Consumer-grade Crypto Global Survey: Users, Revenue, and Track Distribution

Author: Joey Shin, IOSG

I. Summary

The crypto industry claims it lacks users every day, but the data tells a different story. The number of active users in consumer-grade crypto has long reached tens of millions, just not in the sights of Silicon Valley and New York. These users are in Manila, Lagos, Buenos Aires, and Hanoi, using Coins.ph (18 million users), MiniPay (4.2 million weekly active), and Lemon Cash (ranked first in Argentina's app store) daily, yet English media has hardly reported on them. Conversely, the protocols that Western VCs discuss daily have daily active volumes that don't even match the volume of Tron’s shadow settlement network for one hour.

Seven core conclusions: The user problem in crypto is essentially a geographical issue; Tron is the most important consumer-grade public chain, but no one talks about it in NYC and SF; on-chain e-commerce barely exists; the largest prediction market is centralized; revenue and user numbers often move in opposite directions; the perpetual DEX battle is already over; there are indeed consumer-grade crypto companies that make real profits—just not in the form of DeFi.

II. Payments and New Banks: Users Already Exist, Just Not in VC's Sight

Common perception: Crypto needs to enter the mainstream and bring in the next billion users; wallet UX is the bottleneck.

Data shows: The next billion users are already present; the biggest bottleneck is not customer acquisition but monetization.

First, let's look at the existing scale. Telegram Wallet claims to have 150 million registered users (unverified—low confidence), but let's set that aside. Just looking at verified data, the user base is already astonishing: Coins.ph has 18 million confirmed users in the Philippines, primarily operating on Tron’s USDT track; MiniPay, as Opera's mobile stablecoin wallet on Celo, reached 14 million registered users by March 2026, with 4.23 million weekly active USDT users and a monthly transaction volume of $153 million, with on-chain activity growing 506% year-on-year (high confidence—from Tether/Opera/Celo joint disclosure). Chipper Cash covers 7 million users across 9 African countries and recently achieved positive cash flow. Lemon Cash has 5.4 million downloads, ranking first in financial apps in Argentina and Peru, with MAU quadrupling since 2021. Paga processes an annual transaction volume of 17 trillion Naira in Nigeria, but the crypto-related proportion is unclear (medium confidence).

The only payment company currently running both scale and revenue is RedotPay: 6 million users, annualized revenue of $158 million, annualized transaction volume of $10 billion, with a valuation that has increased 16 times since the seed round (high confidence—The Block, CoinDesk, company disclosure). RedotPay's model is a crypto-to-fiat card processor for the Asia-Pacific region, earning commissions per transaction with zero chargeback risk—essentially a crypto-native Visa issuer-acquirer. It is currently the clearest case proving that consumer-grade crypto can generate real, recurring, non-incentive-driven revenue at scale.

Another highlight on the revenue side is Exodus, which disclosed in its SEC 8-K filing that its revenue for 2025 was $121.6 million (high confidence), making it one of the few publicly listed and audited consumer-grade crypto companies in the U.S. Its revenue comes from exchange and staking fees from 1.5 million MAUs, with its stock listed on the NYSE under the EXOD ticker.

Ether.fi's Cash product is the most noteworthy DeFi-native entrant: profitable in its first year, with over 70,000 cards issued, Cash currently contributes about 50% of total revenue, with monthly revenue of $2.8 million (high confidence—from TokenTerminal daily verification). It proves that a DeFi protocol can create a truly consumer-grade product—though its total user count of 200,000 remains niche.

The customer acquisition problem in emerging markets has been solved; the monetization problem has not. The gap between MiniPay's 4.23 million weekly active users and its undisclosed (presumed very low) revenue may be the largest unsolved problem in the crypto industry—also the biggest opportunity.

Marginal Improvement vs. Non-Incremental Value: Fine-Tuning Selection Criteria A common rebuttal to consumer-grade crypto investment is that crypto must provide non-incremental value relative to fiat solutions to offset integration costs. Data shows that the premise of this test is itself flawed. Comparing the two clearest data points in the payments category. MiniPay's advantages over traditional mobile money products like M-Pesa are at most marginal in users' hands—slightly cheaper transfers, slightly wider dollar exposure, slightly broader cross-border coverage. It has 4.23 million weekly active users, with revenue essentially zero. RedotPay's advantages over traditional Visa issuers-acquirers are also marginal in consumer experience—swiping cards, buying hot dogs—but the underlying mechanisms are structurally different: zero chargeback risk, instant cross-border settlement, no reliance on correspondent banks. RedotPay generates $158 million in annualized revenue from 6 million users.

Both products have achieved product-market fit. The difference is that RedotPay's "marginal but structural" advantages can compound into pricing power, while MiniPay's "marginal and superficial" advantages cannot. Zero chargeback risk is not a feature users will notice, but it captures about 1.5% gross margin on every transaction for the issuer. Slightly cheaper transfers are something users only notice once and then no longer value after they become accustomed.

From this, we conclude that the correct selection question is not "Is this non-incremental?" but "Does this marginal improvement map to structural characteristics of unit economics?" If the answer is yes—chargeback risk, settlement speed, correspondent banks, capital efficiency, custody costs—then a product that feels almost unchanged to users can still compound into a big business. If the answer is no, then even if the product has tens of millions of users, it lacks investment value. Consumer-grade crypto has both types, and conflating them has already cost this category a whole generation of capital.

III. E-commerce

Common perception: Crypto payments are gradually being adopted by e-commerce; it's just a matter of time.

Data shows: There is not a single on-chain e-commerce protocol on DeFiLlama with daily revenue exceeding $10,000. It's not "very few," it's literally zero.

This chapter is not about the competition among early players, but the absence of competitors. After auditing all protocols tracked by DeFiLlama and TokenTerminal and all publicly disclosed companies, we found only one noteworthy player: Travala, a centralized travel booking platform, with revenue of $7.17 million in February 2026 (medium confidence—self-reported, not independently verified). Travala is not a protocol; it is a travel agency that accepts cryptocurrency.

UQUID claims to have 220 million users and 50 million monthly visits (the 220 million figure actually represents users of partner platforms—like Binance—not UQUID's own users). The headline data is misleading, but its product catalog is indeed quite large—175 million physical goods and 546,000 digital goods—Tron’s share of its transaction volume doubled to 39% in the first half of 2025, with 54% of transactions priced in USDT-TRC20. However, there is no public revenue data, and the user numbers are questionable.

Gift card and voucher service provider Bitrefill has a monthly revenue of about $1 million (low confidence—Growjo estimate, historically inaccurate). Other than that, there are no other noteworthy on-chain e-commerce protocols.

What truly exists is a shadow e-commerce economy operating on the Tron USDT track—but it is P2P and completely informal. Coins.ph handles remittances for overseas Filipino workers, with funds flowing into retail consumption. Nigeria's P2P ecosystem guides $59 billion in crypto transaction volume annually through OTC desks and dollar savings accounts (from Chainalysis), serving as an alternative to a fractured banking system. In Argentina, SUBE public transport top-ups are completed through Tron USDT and cash OTC channels. Freelancers in Vietnam receive wages in TRC-20 USDT and then exchange them through local P2P networks.

This is real economic activity—but it is not e-commerce infrastructure. No protocol has truly captured any part of it. The entire e-commerce stack that is crypto-native—product selection, checkout, custody, fulfillment tracking, dispute resolution, rewards—is almost entirely blank. How much of this demand will remain after compliance? Before declaring this the biggest product gap in crypto, a more difficult question must be answered: How much of the existing demand is structural, and how much is regulatory arbitrage? An honest assessment is that the vast majority is regulatory arbitrage. Today, the mainstream use cases on the Tron-USDT e-commerce track fall into three categories: dollar exposure needs of users in capital-controlled regions (Argentina, Venezuela, Nigeria)—these users cannot legally hold dollars through traditional channels; evasion of VAT, sales tax, and import duties, especially on digital goods and gift cards—tax authorities find it difficult to verify buyer identities; and cross-border payments for freelancing and gig work that circumvent bank controls—mainly in Vietnam, Iran, and parts of Africa. UQUID's product catalog is heavily skewed towards gift cards, mobile top-ups, and digital goods—these categories exist precisely because they can convert opaque crypto balances into consumable fiat equivalents with almost no identity friction.

This is crucial for the investment thesis because the survival rate of regulatory arbitrage demand under compliance varies greatly. Domestic VAT and tax evasion demand drops to zero the moment KYC is enforced at the merchant level—these users are not paying for a better checkout experience, but for "the absence of a tax ID"; once a tax ID is required, the value immediately disappears. The demand for circumventing foreign exchange controls is somewhat more enduring because its underlying issues (Argentina's capital controls, Nigeria's Naira controls, Venezuela's Bolívar) are structural and long-standing. However, platforms serving these demands cannot operate legally in the corridors they need. They can grow, but cannot register, cannot price finance, and cannot partner with local fintechs—these partnerships are key to creating a moat.

Opportunities that can survive compliance are narrow but real. Cross-border merchant settlements that are slow or expensive in traditional tracks—Latin America ↔ Asia, Africa ↔ anywhere, freelancer payments—can run under any regulatory framework, because the underlying value proposition is "stablecoins are structurally cheaper than SWIFT," not "stablecoins help you circumvent the rules." B2B settlements between SMEs across different jurisdictions also fall into this category. Merchant settlements for cross-border digital services do as well.

Thus, the phrase "the $5 trillion global e-commerce" is the wrong framework for this opportunity. The truly investable area is closer to the $200 billion to $400 billion cross-border B2B and freelancer payment market—its value proposition can transition from the gray area to the legitimate market. Domestic crypto checkout aimed at Western consumers—the thing most "crypto payment" narratives envision—is not this opportunity and never has been. Winning protocols in this category will look more like "the stablecoin version of Wise," rather than "the crypto version of Shopify." For investors, the key question is whether a team is building for a market that can survive or for a market that is about to disappear.

IV. Speculation: The Perpetual Battle is Already Over

Common perception: Decentralized perpetuals is a competitive market, with dYdX, GMX, etc., competing for market share against Hyperliquid.

Data shows: Hyperliquid has already won. GMX and dYdX are not competitors but protocols in terminal decline.

Hyperliquid currently controls over 70% of all on-chain perpetual open contracts, with a nominal monthly trading volume of $105 billion, and fees of $58.8 million just in March—annualized over $640 million (high confidence—TokenTerminal, DeFiLlama, Dune). In the most recent reporting period, its fees grew by 56% month-on-month. It has executed over $800 million in HYPE buybacks, making it one of the few protocols where token value capture is not just talk.

Comparing with established players. GMX has daily revenue of $5,000, with about 500 daily active users. dYdX has daily revenue of $10,000 to $13,000, with 1,300 daily active users, and fees have declined by 84% year-on-year. These are not struggling competitors—these are protocols whose runway has ended mathematically rather than strategically.

The data from edgeX is noteworthy: verified fees of $14.7 million over 30 days, with a fee retention rate of 73%, operating on StarkEx ZK-rollup. We had an aggregation error in our previous dataset, initially showing $2.5 million—after correction, edgeX ranks second among on-chain perpetual venues by revenue (high confidence—TokenTerminal daily verification). Whether edgeX can maintain growth or will follow the path of GMX/dYdX is the only unanswered question in this category.

Hyperliquid is worth analyzing because its victory is not due to better trading UX—its differences from GMX or dYdX in order execution are real but also marginal. It wins on liquidity depth, speed of listing, and branding. Once perpetual liquidity concentrates in one venue, the network effects become nearly unshakeable: traders go where the spreads are narrowest, the narrowest spreads are where the volume is highest, and the volume returns to where the traders are. The perpetual DEX category has completed its winner-takes-all phase, and deploying capital to counter Hyperliquid in this category is akin to burning money. Prediction Markets: This is a story of category choice, not decentralization Another speculative category worth examining is prediction markets, with the mainstream narrative being that Polymarket validated the path for on-chain prediction markets. Data tells a different story—and the lessons from this story have nothing to do with decentralization.

Kalshi is off-chain/like CEX. The comparison itself is insightful.

According to Bloomberg (high confidence), as of March 2026, Kalshi's annualized revenue reached $1.5 billion, with a valuation of $22 billion. In February 2026 alone, it processed over $10 billion in transaction volume, with a 12-fold increase in volume within six months. Sports betting contributed 89% of its revenue. The on-chain alternative Polymarket has monthly revenue of $4.7 million to $5.9 million, with 688,000 MAUs. Kalshi's monthly revenue is about 25 times that of Polymarket.

The lazy explanation is that Polymarket has UX issues. From most product dimensions, Polymarket is the better-built side—the order book is cleaner, settlements are faster, and the trader experience is even more mature than Kalshi's. The UX argument cannot support a 25-fold revenue difference. The defense that Polymarket "hasn't started charging yet" actually makes the comparison worse, not better: if Polymarket loses 25 to 1 without any fees, the underlying revenue potential gap is only greater than the surface numbers suggest.

The real explanation lies in category choice, distribution channels, and jurisdictional positioning—none of which have anything to do with decentralization.

Kalshi chose sports. Sports is a high-frequency, mass-market, structurally recurring category: there are betting opportunities every week, every day, every year, the rules are widely understood, and audiences refresh themselves with each new season. Polymarket positions itself in political and event markets—these are fragmented, reliant on election cycles, and structurally low-frequency. Users who come to Polymarket for the 2024 election have no reason to return in March 2026. Users who come to Kalshi for the NFL have a reason to return every Sunday. Frequent participation compounds into liquidity, liquidity compounds into spreads, and spreads compound into more users. Polymarket is on the wrong side of the flywheel.

The second factor is distribution. Kalshi has built a B2B2C model, integrating the order book into brokerage platforms, fintech applications, and partners, rather than relying on direct-to-consumer customer acquisition. Polymarket only does DTC, meaning every active trader bears the full marketing cost. Crucially, Kalshi operates legally under CFTC regulation within the U.S., while Polymarket—after its settlement with the same agency in 2022—completely geoblocks U.S. users. The largest English-speaking prediction market audience is structurally unreachable by on-chain products. Kalshi not only wins in execution; it has a market that Polymarket is legally barred from entering.

The implications for evaluating prediction market projects are specific. The correct due diligence questions are: (1) How frequent is participation in the chosen category? (2) Does the project have a B2B2C distribution path, or does it rely on direct customer acquisition? (3) What is the regulatory stance in the maximum addressable market? The degree of decentralization is largely irrelevant to the outcome. Polymarket loses 25 to 1 because it chose the wrong category, the wrong distribution model, and the wrong jurisdiction—in roughly that order of importance. Conclusions of this chapter The speculation segment has two key points: (1) Categories that have already produced winners have truly produced winners; capital should not be invested there anymore; (2) The mechanisms by which winners emerge are not decentralization, UX, or token economic models—perpetuals rely on liquidity concentration, while prediction markets rely on category choice and distribution. Both conclusions point to the DeFi mullet thesis: the most defensible consumer-facing positioning is to wrap a compliant front end around a crypto-native back end. Ether.fi Cash is currently the cleanest case. CrediFi and next-generation payment adjacent products belong to the same model.

V. Stablecoin Infrastructure: Tron is the Most Important Consumer-Grade Public Chain, Yet No One Talks About It

Common perception: Ethereum L2 and Solana are the main consumer-grade public chains, while Tron is an old network mainly used for cheap transfers.

Data shows: Tron has monthly stablecoin transaction volumes exceeding $600 billion—comparable to Visa—boasting 14.3 million MAUs, 72.8 million USDT holders, and a stablecoin velocity ratio of 0.2-0.3, proving its activity is for payments rather than speculation. It has a whole set of unmarked protocol shadow economies, completely unreported by Western media.

The numbers are staggering. The supply of USDT-TRC20 on Tron is $86.4 billion. Monthly transfer volumes range from $600 billion to $1.35 trillion (the lower limit is high confidence—from TronScan, TokenTerminal; the upper limit includes circularly counted transaction volumes). On March 29, 2026, a single day's transfer volume reached $44.9 billion. The network processes over 2 million transactions daily, covering 13.8 million MAUs, with an estimated over 80% of transaction volumes below $1,000, and 60%-70% below $100. This is a retail payment network, not a settlement layer dominated by whales.

Velocity metrics are key analytical signals. Tron’s USDT velocity of 0.2-0.3 means that on average, every dollar of USDT on Tron circulates about once every 3 to 5 months. In contrast, speculative public chains can exceed 10 times that velocity—rapidly cycling between DeFi protocols, leveraged positions, and Launchpads. Tron’s stable, slow velocity is characteristic of payment tracks: money comes in, used for a real-world transaction, then sits in wallets waiting for the next bill or remittance. The top ten USDT holders on Tron control only 8.7% of the supply—indicating a broad and decentralized retail distribution.

Then there’s the shadow economy. Our audit of TronScan identified several unmarked protocols generating substantial revenue but with no English documentation:

CatFee has daily fees of $82,000. No one in Western crypto media knows what it is. TRONSAVE has monthly revenue of $863,000, with all parties' identities unknown. These protocols operate within the shadow economies of Vietnam's P2P networks, Nigeria's OTC desks, Philippine remittance corridors, and Latin American cash channels. We estimate that tens of billions of dollars flow through these unmarked clearinghouses daily—dynamic addresses, collection settlements, and freelance payment infrastructures, effectively serving as a banking system for those excluded from traditional finance.

Celo is the fastest-growing public chain in this category, entirely driven by the integration of MiniPay and Tether. Independent user numbers grew 506% year-on-year, with a total of 12.6 million wallets, and a transaction volume of $15.3 million in December 2025 (high confidence). However, its scale is still only a small fraction of Tron.

Ethereum remains the settlement track for institutions—high fees limit retail use. Solana's stablecoin activity is dominated by trading and Launchpad traffic (pump.fun, Jupiter, Meteora), not payments. BNB Chain carries a monthly stablecoin transaction volume of $60 billion, mainly for CEX settlements. TON is a variable—Telegram's wallet integration has brought a massive number of registrations, but the depth of participation remains unclear.

VI. Synthesis: The Lifecycle of Regulatory Arbitrage and the DeFi Mullet

Every successful consumer-grade crypto category in this census has gone through the same arc. It starts with regulatory arbitrage; accumulates capital and users in the gray area; undergoes—or fails to withstand—a compliance forcing event; and the portion that emerges becomes a legitimate financial infrastructure. Today, protocols and companies generating real revenue are at different stages of this lifecycle, and their positions determine the risk and return curves for investments.

Stage 1—Gray Area Launch. A protocol or service emerges to solve problems that traditional finance refuses or is unable to address, almost always due to some regulatory constraint. The user base is small, highly technical, and able to tolerate legal ambiguity. Profit margins are extremely high because regulatory risk is priced into the take rate. Tail risks are unlimited. Today's examples: unmarked shadow clearinghouses on Tron (CatFee, TRONSAVE), Nigeria's P2P USDT desks, and early pump.fun, NFTs, even early Hyperliquid.

Stage 2—User and Capital Accumulation. PMF becomes indisputable. Trading volume grows, and users begin to come from outside the core tech circle. Western media starts to take notice, but regulators have not yet acted. Tron's USDT economy is currently in this stage—14.3 million MAUs, monthly transaction volume exceeding $600 billion. The pump.fun of 2024, Polymarket during the 2024 election cycle, and the current Hyperliquid are also in this stage.

Stage 3—Compliance Transition. A forcing event—lawsuit, enforcement action, settlement, or proactive regulatory communication—drives projects to choose legalization, fragmentation, or death. This is the stage with the highest variance and the most analytical value from an investment perspective. Polymarket's 2022 settlement with the CFTC, pump.fun's $500 million lawsuit, and any future enforcement actions against offshore perpetual venues are here. Most projects cannot fully traverse this stage.

Stage 4—Legitimate Economy. The portion that makes it through becomes durable, auditable, and fundable. Returns compress because businesses are now valued on fintech multiples rather than moonshot project multiples. Kalshi (CFTC regulated, $22 billion valuation), Exodus (NYSE U.S. board, SEC filing), Circle (S-1 disclosure), and RedotPay (fintech comparable multiples financing) are all here.

With this arc laid out, the timing of investments becomes specific. Stage 1 has the most upside, but is essentially uninvestable for institutional capital—underlying businesses can go to zero with a single enforcement order, and underwriting is practically impossible. Stage 4 is fully priced; multiples are fintech multiples, and asymmetry has disappeared. Stage 2 has historically been the stage with the best VC returns in this sector, but the premise is that there is a credible path through Stage 3. The due diligence question for Stage 2 is no longer "Has the product achieved PMF?"—Stage 2 has clearly achieved PMF. The question is whether the business model can survive under compliance.

Tron's shadow protocols cannot pass this test because their reason for existence is evasion itself. Once Vietnam implements KYC on Tron USDT liquidity, CatFee's daily fees of $82,000 will immediately disappear—users are not paying for utility, but for "the absence of identity." There is no compliant business model underneath. This is the fundamental difference between "protocols with PMF" and "protocols that only fit regulatory arbitrage." Both can generate revenue, but only one is investable.

The DeFi mullet thesis is directly derived from this framework. Products like Ether.fi Cash and next-generation Latin American fintech can win because they wrap a compliant front end around a crypto-native back end. Users do not see or care what the chain is. Regulators see an ordinary fintech. Protocols capture the economics of "the cheapest track." These projects currently do not have tokens—this in itself is a signal: value capture occurs at the equity level rather than the token level, and in this cycle, the institutional investors that win will be those holding equity positions rather than token shares.

The three structural opportunities that repeatedly emerge in this report also stem from this synthesis: monetization infrastructure in emerging markets (users are already present, revenue has not yet materialized); the e-commerce track for cross-border B2B and freelancer payments (the portion that can survive the e-commerce gap); and the still uncovered ecosystem of adjacent Tron protocols in lifecycle Stage 2. All three are best suited to enter through the DeFi mullet model; all three reward category choice rather than decentralization purity; all three are currently undervalued because Western capital is still looking at the wrong dashboards. Data Quality Appendix All data in this report is accompanied by one of the following three confidence ratings:

• High—multiple independent sources, verifiable on-chain, or regulatory filings (e.g., Exodus SEC 8-K, TokenTerminal daily verification, Tether/Opera joint disclosure)

• Medium—single credible source, or company self-reported with some independent verification (e.g., Travala self-reported revenue, Coins.ph Latka estimate)

• Low—press releases, unverified statements, or Growjo-level estimates (e.g., Telegram 150 million registered, UQUID 220 million users, Bitget 90 million users)

IOSG Ventures | Q1 2026 | Data from TokenTerminal, DeFiLlama, TronScan, Dune, SEC filings, Sensor Tower, and direct company disclosures. Unless otherwise noted, all data is as of March 2026.