By Andrei Skvarsky.
Paxful, a US-based peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange, has hailed the wide-scale use of bitcoin in Kenya, which is one of the world’s top countries in terms of amounts of bitcoin holdings.
In 2016 Kenyans’ bitcoin holdings accounted for 2.3 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, a Paxful-sourced statement published by APO and other news services said in citing a Citibank report.
According to the Financial Times and BitcoinAfrica.io news website, this was the world’s fifth-largest GDP share represented by bitcoin.
The above-cited statement said Kenya’s Mpesa mobile phone-based money transfer service had recently launched a bitcoin device that provides one in three Kenyans with a bitcoin wallet and makes it easier to buy or sell bitcoin through P2P crypto exchanges.
Set up three years ago, Paxful, which is headquartered in Delaware and is entering the East African market, carries out bitcoin transactions worth about $15m every week. It accepts more than 300 payment methods – debit or credit cards, bank transfers, cash deposits, etc.
But while the statement claimed that the use of cryptocurrencies involves “a plethora” of benefits, Nairobi’s Business Daily cited the same Citibank report as warning that bitcoin’s high percentage of Kenya’s GDP meant the country’s economy would be in major trouble if bitcoin collapsed.
According to the Business Daily article citing Citibank’s warning, Kenya’s central bank is not too happy about the country’s bitcoin enthusiasm either. The article, written by Brian Mgugi, said the regulator refused to be held liable for any losses resulting from the use of digital money cryptocurrencies are not legal tender in Kenya.
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