Nigerians Traded $1.5billion Cryptocurrency to Become Paxful's Biggest Market
- Nigeria has become the biggest market for bitcoin and cryptocurrency on Paxful's exchange
- The Central Bank of Nigeria ban on cryptocurrency transaction had pushed Nigerians to seek exchanges offering peer-to-peer
- P2P is the most used feature by cryptocurrency investors as it reduces fee paid to crypto exchanges
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Nigeria is now the largest cryptocurrency market for Paxful, a peer-to-peer exchange catering to global demand for digital assets. Nigeria had emerged despite a ban on cryptocurrency transaction in the country.
The ban had driven many Nigerians to cryptocurrency exchanges offering the peer-to-peer feature to trade bitcoin and other cryptos as they could no longer use their bank account to buy or sell digital coins.
It was gathered that transactions involving Nigerians have now hit $1.5 billion in volume and with 1.5 million users. China, United States, India, and Kenya fell behind Nigeria respectively as of April 2021.
Paxful had stated in a post on Twitter that:
"Peer-to-peer trading in Nigeria is on fire. Since the ban on cryptocurrency in Nigeria three months ago, peer-to-peer trading volumes have increased by 27%."
Paxful detected a trend among its markets, stating that it is seeing growth in countries where financial system has failed the people. The exchange said 99 percent of the world’s population have been failed by the system.
Source: Getty Images
While addressing the growth of cryptocurrency on the company's exchange, Paxful co-founder, Ray Youssef, who also doubles as the chief executive officer, said:
“Our mission at Paxful is to give everyone equal access to finance no matter who they are or where they are so they can control their own money and build the future they want with financial freedom.
“The financial system is failing 99 percent of the world’s population; it is disconnected and out of date. This means there is no way out of income inequality for a lot of people in the world. With cryptocurrencies, we see an alternative: a way to rest the financial system based on equality.”
He added:
“We are on track for a 20 per cent+ increase in volume this year. We are seeing growth in all our markets and especially among groups or in countries where there’s a real need for cryptocurrencies: where the traditional financial system is failing people, whether that is because of extreme volatility, strict capital controls or high transaction costs.
“People are looking for freedom from these constraints and find that in cryptocurrencies. So, there is a real increase in people using cryptocurrencies for their original purpose – as currencies and not just as a speculative asset.”
Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that Wema Bank recorded a shortfall of N13.51 billion in the full year of 2020 after its turnover ended the year with N81.38 billion.
The company released disappointing earnings for the 2020 period after revenue, operating income, profit before tax, and profit after tax all declined at the end of last year.
The bank was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic which shrank operation capability and also affected interest income as loans were restructured for debtors to avoid turning into bad debt.
Source: Legit.ng
