KEY POINTS
- 54% of Nigerian respondents said they were 'excited' to use Bitcoin
- Some 49% of Nigerian consumers are actually using the digital currency
- 20% of the respondents use the popular digital coin in their daily transactions
A significant number of people in Nigeria have developed confidence in using Bitcoin for their financial transactions, a new survey revealed. This comes at a time when the West African nation is clamping down on the local cryptocurrency industry.
Enthusiasm among Nigerian consumers over the world's largest digital asset by market value is growing, as revealed in a Bitcoin-centric survey released by Web3 infrastructure company Elastos on Thursday.
According to the survey, which was conducted with 1,407 "self-defined 'tech savvy' respondents," 54% of Nigerian respondents said they were "excited" to use Bitcoin on a daily basis, compared to only 42% of Brazilians, 41% of the United Arab Emirates residents and 39% of Germans. In the United States, only 33% of citizens look forward to adopting the digital coin in their daily routines.
Brazilians lead the way in actual Bitcoin usage at 51%, but Nigeria is catching up at 49%, further emphasizing the growing knowledge of Nigerians regarding BTC and the cryptocurrency space.
In terms of "Bitcoin trust," Nigeria is the most trusted country among the seven surveyed. A staggering 75% of Nigerians are confident in using Bitcoin for their financial transactions, compared to 73% of Brazilians and 69% of British respondents.
About 64% of Nigerians believe that the halving event on April 20 – which split BTC mining rewards in half to reduce the circulation of new Bitcoin – will have a positive effect on the digital asset.
"Bitcoin fundamentally transforms access to financial services by operating on a decentralized network, where trust is built through cryptographic proofs rather than a centralized authority. This is crucial in places like Nigeria and Brazil, where traditional banking either falls short or imposes prohibitive costs on users," Elastos wrote in a statement regarding the latest findings.
Elastos' inaugural BIT Index, which tracks the actual awareness, knowledge, and use of Bitcoin around the globe," further revealed that 20% of Nigerians actually use Bitcoin on a daily basis – a percentage that is significantly higher than the world's average of 15% daily BTC usage.
The survey's results come at a critical time in the Nigerian traditional finance market. The naira, Nigeria's local currency, has been plummeting dramatically in recent months, and the government has been targeting cryptocurrencies as it works to keep the naira afloat.
Among its recent moves against the crypto sector is the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) proposal to impose a whopping 400% hike in registration fees for crypto exchanges that seek to do business in the country.
It has also particularly been pinning down Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, in recent months. Nigerian authorities detained two of the digital asset exchange titan's executives against their will late in February, with one of them still being held in the country.
