Over the past five years, Africa has emerged as a leading market for global bitcoin marketplace, Paxful.
The peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplace has announced its official 2019 growth metrics.
On the heels of a November high, in which the company saw nearly $30 million in bitcoin trades – a steady uphill trend since the platform’s inception in 2015 – it is sharing a deep look into key markets and overall growth since launch.
Bitcoin steadily moves mainstream
As a result of increasing cryptocurrency adoption, Paxful has seen significant growth since inception. In 2015, the platform reported $5.9M in US dollar trade volume which has steadily increased by 25% or more year on year.
At the close of 2017, it reported more than $500-million in USD trade volume, with 2019 tripling that number closing at more than $1,6-billion.
In addition, it has seen 1-million wallets added in the past year, which is a vast difference from the 97 000 opened in 2015. Recently, Paxful reported having more than 3-million wallets registered on the platform.
“We started initially as a payment processor for brick and mortar merchants. The product was great and it worked with the few merchants we had but there was still the unsolved problem of an easy way of buying bitcoin,” says Artur Schaback, chief operating officer and co-founder of Paxful.
“That’s how Paxful was born, we realized peer-to-peer was still in its infancy and had a lot of room for improvement. Who would’ve thought that as we celebrate our fifth year in 2020, we would have over 200 employees across four global offices united in building this peer-to-peer marketplace for people around the world.”
Emerging markets accelerate platform growth
2019 has also marked a year of great growth in emerging markets. According to Paxful’s data team, Ghana and India, and Nigeria lead in emerging market usage.
Ghana alone has seen 33 000 new users join the platform in 2019, while South Africa remains one of the top markets for Paxful on the continent.
Trade volume in new markets has also seen significant growth with Hong Kong reporting a 132% increase year on year, Vietnam coming in at 200%, and Indonesia with a striking 400% increase since 2018.
Speculation is not the future of bitcoin
Utility is the future of cryptocurrency and as people begin to understand the use cases of bitcoin and incorporate them into their everyday lives, its mainstream adoption becomes vast and apparent.
With remittance providing users in Europe, Africa, Asia, and beyond a chance at financial freedom, they are obtaining more value for their money while P2P finance works to solve liquidity problems for entire countries.
Ending the year with a partnership
Paxful recently announced a partnership with leading global cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume and users Binance.
The integration will allow Binance users to utilise Paxful’s peer-to-peer trading network directly on Binance.com to buy Bitcoin (BTC) with 167 various fiat currencies. The integration will also allow users to make payments via Paxful on the Binance platform.