The long anticipated 2020 Chainalysis Geography Report is out, and for the first time, Africa is noticeably a key market in the growing crypto space.
According to the report, remittances and fiat currency devaluation is driving Africa’s growing crypto economy and big exchanges recognize the opportunity herein.
We did a deep dive into the report while highlighting the key aspects of the report as it relates to the African space.
SEE ALSO: Kenya Ranked Top 5 in the World on Global Cryptocurrency Activity, Reveals Chainalysis Report
Below is a summary of Africa’s cryptocurrency activity between July 2019 – June 2020 from the report:
- Share of all value sent and received – 2%
- East Asia accounts for largest share of value sent – 31%
- Europe accounts for the largest share of value received – 23%
- Middle East accounts for least share of value sent and received – 4% each
- Value received – $8 billion
- Value sent – $8 billion
- Illict share of value received – 1.4%
- Illicit share of value sent – 1.4%
- Exchanges account for largest share of value sent – 88%
- Scams account for the largest value of illicit value sent – 55%
- Africa has the smallest crypto economy of any region analyzed
- Remittances are an early use case of the developing crypto economy
- The majority of crypto activity in Africa is going to Binance
The report includes a survey of 154 countries from across all the continents.
The countries ranked as having the highest cryptocurrency activity globally are:
- Ukraine – 1
- Russia – 0.9
- Venezuela – 0.7
- China – 0.6
- Kenya – 0.67
- USA – 0.62
- South Africa – 0.5
- Nigeria – 0.46
- Colombia – 0.44
- Vietnam – 0.43
Here is the ranking of all African countries from the highest:
- Kenya (5)
- South Africa (7)
- Nigeria (8)
- Ghana (27)
- United Republic of Tanzania (60)
- Uganda (62)
- Egypt (64)
- Mozambique (72)
- Togo (73)
- Mauritius (75)
- Zambia (80)
- Rwanda (81)
- Benin (90)
- Ivory Coast (94)
- Mali (101)
- Namibia (104)
- Democratic Republic of the Congo (106)
- Madagascar (108)
- Angola (109)
- Botswana (110)
- Tunisia (113)
- Ethiopia (122)
- Burkina Faso (126)
- Malawi (132)
- Sudan (134)
- Gabon (137)
- Algeria (among lowest)
- Chad (among lowest)
- Libya (among lowest)
- Zimbabwe (among lowest)
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P2P exchanges are some of the fastest growing crypto exchanges in Africa. Below is a breakdown of the top 10 countries globally in P2P trading rankings:
- Kenya
- Venezuela
- Nigeria
- Colombia
- Ecuador
- El Salvador
- Peru
- Panama
- Russia
- South Africa
*Rankings are based on a scale of 0 to 1. The rankings are based on the size of a country’s population and theie economies as as per capita earnings of individuals.
The countries ranked as having very little cryptocurrency activity globally are:
- Afghanistan
- Algeria
- Cape Verde
- Chad
- Fiji
- Laos
- Libya
- Mongolia
- Tajikistan
- Turkmenistan
- West Bank and Gaza
- Zimbabwe
The key takeaways from the report include:
- Crypto is truly global – Only 12 out of the 154 countries analyzed had so little crypto activity to be given an index score of zero
- There is high grassroots crypto activity in developing countries
- P2P platforms are essential to crypto adoption in developing countries – 4 out of the top 10 countries with highest crypto activity weighted by number of Internet users and PPP per capita are in developing countries
The report also lists a few possible reasons why there is such a high adoption of cryptocurrencies among the top 10 countries on the list, which also includes three African countries:
- A lack of public trust in government, business, and media
- Bribery, cronyism, and other forms of corruption
- Risk of funds seizure by government officials
- Diminishing trust in banks over the last 30 years as evidenced by collapsed banks
- Growing distrust of banks and/or government financial policy
- Familiarity with electronic payments and e-money making crypto adoption easier
- Remittance use case in these jurisdictions
- Transfers of over $10,000 are driven by the professional market
- The ease of use and adoption of P2P exchanges
Check out the full 2020 Geography Cryptocurrency Report by Chainalysis via this link.
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