Global Crypto Giant Paxful Bullish on Africa for 2020
By almost every metric, Africa has been central to the Paxful story; company shares about their top 3 priorities for Africa
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, February 19, 2020/ -- Global peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin marketplace, Paxful (https://Paxful.com), believes that the world has much to learn from Africa about the future
of the crypto-economy and that 2020 will be a landmark year for the
African crypto and blockchain industry.
With millions of users globally and Africa being the fastest-growing
region, Paxful reported that the company processed almost $1.6 billion
(R23 billion) in trade volume globally in 2019; the result of a steady
increase of 25%+ trade volume growth year-on-year on the platform since
the business' inception in 2015. Paxful currently hosts over three
million wallets, 45% of which are from Africa.
Deepen our relationship with our African users
While the peer-to-peer marketplace has enjoyed tremendous success on the continent, the company is not complacent. Paxful leadership intends to
spend a lot more time in Africa over the next few years. The aim is to
continue to learn from its customers and provide them with the best
possible peer-to-peer finance marketplace.
With Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya already among the leading
markets, the company also expects to extend its customer base in many
more markets where it is seeing a steady increase in trading volumes on
the continent like Zambia and Uganda. African trading volume on the
Paxful platform grew by over 57% in 2019 and the company hopes to
accelerate trading volumes further this year.
Reflecting on the rapid growth of the blockchain and bitcoin sector,
research from the professional networking platform Linkedin shows that
blockchain tops the list of most in-demand hard skills for 2020. For
this reason, another important consideration for Paxful is engaging
talent in Africa. The company believes that Africa can become a leader
in bitcoin skills development. Paxful hopes to expand African
participation in the company’s Global Peer Programme – an initiative to
encourage bitcoin users around the world to educate each other about the opportunities offered by the crypto-economy.
“We are very, very bullish on Africa and believe it is critical to the
future of the crypto-economy overall. While many parts of the developed
world are fixated on speculative activity in the crypto economy, people
in Africa are teaching us about the true use cases of bitcoin and the
opportunity it presents for greater financial inclusion of the
under-banked. As a company, we want to do what we can to ensure that our platform continues to be a bridge to the global economy for our
customers” Says Artur Schaback, Co-Founder and COO of Paxful.
Expanding partnerships
In December 2019, Paxful and Binance, the leading global cryptocurrency
exchange by trading volume and users, announced its strategic
partnership in which Paxful serves as a fiat-to-cryptocurrency on-ramp
for Binance, providing numerous payment methods for purchasing Bitcoin
to Binance’s global user base.
Paxful has also partnered with many other strategic players in the
crypto economy – including the likes of BitMart, BSpin, AirTM, and
CoinLogiq - who offer a variety of complementary services to make it as
possible for its users to take advantage of the power of P2P finance.
Paxful hopes to work with African partners as well.
“Africa has tremendous potential and partnerships are essential in this
pivotal time within the cryptocurrency industry. We are actively looking to join forces with African-born crypto players who share our passion
and vision for the global crypto-economy and to join our efforts in
bringing bitcoin to the unbanked masses across the continent to
fundamentally help alleviate poverty, boost economies and create
jobs,” says Ray Youssef, CEO and co-founder of Paxful.
Making education and social good a priority
“With bitcoin’s original mission of financial inclusion in mind, Paxful
is committed to reaching as many people as possible to help them better
understand the opportunities presented by the crypto-economy. With this
in mind, education and social development will always be a priority for
Paxful,” adds Youssef.
Last year, Paxful undertook an education drive focused on Universities.
Beginning with Universities in East and Southern Africa, the initiative
has reached over 1000 youths. The education workshops provided key,
practical insights to the true use cases of Bitcoin, how to avoid
falling prey to bad actors in the crypto-space and served to counter the over-emphasis on Bitcoin speculation. This type of education will
continue to reach the youth.
In the same year, the company also launched the aforementioned Paxful
Peer Program, a platform encouraging users to educate and support each
other as they navigate the bitcoin-economy. The Peer Program was trialed in South Africa and has been extended to include many other markets on
the continent and Asia.
To support grassroots education, Paxful will continue to invest in its
#BuiltWithBitcoin initiative which has demonstrated how the
cryptocurrency community can contribute to social good. Established in
2017, the initiative had raised over R3 million for charities across
Africa and the Middle East by 2019. In January 2020, the
company announced that they will be building a third school in its
100-school initiative to bring quality education centers to emerging
countries throughout Africa. The third school, which will come fully
equipped with a state-of-the-art water well system, will be built in
Machakos County, Kenya for children ages 3-6 years old and will kick off with over R400,000 donation from Paxful. The first 2 schools were built in Rwanda.
About Paxful:
Paxful’s (https://Paxful.com) mission is to give people a simple, fair, and secure platform for
buying and selling bitcoin. They aim to bring financial inclusion to the underbanked and unbanked through peer-to-peer finance. Every user gets a free digital wallet that lets them send, receive, and store BTC. The
P2P marketplace cuts out the middleman with their secure escrow service
and has a 24/7 customer support system dedicated to resolving issues for their users.
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