government hoped. Many Salvadorans used the free $30 once and returned to cash. Merchants accepted Bitcoin technically but often converted immediately to USD. Remittances were one of the law's stated aims. According to the Central Reserve Bank, money received through crypto wallets was about 1% of all remittances in 2024 and 0.57% in 2025 ($57.67 million of $9.99 billion), as reported by EFE in January 2026. Early 2026 figures show the amount rising again, at 0.8% of the total in January–February (Bloomberg Línea, March 2026). Bitcoin Beach in El Zonte, a community Lightning project that started in 2019, before the law, is a different case: BBC News Mundo reported in October 2026 that when it checked in 2024, bitcoin use in the country was anecdotal and concentrated mostly around Bitcoin Beach.

The IMF repeatedly urged El Salvador to remove Bitcoin's legal tender status, citing risks to financial stability, financial integrity, and consumer protection. In December 2024, IMF staff and El Salvador reached a $1.4B staff-level agreement, which the IMF Executive Board approved in February 2025. As a condition of the loan, a January 2025 amendment made accepting Bitcoin voluntary and ended tax payments in Bitcoin; in October 2026, the IMF reported that majority ownership of the government's Chivo wallet had passed to a private operator. A survey by economists Fernando Alvarez, David Argente, and Diana Van Patten, published as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper in 2022, found that only 20% of respondents kept using Chivo after spending their $30 bonus, and that 88% of businesses converted the money from bitcoin sales into dollars.

"I wouldn't consider it a resounding success. Still, I do believe that the positive outcomes outweigh the negative, and the issues that have been highlighted are relatively minor." — Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, to TIME, August 2024

"The issues of trust and privacy are going to be key." — David Argente, Yale economist and co-author of the NBER study, to Yale Insights, January 2024

What It Showed

That sovereign adoption is possible. That a village can run everyday payments on Lightning, as Bitcoin Beach does; critics quoted by AP and BBC News Mundo in 2021 called it "artificial", because a donor's gifts got it started. That adoption is hard to impose: Samson Mow, head of Bitcoin firm JAN3, told BBC News Mundo in October 2026 that even a powerful government cannot force it. And that the world was paying attention.

Want to go deeper?

• Bitcoin adoption — lopp.net
• HRF on El Salvador — Human Rights Foundation

Bitcoin and Remittances: Sending Money Home Without Losing 10%

$800 billion is sent across borders as remittances every year — migrants sending money to their families back home. The average fee for these transfers is 6.2%. On $800 billion, that's $50 billion in fees. Paid to Western Union, MoneyGram, and similar services. Taken from some of the world's poorest families. Bitcoin and Lightning Network have the potential to eliminate nearly all of these fees — and the early evidence is compelling.

The Traditional Remittance Problem

• High fees: 6–10% for many corridors (Africa-to-Africa routes often exceed 10%)
• Slow: typically 1–5 business days
• Exclusionary: requires bank accounts, identity documents, physical locations
• Geographically limited: many corridors have no competitive services

How Bitcoin/Lightning Changes This

With Bitcoin and Lightning, a worker in the US can send money to family in El Salvador, Nigeria, or the Philippines in seconds, for fractions of a cent in fees. The recipient doesn't need a bank account — just a mobile phone with a Lightning wallet. Services like Strike use this infrastructure to offer near-zero fee cross-border transfers, converting USD → BTC → USD in the background automatically.

Remittance cost comparison (US → Philippines, sending $200; World Bank, Q3 2025)

Total cost = transfer fee + exchange-rate margin for sending $200, from the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide data (prices collected 4–21 August 2025; ranges and averages are our calculation from its listed services). Bitcoin rows show network fees, not World Bank data.

Sources: World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide · Wise Pricing

"Using bitcoin is really helpful for many Filipinos ... as every single cent that we send can be very significant." — Kate Corporal, a Filipina working in South Korea who sent money home through a bitcoin-based service, to Reuters, March 2018

The same Reuters report noted that such services had "little to no advantage" where fees were already low, such as Hong Kong and Singapore (roughly 1–2%, compared with 10–15% in South Korea).

Challenges and Honest Limitations

Bitcoin remittances still face real barriers: recipients need smartphones, digital literacy, and a way to convert to local currency. Regulatory uncertainty in some corridors creates friction. Last-mile cash-out remains a challenge in rural areas. These are solvable problems — and they're being solved — but acknowledging them matters for an honest picture.

Want to go deeper?

• Bitcoin adoption — lopp.net
• Human Rights Foundation — Bitcoin remittances

Bitcoin in Africa: The Continent Where Bitcoin Is Most Needed

Africa is not the future of Bitcoin adoption — it's happening now. Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the world's most compelling Bitcoin use cases, driven by genuine financial necessity: currency debasement, inflation, banking exclusion, high remittance fees, and cross-border payment friction. In Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, Bitcoin isn't a speculative asset. It's a practical tool for financial survival and self-determination.

Why Africa Has the Most Compelling Bitcoin Use Cases

• Currency instability: Nigeria's naira has lost 70%+ of its value against the dollar in recent years; Zimbabwe's inflation history is well-documented
• Unbanked populations: over 57% of sub-Saharan Africans remain unbanked, yet mobile phone penetration is high
• Remittances: Africa receives over $100 billion/year in remittances — among the highest-fee corridors in the world
• Cross-border trade: 54 African nations, 42 currencies — cross-border business is expensive and slow

Nigeria: Africa's Bitcoin Leader

Despite a government ban on financial institutions facilitating crypto transactions (partially lifted in 2023), Nigeria has consistently ranked among the top countries globally for peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading volume. When the government banned it, Nigerians moved to P2P platforms and cash settlements. Bitcoin adoption here wasn't speculative — it was defensive, driven by naira collapse and capital flight restrictions.

Chainalysis found that bitcoin made up 89% of fiat purchases of crypto in Nigeria and called it "a widely recognized financial hedge and alternative savings tool" there (September 2025). Its October 2024 report found that stablecoins, tokens pegged to the US dollar, made up about 43% of crypto transaction volume across Sub-Saharan Africa (Chainalysis, October 2024).

Want to go deeper?

• Bitcoin global adoption — lopp.net
• Human Rights Foundation — Africa and Bitcoin

Bitcoin Beach: A Salvadoran Village's Bitcoin Experiment

About two years before El Salvador passed its Bitcoin Law, people in El Zonte, a small fishing village on the Pacific coast, began using bitcoin in local shops and to pay wages. They called it Bitcoin Beach. Reuters reported in June 2021 that three young Salvadorans started the project in 2019, backed by Californian Mike Peterson, after an anonymous bitcoin donation. It ran through a local nonprofit, Hope House.

The Bitcoin Beach Origin Story

In 2019, an anonymous Bitcoin donor began funding community work in El Zonte through a local nonprofit, with one condition: the bitcoin could not be converted to dollars. The team first paid teenagers in bitcoin for jobs such as cleaning up the river. When the pandemic closed the village to tourists in 2020, the team sent bitcoin gifts to around 500 families, who spent them at the first shops willing to accept bitcoin. Lightning Network was still nascent. AP reported in June 2021 that adoption had been slow until the pandemic, then took off.

How It Worked

• Local circular economy: Bitcoin Beach's site says locals can pay for food, medical care, utility bills and haircuts in bitcoin; CBS 60 Minutes counted about 45 businesses taking it in 2022
• Works without bank accounts — most residents were unbanked, BBC News Mundo reported in 2021
• Lightning helped make small payments practical, the founders told Reuters; BBC News Mundo noted the app held users' funds in custody, which drew criticism
• Community education model — Hope House staff gave neighbours talks and training (BBC News Mundo)

"Now they are small investors whose lives have been changed by bitcoin." — Roman Martínez, Bitcoin Beach co-founder, to AP in June 2021. "That's not a proof of concept that works." — author David Gerard, in the same AP report; he said it appears to work because the donor keeps adding bitcoin

What Came Next

Reuters and BBC News Mundo reported in June 2021 that President Nayib Bukele cited Bitcoin Beach as inspiration for El Salvador's Bitcoin Law. BBC News Mundo also reported that the US payments start-up Strike had set up in El Zonte, drawn by Bitcoin Beach. Bitcoin Beach's site lists Bitcoin Lake in Guatemala, Bitcoin Ekasi in South Africa and Bitcoin Jungle in Costa Rica among the circular economies it calls friends. Co-founder Roman Martínez told Bitcoin News in October 2025 that the project works with around 70 Bitcoin circular economies worldwide.

Want to go deeper?

• Bitcoin adoption — lopp.net
• Human Rights Foundation features

Bitcoin Circular Economies: Earning, Spending, and Living on Bitcoin

A Bitcoin circular economy is a community or ecosystem where participants earn Bitcoin, spend Bitcoin, save in Bitcoin, and rarely need to convert to fiat currency. The idea challenges the assumption that Bitcoin can only be an investment to eventually cash out into dollars. In several communities around the world, it's possible to live entirely in a Bitcoin economy — no bank required.

What Makes a Circular Economy

For a circular economy to function, three things must be present:

• Merchants accepting Bitcoin — coffee shops, grocery stores, services, landlords
• Employers or clients paying in Bitcoin — so workers receive Bitcoin income directly
• Community education — enough local understanding to transact confidently

Lightning Network is essential for most circular economies — base-layer Bitcoin fees make small daily transactions impractical. Lightning makes paying for a $3 cup of coffee viable. Explore the global Bitcoin ecosystem in our Orange Pages directory.

Examples Around the World

• Bitcoin Beach (El Zonte, El Salvador) — started in 2019 with bitcoin from an anonymous donor
• Bitcoin Ekasi (South Africa) — serving the Mossel Bay township community; its site says it builds on an existing community group, as Bitcoin Beach did in El Zonte
• Bitcoin Lake (Guatemala) — circular economy in Panajachel, on Lake Atitlán; we could not confirm that it is still running (checked October 2026)
• Bitcoin Jungle (Costa Rica) — Uvita area business and resident network

"Everyone who works for The Surfer Kids & Bitcoin Ekasi earns 100% of their salaries in bitcoin. At the same time, Bitcoin Ekasi does onboarding of shops in the township so that spaza shops accept bitcoin. This means that coaches, teachers, etc., employed by The Surfer Kids & Bitcoin Ekasi can spend their bitcoin salaries at the spaza shops without needing to convert to fiat." — Hermann Vivier, Bitcoin Ekasi, to Mariblock, October 2023

Challenges for Circular Economies

A survey of 64 merchants in Panajachel (Guatemala), El Zonte (El Salvador) and Uvita (Costa Rica), the towns of Bitcoin Lake, Bitcoin Beach and Bitcoin Jungle, found that 44% held the bitcoin they earned as an asset and 27% converted it to fiat (Gutsche and Louca, Springer, 2024). Sustainable circular economies require critical mass — if too few merchants accept Bitcoin, workers convert to fiat immediately. Tax complexity around Bitcoin-denominated wages varies by jurisdiction. Price volatility can discourage savings. And the most successful circular economies have required years of patient community education, not overnight adoption. They're promising models, not guaranteed outcomes.

Want to go deeper?

• Bitcoin adoption — lopp.net
• HRF circular economies coverage