Despite the ban on cryptocurrency trading, Nigerians traded bitcoin volumes of over N92.25 million ($225K) on Paxful– a cryptocurrency trading platform– from March to June 2021. 

According to a source in Paxful, reported by the Punch Newspaper, from November 2020 to February 2021, trading volumes from Nigeria was about N73.8 million.

The source said, “From March through June 2021, Paxful had a bitcoin trading volume of over $225K in Nigeria.

“It’s best to compare Nov 2020 to Feb 2021; they are both four months. From this date range, we have bitcoin trading of nearly $180K.”

In April, Paxful announced that Nigeria was its biggest crypto market, with volumes of $1.5bn and 1.5 million users with an expectation of 23 percent more trading volumes from Nigeria than what it recorded in 2020.

Between 2015 and 2020, Nigerians have traded $566 million worth of bitcoin across various cryptocurrency trading platforms, making the country the second-largest peer-to-peer bitcoin market after the United States, according to news.bitcoin.com.

Global prices of bitcoin have been plummeting since May, with bitcoin losing about half its peak price since then.

According to Cointelegraph, the price of bitcoin surged from $3,858 in March 2020 to about $65,000 in April 2021, a 1,548 percent gain.