Asia-Pacific leads the world in NFT searches on Google

Asia

Google searches for “NFT” again overtook “cryptocurrency” queries in September after a significant spike in March.

Amid the ongoing nonfungible token (NFT) boom, people in Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries appear to be the most curious about NFTs, according to Google Trends data.

Google Trends data shows that China, Singapore and Hong Kong are the three top countries in the world in terms of the number of “NFT” searches on Google over the past year.

According to the data, China has posted the highest number of such searches, with the Google search index amounting to 100 points. Singapore and Hong Kong follow with 67 and 62 points, respectively. Other major “NFT”-searching countries include Venezuela, the Philippines, Cyprus, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

The most populous nation in APAC, China, could be moving into NFTs to alleviate the consequences of the country’s latest super crypto ban announced in late September, according to Khashayar Abbasi, a contributor at finance-focused publication Bankless Times.

“The country recently banned cryptocurrency trading, which could see crypto-keen investors move over to NFTs,” Abbasi said. He noted that China’s e-commerce giant, Alibaba, launched its own NFT marketplace in August, which could also further fuel the popularity of NFTs in China.

According to a report by Bankless Times, the biggest amount of “NFT” searches in China came from the eastern province of Zhejiang, the city of Shanghai and Hubei province, now best-known as the home of Wuhan. It should be noted that Google has been technically blocked in China since 2010 as part of the “Great Firewall.”

“Asian countries are typically more used to cashless and digitized systems than western ones, so this could be why their adoption of NFTs has been so widespread,” Abbasi added.

According to the report, Google searches for “NFT” again overtook “cryptocurrency” queries in September, following a major previous spike in March.

As such, Japan has the highest ratio of NFT searches over cryptocurrencies, as the new market has been apparently surging in popularity. In contrast, Nigeria has the lowest ratio of NFT searches over crypto, as the country has the highest rates of crypto ownership in the world, according to data from Statista.

According to Abbasi, the world has just started discovering the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the use cases of NFTs, including a new opportunity for wealthy people to show off their wealth.

“Before, wealthy people would buy expensive watches to show off their wealth and only those who met them in real life would see what they were wearing. Now, you can buy an NFT, post it on social media and everyone around the world can verify 100% that it’s yours,” he noted.

Asia

Visa is continuing to extend its integration with regulated crypto companies worldwide.

Asia-Pacific crypto-fiat trading platform Zipmex has forged a strategic partnership with Visa in a bid to improve the convenience of its payment programs and products.

The platform's payment network ZipSend, designed to enable users to spend their crypto, will be integrated into Visa’s worldwide network of 70 million merchants. Following the partnership, Zipmex aims to release a Visa-branded payment card later this year.

Zipmex, which has compliant operations in Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Australia, currently has a user base of over 200,000 and has reported over $1 billion in gross transaction volume since its launch in late 2019. The company has noted that any future payment product, such as a card, will still need to get the green light from the regulatory authorities in the relevant jurisdictions.

Zipmex CEO Marcus Lim has said that the platform’s bid to become a crypto payment card issuer has placed it in a position “to provide support and guidance to help regulators pass effective digital asset legislation. This has been one of the more fulfilling aspects of this project.”

As reported, crypto exchange and payment service provider Crypto.com has also inked a global partnership with Visa and has rolled out its card in multiple regions, including Asia-Pacific. In July, Visa announced that its crypto-enabled cards had processed more than $1 billion in total spending during the first half of 2021 alone.

With central bank digital currencies and private sector stablecoins drawing ever more attention from a legal and geopolitical perspective, both Visa and its rival Mastercard have been vying to ensure their services remain at the center of the latest developments in the digital asset space.

Visa’s CEO has this year argued that stablecoins’ blockchains could be thought of as payment rails similar to RPT or ACH networks. Mastercard has for its part announced recent partnerships with Circle, Paxos, Evolve Bank & Trust and others on a joint project to enable banks and crypto firms to roll out crypto cards that can be used anywhere that Mastercard is accepted.

The company has also recently announced a new startup engagement program as part of Mastercard Start Path to support fintechs and companies working with digital assets, crypto and blockchain technology.

On the consumer front, Coinbase announced this week that users with a Visa or Mastercard debit card linked to Apple Pay can now purchase crypto assets on its platform, with Google Pay integration to follow.

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