Malaysia remains one of Luno's strongest markets

Malaysia remains one of Luno’s strongest markets

By NURUL SUHAIDI / Pic by TMR FILE PIX

Luno today announced that it has surpassed 10 million customers across over 40 countries despite the challenging macro-economic environment and market volatility.

The cryptocurrency platform also gained an additional one million customers in just 6 months which led to a successful year for Luno as it grew its global customer base by 35% year on year.

Luno Malaysia Country Manager, Aaron Tang noted that Malaysia is one of Luno’s strongest markets, 12% of the new customers added in the last 6 months are based in the country.

“On average Malaysians deposit RM 100 when they open their account and tend to hold for an average of eight months. Additionally, in the past year, 32% of new customers bought Bitcoin, while 23% bought Ethereum,” he said in a statement today.

Luno female users have also increased by sevenfold from 16,000 in 2020 to more than 120,000 in 2021.

“This is a testament to our commitment of making cryptocurrencies accessible for everyone and we are confident the adoption of digital assets will continue to grow in coming years”, Tangadded.

The cryptocurrency market plummeted to its lowest level in five months in January 2022, after reaching an all-time high market valuation of USD$3 trillion in November 2021, amidst regulation concerns and a challenging macro-economic environment.

Despite this, Luno has continued to expand and play a vital role in the global acceptance of crypto, which has now crossed the USD$2 trillion milestone on March, once again proving it’s resilient.

Since being founded in 2013, Luno has enabled over USD$52 billion of crypto to be safely transacted and its customers have stored in excess of USD$1 billion.

It aims to bring crypto to over 1 billion people by 2030, and there is incredible demand for cryptocurrencies in many emerging and frontier markets.

Luno increased its customer base in Indonesia by 83 % last year, nearly tripling its customer base in the region and providing cryptocurrency access to 1 million additional South Africans for the first time.

According to CEO and Co-Founder of Luno, Marcus Swanepoel, there are an estimated 300 million crypto users worldwide as of March 2022, and this number is likely to rise as global markets acquire better access to the crypto ecosystem.

“Our mission is to put the power of crypto in everyone’s hands and reaching the major milestone of 10 million customer’s shows we are leading the way in this transition towards building a better, fairer financial system for the world,” he said in the same statement.

As of March 11 2022, the average holding time for a Luno user is over seven months, with South Africa, the company’s most active market holding for the longest time at an average of ten months.

Apart from South Africa, Singaporean users also had the highest value of first deposits, which stood at USD$76 across the previous 12 months, compared to Nigeria, one of Luno’s biggest markets which had an average first deposit of USD$10.

The milestone announcement comes after a rocketing 12 months for Luno that was fuelled by the launch of Luno Expeditions, its global early-stage investment arm to support the best fintech and crypto or web3 founders.

The company continues to forge strategic partnerships and expansions to drive its growth and today, is headquartered in London with over 800 employees across offices in London, South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Singapore, which is up 89% in the last year alone.