Bitcoin adoption in Nigeria falls 53.3% amid declining inflation

Bitcoin has been a perfect hedge against Nigeria’s double-digit inflation in the last two years, but as consumer price index (CPI) declines, the adoption of the crypto dipped in the country.

The decentralised digital coin has been a store of value for many Nigerians as naira loses weight to the double-digit inflation rate, but the nation’s central bank, led by Godwin Emefiele, has been a stumbling block to BTC.

And as bitcoin struggles with the spanner in its works, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has been reporting that inflation is on a downtrend for seven-straight months, flipping on its head to settle at 15.99 percent in October, which is 0.17 percent lower than 16.63 percent posted in September.

Inflation is down by 0.48 points year-to-October, from the 16.47 percent NBS posted for January. But as the CPI heads down the hill, bitcoin adoption dipped further according to H1 data from Paxful.

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At the start of Q3, the volume of trade clocked over 6 million, but it ended September below 5 million, before falling further to 2.8 million trading volume at the beginning of November.

This represents 53.3 percent decline in volume of trading among Nigerians despite rise in bitcoin value which has hit an all time $68,990 last week, but currently trades at $57,274, as at the time of filing this report.

The dip in trading volume among Nigerians came as the CBN and its financial institutions crackdown on peer-to-peer trading, which has been the tool used by Nigerian crypto community to bypass the unplugging of exchanges from their customer base.

Zenith Bank, GTBank, FCMB and Kuda have been linking significant inflow and outflow of funds among non-business accounts to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and blocking such accounts.

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