Nigeria continues to be the top country in the world with the most interest in bitcoin in the past year.
This is despite limits placed on the trade of the cryptocurrency by the financial regulator, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in February.
Africa’s most populous country is ranked number 1 in the world on Google Trends with a 100 percent interest in the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
Aside from being the most valuable cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is the fastest asset to reach $1 trillion as it took only 12 years compared to Microsoft and Apple, which needed 44 years and 42 years to hit the target.
Bitcoin at $1 trillion market capitalisation is seen as strong support for the world’s largest digital currency in the last few weeks. The cryptocurrency’s on-chain activity has increased above the $1 trillion market cap.
Read Also: What makes Nigeria the No.2 Cryptocurrency Market?
The price of bitcoin remains its main attraction for many Nigerians as it is mostly used as a store of value to hedge against the weak naira. Nigeria’s naira has been devalued twice in the space of one year and continues to operate under different rates – the official price and black market price which is far above the former.
“The reasons why Nigeria ranked highest for bitcoin search such as alternative source of income and cheap, fast value transfer option still remain intact despite the CBN pronouncement and the recent spike in Bitcoin search in Turkey following a similar situation has shown that public pronouncements whether negative or positive from the government fuels interest or curiosity at least,” Owenize Odia, country manager, Luno, said in a note.
Bitcoin has had an interesting few weeks hitting an all time high and correcting or dipping over 20 percent which all contribute to increased interest.
The price of bitcoin at time of writing this report was at $50,225 on Saturday evening which is a drop considering the crypto had soared to $64,717.01 (£46,908.11), ahead of Coinbase’s historic stock market listing in New York in April 13.
Coinbase shares closed at $328.28 in their Nasdaq debut giving the cryptocurrency exchange an initial market cap of $85.8 billion on a fully diluted basis.
The price of bitcoin did not sustain the rally as seen by the drop to below $50,000. Experts say it is the worst weekly performance since March, as traders appeared unable to shake worries over a potential rise in the US capital-gains tax rate for wealthy investors.
President Joe Biden said it is completing plans to release his “American Families Plan” to offer programmes like free community college and paid family leave. The president is expected to fund the forthcoming plan with tax increases on wealthy households. Recent surge in prices of assets like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have created more wealthy people in the US. These new millionaires could be targeted in the Biden plan.
Nigerians appear not perturbed by Biden’s plan and the fluctuations in the cryptocurrency market. If anything the price fluctuations have little impact on the margins they make from buying and selling Bitcoin through peer-to-peer.
Since the CBN’s prohibition on banks not to provide financial services to cryptocurrency businesses and retail investors to trade cryptocurrencies with fiat, Nigerians have been buying Bitcoin and others at almost twice the price on the global market.
For instance, while the price is quoted at $50,774 or $50,634 on global exchanges like Luno and Binance respectively, the price in Nigeria is at N52.59 million instead of N20.8 which will be the official price at N410/$ or N24.37 million at N480/$ from the Bureau de Changes (BDCs).
The local currency, naira, exchanges for about N730/$ on the different exchanges since the prohibition was placed.
Exchanges like Luno have explained that the price of bitcoin is determined by what traders are willing to pay for it. Hence, traders with bitcoin to sell can set their prices given that the CBN prohibition places a limit on the interference of exchanges on trades and leaves the traders with only peer-to-peer options.
“The traders you find on each platform will be different, and will therefore set different prices. The price you see on Luno will subsequently not be the same as the one you see on another exchange, in the same way, that if you go on eBay or Amazon and look for the latest iPhone, the prices will be slightly different,” Luno officials said recently.
For bitcoin, it is a high slippage due to the extraordinary circumstances caused by the CBN restriction.
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