After a 15% surge in crypto peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, according to a Nairametrics study in February, Africa’s largest economy has recorded another all-time high in crypto p2p trading.
According to a report by Vanguard, Nigeria now has a mind-boggling all-time trading volume of $1.5 billion on Paxful. Paxful is one of the biggest crypto P2P trading platforms globally.
Data from UsefulTulips, a website that explores the global use cases of cryptocurrencies, reveals that Nigeria transacted $99.1 million worth of Bitcoins in the first quarter of 2021. This figure surpasses Kenya’s Bitcoin P2P transactions for the whole of 2020. Kenya comes in second with a Bitcoin P2P trading value worth $38.4 million.
Ghana and South Africa rank third and fourth, respectively, with Bitcoin P2P transaction values of $27.4 million and $25.8 million
Globally, Nigeria sits with China, the US, India, and Kenya in Paxful’s P2P rankings.
This comes as no surprise as Africa’s most populous nation had been making waves on Paxful’s P2P trading platform. Techpoint Africa earlier reported that Nigeria traded more than $566 million worth of bitcoins in the last five years, coming second to the US. In 2020, Paxful had over a million accounts registered from Nigeria.
Interesting, a Techpoint Africa report, states that three crypto exchanges — Busha, BuyCoins, and Bitsika — claimed to have processed $219.2 million, $141.39 million, and $39.95 million, respectively. With a total of about $400,556,913 million, it is safe to say that perhaps the transactions are greater as other local exchanges did not disclose their transaction volumes.
Surprisingly, the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN’s) crypto ban in mid-February 2021, did nothing to reduce the volume of crypto activities in the country. If anything, crypto transactions seem to have increased significantly since.
In a press release dated February 7, 2021, the CBN claimed that cryptocurrencies pose risks of loss of investments and terrorism, among other disadvantages. However, the continuous rise in the use of digital currencies might prove that there is more to gain than lose.
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