The Nigerian Web 3 scene is dominated by foreign products and startups founded by foreign crypto entrepreneurs who are usually building for the global market.
This fact coupled with the general trust Nigerians tend to place in foreign products over local ones can pose a slight challenge for Nigerian crypto entrepreneurs looking to build their products and compete in the marketplace.
Despite this challenge, some Nigerian crypto entrepreneurs are still forging ahead to build homegrown products that are punching above their weight and competing with foreign-owned projects which are usually better funded and marketed.
Nigeria was recently named among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of Crypto adoption by Chainalysis and a huge part of the Nigerian Web 3 community activity borders on crypto trading.
The Crypto exchange market in Nigeria is a tedious one given the high rate of crypto trading in the country’s Web 3 space.
Although Crypto exchanges like Binance and Bybit are quite dominant in the Nigerian market, Some Nigerian crypto exchanges founded by Nigerians and Africans are also gaining a foothold in the Nigerian market and carving out portions of the market share for themselves.
In this article, we are going to look at the Founders of top Nigerian and African crypto exchanges competing in the Nigerian and African markets.
Exchange Founded: Bitmama
Year: 2017
Ruth Iselema is the founder of Bitmama a leading Nigerian crypto exchange.
Ruth started learning about blockchain and cryptocurrencies in 2015, through a friend in Japan who introduced her to the industry. Her knowledge of the industry grew after joining Telegram and WhatsApp groups dedicated to cryptocurrencies.
She soon became one of the few women voices in the crypto community and launched Bitmama in 2017.
Bitmama is registered in Delaware USA and has offices in Nigeria and Ghana. The platform offers various trading services and over ten cryptocurrencies are listed on its exchange, including BTC, ETH, USDT, XRP, etc.
Bitmama has raised $2.5 million in funding from various investors, including Mercy Corps Ventures, Five35 Ventures, and Adaverse.
These four Nigerian crypto exchanges are slugging it out with foreign brands like Binance, Bybit, and OKX for more market share in the Nigerian Web 3 space.
Other notable Nigerian crypto exchanges include Yellow Card founded by Chris Maurice and Justin Poiroux and launched in Nigeria in 2019. Yellow Card allows its users to buy crypto in Naira and has become the largest centralized crypto exchange in Africa.
Luno crypto exchange was also founded by Marcus Swanepoel, a South African former banker in 2013 to bring crypto to the masses in Africa.
Crypto exchanges are an integral part of the Crypto ecosystem because they create an avenue for Crypto trading and also double as wallets where users can hold their various crypto assets.
The approval of Quidax and Busha by the Nigerian SEC will definitely open the door for more Nigerian founders to build more Crypto exchanges and products in Nigeria competing with foreign brands and deepening the Nigerian crypto ecosystem.
