Nigerians Double Bitcoin Transactions in One Month Despite a Significant Drop in Value, CBN’s Ban
- Despite the Central Bank of Nigeria's prohibition, Nigerians have continued to trade in cryptocurrencies
- Even the present cryptocurrency market uncertainty has not deterred more Nigerians from placing a wager in order to profit
- Nigerian bitcoin dealers doubled their investment in one month, to rank among the countries with the highest volume of transactions in the world
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Paxful, a cryptocurrency trading platform, has reported a surge in weekly transactions by Nigerians on its Lightning Network.
This is despite the Central Bank of Nigeria’s restrictions on cryptocurrency transactions in the country and the crashing prices of cryptocurrencies globally, the Punch reports.
According to the trading platform, the volume of money sent by Nigerians via the network doubled from October 2021 to May 2022.
Source: Facebook
The statement from Paxful captured in TheSun reports read in parts:
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“Paxful, the leading global peer-to-peer (P2P) fintech platform announced that weekly transactions on the Lightning Network have increased tremendously.”
It added:
“In Nigeria, the volume of money being sent out on Lightning has doubled from October 2021 to May 2022.”
Paxful further disclosed that globally, deposit volume increased five times since the platform launched its integration on the Lightning Network in September 2021.
Paxful noted that the deposit volume increased by 54 per cent in April.
Speaking the CEO, and founder of Paxful, Ray Youssef, noted that Nigeria was one of the countries with the highest Bitcoin trade volume in the first week of May this year.
He said:
“In the first week of May, Nigeria was one of the countries with the highest Bitcoin trade volume on Paxful alongside the United States, Ghana, China, and Kenya. Today, we have over 70 countries using Lightning on Paxful.”
"Nigerians traded at least N77.75bn ($185m) worth of Bitcoin in the first three months of 2022, which is a 5.71 per cent increase from the N73.54bn worth of Bitcoin that was traded in the corresponding period of 2021."
CBN ban cryptocurrency transactions in banks
You will recall that in February 2021 the CBN asked banks in the nation to stop transacting in and with entities dealing in crypto assets.
Despite this, a recent report by KuCoin, a crypto exchange with over 10 million registered users, disclosed that about 33.4 million Nigerians traded or owned crypto assets.
Bitcoin falls below $19k sends fear into the crypto market; Here are the other biggest bitcoin crashes in history
In another report Legit.ng revealed that Bitcoin fell below $19,000 for the first time in 18 months, wiping off more than $240.18 billion of its value since the beginning of June, when it stood at $31,643.75.
However, it recovered slightly to trade at $19,148.61 at the time of writing data obtained from CoinDesk shows.
The most valuable cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization has been declining since the beginning of June, and it now has a market valuation of N364.32bn, down from N604.50bn at the beginning of June.
Source: Legit.ng
