There are three main things fueling their interest in Bitcoin:
the continuing failure of African governments to provide opportunities for their citizens to secure employment or engage in entrepreneurship;
related to the first, which is the depreciation of these countries’ local fiat currencies – in the 1980s, the Nigerian currency (the naira) traded at parity with the U.S. dollar; now it takes close to N600 to buy one dollar; and
due to the rise of mobile telephony and apps, African youths are used to having the world at their fingertips. With Bitcoin, they have the opportunity to transact 24/7 and send/receive money cheaply and almost instantaneously from all over the world. The combination of these factors contributed to Africans’ appetite for Bitcoin and peer-to-peer platforms.
Combined with the rise of remote work, Bitcoin will make it possible for world-class talent in Africa to take advantage of global work and entrepreneurial opportunities.
Bitcoin will usher in frictionless payment and trade rails across all of sub-Saharan Africa. This is particularly important because of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), which is intended to establish a free trade zone across all of Africa, and which the World Bank estimates will boost Africa’s income by $450 billion.
The Brookings Institution noted that cryptocurrencies have a lot of potential to facilitate remittances and help democratise finance. That is our raison d’etre here at Paxful – as a peer-to-peer platform; we are fully on board with Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision of Bitcoin as a way for users to exchange value among themselves without a centralised authority in the middle.