Nigerian Bitcoin Exchanges
As mentioned in our previous article, Bitcoin demand is growing in Nigeria. During economic uncertainty, people are looking outside of local Nigerian bonds and currency to store value, and Bitcoin searches have tripled in Nigeria. These are the most popular and reputable, Nigerian Bitcoin Exchanges. Nigeria is a market with over 177 million people 33 million of which are between the ages of 18-35 a target demographic.
Nigeria’s Largest Exchange – NairaEx
The Naira is Nigeria’s currency. At time of writing a Bitcoin was going for 425,320 Naira, or $1353.44. This is a huge potential for arbitrage, for our advanced traders out there. If one can buy Bitcoin on Coinbase at spot, then transfer to Nigeria exchanges, there’s a tremendous profit. But a reason these high prices exist is due to the difficulty in arbitraging. Accounts on both ends need to be verified, then there are fees, withdrawal and deposit times. The large price difference is due to the difficulty in arbitraging Bitcoin between the countries. If people were able to do it, the price difference would be much smaller, but many investors don’t feel comfortable in arbitraging like this.
ICE3X,
ICE3X, initially launched as a South African exchange has opened up a Nigerian Bitcoin Exchange for trading, another prominent nation in the continent of Africa. This is another potentially enormous lucrative market for ICE3X to gain a foothold in. The company has created a partnership with a Nigerian payment processor VoguePay. With this strategic alliance users will now have the capability of buying and selling bitcoins using the Nigerian Naira directly from VoguePay wallets.
ICE3X (pronounced ‘ice-cubed X’), launched in January of 2015, as the first Nigerian Bitcoin exchange.
Local Bitcoin in Nigeria
LocalBitcoin is a P2P (peer to peer) platform allowing it’s userbase to exchange Bitcoin amongst themselves through a variety of payment forms, everything from in person, to gift cards, and bank wires. Nigerian users usually fund their purchase of Bitcoins via Perfect Money or Western union. When a transaction is agreed upon
The main variable in utilizing local Bitcoin is the method of which buyers and sellers use. Each one has a different level of fee and risk risk to each party. The most secure way in our experience has been face to face transactions for buying / selling Bitcoin with the least secure for us thus far being Paypal. Your mileage may vary, still utilizing LocalBitcoin in Nigeria is another method of conducting Bitcoin transactions for citizens of Nigeria.
Luno (Formerly Bitx)
BitX has rebranded itself as Luno. Luno allows Nigerians to buy and sell bitcoin instantly using the BitX app on Android of iOS. Users will have the ability to trade naira against bitcoin on the BitX Exchange. Luno has a great feature that provides a wallet service to its users. This is different than NairaEx, which requires a separate wallet in order to obtain a Bitcon address. Luno has raised more than $4m in funding as of now.
Luno states on its website “no extra fees will be levied” when you use them to buy. Better yet Luno has no fees for depositing Naira with the site, bank fees may apply however. Luno does currently charge a small fee each time you withdraw from them however.