Bitcoin trading has always seen high adoption in countries with currencies that are depreciating fast. The West African country of Nigeria has always been at the forefront of BTC adoption in the region. A combination of a large youth population, the growing popularity of tech, and a fast depreciating currency have seen citizens of the most populated African country turning to another option for value storage.
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Earlier in the year, the government of Nigeria announced a country-wide ban on cryptocurrencies. Instructing banking and payment institutions to stop facilitating the buying and selling of digital assets. But despite the ban, bitcoin adoption continues to be on the rise in the country. In 2020, Paxful released numbers that showed that Nigerians made up the second-largest BTC market, only coming behind the United States.
This growth of Bitcoin has continued in the country. With exchanges like Binance, Buycoins, LocalBitcoins, Paxful, and a whole host of others providing an avenue for the citizens to trade BTC through P2P. Nigeria continues to lead the continent in BTC adoption.
Booming P2P MarketThe ban does not seem to have had much effect on the momentum of bitcoin adoption in the country. Data from UsefulTulips shows that Nigerians alone traded and moved almost $40 million in BTC P2P trading in the span of 30 days.
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The data which was taken from July 4th to August 4th showed that the P2P value of BTC traded in Nigerian Naira (NGN) came out to $38,083,688 in 30 days. This number was taken from two prominent P2P services used in the country, Paxful, and LocalBitcoins. While the previous 30-day period had seen over $37 million traded and moved in the top P2P platforms.
BTC price breaks $40,000 for the second time in a 7-day period | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.comKenyans came in second place to Nigeria on the volume of BTC traded on P2P, with $14,054,477. Less than half the volume was moved by Nigerians alone. But still slightly higher than the amount moved in the country in the previous 30-day period, which came out to a little over $13 million.
Reasons For Growing Bitcoin AdoptionBitcoin adoption in Africa is on the rise. Using BTC as a way to send remittances back home is becoming increasingly popular in the continent. In countries like Nigeria, remittances to loved ones back home can be a tiring and grueling process. With regulations making the changing of dollars into Naira a hard process.
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Bitcoin provides fast and efficient transactions for people who are sending money back home. With their loved ones getting the coins sent in minutes. And swapping the coins for local currency in a couple of steps using P2P BTC trading.
With currency devaluations, citizens have now turned to digital assets as the new store of value. Nigeria’s inflation rate has now reached as high as 20%, hence the buying power of the local currency has gone down tremendously. Bitcoin provides a viable alternative to the falling currency.
Featured image from Bitcoinist, chart from TradingView.com
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