Cryptocurrency
Nigerians bypassing bank transfers with crypto
Experts give vital insights to why Nigerians are fast adopting crypto, and the advantages crypto assets bring.
The high penetration of mobile phone usage in most African countries, particularly in Nigeria, has resulted in the rise of remittance rates and payments for goods and services. According to the World Bank, Africa’s largest economy is one of the six largest recipients of remittances in the world, attracting $24 billion in 2019, which made up 5% of the country’s GDP.
The financial market turmoil triggered by COVID-19 has definitely changed the way Nigerians view the whole financial system, as data also obtained from Google trend, shows Nigeria leading the pack around the world in Bitcoin searches.
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So, it not surprising that a significant number of young Nigerians, and small business owners avoid Nigerian banks, because of their stringent capital controls on outflows, relatively high transaction costs, and inflexible exchange rate system. However, in the crypto-verse, an entity can move over $250,000, with a transaction charge of less than $5, that can be received in minutes anywhere in the world.
Jens Ischebeck, a renowned Fintech publisher, in a note shared with Nairametrics, gave vital insights on why Africans are fast adopting crypto, and the advantages that crypto assets bring:
“Most African citizens have started shifting their hopes to the use of crypto, to escape numerous constraints faced with the traditional money transfer services, including cost, speed, and inconveniences.
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“The main benefit is the overall lower cost to the end customer, which allows migrant workers to send substantial amounts of money to their loved ones in their home countries, at fairer prices. Also, there is a high unpredictability in the local currencies in most African countries; for instance, when South African rand became a volatile currency, most people switched to crypto, to seek security.
“The transaction is safe, and the companies don’t hold the virtual currency for more extended periods; thus, the operation takes a short time.”
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Recent statistics obtained from Useful Tulips, a BTC analytic data provider, stated that Nigeria leads Africa Bitcoin’s peer to peer lending in 2020, posting weekly P2P volumes of about $8 million, followed by South Africa and Kenya posting about $2 million weekly.
Nena Nwachukwu, Nigeria’s Regional Manager at Paxful, in an exclusive interview with Nairametrics, spoke on why many Nigerians are now turning to crypto as the viable option for transactions and store of value.
“This year, Cryptocurrency popularity and usage by Nigerians have grown by leaps and bounds. With the COVID-19 pandemic and CBN’s Naira devaluation, more people are actively searching for means to secure their wealth.
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“As traditional investment tools like Real Estate, Stocks, Treasury bills etc. are too complicated to understand & acquire, Crypto-currency is the next best choice as it is very easy to access from any internet-enabled device.
“According to a recent Crypto Adoption Index report published by Chainanalysis, Nigeria currently ranks number 8 out of 154 countries in the use of Cryptocurrency; this comes as no surprise considering the urgent need for Nigerians to protect the value of their money.”
She also spoke on the high intellectual know-how, many Nigerian millennials have on using crypto.
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“Our Nigerian customers are also very knowledgeable and have evolved from using crypto/Bitcoin as only a form of speculative investment to making online payments, cross-border remittances, freelancer payments, and E-Commerce.
“With our second cryptocurrency (Tether USDT, a stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar) our customers are learning to further secure their Bitcoins from volatility, by converting BTC to USDT and lock its fiat value.”
It’s fair to say that the present complexity prevalent in Africa’s banking industry or arbitrary misappropriation of capital by some African governments has made young African millennials attracted to the most disruptive financial asset in the modern era.
Cryptocurrency
Large entity moves Bitcoins valued $244 million
BTC whale moved about 18,901 BTC estimated to be worth about $244million, some hours ago.
As the price of the Bitcoin, the world’s flagship crypto breaches above $13,000 price levels, a growing amount of large entities in recent times have been increasing their transactional volume at the world’s most popular crypto.
Data obtained from Whales Alert, a crypto analytic tracker, revealed that an unknown BTC whale moved about 18,901 BTC estimated to be worth about $244 million, some hours ago.
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🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 18,901 #BTC (244,385,564 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) October 25, 2020
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Meanwhile, at the time of writing, Bitcoin traded at $13,064.05 with a 24-hour trading volume of $18,700,010,754. BTC price is down -1.8% in the last 24 hours. It has a circulating supply of 19 million coins and a max supply of 21 million coins.
Explore Data on the Nairametrics Research Website
What this means: From a macro level, the increase in the number of these large entities can be considered bullish.
- At the time this report was drafted, Bitcoin was still trading around the $13,000 support levels, as investors have kept buying BTC at its support levels.
- Nairametrics believes the increased buying pressures by notable institutional brands are partly responsible for the non-dilutable crypto recent highs while it is difficult to predict market movements. BTC whales have shown historically that they often determine the BTC trend.
READ: Two strange Bitcoin whales transfer $290 million worth of Crypto
Quick fact: At the BTC market, investors or traders who own large amounts of Bitcoins are typically known as Bitcoin whales.
- This means that a BTC whale would be an individual or business entity (with a single Bitcoin address) owning around 1000 Bitcoins or more.
- As BTC whales accumulate BTCs, bitcoin’s circulating supply reduces, and this can weaken any bearish trend bitcoin finds itself in.
- This means that over time, it’s possible that as BTC approaches its fixed supply of 21 million, the price of BTC will go up, with BTC’s present demand factored in.
Cryptocurrency
Bulls on rampage, Ethereum wallets now record high
The number of Ethereum addresses (EOAs) holding at least 0.1 ETH just crossed the 10,261,111 million mark for the first time.
Retail investors are rushing big time, over owning a stake in the world’s second most valuable crypto by market value. Its rise has not been surprising to many crypto experts in the crypto-verse, as the rise of DeFi Crypto partly helped Ethereum usage reach an all-time high coupled with the fact that it’s now trading over $400.
According to reports recently released by Glasscode, the number of Ethereum addresses (EOAs) holding at least 0.1 ETH just crossed the 10,261,111 million mark for the first time.
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📈 #Ethereum $ETH Number of Addresses Holding 0.01+ coins just reached an ATH of 10,261,111
Previous ATH of 10,258,944 was observed earlier today
View metric:https://t.co/XXb0u19ouH pic.twitter.com/P4QdVy2yNh
— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) October 26, 2020
“The increase in gas usage indicates a continuous growth in the use of Ethereum’s platform, as measured by the number of transactions, as well as demand for block space, as measured via gas per transaction,” said Wilson Withiam, research analyst at data provider Messari.
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Data from Coingecko at the time this report was written showed Ethereum traded at $408.30 with a daily trading volume of $11 billion. ETH price is down -1.6% in the last 24 hours. It has a circulating supply of 110 million coins and a max supply of ∞ coins.
Quick fact; Ethereum is a cryptocurrency designed for decentralized applications and deployment of smart contracts, which are created and operated without any fraud, interruption, control or interference from a third party.
READ: Buying sign: Number of Bitcoin Big players at record high
Ethereum is a decentralized system, fully independent, and is not under anybody’s authority. It has no pivotal point, and its platform is connected to thousands of its users through their computing system around the world, which means it’s almost impossible for Ethereum to go offline.
Gas is the token that energizes Ethereum’s blockchain. It is the standard used to calculate the number of charges an individual needs to pay in order to make transactions on Ethereum’s blockchain.
READ: Ethereum whales move over $50 million of Ether to Uniswap
Like with many other crypto assets, speculating with Ethereum can be highly profitable and has had a good history of giving its investors huge returns. However, there are also many other options to make income from Ethereum. These options include Ethereum mining, Ethereum faucets, and Ethereum staking.
Cryptocurrency
Crypto for music, AUDIO up by 500%
Binance Labs, the investment and incubation arm of Binance, has made a strategic investment in Audius.
A newly designed crypto is presently gaining waves with the aid of the world’s biggest crypto exchange Binance.
A few days ago the decentralized music streaming platform Audius (AUDIO) launched its crypto. The coin traded as low as $0.04 on launch day, according to Coinmarketcap.
READ: Crypto: UniSwap gives each owner over $2,000
However that became history as the macro, showing Binance would be supporting the pretty unknown crypto catalyzed a steep upward price movement that sent it as high as $0.50, which represents a surge of 1,125% in a span of a few hours, before presently trading at the time this report was drafted at 0.21140 with a gain close to 500% since its launch.
The macro making this crypto asset blue hot amidst thousands of crypto is largely attributed to these statement released by Binance
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Binance Labs, the investment and incubation arm of Binance, has made a strategic investment in Audius – a decentralized streaming protocol giving everyone the freedom to distribute, monetize, and stream any audio content. Specifically, Binance Labs led an extension round for Audius worth $1.25 million.
With 750,000 monthly active users (MAUs) and over a million streams each month across more than 100,000 tracks, Audius has teamed up with top artists like deadmau5, 3LAU, and RAC to help crypto cross the chasm.
READ: Crypto: Popular Hedge Fund, Grayscale record best quarter ever
Audius features a native platform token – AUDIO – that is staked for security, feature access, and governance. AUDIO is earned by users to shape future iterations of the protocol, creating a community dynamic in ownership unique to a music industry full of middlemen.
The means of artists being able to connect directly with fans is one that speaks to the ethos of web3, and one that the Audius community will be exploring closely over the coming months.
READ: Crypto exchanges with most valuable crypto-assets in the world
“Audius and its approach to mainstream crypto adoption are among the strongest we’ve seen. We’re glad to have Binance supporting this vision as we are both heavily aligned in creating a more accessible future for crypto,” Head of Binance Labs Wei Zhou said about the investment.
That said, the popularly known Binance founder Changpeng Zhao shared the news about the company’s investment in Audius via Twitter
Let's decentralize music. 🎶🎶🎶https://t.co/sUgAfNmKwO
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) October 24, 2020
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Crypto for music, AUDIO up by 500%
