Topic: Africa’s crypto market has grown by more than 1,200% since 2020: Chainalysis (Read 376 times)

This is an interesting point, on the developed countries bitcoin is facing a lot of issues with adoption as people see it more as an investment opportunity than a currency, but in countries where the banking system is weak and the fiat printed by the government is subject to high inflation people will immediately see the advantages bitcoin brings as a currency.

So it is interesting how depending on the circumstances bitcoin appeals to people in different ways, on developed countries its main appeal is as an investment but in developing countries its main appeal is as a currency.

I love this idea because here in Africa crypto can do some better banking system is not looked like as we have in other continents so if some government is having guts like El Salvador they can implement crypto or bitcoin for use which will be very helpful and having very good impact on country economy, few big names already suggesting adoption of crypto in Africa could be very helpful, but sadly Governments are not interesting which is nightmare for them and common peoples because if they have just pinned start then this all can go revolutionize all system in this continent from Dark Continent to Digital Continent.

I have a feeling that African countries are ideal for the growth of cryptocurrency adoption and integration. The fiat banking system is not very widespread there (except for a few developed nations like Mauritius and South Africa). So Bitcoin doesn't need to replace an existing system. It just need to spread itself and present as the best option. Fiat system maybe established in many of the countries. But even then digital form of fiat is not that popular. So obviously the resistance against cryptocurrency will be lower in these nations.

Recently we have some very positive changes in few African countries which can bring some big impact on many other countries because now changing is happening around the world and this African culture is also changing very quickly with the help of this crypto even they are facing some serious threats and rules by corrupt governments bug still very positive outlook is coming.

Specially Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania having great gross rout adoption in this way. Not talking about Nigeria as special country is not good because it's really having some very good impact in this all Continent, and they can do much more than current role.

In a developing countries, some made a huge impact in the development of Bitcoin price. This only happened because of major involvement of people of such country into the trading and investments.Without the huge demand of bitcoin, it won't reach the valur of 60k$.It was the welcome one for the long term investors. They gained huge from this pump.

Governments fear on this, because when people are the king the government doesn't have anything to do. Governments that are thinking good for its citizens will understand the need for it, and regulate the usage. When the government isn't able to enjoy out of its citizens it tries to ban and keep them under restrictions.

Africa's crypto adoption hadn't happened in a short. It is a gradual growth, because long back itself it is possible to see large number of people using cryptocurrency as they weren't able to carry a large volume of currency that is under hard inflation. Now this has taken fast phase adoption.

I'm not surprised, crypto is the best way to change many lives for the better right now and countries in Africa needed it the most because there are too many African countries with many poor people today, I myself I'm from Africa and I've been able to live a good life thanks to crypto

And this is why the existence of bitcoin is important, when there were protests at Honk Kong due to the increase of the influence of China, protesters got donations from others on bank accounts they opened and immediately those accounts were frozen despite the fact their protests were legitimate.

As such we cannot let the governments and banks to have complete control of money and banking because they are abusing that power more than ever, and as such we need something they cannot control so they cannot censor you just because you have an opinion and stance different from what they approve.

Sometimes the government leave the people with no choice to make, in the case of Nigerians, I can remember that when they started making use of crypto currency was during their ENDSARS protest. And that was what led to their government deciding to place a ban on cryptocurrencies in the country, so that they can prevent the protesters from having access to funds for the protest.

Unfortunately for them this didn’t work out because immediately they banned cryptocurrency in the country people quickly switched to decentralized exchanges. Now nobody in that country is ready to make use of any exchange that is centralized, and this is going to be the same for other countries that will ban cryptocurrencies, their citizens will switch to decentralized exchanges immediately.

In Africa, there are developers of more than 10 years that will jump into the market and compete for it, which allows Africans to get a job a lot easier, as they are also developers. developers are no less great than people from just one country with a bad economy, so companies in the crypto world hire them partly because it's cheap to hire people in Europe and they bring money to your country. them, and now in the Africa region and a lot of people in this region will actually choose to hide their wealth in other ways like putting it in cryptocurrencies. so they have no problem converting their crypto to fiat when they need to launder the nefarious money into fiat and use it openly.

It is very easy to see why they think this way, the goal of any politician is to get to a position of power, and once they get there then their next goal is to retain that power, governments are afraid of what bitcoin can do as they can see one of their sources of power which are fiat currencies are going to have problems resisting bitcoin and its influence.

And since they do not like anything that reduces their power then they do not like bitcoin, so people despite all what governments say need to keep looking after themselves and their own interests because no one is going to do it for them as governments are only interested on what is best for them.

I don’t know why the government would, above all things that the country is facing, think that cryptocurrency is their main problem. There are many issues that the country is facing, and cryptocurrency is the least thing that the government should be worried about. There is a high rate of poverty in the country, Nigeria, and they are not doing to help their citizens by creating more jobs and giving out supports, rather they are only looking for a way to ban cryptocurrency. This goes to show how foolish that this government is.

It is good that people have looked for other means to override the ban and continue their cryptocurrency business. I am also hoping that countries like China, and other places where Bitcoin has been banned, people are going to do the same thing.

It is very interesting what is happening in those countries, governments are always speaking of the free markets and how competition is good for all industries and the people that use the products those industries produce, and they are not wrong, however when they are the ones that face that competition they immediately try to create laws to forbid bitcoin or to regulate it to extreme levels.

Instead what they should do is to improve their management of their economies, if people did not felt that they were cheated all the time by the governments then the motivation for satoshi to create bitcoin on the first place would not have existed, and people will not have any motivation to use bitcoin as they will not see the point, but it seems they have no intention to change and as such bitcoin will keep increasing its user base and its price as well.

Nigeria and south africa have had dire consequences for their late entry into the cryptocurrency sector south africa's economy is in recession for the second time in two years the economy contracted more than forecast in the fourth quarter of last year. South africa's economy has shrunk largely due to power outages and declining business confidence but the rapid growth of the nigerian economy for crypto will continue, this is good news for africans crypto will help them improve their economy.

If I am not wrong, Nigeria and South Africa are late entrants to the cryptocurrency sector. First it was Kenya and Tanzania, where the M-Pesa tried to integrate Bitcoin in to its platform, for the remittance payments. The biggest issue in all of these countries is that the government is not very supportive of cryptocurrency. Most of them have national currencies that are prone to inflation and the governments are afraid that cryptocurrency would create even more competition for the local currencies.

I did sort of something similar as well, I have been a freelancer anyway so I was already at home and did not lose my job thankfully, in fact it got a little bigger I believe, I am not sure but my income certainly did grow, that could be because of the rate maybe.

In the end, I got so many offers from so many other places as well, there were times I accepted one or two times and tested it, but it was seriously impossible for me, I already have a job that takes most of my day, and I do not like to work after 18:00 until I go to bed, for me work should be 9 am to 6 pm and whatever you can do in between them and even that sometimes is broken and I work after 6 pm, so getting another job on top of the current one was impossible.

However I did try to "enjoy" crypto during pandemic and started a project and did few things of my own, they were still sort of like work, but they were mine so I am quite happy about what I got, the return was awful and I lost all my money but I was quite happy about saying I did this.

South Africa and Nigeria was always ahead in Africa for adopting technology and many new things for their peoples but now few other countries also running on their footstep which is very good for African nation as they were living in Dark but suddenly this cryptocurrency bringing some good change for millions of peoples after reading about Kenya and Tanzania feeling now this is spreading like pandemic its very fruitful and can bring big changes in common peoples.

Sadly few countries still in civil war or many other issues now time for them to sit and talk because it's very long time we are reading and hearing this all so for better future adopt and run with this new technology crypto.

But you need to also look at this in terms of probabilities, what is more likely that people begin to use bitcoin out of nowhere or that once they discovered the profits they could get out of bitcoin and they get some of them then they decide to also use bitcoin on their everyday lives?

It is obvious the latter is more likely than the former, so even if most of the volume increase in African countries comes from speculation this will eventually transform in demand coming from the people to be able to use those profits to buy what they need.

They just did the best thing for themselves, switching to peer to peer exchanges was the best thing that Nigerians did for themselves. If you follow up with what’s happening in Nigeria (and not just in Nigeria, but in most countries in the world,) you will see that cryptocurrency has really provided so many opportunities for people around the world. So, government trying to ban cryptocurrency in these countries means that they are going to be rendering the source of income for most people useless.

When cryptocurrency was banned in Nigeria a lot of exchanges that were functioning there stopped functioning, and they all had to move to a different location to continue. So, imagine youth who had jobs in these companies and what’s going to happen to them after the government has banned cryptocurrency, they are going to end up losing their means of income which is very bad. So, in a situation like this I stand with the people.

This should not be surprising at all, the pandemic hit every single person around the world whether they know it or not, and those that were in more difficult situations to begin with will look for alternatives to their problems so they have found in bitcoin a way to earn some money, store their wealth more effectively than what they can do with their fiat and now they are able to send payments all over the world, so it makes sense people are adopting bitcoin at a very fast rate in countries where the pandemic has hit the economy the hardest.

Government in Africa has failed in the last 50 years, that's why it remain corrupt and poor. And they have been exploitation too but other nations, and recently it was China who are taking advantage by giving up loans, and we know what in it for the Chinese government.

And for bitcoin to really prosper, there should be infrastructure to support its growth. Jack Dorsey of Twitter is very vocal about tapping Africa vast people to get into crypto, but if governments are not laying down the foundation then it might takes years to really see it grow, as in mass adoption in the biggest continent.

This news is a statement to show how the government have failed the people in securing a stable financial system, since we all know Africa holds the largest number of developing and poor countries, and seeing how many people are using bitcoin and crypto in these country shows how dedicated and ready to constantly improve even though their countries have failed to support them, so they are taking the matter in their own hand and making transaction using bitcoin and other crypto.

This could just be attributed to the price of bitcoin and other cryptos rising substantially.

I would classify this as sort of a non-news. It is exactly what we expect.

An increase in trading volume etc. is not an indication of whether or not people are actually adopting bitcoin/other cryptos as a form of day to day transaction, which is actually what we need.

And I believe, the neighboring countries of El Salvador are already looking at this aspect as they are gaining attention from the community. Their latest move is to utilize their volcanic energy in bitcoin mining. And with continuous adoption like more merchants or shops accepting crypto as payment, in time, this country will be a very good example in terms of crypto adoption. We will see in the next 6 months and beyond what will be impact of bitcoin adoption in their economy.

And with the African region, embracing crypto may have very good influence in the status quo of their citizens, even just to help them in their daily consumption would be more than enough assistance if people can get it from their crypto activities.

Yes, in fact when you see El Salvador is a country that has always lived on its remittances, its source of greatest income always comes from there, it is not such a poor country, but when compared with European countries it can be or will be. It makes you see, but when you see and notice the movements of money and volume that move BTC, it is no longer such a poor country and this considering that it does not have 100% of the population operating with BTC, now the African countries that have so many people, Moving BTC will be like a big tide of considerable volume to the market.

I am really hoping that the support for bitcoin at developing countries begin to grow up at a fast rate, in a way I understand why rich countries do not want to adopt bitcoin as they are happy with the status quo and they want to maintain it.

But for countries that are not doing so well and in which corruption is rampant then bitcoin can be a great tool for the people to be able to move up in the economic ladder, so if the experiment that we are seeing at El Salvador is a huge success then I will not be surprised if we saw 10+ countries doing the same, and I would expect to see a few countries which are in the African continent being among them.

Statistics back that up though, there's a lot of data online so you don't need to claim that you did the statistics yourself. Africa is a good country and the continent that deserves to reap the benefits of cryptocurrency, the only problem is their dictators and militias opposing the stuff that gives people freedom.

I guess inflation is quite high in African nations and it makes sense to invest some amount in cryptocurrency. That said, I am not sure how viable are mining operations in African nations. First of all, they need to import the equipment (not just the mining rigs, but also cooling systems and other accessories) from China. And then the supply of electricity is going to be another major issue. Unless the miners can generate their own electricity (using solar panels or some other method), they may face difficulty in running the mining operation 24x7.

as a person living in africa i must say that in the last few months i have seen several people from my country buy and use cryptocurrencies and there are also people in my country who mine cryptocurrencies, this is something fantastic that even last year was very difficult to walk on the street and hearing people talking about bitcoin... it shows that in Africa the popularity of cryptocurrencies is growing. although ATM bitcoins are not growing, nor are the number of exchanges and stores that accept bitcoin as a payment method.

I have always thought that in the African Continent there is a lot of potential of all kinds, especially economically, countries that have deficiencies always seek to make progress, in fact I am very happy that Africa is starting to do well and that People can have more options to earn money, either generating through crypto or through any means, the reason is simple, there are many people and some are very well prepared academically and are very studious, the potential that very few see in Africa is huge. If now the governments of Africa believe in BTC, I think that the demand will be increasing and this will cause the supply to decrease, this transforms into that the price will be higher.

P2P platforms are not entirely risk free, and especially in new markets like Nigeria there won't be any shortage of scammers who try to con the innocent users. I have been using various P2P platforms for the last 6-7 years. And despite my experience, from time to time I stumble upon scammers and it can be a very frustrating experience. And worse still, these scammers are getting more innovative nowadays. We rely a lot on the feedback scores, and now the strategy is to hack P2P accounts that are inactive for sometime, with good trust and feedback scores. The only way to flag such accounts is to check the recent feedback scores in detail.

In my time as a bounty hunter, I did two bountie campaigns to support the South African and Nigerian market in products such as wallets and exchange platforms. Which is why I am happy that their crypto community is growing to gain freedom and improvement in their economy for which they fight as well as we do because we know that it is the right direction.
The statistics do not lie where bitcoin is we will know given the number of transactions in those nations.

The people are the ones that are behind the adoption of bitcoin, and it is easy to see why this is the case, in countries where everything seems to be fine then many people are not going to be interested in bitcoin as they do not see the need for a decentralized currency.

But in countries where things are not going well and the economy is in shambles then people are going to look into any option they have available at the time to try to improve their economic situation, and bitcoin is there to give them the support they need just when they need it the most.

The numbers are never truly proven because there are so many people who do it behind the closed doors that the numbers are skewed towards whatever we have. I mean if people do not openly tell that they are doing something, then how can you calculate how many people are doing it? Maybe it grew 1200%, or maybe a lot more, or maybe a lot less, who could possibly know what is happening?

At the end of the day, what we have right now is the fact that people are more interested in crypto all around the world, especially considering 2020 and 2021 became wild years that saw bitcoin start at 9k by the start of 2020, saw as little as under 4k, saw as high as 64k, and had aaaalllll kinds of crazy stuff in between.

P2P transactions are easy, which means that in less time, the transaction will start if not already because the buyer and seller relationship is developing rapidly. When it comes to Nigeria I'm really not surprised by this. It may also be because the economies of many African countries have been trying to catch up with other economies to stabilize. Many African citizens fear the volatility of their economy prompting them to switch to a more profitable currency that can provide higher income.

I will say from statistics African is among one major, larger country that endorsed a cryptocurrence when it wasn't officially recommend by other countries, so in Crypto market was once going in higher percentage in Africa but the government who came and destroyed the increase of bitcoin market in Africa.

^^^^ Cryptocurrency can be misused for illegal purposes, such as payment of bribes and ransom. Given the high levels of corruption that is prevalent in countries such as Nigeria, I am afraid that in the near future we are going to hear about it much more frequently. The politicians will be the first group to use cryptocurrency for such purposes. And these politicians will be the first ones to complaint that they need stricter regulations on cryptocurrency, because it is being misused (after they move their funds to offshore tax havens).

I agree, Africa is a continent that consists mainly of very poor and corrupt countries, but on the other hand also a continent very rich in various resources that are mostly exploited by political elites. Ordinary people have always sought a way out of such a situation, and in addition to the inevitable migrations, they now see their opportunity in cryptocurrencies.

The problem, of course, is that most of the political establishment does not want to accept that ordinary people prosper, because people who are poor and dependent on state aid are also those who do not create problems. Of course, there is another side to the story, and we all know that for one good and an honest man comes at least two dishonest people who abuse every tool that should primarily serve the good. This problem can never be completely solved, but it can be reduced by legalizing cryptocurrencies and placing them in some kind of legal framework.

I often watch documentaries about Africa and its people and I am fascinated by how someone can be happy with so little (compared to those living in developed countries), and I hope that honest politicians will start coming to power and change things for the better.

When that happens, I hope that this picture will change, because as we see, the African continent has the most countries where the corruption index is at the highest possible level.


Source

One of the issues with the cryptocurrency markets in third world nations is that there is a higher proportion of scammers trying to con the unsuspecting investors. And this in turn will tarnish the reputation of cryptocurrency in general. We have seen multi-billion scams like OneCoin and PlusToken, targeting developing nations such as China and Vietnam. The market in Africa is in its infancy, but I am really afraid that the scammers are really going to target it hard. General awareness and risk perception tends to be lower in these markets, which in turn aids the scammers.

The number of increase is not surprising knowing we are in middle of pandemic and people  finding another source to earn a income that's why many goes with crypto since lately this was been hype by so many people over the net where they can earn a good income on pandemic days. I do hope this increase will also happen to first world country so that we can see a good growth towards crypto and for sure more adoption to came if this super power countries will find bitcoin as relevant asset.

Not the grown country, but more number of growing countries find cryptocurrency as a way to boost the country's economy. This has been happening good in real-time, but the inappropriate plan and execution have made countries like Venezuela suffer even after its positive move with cryptocurrency usage. Now what we can see with Africa is the growth from the ground level, which means the common man have begun to use it in large scale fearing inflation of the local currency. This is the reason why we're seeing a massive bounce in the growth on African Crypto Market.

Do we need the government support for this to be effective? I think it's the government not supporting that's even driving the support/volume upwards. Unlike other nations, Nigerian tends not to follow the government directives since corrupt has gotten to majority of those in power, so if the government were to give their support they might decrease the increase of the citizens. They still haven't understood that instead of them fighting (which will drive the volume upwards), they should try supporting and see how many will lose interest lol.


Actually that's the reason and in years to come we'll continue seeing such increase as the economy isn't getting any better. In country like Nigerian our local currency is declining daily and some to be in thousands just for one dollar. Jobs are been lost and the fiats is getting devalued against the dollars so yes cryptocurrency investment/trading is now the safest bet out there, just wished the citizens realize this early but it's never too late to invest.

Pretty complicated news though! Last time I heard that Nigerian government is completely against the crypto currency use and they are banning all the accounts associated with it. I think it’s better to segregate the result as per North Africa and South Africa as the region is clearly differentiated with two different authorities. The overs result might be good for Africa but regional and local authorities are not in favour of crypto currency. As I started Nigeria which also constitute bigger populated country is having measure negative side impact on the use of bitcoin and are prohibited to invest in crypto. Not sure if these things have changed after my last update.

That's the case when the government is not really that fond of Bitcoins in the first place. For example look at this statement taken from google:

Which does show us how the crypto market is not openly supported by the government which is a very important part for a country such as Africa where both local and international residents are sometimes more dependent on establishing the framework of p2p exchange and at the same time they are able to handle the market better than their own currency and it's more beneficial for them, due to excessive corruption in the central banks it's better to have such one world 🌍 currencies supporting people and the businesses independently. I think it would be beneficial if the government realizes what bitcoins is actually doing for their country.

That is precisely why they are not going to support bitcoin, when governments begin to lose control of the economy the first thing that they do is to forbid their citizens to use a currency other than the one that they can print, and they do this because they know that with inflation they can steal your wealth and in that way keep themselves in power.

However if you use anything else but their own currencies then they do not have that power over you, and they particularly fear bitcoin because at least with other currencies or even gold they can easily confiscate them but when it comes to bitcoin this is a lot harder because people can move their coins over the Internet and have no evidence over them to signal this fact, so I'm not really surprised that countries like Nigeria do not really support bitcoin at all.

Maybe be the reason could be due to the economy of many African countries that had been trying to meet up with other economy to be stable. Many African citizens are afraid of the fluctuation of their own economy making them to switch to a more benefiting currency that can yield excellent income.

The cryptocurrency ban that was initiated by the Nigerian government seemed like it triggered so many people in that country to start making use of cryptocurrency. A lot of them now has moved into making use of peer-to-peer crypto currency exchanges, and that goes to show how strong the cryptocurrency community can be; they are always unstoppable.

Nigeria has recorded as the number one country in Africa in making use of cryptocurrency.Another country in Africa that is strongly making use of crypto currency is South Africa, and if I’m right Kenya is another one.Some people have said that this number will increase more when the government becomes in support of cryptocurrency, but I don’t really think so. Whether their government is in support of cryptocurrency or not, it is still going to continue growing in all these countries.

There's a high rate of poverty & economic hardship in Africa, the young, conscious and digital minded have singled out multiple opportunities in the crypto market and are taking full advantage of it.

With the high rate of volatility in the crypto market, most persons have been able to take advantage and improve their standard of living from the good profits they have made from their crypto experience.

And it also shows that the data might not reflect the whole status in Africa. Definitely, Nigeria is leading all bitcoin activity and maybe majority of the data come from them. So I wouldn't put 100% faith in that news. Definitely welcoming, but there could be some gap as well.

So let's look at it in a positive way, maybe when the government in Africa builds infrastructure to support the growth of crypto, then we might see Africa leading the adoption because that is a huge market to explore, just ask Jack Dorsey about it.

This is exactly what i was thinking about right after reading the full report from Chainanalysis. The report was made based only on the number of transactions via P2P platforms [localbitcoins,Paxful] and focus on the example of few countries where users moved from Binance to P2P platforms to avoid sanctions from central banks, which causes a significant growth in P2P adoption. However, this is far to give an accurate result. The number of people using binance in other African countries is much more bigger than those 4 countries having the highest rate according to the report. And as we can't determine how many people are using cryptocurrencies apart those using centralised/P2P exchanges, almost all statistics can't reveal the real mass of adoption, all arround the world and not just for Africa .

I do agree that corruption is rampant in African region and a lot of its people will really opt to hide their assets by other means like putting it into crypto. And since p2p still exists, then, they have no problem converting their crypto to fiat, if needed. But if the government will find out that it is better to regulate it rather than being strict about it, because with regulation, at least they can get some taxes from crypto-related business even if they can't get a hold of all crypto transactions, they will soon be much open to it.

The Bitcoin market in Africa would definitely continue to grow, the thing is, Bitcoin is more about control and freedom for its users and since many governments in Africa tend not only to be corrupt, but also somewhat dictatorial, it's only necessary that its citizens somewhat put their finances in their hands and try to control it to an extent by using Bitcoin, the government may not like that, but as long as there is P2p service, there is little or nothing they can do about it.

We recall the situation in Nigeria and their ban on banks handling crypto transactions from exchanges, it was more or less counterproductive as it didn't dissuade the teeming crypto population in Nigeria as Nigerians in mass just basically adopted p2p transactions, but what we must come to accept is that since Bitcoin is decentralized, it must face hostilities from a centralized government that wants to control absolutely everything.

I wouldn't be shocked about it. Crypto has the slogan of "banking the unbanked" for a reason and that reason is no joke. We are talking about something that is helping the people all around the world, but the lower financial nations that have a lot less wealth do use it the most.

After all, if you are a person in USA and a big economy state like New York or California and you are let's say a developer then doing something for 50 bucks is not really that interesting, you may if you are a kid but if you are a good developer that has been coding for 10+ years then you will say no to 50 bucks, probably no to 200+ bucks as well, it has to be like 500 bucks to interest you at least.

In Africa, there are 10+ year developers that would jump into 50 bucks and compete to get it, which allows Africans to get the jobs a lot easier, they are equally great developers who are just in a bad economy nation, so companies in crypto world hire them and they bring in money to their nation and all around works for them amazingly.

If there is room for P2P trading with ease that means with little more time, such transaction will commence if it is not already because buyers and sellers relationship is fast growing and I won't doubt if some are already exchanging some items and paying in btc. There are online sales and delivery system going on in Nigeria , though yet to confirm if btc is added to there payment system but surely P2P is in top rave at the moment and that creates faster awareness than decentralized exchanges.

Have you checked the above Chainanalysis data before based on PPP. Although, based on PPP but it is still an indication that there are still other countries in Africa that are involved in crypto adoption. Out of first 20 countries listed, 5 African countries are among.

Your post simply means those using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are scammers and you are indeed wrong. You are just having the opinion just like few leaders in Nigeria like CBN governor and EFCC chairman that deemed decentralized currencies bad and illegitimate and misleading people, especially the CBN governor that only have interest of e-naira while condemning decentralized currencies just for people to go for e-naira that will be pegged with naira and significantly subjected to devaluation.

Why comparing cryptocurrencies to credit cards?

It is widely known that the Nigerians are some of the most active scammers out there, so using them as an example of a country in Africa that are growing the fastest on their Crypto market... should raise some red flags.

One of the advantages of using Crypto currencies are the pseudo anonymity that goes with the technology and also the fact that transactions cannot be reversed. (Like with Credit cards)

A technology like this can be a asset for the African continent, but it can also be a tool for scammers to extort money from people. (  “Nigerian prince” scam, also known as the “419” scam ) 

It's good that there are p2p exchanges, but this is for trading or for selling Bitcoin for fiat in order to actually use it. How common is direct usage of cryptos in countries like Nigeria? Can people pay for goods and services with it, or is Bitcoin merely a way to make profit there?
Also, 4 countries out of the whole continent that has 54 countries is impressive, but I guess not enough to talk generally about how cryptos are very popular in Africa. What about the majority of countries there? I think it's wrong to overgeneralize a big and diverse place, based on limited data from 16% of the countries out there.

I am not surprised for a couple of reasons: The first one is that bitcoin tends to do well in two types of countries, that is, those which are following irresponsible monetary policies or have serious issues with governance and, on the opposite side of the spectrum, those that do very well and have wealthy citizens buying bitcoin.
The second reason is because when you have little, is easy to see it grow massively even with moderate adoption.

This will grow much bigger if the government is supporting crypto, one example of untapped potential is Nigeria, they have a big marlet in P2P but their government and central bank isn't supporting the crypto community even though the over all result of crypto for the economy is mostly positive.

Goodnews over Africa in the crypto world as it was rank one of the most effective active user of p2p exchanges such as Paxful among others, Nigeria to be precise has recorded a tremendous performances in this regards with an outstanding increase in numbers of users with active account, you could recall her recent ban of crypto by the government and the citizens have soughted for an alternative crypto trading platforms (exchanges) which is more preferred than the cross boarder transactions by Fiat with high cost on transaction fee/charges in a bid to avoid inflation, this has also help in the increase of Nigeria's Economy and more visible chances could lead to it adoption by the government at a later run.




If the government put in place by the people to effectively work and regulate the economy, make policy and implement strategies to economy development but couldn't than placing restriction on crypto which could have been one of the aiming soughted out solution, the populace have rather in their own way create an alternative to sustain their respective businesses and exchange market thereby avoiding inflation and solving the problem of remittance limiting number of funds to transfer abroad.
With this developments, I hope it will create an upper edge toward the adoption of crypto back in Nigeria specifically and increase the performance and participation the more in Africa as a whole.