I just sharing this based on my personal experience! And, short survey around my friends to know how they get to know bitcoin.
Most of the Malaysian know a word call "bitcoin", they don't really know exactly what is it. They start to know it when first time the bitcoin price hit higher than gold price. But we all still don't aware what is it. They only know is a coin, mostly though is a physical coin until last year many HYIP program and money game company start to use.
Some of the vocabulary miss in their mind in this crypto currency industry. I think by explaining what most of them don't know, you will understand how they get to know about bitcoin.
Most of them never heard about crypto currency, blockchain, bitcoin wallet, digital coin, poloniex, coinmarketcap, altcoin, ethereum.
Just a few numbers of person know the value of bitcoin and start collecting it since 2 years ago. Even most of the time, I ask my friends to keep their money in bitcoin form. They using a weird eye sight to look at me. That is a crazy ideas in term of keeping a coin that can't even use. We know it have a value but don't know where the value come from.
Last year 2016 many new money game company launch, offering altcoin. They aggresively marketing and promote altcoin. Promoting their coin with simple concept. They ask you to purchase their coin and keep for value, since Ringgit Malaysia is depreciate very quickly. Last year alone have depreciate more than 30%.
The time when I know about cryptocurrency and coinmarketcap.com. Only then I understand, most of the coin that this company promote don't even exist in blockchain? They just promote a digital point as a crypto currency. It doesn't have any technology to support the coin.
Then mining crypto currency become very hot. All this just happening within this 2 years time. One of the first crypto currency mining company available is https://www.genesis-mining.com, many of my friend participate on bitcoin mining with a coupon code: RkaUtg we all get 3% discount on our contract purchase. And start mining many kind of altcoin and bitcoin as well.
Most of Malaysia don't know how to buy bitcoin, they do have 2 bitcoin atm machine in Malaysia. Then slowly the spread of bitcoin mining, most of the people lazy to wait on mining. They buy bitcoin directly at https://localbitcoins.com/?ch=aa2j
That's why localbitcoins show the statistic grow of interest in Malaysia buyer on bitcoin purchase.