The average South African crypto buyer is most likely to be male and spends about R650 on the first purchase, according to data from Luno, the largest crypto investment app in the country with 12 million customers in 40 countries. Luno celebrates ten years in business this year, with five million app downloads from customers in South Africa.
Christo de Wit, Luno’s country manager for South Africa, says that South Africa is one of Luno’s strongest markets, with around a third of its verified customers.
South African customer behaviour
South African customers start with a relatively small deposit of R650, which is higher than the global average of R400. The most popular crypto coins in South Africa are Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP.
Local buyers are almost a mirror image of the global picture. The average age of buyers is 35 and in line with the gender split in traditional financial services – more men buy crypto in South Africa than women. Interestingly, there is a greater percentage of women buying crypto in SA than the global average – in SA, the split is 36% female and 64% male compared to 19% female and 81% male across other markets. In addition, we’ve seen greater adoption among women. SA customers hold on to their crypto for about six months – slightly longer than the global average of 4.5 months.
According to de Wit, South Africans who use the repeat buy function are buying an average of R270 worth of cryptocurrency per month using this facility. “Repeat buy is an instruction to buy into the market at regular intervals and is a great way for customers to buy crypto without having to time the market. Without a repeat buy instruction, you need to keep a very close eye on movements in the market to ensure you buy when the price dips and sell when it rises,” he says.
Luno was founded ten years ago by South Africans with a vision about how cryptocurrency could be the basis of a new financial system.
Since inception, there have been 388 million transactions on Luno. Users are spread across the country, with the highest concentration of customers in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, Sandton and Durban but there are also customers in far-flung areas like Sulenkama, Hammanskraal and Lambert’s Bay.
“One of the first crypto transactions on Luno was a purchase of 0.1 Bitcoin worth R403 at that time. Today, the value would be over R56 000 at Bitcoin’s current trading price on Luno,” adds de Wit.
Over R655 billion has been traded on Luno over the last ten years – that’s almost 7 million Bitcoin – and more than 3000 businesses have Luno accounts in SA.
Looking forward to the next ten years, Luno plans to get its licence as a financial services provider in SA and in other markets, pursue a potential stock exchange listing, add more curated coins and make it even easier to invest in crypto. Millions more Luno customers will be onboarded who recognise a sensible, long-term investment approach and who see the potential cryptocurrency has to upgrade our current financial system.
