Recent data from Paxful has revealed that Nigeria leads Africa in peer-to-peer trading in bitcoin, posting monthly volumes of over $66 million in 2020.
According to a report, the country is closely followed by Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa respectively.
With over 620,000 active Nigerian users on its platform, Paxful in the report disclosed that Nigerians traded around $15 million worth of Bitcoin in April alone, making Nigeria the leader in the African region.
“Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa are our main markets in Africa. There’s no question that emerging markets are the future of the crypto economy.
“That’s been clear to us for some time, as we see on a daily basis how tech-savvy Africans are using Bitcoin to invest, trade, send money abroad and accumulate wealth.
“Bitcoin helps improve lives and gives opportunities for personal and entrepreneurial development. Paxful is all about bringing financial inclusion to the emerging world and we’re ecstatic to help so many people with limited access to the traditional financial services,” Paxful CEO and co-founder Ray Youssef said.
It noted that Nigeria has continued to witness a huge rise in the adoption of digital money as a means to store value, preserve wealth, trade, and settle day-to-day payments.
“Another great use case for crypto, popular with the local traders and businesses in Nigeria, is helping them hedge against weak naira partially caused by the shortage of US Dollars in the country,” it added.
Since launching five years ago, global transactions on the Paxful platform have grown by over 25 per cent from October 2019 to October 2020.
A large proportion of the transactions is attributed to the African market, with Nigeria leading the pack.
“Committed to providing users with a cost-efficient, accessible trading system on its platform, Paxful is strengthening Nigeria’s crypto market with varied payment methods that meet the needs of users.
“The company currently has over 300 payment methods all geared to meet users’ needs and includes a variety of local payment options, including BuyCoins, Bitsika, and Carbon.
“Paxful is a people-powered marketplace for money transfers with anyone, anywhere, at any time. Their mission is to empower the forgotten four billion unbanked and underbanked around the world to have control of their money using peer-to-peer transactions.
“The company has over 4.5 million users globally who you can instantly buy and sell Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether (USDT) using over 300 different payment methods,” it added.
