There were 17.91 million cryptocurrency traders in Indonesia in contrast to the 11.54 million stock traders at the end of September 2023.
The prediction that crypto traders would surpass stock traders in the country had been handed down since 2018 five years after it came to pass.
Percentage of Indonesia That Are Crypto Traders
The country had a population of 279.5million as of July 2023, according to the World Population Clock of the Census Bureau of the United States.
This means that approximately 1.8% of Indonesians are cryptocurrency investors. They trade digital assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and they are also showing interest in other Altcoins such as DragonCoin, EggDog, and XV among others.
Now, the country’s regulatory authorities are beaming their searchlight on the crypto sectors and are already pushing to tax cryptocurrency exchanges and traders (more about this below).
To even show it isn’t joking about cryptocurrency regulations, the country has also issued a warning to exchanges to be ready to abide by its new digital assets rules or face the full wrath of the law.
Now, what does the data say about cryptocurrency and stock traders in the fourth most-populated country?
How many Crypto traders are there in Indonesia?
Cryptocurrency investors in Indonesia increased in number from 17.79 million in August to 17.91 million in September 2023, data from the Futures Exchange Supervisory Board (Bappebti) revealed.
Noticeably, those who engage in crypto investment – buyers and sellers – increased by 1.64 million between September 2022 to September 2023, showing a 10.1 per cent increase.
And despite the decline in the value of crypto in 2022, Indonesians’ interest in Bitcoin, NFT, and other digital assets did not decline, but not at the same pace we expected it.
The recent surge in crypto trading among Indonesians is not far-fetched from the recent bounce-back performance of Bitcoin, when it surpassed $35,000 in October, which significantly pushed up the value of other coins.
At the time of this publication, Bitcoin is BTC/$41,976.98 while analysts say 2024 may be another breakthrough for the leading digital asset.
There are also speculations among analysts that the “Bitcoin halving” event in 2024, when a new BTC will be issued at half the rate, could further push Bitcoin’s price up.
What does this mean?
The increase in the value of Bitcoin and other coins will most likely spur the interest of Indonesians, leading to the popularity of the digital assets.
How many stock traders are there in Indonesia?
At the end of August 2023, there were 11.54 million stock investors in Asia’s third-most populated country.
The English version of Kompas in a report quoted PT Kustodian Sentral Efek Indonesia (KSEI) as saying that individual investors aged 30 years or younger reached 57.04 percent within the year under review.
While this could be described as impressive and a sign that the younger generation are interested in stock investing, the fact that 30 or below 30 of age recorded 59.22 percent in 2022 shows that they may be moving their investment into digital assets.
The emergence of the Indonesian Crypto Asset Futures Exchange
As more investors move towards cryptocurrency investing, the government on July 28, 2023, launched the Indonesian Crypto Asset Futures Exchange, a national crypto asset bourse that will provide regulators with transaction records.
The idea is to boost transparency and better protect the interest of crypto consumers as digital assets continue to boom in the country.
This means all crypto exchanges must register with the new bourse or be shut.
While this move has received backlash from some quarters, others are hailing it, saying it will restore sanity in the crypto market in the country, considering the recent crises that have rocked the crypto market following the collapse of a global exchange FTX in 2022.
What does the new bourse mean for Indonesian crypto traders?
Cryptocurrency is designed to be anonymous, but the anonymity will be eroded by the activities of the new bourse.
All activities of crypto traders and investors in the country will now be visible to the authority and all transactions within its jurisdiction.
The new rule regarding digital assets in the country was anticipated considering Bank Indonesia repeated warning about the danger of cryptocurrencies.
Its crackdown once caused Indonesian Bitcoin payment processors to halt operations, which affected local tourism businesses in the island of Bali.
But the crackdown didn’t stop people from trading crypto as they defied the apex bank’s rule through the use of peer-to-peer exchanges, just as the case was in Nigeria when authorities clampdown on traders before changing its own rule in the latest update.
So, the best alternative for the government is to come up with the means of bringing the investors into its tax net.
For instance, Indonesia Digital Asset Exchange (Indodax) – a crypto exchange founded in 2014 – boasted 1,147,430 members on its platform as of 2018.
But at the time of updating this article, Indodax App already has more than 5.7 million users on its platform.
Indodax, which is the pioneer largest Crypto trading exchange in Indonesia, is verified by BAPPEBTI.
Five years ago, Chief Executive Officer Oscar Darmawan was quoted as saying that Indodax App was seeing “almost 3,000 new members signing up everyday”
