Nigeria is now the second largest bitcoin market after the US. According to details obtained from Quartz, Nigeria peaks at second place with a volume of 60, 215 BTC valued at more than $566 million. This makes Nigeria, asides the US, the largest volume globally on Paxful, a leading peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplace.
Experts attribute this to the EndSARS protests in October when government shut out protesters from using local payment platforms for collecting donations. In view of Jack Dorsey’s call for bitcoin donations, the young, tech-savvy protesters quickly switched to using bitcoin and in about a week it accounted for around 40% of the nearly $400,000 raised.
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Data gotten from Coin Dance reveals that from the beginning of May 2015 to the middle of November 2020, bitcoin trade in Nigeria have increased yearly to at least 19% in volume since 2017. It revealed that the highest volume (20, 504.50) was traded in 2020.
Bitcoin trade in the country recorded a rare spike of 30% this year following the national lockdown. The country also had the highest volume traded during the peak of the pandemic. Sources from Paxful reveal a 137% increase in new registrations in Nigeria.
According to the company, Nigerians constitute a quarter of its customer base with 1.3 million registered accounts. Nene Nwachukwu, regional manager, Paxful Nigeria, averred that “they mostly use the platform for peer-to-peer and arbitrage trading. Remittances are also a popular use case”. She stated further that bitcoin is “much cheaper and faster than using traditional money transfer operators.”