Bitcoin Adoption Continues to Thrive Within Africa’s Borders
According to multiple reports this week the decentralized currency bitcoin is still booming in many African countries. From South Africa to the Sub-Saharan region, citizens from all walks of life are finding bitcoin beneficial. This is making domestic cryptocurrency exchanges and peer-to-peer trading platforms’ volumes climb while digital currencies are also selling at a premium.
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I´d argue that the bolded fact is happening for other reasons than the reasons that the
article mentions. The huge premium at African Bitcoin exchanges is mainly the result of the
following 2 reasons and not really caused by increased interest by the African people.
1. Arbitrage is nearly impossible, because it is incredibly hard to move funds in and out of the country and in and out of the exchanges
for a foreigner that wants to do arbitrage between Western/Asian exchanges and the African markets... otherwise these
premiums would be gone very fast.
2. Thin orderbooks
Professional traders can manipulate the price action on these exchanges far easier than at Western/Asian exchanges,
because the few African exchanges have incredibly thin orderbooks.
