Bitcoin is growing like there’s no tomorrow, and for once, it looks like Asia is being beaten out by North America in terms of cryptocurrency love and adoption.

North America Is Becoming Number One

More coins and cryptocurrencies are flowing into North American exchanges than into Asian exchanges. This is an odd occurrence considering Asia has typically outdone all other regions in terms of crypto appreciation. There was a time when South Korea accounted for more than one-quarter of the world’s crypto transactions, and no doubt China has been the biggest influencer in the space.

But as of late, North America is moving up the financial ladder and proving itself to be a major hub for crypto trading. In fact, weekly inflows to American exchanges have surged by more than 7,000 times what they were at the beginning of the year. Overall, 216,000 bitcoins – worth approximately $3.4 billion at the time of writing – made their way into American exchanges in mid-November.

Ciara Sun – a representatives of Huobi Global Markets in Seychelles – commented in a recent statement:

The sudden influx of institutional interest from the North American region is driving a shift in bitcoin trading, which is rebalancing asset allocations across different exchanges and platforms.

Some are claiming, however, that the call of North America as a leader in the crypto space is coming a bit early. Chainalysis figures show, for example, that East Asia is still a major exporter of crypto funds, and still serves as one of the largest regions for digital asset activity. In addition, many others claim that regulation in Asia is quite different than what it is in North America. This puts a dent in the overall figures, and they claim that it cannot be deciphered just yet which one is more dominant.

Curtis Ting of the U.S. exchange Kraken in San Francisco explained:

You’re increasingly starting to see distinctions in the market between those that have no regulatory or little regulatory clarity versus those that do. Larger institutions seek the predictability that a regulated venue offers.

Putting this aside, however, Chainalysis shows that the activity occurring in major North American exchanges – i.e. Coinbase, Kraken, etc. – is considerably larger than what’s happening in Asian exchanges. In the past, North America has edged forward like this, but never by such a big margin.

It is estimated that approximately 1.6 million in bitcoin is making its way into North American trading platforms each week. By contrast, Asian exchanges are seeing only 1.4 million units.

Regulation Is the Key

At this stage, it looks like America is offering a stricter, more regulated environment, which appears to be attracting larger traders. Christopher Matt of 3iQ in Canada states:

A lot of U.S. funds are trading with large U.S. counterparties. It tells you right there how important the regulatory nature of the space is and having venues to trade on that are regulated.

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