TL;DR Breakdown
- Crypto trade surges in Nigeria amidst crypto ban
- Nigeria and its ban on crypto
In just three months of the crypto ban in Nigeria, residents have traded crypto worth $225,000 on Paxful peer-to-peer platform.
Local media in Nigeria reports that Paxful revealed this to them. From November 2020 to February 2021, the source added that trading volumes from Nigeria was about $150,000 representing an increase in crypto sales during the crypto ban, local media reports.
“From March through June 2021, Paxful had a bitcoin trading volume of over $225K in Nigeria.
“It’s best to compare Nov 2020 to Feb 2021; they are both four months. From this date range, we have bitcoin trading of nearly $180K.”
Back in April, the peer-to-peer market announced that Nigeria was its biggest crypto market, with volumes of $1.5bn and 1.5 million users.
The crypto firm has previously envisaged the surge in crypto sales by Nigeria as it announced early in 2021 that it expects 23 percent more trading volumes from Nigeria than what it recorded in 2020.
Beyond Paxful, how Nigerians have traded $566m Bitcoin worth
Between 2015 and 2020, Nigerians have traded $566m worth of Bitcoin across various cryptocurrency trading platforms. This makes the African giant the second largest peer-to-peer Bitcoin market after the United States, according to news.bitcoin.com.
However, Nigeria remains the largest crypto market in Africa. This is in the wake of plunging crypto prices since May as the number one crypto; Bitcoin has lost more than half of its value since then.
The plunge in value has been linked to being similar to the 2017 sell-off.
Nigeria and its crypto ban
The Nigerian Central bank months ago stopped banks and other financial institutions from providing support for cryptocurrencies similar to what happened in India years back.
However, data has shown that Nigerians have continued to use alternative means (P2P) to access and convert their crypto holdings after the ban.
Usefultulips, a crypto analytical website, shows that the usage of Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer trading in Nigeria has surged by 27 percent since the CBN directive. Nigerians have moved over $103 million worth of Bitcoins on just Paxful and LocalBitcoins channels alone.
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