02 Aug 2021
Rising BTC adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa
The P2P volume of Sub-Saharan Africa has reached new all-time highs this summer.
The weekly volume rose throughout May and has plateaued at around $16 million. Nigeria is the dominating force in the region, accounting for around 60% of the weekly volume.However, both Kenya and Ghana has seen a large growth in weekly volume this year, well beyond 3x the size from early January. LocalBitcoins was the dominating P2P platform in the region, but quickly lost their grip in the region as they became KYC-compliant in September of 2019. Then, Paxful overtook LocalBitcoins in the region. LocalBitcoins currently only holds a majority of the trade volume in the most developed countries of the region. This illuminates one major issue with KYC-compliance in the P2P market. As a large share of the
population in Sub-Saharan Africa are unbanked and unable to become KYC-compliant.