Crypto wallet downloads surpass 100 million in 2022 despite crypto winter

Cryptocurrency wallets remain pivotal for investors to get involved in the digital assets sector. Amid the highs and lows of the crypto markets, the usage of wallets has remained reasonably active.

In this line, data acquired by Finbold indicates that between January and October 2022, an estimated 102.06 million crypto wallets were downloaded for Android and iOS devices for 21 selected apps that enable digital currency storage. The value represents a drop of 42.37% from 177.85 million downloads in 2021.

Elsewhere, in 2022, January recorded the highest number of downloads at 16.11 million, while data for the most recent month, October, stood at 8.7 million. July recorded the least number of downloads at 7.29 million.

Notably, last year’s figure represents the highest yearly crypto wallet downloads ever, representing a growth of 453.12% from 2020’s figure of 32.95 million. At the same time, 2017 registered the second-highest rate of downloads at 433.33%, when the number of downloaded crypto wallets stood at 16.72 million.

A notable download drop was registered in 2018, with 14.83 million downloaded apps or a slump of 12.5%. Additionally, 2019 wallet downloads stood at 13.34 million, a drop of 7.14%.

Impact of crypto market crisis

The report acknowledges that despite the drop in 2022, the number of crypto wallet downloads has remained relatively active. According to the research report:

“The downloads have plunged amid the prevailing bear market as investor interest in digital assets remains low. Indeed, the low interest has been motivated by related activities such as the fear of losing crypto holdings considering high profile incidents like the Terra (LUNA) ecosystem crash and the FTX crypto exchange collapse as confidence in centralized trading platforms took a hit.”

Overall, the growth of crypto wallets still faces several challenges, with regulatory uncertainty emerging as a key inhibitor.