Ghana set to catch up to Nigeria and Kenya in terms of crypto adoption: Chainalysis

As emerg­ing mar­kets take the lead in cryp­to adop­tion, Ghana, a coun­try locat­ed in West Africa, may soon catch up to oth­er African coun­tries regard­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cy use. 

In a report released by blockchain ana­lyt­ics plat­form Chainal­y­sis, researchers found that Ghana has the poten­tial to achieve cryp­to adop­tion lev­els sim­i­lar to Kenya and Nige­ria, coun­tries which ranked 11th and 19th in the ana­lyt­ics firm’s glob­al cryp­to adop­tion index.

Accord­ing to Ray Youssef, the CEO of P2P plat­form Pax­ful, the local pop­u­la­tion’s needs along with the cur­rent growth trends in Ghana show that it has the poten­tial to become a leader in cryp­to adop­tion in Africa. 

Youssef said that in the last year, the total trad­ing vol­ume com­ing from Ghana in their P2P exchange has grown by 400% in the last two years. The exec­u­tive also believes that many Nige­ri­ans con­sid­er Ghana as their home dur­ing the sum­mer and are edu­cat­ing Ghana­ians on Bit­coin (BTC) and crypto. 

Chainal­y­sis also men­tioned that the insights pro­vid­ed by Youssef align with their data on Ghana. The ana­lyt­ics firm added that apart from Ghana, oth­er coun­tries in Sub-Saha­ran Africa are expect­ed to have high­er lev­els of cryp­to usage as a lot of res­i­dents con­tin­ue to face issues that cryp­to can solve for them. 

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In a recent inter­view with Coin­tele­graph at the Africa Mon­ey & DeFi Sum­mit, Kwame Oppong, an exec­u­tive at the Bank of Ghana shared that the coun­try is test­ing and prepar­ing for a cen­tral bank dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy (CBDC). Accord­ing to Oppong, the rea­son behind their pur­suit of a CBDC is to fos­ter finan­cial inclu­sion with­in the coun­try. The exec­u­tive believes that there is a lot of poten­tial for cryp­to use in the coun­try as it gives a lot of ben­e­fits to its people.