Protests Show Bitcoin Adoption Is Accelerating in Nigeria

After reports of SARS officers allegedly killing a young boy in southern Nigeria surfaced on Oct. 3 of this year, protests erupted again.

Nigeria's predominantly young population, its status as a regional tech hub, an inflationary local currency, along with a large diaspora looking to send remittances home have been driving crypto adoption and innovation in Africa's most populated country.

Now, Nigeria's federal government is making plans to facilitate national blockchain adoption.

A Chainalysis report on the geography of crypto revealed Nigeria ranked eighth in its 2019-2020 global adoption index.

In late 2018, Ahmed Rasheed, 29, opened a bitcoin wallet for his unborn daughter in Nigeria's southwestern state of Oyo.The previous year, after a friend had introduced him to crypto, he quickly amassed $720, the equivalent of his six months of his then-salary as a physics and mathematics teacher.

According to Nena Nwachukwu, Nigeria regional manager at peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange Paxful, in the period between January and September 2020, new registrations at the exchange rose 137% compared to the same period last year.

According to Senator Ihenyen, fintech lawyer and general secretary of Nigeria's blockchain association SiBAN, a self-regulatory body in the industry, adoption trends show that the largest use cases for crypto are in remittances and P2P trading.

According to a report from consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers Nigerian migrants sent home a whopping $23.63 billion in remittances in 2018.Additionally, since bitcoin allows for the quick transfer of large volumes, particularly for international trade deals, intermediaries would facilitate fiat-to-crypto transfers between Nigeria and other countries like China.

An underlying reason why blockchain is gaining traction fast in Nigeria is because its young and tech-savvy population is showing an eagerness to learn more about Web3.0, a decentralized internet powered by blockchain technology.

In Nigeria's northwestern state of Kano, 29-year-old Sani Musa Sharu, who is managing his family's savings in crypto, was excited to find that his government was officially supporting blockchain adoption in the country.