Bitcoin sales soar in Nigeria, despite government crackdown

in LeoFinance3 years ago

Nigerian citizens cannot get enough of cryptocurrencies, despite the efforts of the national bank. As you know, the Nigerian government is doing everything in its power to suppress and make impossible the local cryptocurrency ecosystem. However, their efforts have so far failed.


The cryptocurrency market is booming, and the head of state power is growing. That's the situation in a nutshell, but let us dig deeper.

Last month, peer-to-peer (P2P) BTC trading volume, i.e. direct, private-to-private BTC trading, reached its second strongest level ever. P2P exchange platforms became very popular in Nigeria after the government banned the trading of cryptocurrencies in February this year, which backfired and pushed the public even more towards cryptos.

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Image source: https://ftnnews.com.

During the period, by the way, the purchase price of bitcoin in the country was trading at a premium, as some would have bid up to $72 000 USD for a unit, which is $8 000 US
D more than the world's peak price. However, the regulation only applied to banks and other financial institutions, not to transactions between individuals, which would be impossible to regulate in any meaningful way.

The authorities tried to save the day in May 2021, when the CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) announced in an official statement that it would henceforth allow trading in digital assets.

Nigeria's strange internal affairs

Now let's jump back to the present. According to the latest data from Google Trends, Nigerians are still the most searched for "bitcoin" in the world. Moreover, in the P2P market, Nigeria is only overtaken by the United States, which has the second largest exchange.

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Google Trends - Searches for 'bitcoin' by country over the past 12 months.

As a result, P2P volume in the sub-Saharan country is the highest in the world, at $18.8 million per week. In the US, the volume was $18 million last week.

The ongoing political and economic crisis in the country is further fuelling the penetration of cryptocurrencies into the public consciousness. The brutal social repression and high inflation in this case are just fuel for the fire.

The Nigerian government's actions have been heavily criticised in the foreign press as well as in international politics, forcing the apparatus to change its attitude.

Despite their aversion to cryptos, the public administration has been toying with the idea of issuing its own digital currency (CBDC) for some time. At the end of July, the central bank announced that it would start live testing of the CBDC from 1 October.

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The government is retarded. They're just copying other countries to implement CBDC, and I'm confident that the project will fail.

Probably. Looks like the Nigerians are almost all in for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is more popular in Nigeria than in the USA.

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The central bank does a horrible job at keeping the fiat under their nose in control, if they think CBDC will magically improve the current situation of the currency, they are highly mistaken.

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Yes. Looks like the control is slipping out of their hands, and they try to do anything to avoid that.

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I am surprised that the demand for BTC/Crypto is so high in Nigeria, given it's recent volatility where values have plummeted and people will be left with a reduction in coin value. It would also be interesting to know whether people can "spend" it on everyday items or whether it is just BTC being used for savings.

Then again, I don't know how volatile the fiat currency is in Nigeria so it's hard to do a direct comparisson. It might be that BTC is less volatile than the local fiat inflation thereby making it a better longer term investment.

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People often give thousands of dollars (even up to $8 000 USD) more for a Bitcoin in Nigeria than the world's peak price. But I am not really sure why the Bitcoin is so (much more) valuable in Nigeria (than in other parts of the world).

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