Cryptocurrency adoption: Aggressive Nigeria shows how to be a leading example

Cryptocurrency adoption is an issue that has sparked interest in the recent past owing to the increase in crypto prices at the start of 2020.

Nigeria topping charts for cryptocurrency adoption

These findings are backed up by a surge in search engine results for Bitcoin. As a hallmark, Nigeria has recorded the highest transactions and is topping the charts for the last 12 months. South Africa and Ghana came close to the logs.

In as much as Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa, the country is still marred by many socio-economic challenges. In 2019, Nigeria rose above India as the nation having the highest number of people languishing in abject poverty. 87 million out of 200 million Nigerians are in the extreme poverty brackets.

Despite warnings from Nigeria’s central bank and scams, the Nigerian population is not delinquent in acquiring Bitcoin knowledge and other cryptocurrencies. Peer to peer transactions on local Bitcoin have hit 600 million naira in one week according to a report by Coin Dance.

Most Nigerians rely on international remittances from abroad. Nigerian central bank records show that in 2019, remittances from diaspora hit $17.57 billion. The total figure is a 56.4% increase from 2018. Due to high transfer charges for fiat currencies, cryptocurrency adoption has provided an alternative for sending and receiving money.

Exchange platforms in Nigeria that have accelerated cryptocurrency adoption.

Fortunately, Nigeria has several local exchange platforms like Nairaex for buying and selling of crypto. Bitpesa, an exchange in Nigeria works with Safaricom’s money transfer service, M-Pesa. Therefore, Nigerians can use debit cards to buy Bitcoin on BitPesa.

Nigerian people have many options for using crypto, Paychant, which is a payment processor offers a gateway to receive cryptocurrencies while having an option to transfer crypto to local money the Naira. Paychant supports Ethereum and Bitcoin and traders who accept Bitcoin can use Bitcoin Cash register app on their phones and it allows them to send and receive bitcoin payments.

Remarkably, many companies in Nigeria accept bitcoin payments and among them is an airtime and short message services provider Gsm2me. Minku, which trades with fashion goods and beauty accessories across the continent also accepts bitcoin.