Asia has overtaken North America as the leader in cryptocurrency and blockchain development talent, according to a recent report.
Asia’s share of cryptocurrency developers increased to 32% in 2024, up from 13% in 2015, making it the top region for developer talent.
Over the same period, North America’s share of developers was effectively cut in half, dropping to 24% from 44% in 2015, according to Electric Capital general partner Maria Shen, who wrote in an Oct. 30 X post:
“Asia is now #1 for crypto devs. The US is losing market share. Crypto impacts every state in the US – crypto should be non-partisan.”
Crypto developers share by continent. Source: Maria Shen
The geographic distribution of crypto developers often signals the regions poised to drive future blockchain innovation. A growing developer base in any region is a positive indicator of mass adoption of blockchain technology, as it suggests an increase in blockchain-based consumer applications.
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The US still leads in total crypto developers
Despite 81% of all blockchain developers now residing outside the United States, it still holds the highest number of developers globally.
About 18.8% of all crypto developers are based in the US, followed by India at 11.8% and the United Kingdom third at 4.2%.
Crypto developers share by country. Source: Maria Shen
Still, the US has seen a more than 51% drop in developer share since 2015, despite the industry’s continued growth.
Within the US, 22.3% of developers live in California, while 13.7% reside in New York. The lion’s share, or 64% of US developers, live outside of these two states.
Crypto developer share by top five countries. Source: Maria Shen
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The researchers analyzed over 200 million crypto-related GitHub commits across 350,000 repositories. Geographical data was sourced from over 110,000 developer wallets with self-reported locations.
Institutional interest in cryptocurrencies has been on the rise in Asia. In South Korea, the number of crypto investors rose 21% in the first half of 2024, pushing the cumulative operation profits of the top 21 local centralized exchanges (CEXs) to $4.2 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 106%.
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