The 15 American Brands present in the Caribbean now accept Crypto Payments, could that speed up adoption and legislation rollout here?

Fifteen American Brands doing business in the Caribbean now accept Crypto Payments in the US Market but with Caribbean crypto ownership and usage still only around 1-2%, adoption and legislation will likely slow the rollout here, or can it lead to a speeding up of things? Let’s look at some numbers and details.

The 15 Crypto-friendly and Crypto-transacting American Brands operating in the Caribbean are:

Fast Food: Burger King, Subway, KFC, Starbucks

Consumer Packaged Goods: Coco Cola

Tech: Microsoft, Twitch

Global Companies that Caribbean people Use: Amazon, Crate and Barrel, Express VPN, Overstock, and Expedia 

Now, this crypto-transaction greenlight, is great news for the United States where adoption and ownership are reported to be at13.74% as of 2021, with 46 million Americans owning and using cryptocurrency.

But in the Caribbean, while the early adopters lead the charge in cryptocurrency usage and ownership, yes the 1%, as a Region, we are far off from making crypto transactions out in the wild at our local businesses or even at our favourite American fast food chains.

As of last year’s Triple A’s report– the top 8 Caribbean Crypto using countries are:

107,752 Crypto users in Haiti – 1% of population

39,214 Crypto users in Jamaica – 1% of population

35,851 Crypto users in Puerto Rico- 1% of population

16,377 Crypto users in Trinidad & Tobago – 1% of population

5,474 Crypto users in Suriname- 1% of population

3,576 Crypto users in The Bahamas- 1% of population

3,569 Crypto users in Belizeans – 1% of population

3,022 Crypto users in Barbados- 1% of population

All this against the backdrop of the fact that Emerging Markets lead the crypto adoption curve.

Emerging Markets Dominate in Grassroots Cryptocurrency Adoption

According to Chainanalysis, a blockchain data platform: “Emerging markets dominate the Cryptocurrency Adoption index. The World Bank categorizes countries into one of four categories based on income levels and overall economic development: high income, upper middle income, lower middle income, and low income. Using that framework, we find that the middle two categories dominate the top of our index. Out of our top 20 ranked countries:

• Ten are lower-middle income: Vietnam, Philippines, Ukraine, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Morocco, Nepal, Kenya, and Indonesia
• Eight are upper-middle income: Brazil, Thailand, Russia, China, Turkey, Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador
• Two are high-income: the United States and United Kingdom”

This research data is pretty interesting and is a subset of the larger picture- which is that we now have an estimated 300 million crypto users globally and over 18,000 businesses already accepting cryptocurrency payments.

With over 214,000 Caribbean Crypto owners and America being the Region’s chief trading partner and source for millions of tourists annually, can this connection spark faster adoption and legislation?

As Bob Marley said, only Time will tell.