Paxful has crossed the $1.1 billion transaction volume for Bitcoin in the first half of the year, thanks to the drive from emerging markets.
Paxful BTC Performance Surpasses $1.1 Billion in Six Months
Peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto exchange Paxful announced on Tuesday that the Bitcoin trading volume on its platform has surged by 35% so far this year. As such, it has surpassed the $1.1 billion mark during the first six months of the year. This figure surpasses the $817 million the company generated in the first half of 2019.
According to Paxful, the exchange recorded over 5182 million worth of BTC, traded on its platform every month, between January and June. The company added that Nigeria, Ghana, the United States, India, and Kenya were the major countries to lead the charge, with these countries, some of the major emerging markets in the crypto space.
The announcement marked a special occasion for Paxful as it hit its 5th year in the crypto space. During that time, Paxful has garnered 4.5 million users and reached over $4.6 billion in BTC trading volume. The average amount per trade on Paxful is currently around $102, which is almost twice the average of $45 they were recording when they started out in 2015.
“As of July 2020, Paxful has hit 4.5 million registered wallets, reached 4.6 billion USD in trading volume, and reduced dispute levels to under 1%. The average dispute rate for all the countries with a minimum of 1,000 trades was a mere 0.025 in 2019, and it took 56 trades before encountering a dispute,” the blog post added.
Paxful is Growing
The CEO of Paxful, Ray Youssef, stated that the P2P crypto exchange had recorded an average of a million users annually over the past four and a half years. At their current rate, the company will add two million new users in 2020, he added.
Since the start of the year, over 1.1 million new users joined Paxful. This is better than the 480,000 new users registered on the platform during the first half of 2019. Youssef attributed the massive growth in its user-base to high inflation rates, weakening fiat currencies, inadequate financial infrastructures, and the increasing economic uncertainty.
Yousef also added that they developed Paxful to help ordinary people and to help create wealth for the people that need it the most. “There are people who live with restrictions and limitations we cannot imagine. For true financial inclusion to happen, it requires a free market for money transfers,” Yousef stated.
Peer-to-peer exchanges have always come under scrutiny in the crypto world as they are sometimes associated with fraudulent activities. Paxful, however, assured the crypto community that it had reduced dispute levels on its platform to below 1%. This is an excellent achievement and could be one of the reasons why Paxful is recording such impressive transaction numbers.
Its major competitor, LocalBitcoins, recently revealed that its 2018 revenue went up by 10% to $29.6 million from $27 million that was recorded in 2018. For 2019, their operating income dropped by 6% to $19.9 million from the $21.2 million reported the year before.
According to the Finnish P2P marketplace, they had about $2.8 billion in trading volume from 15.6 million transactions. In 2019, LocalBitcoins added 1.46 million new users to its platform.