CryptoUpdates #1 - Cambridge University - Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study

Cambride University published a very interewsting article on the state of Cryptocurrency Ecosystem. Its key finding are:

• Cryptocurrency industry: their data shows that it really is at early stage. 1,876 people work full-time in the cryptocurrency industry (720 in Asia-Pacific with 720, 676 in North America)
• Exchanges: Europe had the highest number of exchanges, followed by Asia-Pacific. Bitfinex had the highest market share of all exchanges. US Dollar was the most used fiat currency, Euro was second
• Wallets: number of active wallets is estimated between 5.8 mln and 11.5 mln (it's difficult to define an active wallet is). 32% are closed source software, 68% are open source. Almost 50% of wallets provide some sort of currency exchange service
• Mining: 50% of miners believe to have a high or very high ability to influence protocol development. This number is higher the bigger the mining pool. Almost 60% of the mining power is based in China, US comes in second with less than 20%. Mining revenue is decreasing despite the growing interest, increasing price and increase in transaction costs. This is due to increase in difficulty