3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study (Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance)

Summary

• The CCAF gathered data from 280 entities from 59 countries across exchange, payments, custody and mining, comprising 175 service providers, 75 mining companies and 30 individual miners.p.11
• FTE employee growth slowed to 21% in 2019, down from 57% in 2018.p.11
• Capital expenditure takes up to 56% of American hashers' costs, compared with 31% for Chinese ones, and 52% of ASIC manufacturers' total sales went to Chinese hashers in 2019.p.12
• 28% of surveyed hashers report receiving support from governments.p.12
• The share of cryptoasset-only companies that did not conduct any KYC checks dropped from 48% to 13% between 2018 and 2020.p.13
• 54% of surveyed custodial service providers performed an externally-led audit of their cryptoasset reserves, a 24-percentage point decline compared with 2018.p.13
• 90% of surveyed service providers keep cryptoasset funds in cold storage, and 46% report not being insured.p.13

Key insights

1. Growth in FTE employment declined by 36 percentage points between 2017 and 2019.p.11
2. Exchanges based in APAC record the highest share of cryptoasset-cryptoasset trades (40%).p.12
3. Nearly all customer accounts at European and North American service providers have been KYC'ed, against one out of two accounts at MEA-based providers.p.13
4. Providers use multi-signature approaches to secure cold storage (81%) and hot storage (70%).p.13
5. Data was collected between March and May 2020 through two separate surveys.p.14
6. The FATF's updated AML and CFT standards published in June 2019 encouraged compliance by industry participants.p.4