The Nigerian Crypto Adoption Rates Rise During Government Crackdown

The Nigerian crypto adoption rates rise while the ongoing governemnt crackdown is getting harsher as we are reading more in our latest cryptocurrency news today.

The Nigerian crypto adoption rises in spite of the government crackdown with peer-to-peer trading volume for BTC posting a second strong week in the last month. As per the data by Google Trends, Nigeria ranks numbers by search interest for the keyword BTC as of this writing. P2P BTC trading denominated in the Nigerian Naira has steadily increased in 2021 with the country ranking behind the US as a second-largest market for the P2P BTC trading as per Useful Tulips.

The growing BTC adoption in Nigeria helped Sub-Saharan Africa emerge as the main region by P2P volume with the region posting $18.8 million in the weekly volume to beat out North America’s $18M this week. The confluence of political and economic crises spurred local crypto adoption like social repression, rampant inflation, and currency controls. The tensions escalated after the public protests opposing police brutality and the infamous “Sars” police until it swept the nation.

The EndSars protests saw protestors attacked with tear gas and water content with 50 civilians killed in total including one dozen of them who got shot by police armed with live ammunition a year ago. The government crackdown saw economic repression with the social organizations supporting the protestors with food and medical aid getting their accounts frozen. During the violence, protestors turned to crypto in order to place their economic activity outside of the reach of the government.

The founder of Garfield which is a public policy organization that had its accounts suspended for providing grants to journalists covering the protests in Nigeria attributed the hostility regarding assets to October’s protests saying:

“I think that EndSars is like the key catalyst for some of these decisions the government is making. It caused fear. They saw, for example, that people could decide to bypass government structures and institutions to mobilize.”

An anonymous source claiming to represent the social organization whose bank accounts were targeted during the turmoil and told the publication that their group was able to pay members salaries with crypto despite the financial embargo.

“We keep some securities in crypto – not too much but enough, sort of as an insurance policy. When the ban happened we were, thankfully, able to pay salaries.”

Source: https://www.dcforecasts.com/regulation/the-nigerian-crypto-adoption-rates-rise-during-government-crackdown/