Paxful, a cryptocurrency marketplace, has said it experienced a 25 per cent increase in global transactions from October 2019 to October 2020 since its five-year launch.
A large proportion of the transactions was attributed to the African market, with Nigeria leading the pack, the firm said in a statement on Monday titled ‘2020 wrapped up: Paxful highlights Nigeria’s thriving crypto market’.
The report noted that the crypto business had seen immense growth and investor interest since the outbreak of COVID-19, using the latest rise of Bitcoin to nearly $20,000 to buttress its point.
The company, with patronage of over 620,000 active Nigerian users on its platform, said Nigerians traded around $15m worth of Bitcoin in April alone, making Nigeria the leader in the African region.
The Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Paxful, Ray Youssef, stated, “Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa are our main markets in Africa. There is no question that emerging markets are the future of the crypto economy.
“That has been clear to us for some time, as we see on a daily basis how tech-savvy Africans are using Bitcoin to invest, trade, send money abroad and accumulate wealth.
“Bitcoin helps improve lives and gives opportunities for personal and entrepreneurial development.
“Paxful is all about bringing financial inclusion to the emerging world and we are ecstatic to help so many people with limited access to traditional financial services.”
Recent data from Paxful also revealed that Nigeria led Africa in peer-to-peer trading in 2020, posting monthly volumes of over $66m in 2020, followed by Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa respectively.
According to the statement, Paxful was strengthening Nigeria’s crypto market with varied payment methods that met the needs of users.
The company currently has over 300 payment methods all geared to meet users’ needs and includes a variety of local payment options, including BuyCoins, Bitsika, and Carbon, it stated.
Also, Naira Token, another stablecoin, was recently introduced as a payment method to the platform as part of the company’s localisation efforts.
Naira Token users could now look forward to fast, publicly-verifiable, borderless transactions with a fiat equivalent, it stated.
The statement said Paxful built its fourth school with Bitcoin in Nigeria in 2020.
The school located in the Ankara Nandu community of Sanga Local Government in Kaduna state would serve an estimated 100–120 children between the ages of three and six years old, and double as an adult education centre in the evenings.
The new facility would come with a state of the art solar power panels and a water filtration system.