A new study has shown intense growth in crypto adoption across Nigeria. The adoption is driven by limited access to affordable fiat-based financial services in Africa.
The "Into the Cryptoverse Report", conducted by KuCoin, shows that many Nigerian citizens have started using cryptocurrencies as a viable alternative to store and transfer assets.
The report shows, 35% of the Nigerian population aged 18 to 60 (or 33.4 million people) have owned or traded cryptocurrencies within the last six months. More than half of the Nigerian crypto investors (17.36 million people) have allocated more than half of their assets to cryptocurrencies.
One of the main reasons for this numbers may be to counter rising inflation. For example, a selection of UK's investors was surveyed last month, and the majority considered tokens to be safer than traditional investments such as gold, oil, stocks and real estate.
The KuCoin report further shows that peer-to-peer trading is the most popular method among Nigerian investors to convert fiat into crypto assets.
The value of the Naira, Nigeria's fiat currency, has fallen massively. This might be the key driver for local investors to eye deflationary assets such as Bitcoin.
In October 2021, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari introduced the country's central bank digital currency, the eNaira. The eNaira is considered the most developed CBDC, scoring 95 out of 100 across both the retail and wholesale categories in PwC's recently released "2022 Global CBDC Index".