Nigeria, Africa’s largest nation, got its first Bitcoin ATM. Blockstale BTM, which took the initiative of installing the ATM in the Dazey Lounge and Bar in Lagos, intends to set up over 30 more ATMs throughout the country.
Commenting on the initiative, Blockstale’s chief executive and founder, Daniel Adekunle, said “Despite all the legal uncertainties about cryptocurrencies in Nigeria, Nigerians happen to be the highest crypto traders in Africa.”
Adekunle established Bitcoin ATMs in collaboration with a Shenzhen (China) based tech firm.
Even though Nigeria accounts for the largest trading volume in Africa, it is only the eighth country in the continent to receive a Bitcoin ATM. Blockstale has so far installed 15 ATMs in Africa.
As per CoinATMRadar, South Africa hosts seven cryptocurrency ATMs, Ghana has two, and Djibouti, Botswana, Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe has single ATM machine installed.
As Nigeria is the largest population and economy in Africa, arrival of first Bitcoin ATM signals an increasing adoption not only in the country but also across the entire continent.
In West Africa, the only other company which has installed Bitcoin ATM is Coinstale.
Of late, 220 Bitcoins worth roughly $1.38 million has been transacted on a p2p (peer-to-peer) basis Nigerian Naira and BTC LocalBitcoins platform.
Nevertheless, Nigerial LocalBitcoins has declined by about 50% since the P2P platform implemented stringent KYC rules last September.
As per Google Trends, Nigeria also regularly leads Google searches for ‘Bitcoin’, drawing almost twice the traffic as Austria, which is listed second. Of the top five nations leading ‘Bitcoin’ searches, three are African countries. South Africa and Ghana is listed in the third and fifth place, respectively.
