Recent reports show that the Sub-Saharan Peer-to-Peer Bitcoin trading has surpassed that of North America, making the region the largest P2P market in the world. This was indicated in a recent data made available by UsefulTulips.org which analyses data from LocalBitcoins and Paxful trading platforms.
According to the recent data, a total of $17,599,679 was traded in BTC volume from sub-Saharan Africa. For the North American region, $17,540,134 was traded in BTC volume.
And in the Sub-Sahara African region, Nigeria tops the chart with $8,761,051 in BTC traded volume. Kenya and Ghana were distant second and third with $3,613,004 and $2,882,710 in traded BTC volume for the period, while the United States led the North American charge with $16,752,803 in BTC volume for the period.
In terms of monthly averages for August, North America was marginally above sub-Saharan Africa. A total of $73,529,843 has been traded in BTC volume from North America, while $73,420,672 has been traded in BTC volume from sub-Saharan Africa.
Since the Central Bank of Nigeria banned cryptocurrency in Nigeria in February, P2P trading has surged in the country. In April 2021, Paxful had announced that trading volume from Nigeria had hit $1.5bn with 1.5 million users.
Between 2015 and 2020, Nigerians traded $566m worth of bitcoin only behind the United Stated in the peer-to-peer bitcoin market.
According to a source in Paxful, Nigerians had traded bitcoin volumes of over $225m from March to June 2021. The source added that only $180m was traded in BTC volume from Nov 2020 to Feb 2021.