Nigeria Hits $1.5 Billion in P2P Trading Volume Despite Crypto Trading Ban
Nigeria is unarguably the largest cryptocurrency market in Africa, with millions of the country’s young citizens trying to leverage their power to solve their financial problems.
However, the recent ban placed on banks by the country’s central bank, CBN, that prevents them from servicing crypto entities had threatened to reduce the size of this market.
What Happened?
For clarity, the central bank said it is okay with cryptocurrencies and is not discouraging people from trading them. The prohibition is only applicable to banks and financial institutions. In other words, crypto exchanges and related companies that previously allowed users to deposit or withdraw their funds directly from their bank accounts can no longer do so.
The ban became a major setback as bank transfers via exchanges made it easier for many Nigerians to access crypto services without getting scammed.
But the hurdle did not deter Nigerians from trading crypto assets. According to a recent report, Nigeria has emerged as the biggest peer-to-peer market for Paxful amid the CBN’s prohibition.
It’s Not a Deterrent
When the ban went into effect, cryptocurrency traders in Nigeria had to devise a means to continue their transactions without the interference of banks via crypto exchanges.
P2P trading became the order of the day and Paxful, a global peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading platform, became one of the most used platforms in the country.
As per the report, Nigerians conducting trades using the Paxful platform were able to hit a remarkable trading volume of $1.5 billion with over 1.5 million users, despite the ban.
And according to data published by UsefulTulips, Nigerians using Paxful traded over $6.3 million in the last 7 days and over $77.4 million in the last 90 days.
Apart from Nigeria, several other major economies are becoming more interested in crypto trading. Paxful saw impressive trade volumes from countries like China, the United States of America, India, and Kenya.
Globally, the peer-to-peer platform has over six million users with more than $5 billion trades that have been conducted.
According to the company’s CEO and co-founder, Ray Youssef, the traditional financial system can no longer meet up the needs of a large percentage of the world’s population.
He noted that the financial systems that are currently in place foster a lot of financial inequalities, adding that cryptocurrencies have the power to change the system.
He said:
With crypto-currencies, we see an alternative, a way to rest the financial system based on equality. 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.
With millions of people venturing into the crypto space in search of alternate stores of value, adoption levels have increased. But, this is just the beginning.
