Abstract

Regulatory permissiveness is widely prescribed as the primary institutional lever for digital asset adoption. This study challenges that prescription. Analyzing NFT and DeFi adoption across 105 countries using Principal Component Analysis (PCA)-constructed composite indices and multivariate Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, we find that the Frontier Technology Readiness Index (FTRI) is the dominant structural correlate across all specifications, consistently outperforming competing explanatory variables. Regulatory environments neither independently explain adoption nor are associated with it linearly: both permissive and restrictive environments outperform mostly prohibited jurisdictions, suggesting that regulatory clarity rather than permissiveness is the operative institutional dimension. NFT and DeFi markets follow empirically distinct pathways: NFT adoption shows stronger associations with digital marketplace maturity while DeFi is more closely associated with technological infrastructure, suggesting that treating Web3 as a homogeneous policy category is unwarranted. National income conditions how effectively technological readiness is associated with adoption gains, with structural determinants exhibiting considerably reduced explanatory power in lower-middle-income economies. For policymakers, these findings reframe the debate: the primary structural correlate of digital asset adoption is technological capacity, not regulatory stance, and below a development threshold, neither intervention is reliably associated with adoption gains.

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