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IOSG Weekly Brief | Global Census of Consumer Crypto: Users, Revenue, and Sector Distribution #322

Author: Joey Shin @IOSG

Source: IOSG

The crypto industry constantly claims a lack of users, but the data tells a different story. The active user base for consumer-grade crypto has already reached tens of millions. They just aren’t within the purview of Silicon Valley or New York. These users are in Manila, Lagos, Buenos Aires, and Hanoi, actively using platforms like Coins.ph (18 million users), MiniPay (4.2 million weekly active users), and Lemon Cash (ranked number one in Argentina's app store). Yet, English-language media has barely covered them. Conversely, the protocols Western venture capitalists discuss daily don’t even match the hourly activity volume of Tron’s shadow settlement network.

Seven core findings: The user issue in crypto is fundamentally a geographic one; Tron is the most important consumer-grade public chain, though no one in NYC or SF talks about it; on-chain e-commerce barely exists; the largest prediction markets are centralized; revenue and user numbers often move inversely; the battle for perpetual DEXs is over; truly profitable consumer crypto companies do exist—they just don’t resemble DeFi.

Common perception: Crypto needs to go mainstream, attract the next billion users, and wallet UX is the bottleneck.

Data shows: The next billion users are already here. The biggest bottleneck isn't user acquisition but monetization.

Let’s first look at the current scale. Telegram Wallet claims to have 150 million registered users (unverified – low confidence), a figure we'll set aside for now. Looking only at verified data, the user base is already staggering: Coins.ph has 18 million confirmed users in the Philippines, primarily operating on the Tron-based USDT rail; MiniPay, Opera's mobile stablecoin wallet on Celo, had 14 million registered users as of March 2026, with 4.23 million weekly active USDT users, monthly transaction volumes of $153 million, and on-chain activity growing 506% year-over-year (high confidence – disclosed jointly by Tether/Opera/Celo). Chipper Cash serves 7 million users across nine African countries and recently turned cash flow positive. Lemon Cash has been downloaded 5.4 million times, ranking first among financial apps in Argentina and Peru, with MAU quadrupling since 2021. Paga processes 17 trillion naira annually in Nigeria, though its crypto-related share remains unclear (medium confidence).

The only payments company currently achieving both scale and revenue is RedotPay: 6 million users, $158 million in annualized revenue, and $10 billion in annualized transaction volume, with its valuation increasing 16-fold since the seed round (high confidence – The Block, CoinDesk, company disclosures). RedotPay's model focuses on being a crypto-to-fiat card processor for the Asia-Pacific region, earning commissions on transactions with zero chargeback risk – essentially a crypto-native Visa issuer-acquirer. It is the clearest example proving that consumer-grade crypto can generate real, recurring, non-incentive-driven income at scale.

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

Ether.fi’s Cash product is the most noteworthy DeFi-native entrant: profitable within its first year, issuing over 70,000 cards, and contributing approximately 50% of total revenue, with monthly income reaching $2.8 million (high confidence—verified daily by TokenTerminal). It demonstrates that a DeFi protocol can create a genuine consumer-grade product—though its 200,000 total users still represent a niche market.

The user acquisition problem in emerging markets has been solved, but the monetization problem hasn't. The gap between MiniPay's 4.2 million weekly active users and its undisclosed (and presumably very low) revenue represents one of the biggest unsolved problems in crypto – and also the biggest opportunity.

A common counterargument to consumer-grade crypto investments is that crypto must offer non-incremental value relative to fiat solutions to offset integration costs. Data suggests this framing itself is flawed. Compare two of the clearest data points in payments. MiniPay's advantages over traditional mobile money products like M-Pesa are marginal at best in users' hands – slightly cheaper transfers, marginally broader USD exposure, slightly wider cross-border coverage. With 4.2 million weekly active users, its revenue is virtually zero. RedotPay's advantages over traditional Visa issuer-acquirers are similarly marginal in consumer experience – swipe, buy hot dogs – but structurally different underneath: zero chargeback risk, instant cross-border settlement, no correspondent banking dependence. RedotPay generates $158 million in annualized revenue from 6 million users.

Both products work and have achieved product-market fit (PMF). The difference is that RedotPay's 'marginal but structural' advantages compound into pricing power, whereas MiniPay's 'marginal and superficial' advantages do not. Zero chargebacks aren’t features users notice, but they represent an enduring ~1.5% gross margin spread captured on every transaction by the issuer. Slightly cheaper transfers are things users notice once and then stop valuing after getting used to them.

This leads to the conclusion that the right screening question isn't 'Is this non-incremental?' but rather 'Does this marginal improvement map to structural 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 massive business. If the answer is no, even with tens of millions of users, the product lacks investment value. Consumer-grade crypto includes both types, and conflating them has cost the category an entire generation of capital.

General perception: The adoption of crypto payments by e-commerce is just a matter of time.

Data shows: None of the on-chain e-commerce protocols tracked by DeFiLlama generate more than $10,000 in daily protocol revenue. It's not "a few," it's literally zero.

This chapter isn't about early competition between players but rather the absence of competitors. After auditing all protocols tracked by DeFiLlama and TokenTerminal, as well as all publicly disclosed company data, we found only one notable player: Travala, a centralized travel booking platform with February 2026 revenue reported at $7.17 million (medium confidence - self-reported figures, no independent verification). Travala is not a protocol; it's a travel agency that accepts cryptocurrencies.

UQUID claims to have 220 million users and 50 million monthly visits (the figure of 220 million actually represents the users of its partner platforms, such as Binance, rather than UQUID's own users). The headline figures are misleading, but its product catalog is indeed extensive - 175 million physical goods and 546,000 digital goods. Tron's share in its trading volume doubled to 39% in the first half of 2025, with 54% of transactions denominated in USDT-TRC20. However, there is no public revenue data, and the user numbers do not hold up under scrutiny.

Bitrefill, a gift card and voucher service provider, generates approximately $1 million in monthly revenue (low confidence - Growjo estimate, historically imprecise). Beyond this, there are no other notable on-chain e-commerce protocols.

What does exist is a shadow e-commerce economy running on the Tron USDT rail—but it’s peer-to-peer and entirely informal. Coins.ph handles remittances for overseas Filipino workers, with funds flowing into retail consumption. Nigeria’s P2P ecosystem channels $590 billion in annual crypto trading volume via OTC desks and dollar savings accounts (according to Chainalysis), acting as a substitute for its broken banking system. In Argentina, SUBE public transport recharges are completed via Tron USDT and cash OTC channels. Vietnamese freelancers receive salaries in TRC-20 USDT, which they then exchange through local P2P networks.

These are real economic activities—but they don’t constitute e-commerce infrastructure. No protocol has captured any part of this activity. The entire crypto-native e-commerce stack—product selection, checkout, escrow, fulfillment tracking, dispute resolution, loyalty points—is almost entirely vacant.

Before declaring this as the biggest product gap in crypto, a harder question must be answered: How much of the existing demand is structural, and how much is regulatory arbitrage? An honest assessment is that the majority is regulatory arbitrage. Today, the dominant use cases on the Tron-USDT e-commerce rail fall into three categories: Demand for USD exposure from users in capital-controlled regions (Argentina, Venezuela, Nigeria)—these users cannot legally hold USD through traditional channels; VAT, sales tax, and import duty avoidance, especially on digital goods and gift cards—tax authorities struggle to verify buyer identities; and cross-border freelance and gig payments bypassing banking controls—mainly in Vietnam, Iran, and parts of Africa. UQUID’s catalog heavily skews toward gift cards, mobile top-ups, and digital goods—categories that exist precisely because they convert opaque crypto balances into spendable fiat equivalents with minimal identity friction.

This is critical for the investment thesis because the survivability of regulatory arbitrage demand under compliance varies greatly. Domestic VAT and tax evasion demands vanish the moment merchant-level KYC is enforced—these users aren’t paying for a better checkout experience but for “no tax ID field.” Once a tax ID is required, the value proposition disappears immediately. Demand for circumventing foreign exchange controls is more persistent because the underlying issues (Argentina’s capital controls, Nigeria’s naira restrictions, Venezuela’s bolivar instability) are structural and long-term. However, platforms serving these needs cannot operate legally within the required corridors. They can scale, but they cannot register, raise priced rounds, or partner with local fintechs for issuing agreements—the very partnerships that would create their moat.

The opportunities that can survive compliance are narrow but real. Cross-border merchant settlements where traditional rails are slow or expensive—LatAm↔Asia, Africa↔anywhere, freelancer payouts—can work under any regulatory framework because the core value proposition is “stablecoins are structurally cheaper than SWIFT,” not “stablecoins help you bypass rules.” B2B settlements between SMEs across different jurisdictions also fall into this category, as do merchant settlements for cross-border digital services.

Therefore, the notion of a “$5 trillion global e-commerce market” is the wrong framing for this opportunity. The truly investable area is closer to the $200–400 billion cross-border B2B and freelancer payment market—where the value proposition can transition from gray areas to legal markets. Domestic crypto checkouts targeting Western consumers—the image most “crypto payment” narratives conjure—are not this opportunity and never were. The winning protocol in this category will look more like a “stablecoin version of Wise” than a “crypto version of Shopify.” For investors, the key question is whether a team is building for the surviving market or for the disappearing one.

Common perception: Decentralized perpetuals represent a competitive market, with players like dYdX and GMX competing with Hyperliquid for market share.

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

Hyperliquid currently controls over 70% of the open interest across all on-chain perpetual venues, with a monthly notional trading volume of $105 billion and March fees alone reaching $58.8 million – annualizing to over $640 million (high confidence – TokenTerminal, DeFiLlama, Dune). In the most recent reporting period, its fees grew by 56% quarter-on-quarter. It has executed more than $800 million worth of HYPE buybacks, making it one of the few protocols where token value accrual is not just theoretical.

In comparison, the veteran players show different results. GMX generates $5,000 in daily revenue with around 500 daily active users. dYdX earns between $10,000 and $13,000 per day with 1,300 daily active users, while its fees have declined 84% year-over-year. These are not struggling competitors – these are protocols whose runway has mathematically, rather than strategically, come to an end.

The data for edgeX is noteworthy: verified 30-day fees of $14.7 million, with a fee retention rate of 73%, operating on StarkEx ZK-rollup. There was an aggregation error in our previous dataset, which initially showed $2.5 million—after correction, edgeX firmly ranks second among on-chain perpetual venues by revenue (high confidence—TokenTerminal daily verification). Whether edgeX can sustain its growth or follow the path of GMX/dYdX remains the only unanswered question in this category.

What makes Hyperliquid worthy of analytical attention is that its success isn’t solely due to better trading UX – its differences from GMX or dYdX at the order execution level are real but marginal. It wins because of liquidity depth, listing speed, and branding. Once perpetual liquidity concentrates in one venue, network effects become nearly impossible to dislodge: traders go where spreads are tightest, tightest spreads occur where trading volume is highest, and trading volume returns to where traders congregate. The decentralized perpetual exchange category has already reached the winner-takes-all stage, and deploying capital to compete against Hyperliquid in this category is akin to lighting money on fire.

Another speculative category worth examining is prediction markets. The mainstream narrative is that Polymarket validates the path of on-chain prediction markets. However, data tells a different story – and the lesson here has nothing to do with decentralization.

•Kalshi operates as an off-chain/CEX-like platform. 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 trading volume, with its trading volume growing 12x in six months. Sports betting accounts for 89% of its revenue. Meanwhile, the on-chain alternative Polymarket generates $4.7 million to $5.9 million in monthly revenue with 688,000 MAUs. Kalshi’s monthly revenue is approximately 25 times that of Polymarket.

The lazy explanation is that Polymarket suffers from UX issues. But from most product dimensions, Polymarket is actually the better-built platform – cleaner order books, faster settlements, and even a more mature trader experience compared to Kalshi. UX alone cannot justify a 25x revenue gap. The defense that Polymarket “hasn’t started charging fees yet” only worsens the comparison, not improves it: if Polymarket loses 25-to-1 without any fees, the underlying revenue potential gap is likely even wider than the surface numbers suggest.

The real explanation lies in category selection, distribution channels, and jurisdiction positioning—these three elements have nothing to do with decentralization.

Kalshi chose sports. Sports represent a high-frequency, mass-market, structurally recurring category: there are betting opportunities every week, every day, every year; the rules are universally understood, and audiences refresh themselves with each new season. Polymarket positioned itself in politics and event markets – these are fragmented, election-cycle-dependent, and structurally low-frequency. Users who came to Polymarket for the 2024 elections have no reason to return by March 2026. Users who came to Kalshi for the NFL have a reason to return every Sunday. Recurring participation compounds into liquidity, liquidity compounds into tighter spreads, and tighter spreads compound into more users. Polymarket stood on the wrong side of the flywheel.

The second factor is distribution. Kalshi has built a B2B2C model, integrating its order book into brokerage platforms, fintech apps, and partner integrations, instead of relying on direct-to-consumer customer acquisition. Polymarket operates purely DTC, meaning every active trader carries the full marketing cost. Crucially, Kalshi operates legally under U.S. CFTC regulation, while Polymarket—following its 2022 settlement with the same agency—is geographically blocked from American users. The largest English-speaking audience for prediction markets is structurally unreachable by on-chain products. Kalshi doesn’t just win in execution; it owns a market that Polymarket is legally prohibited from entering.

The implications for evaluating prediction market projects are specific. The right due diligence questions are: (1) What is the recurring engagement frequency for 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 posture within the largest addressable market? The degree of decentralization is largely irrelevant to the outcome. Polymarket lost by a factor of 25 to 1 because it chose the wrong category, the wrong distribution model, and the wrong jurisdiction—in roughly that order of importance.

There are two key points in the speculative sector: (1) Categories that have already produced winners really have produced winners—capital should no longer flow there; (2) The mechanism by which winners prevail isn't decentralization, UX, or tokenomics—perpetuals rely on liquidity concentration, and prediction markets rely on category selection plus distribution. Both conclusions point to the DeFi mullet proposition: the most defensible consumer positioning is wrapping a compliant frontend around a crypto-native backend. Ether.fi Cash is the cleanest current example. CrediFi and the next generation of payment-adjacent products all belong to this model.

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

Data shows: Tron processes over $600 billion in stablecoin transactions monthly—comparable to Visa—with 14.3 million MAU, 72.8 million USDT holders, and a stablecoin velocity of 0.2–0.3x—indicating its activity is payment-driven, not speculative. It hosts an entire shadow economy of unmarked protocols, which Western media completely ignores.

The numbers are staggering. The supply of USDT-TRC20 on Tron is $86.4 billion. Monthly transaction volumes range between $600 billion and $1.35 trillion (with high confidence in the lower bound from TronScan and TokenTerminal; the upper bound includes recycled transaction volumes). On March 29, 2026, daily transaction volume reached $44.9 billion. The network processes over 2 million transactions daily, covering 13.8 million MAU, with 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 a key analytical signal. Tron's USDT velocity is 0.2–0.3x, meaning that on average, every dollar of USDT on Tron turns over once every 3 to 5 months. In contrast, speculative public chains can have velocities exceeding 10x—rapidly cycling between DeFi protocols, leveraged positions, and Launchpads. Tron's stable, slow velocity is characteristic of a payment rail: money comes in, is used for a real-world transaction, then stays in wallets awaiting the next bill or remittance. The top ten USDT holders on Tron control only 8.7% of the supply—indicating broad and decentralized retail distribution.

Then there's the shadow economy. Our audit of TronScan identified several unlabeled protocols generating significant revenue but with no English documentation whatsoever:

CatFee generates $82,000 in daily fees. No one in Western crypto media knows what it is. TRONSAVE earns $863,000 in monthly revenue, with the owner’s identity unknown. These protocols operate in the shadow economies of Vietnam’s P2P networks, Nigeria’s OTC counters, the Philippines’ remittance corridors, and Latin America’s cash channels. We estimate that tens of billions of dollars flow through these unmarked clearinghouses daily—dynamic addresses, collection settlements, and freelance payment infrastructures that effectively act as banking systems for populations excluded from traditional finance.

Celo is the fastest-growing public chain in this category, entirely driven by the integration of MiniPay and Tether. Unique users grew by 506% year-over-year, with a total of 12.6 million wallets and $153 million in transaction volume in December 2025 (high confidence). However, its scale remains only a fraction of Tron’s.

Ethereum remains the institutional settlement rail—high fees limit retail usage. Solana's stablecoin activity is dominated by trading and Launchpad traffic (pump.fun, Jupiter, Meteora), not payments. BNB Chain handles a monthly stablecoin trading volume of 600 billion US dollars, primarily CEX settlements. TON is the wildcard—Telegram's wallet integration has brought massive sign-ups, but the depth of participation remains unclear.

In this overview, every successful consumer-grade crypto category has followed the same trajectory. It starts with regulatory arbitrage; accumulates capital and users in a gray area; faces — or fails to withstand — a compliance-driven event; and what emerges becomes legitimate financial infrastructure. Today's protocols and companies generating real revenue are at different stages of this lifecycle, and their position determines the risk and return profile for investors.

Stage 1 - Gray Area Launch. A protocol or service emerges, solving problems that traditional finance either refuses or is unable to address, almost always due to some regulatory constraint. The user base is small, highly technical, and can tolerate legal ambiguity. Margins are extremely high because regulatory risk is priced into the take rate. Tail risk is unlimited. Examples today include unmarked shadow clearinghouses on Tron (CatFee, TRONSAVE), Nigerian P2P USDT platforms, early pump.fun, NFTs, and even the early days of Hyperliquid.

Stage 2 - User and Capital Accumulation. Product-market fit (PMF) becomes undeniable. Trading volumes grow, and users begin to come from outside the core tech circle. Western media starts to notice, but regulators have not yet acted. Tron’s USDT economy is currently at this stage — 14.3 million MAUs and over $600 billion in monthly trading volume. The pump.fun of 2024, Polymarket during the 2024 election cycle, and today’s Hyperliquid are also at this stage.

Stage 3 - Compliance Transition. A forcing event — litigation, enforcement action, settlement, or proactive regulatory engagement — pushes the project to choose legalization, fragmentation, or death. This is the stage with the highest variance and, from an investment perspective, the most analytically valuable. Polymarket’s 2022 settlement with the CFTC, pump.fun’s $500 million lawsuit, and any future enforcement actions against offshore perpetual venues are all here. Most projects fail to fully navigate this stage.

Stage 4 - Legitimate Economy. Those that make it through become enduring, auditable, and financeable. Returns compress as businesses are now valued like fintech rather than moonshot projects. Kalshi (CFTC-regulated, valued at $22 billion), Exodus (NYSE American-listed, SEC-registered), Circle (S-1 filed), and RedotPay (financed at fintech comparable multiples) are all here.

Once the arc is laid out, the question of investment timing becomes more concrete. Stage 1 offers the greatest upside, but for institutional capital, it's essentially uninvestable — the underlying business could be wiped out by a single enforcement order, making underwriting practically impossible. Stage 4 is already fully priced; multiples are fintech multiples, and asymmetry has disappeared. Stage 2 has historically been the best phase for VC returns in this sector, provided there is a credible path through Stage 3. The due diligence question in Stage 2 is no longer “Does the product work?” — obviously, it does. The question is whether the business model can survive compliance.

Tron’s shadow protocols won’t pass this test because their raison d’être is avoidance itself. Once Vietnam implements KYC on Tron USDT liquidity, CatFee’s daily fee revenue of $82,000 will vanish instantly — users aren’t paying for utility but for “no identity.” There’s no compliant business model underneath. This is the fundamental difference between protocols with true PMF and those that only fit regulatory arbitrage. Both can generate revenue, but only one is investable.

The DeFi mullet proposition is directly derived from this framework. Products like Ether.fi Cash and the next generation of Latin American fintech can win because they wrap a compliant frontend around a crypto-native backend. Users neither see nor care about what chain it is. Regulators see just another ordinary fintech. The protocol captures the economics of “the cheapest rail.” None of these projects have issued tokens yet — which is itself a signal: value capture happens at the equity layer, not the token layer, and the institutional investors who will prevail in this cycle are those holding equity stakes, not token shares.

The three structural opportunities repeatedly highlighted throughout this briefing are precisely derived from this synthesis: emerging market monetization infrastructure (users are already there, revenue hasn’t caught up); cross-border B2B and freelancer payment e-commerce rails (the parts that can survive the e-commerce gap); and the still-uncovered ecosystem of Tron-adjacent protocols in Stage 2 of the lifecycle. All three are best approached using the DeFi mullet model; all three reward category selection over decentralization purity; and all three are undervalued today because Western capital is still looking at the wrong dashboard.

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-reported with partial independent corroboration (e.g., Travala self-reported revenue, Coins.ph Latka estimate)

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

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

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