P2P Crypto Trading Volume Increased 2800% in South Africa, Says Paxful

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) cryptocurrency trading platform Paxful has seen 2,800% more trades in South Africa this month compared to October 2018.

Demand for crypto sharply increases in S.A.

Paxful announced the growth of its South African user base in a blog post published on Oct. 28. In the post, the company also notes that Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town are the three cities that see the highest numbers of users.

Paxful adds that the overall number of trades in the African continent also increased by 64% when comparing the current month with October last year. Furthermore, the platform reportedly now counts 3 million wallets and processes over 50,000 trades a day globally.

South Africa a hotspot for Bitcoin trading

In January, Paxful also announced that the volume of transactions it has processed from Africa has risen by more than 130% — recording an average of 17,351 trades per day at the time.

As Cointelegraph illustrated in a dedicated analysis published last month, Africa — mainly South Africa — is poised to be the next big market for cryptocurrency exchanges.

In June, popular Finnish P2P Bitcoin (BTC) trading platform LocalBitcoins quietly removed in-person cash trading from its service because of regulatory pressure. Meanwhile, volumes on the platform decreased to the benefit of competitors Paxful and HodlHodl who are reportedly seeing an increase in demand for cash trading.

Earlier this month, major cryptocurrency exchange Binance launched support for peer-to-peer trading of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Tether (USDT) against the Chinese yuan (CNY).