Africa’s Seeing a Growth in Crypto Indicators Despite the Bearish Market

While the bearish market is still taking its toll on the cryptocurrency industry, recent data has indicated that Africa has had rapid growth in the interest of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

According to the data gathered by the international cryptocurrency marketplace, Paxful, Africa’s interest in cryptocurrency has risen despite the crypto world being in the midst of the worst downturn it has ever seen. Paxful’s highest new subscriber additions come from Africa.

Additionally, it is not just one city, state or country that has shown this growth, but it is evenly distributed across the continent. According to the portal, over the past year, transactions on the Paxful platform from South Africa increased by 25 percent, 60 percent in Nigeria and by up to 100 percent in other parts of the continent. Africa as a whole has led to a 225 percent growth in Paxful’s user base.

The data noted that the main age group making the transactions was around 18-30 years old. The average Bitcoin purchase is R871, while the average Paxful wallet transaction is under R435.

The CEO of Paxful, Ray Youssef expressed his optimism regarding the growth and said,

“The adoption of Bitcoin across the globe re-affirms our belief that crypto will take its place as a mainstream financial system. As has been the case with other tech innovations, Africa is leading the peer-to-peer financial revolution. Our aim is to continue to partner with consumers to expand access to the global financial system.”

It seems that the main cause for such rapid substitution to this new mode of currency in Africa is due to the lack of sufficient outreach by traditional banks across the continent, unlike other more developed regions in the world where people have the luxury of choosing between banks. As such, most of the continent has already shifted to mobile payment systems and the easy and cost-effective nature of cryptocurrencies has become a hit with the millennial generation of Africa.

Binance’s CFO, Wei Zhou expressed a similar his interest in tapping into this market that has the potential to be a huge source of revenue for cryptocurrency companies. He said,

“A lot of the use cases for cryptocurrency — store of value, remittances, all of that — are in Africa. If we can leverage that into building a financial services provider on the continent, that would be amazing. Currently, only about 15 percent have access to traditional banking services.”

It seems that Africa has been quick to adapt to its situation and accepted the new form of currency while the rest of the world is still figuring out how to regulate it. For Africa, it is only a matter of time before the industry grows into a substantial size and draws in more businesses to fill the void left by the absence of traditional banking infrastructure.