A study by blockchaincenter.net shows that South America and Africa have the highest Bitcoin (BT) search interest in the world.
A study has been conducted by blockchaincenter.net using a powerful tool Google Trends, to see which countries are peaking the search interest in Bitcoin. Google Trends shows how often a specific term is entered into the Google search engine in relation to the total amount of searches over a time period. It has been concluded that out of the top 10 countries 4 are located in South America and 3 in Africa.
The research shows that every cryptocurrency search in Africa and South America is connected to bitcoin. These may range anywhere from Bitcoin (BT), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Cardano (ADA), IOTA, XRP, to Litecoin (LTC), IOTA, or even Tron (TRX). Specifically, in Africa, Kenya is leading the race with 94.7% of all searches including bitcoin one way or another with the close followup of Nigeria and South Africa peaking at 89.4% and 89% respectively. On the other side of the earth, we have South America with Brazil sitting at 92.6% in the bitcoin search interest index, with both Chile and Ecuador roughly around 89%.
This may be in connection with the volatility of bitcoin. With the latest protests in the United States of America with people coming out against police brutality and systematic racism after the death of George Floyd, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has issued a statement regarding moving the national guard into states overtaken by the riots. This has shifted the price of bitcoin to hit the highest during the last couple of years of $10,500. This means that some trading order types have become more popular due to the overall unstable nature of the market. For example, stop-loss orders are one of the most prevalent in conjunction with the political spectrum of 2020. Lots of countries are in disarray due to the novel coronavirus pandemic with Chinese investors buying up European and American stocks. This has caused less knowledgeable users to become a bit panicky and thus start googling different information about Bitcoin and what to do with their investments. The overall agreement in the market is to not rely too heavily on bitcoin at this moment due to a multitude of outside factors influencing the whole trade making it extremely hard to predict the price change.
One way or another the result is the same – overall increase of the interest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in regions that have fewer regulations in comparison to more developed parts of the world where the cryptocurrency adoption is happening at a higher and more chaotic level than everywhere else. The overall flexibility of economics in African and South American countries creates a perfect atmosphere for such developments.
Africa and Cryptocurrencies
African countries are becoming key players in the development of the cryptocurrency markets in the whole world. Google trends is a beautiful indicator of this pattern. The speaker of the House of Representatives in Nigeria has even called for a legal framework to be developed back in July 2019. The government has thus shifted its interest towards the cryptocurrencies to make sure that their popularity in the unregulated markets results in as much gain for the population and the nation as a whole as possible. The logic behind government interest is simple – with the countries struggling to bank money and achieve stability during coronavirus pandemic the cryptocurrency market can be a bubble of air the economies desperately need. When a Nigerian person starts trading and accumulating money, he or she starts spending it in the country where they live. This means that the funds gained from trading can directly benefit the nation’s economy by creating an inflow of money from outside the country. The best part, however, is still the fact that there is no need to develop any specific infrastructure since all that is required to start trading is to have an active internet connection. South Africa, for example, has been a leading country on the whole continent with its high rate of internet penetration. If anything in the 21st century the internet penetration is already under demand, hence, it is a governmental project which will have a huge positive impact. Internet World Stat has been tracking the penetration levels, which have been increasing rapidly since 2011.
South Africa owns 13% of cryptocurrency on the whole continent of Africa. This number, while it doesn’t seem like it, is actually a considerable amount considering it’s the highest in the region. In April 2020 the Financial Services Board, which is a South African financial regulatory agency has issued a document highlighting the fact that crypto-assets and activities “can no longer remain outside of the regulatory perimeter.”
South America and Bitcoin
South America in general is holding a big interest in the bitcoin market with Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador leading the race on the continent. Argentina is also quite keen on the BT with its 87.7% search interest on Google Trends. The peer-to-peer trading has reached all-time highs in all of the countries mentioned above.
Bitcoin is becoming prevalent though. In Venezuela, cryptocurrencies have become a go-to for a lot of people due to local currency becoming effectively worthless. President Maduro and his government have been pushing their own centralized “cryptocurrency” Petro, however, it goes against everything the cryptos stand for and thus has faced loads of backlash from people stating that it’s basically a new way for the authoritarian regime to control more things in the country.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the bitcoin can certainly be used to provide some kind of relief for the economies in the COVID-19 infested world. The economies are struggling all over the world due to the interconnectedness of the world trade. When the pandemic started to spread all of the borders were closed down restricting import as well as export but most of all, tourism which is an extremely profitable business for lots of different countries all across the globe. In addition to that, the oil prices have dropped due to the fact that lockdown was issued in multiple countries with the addition of the airline industry being completely grounded. This has caused oil prices to drop damaging already struggling economies like Venezuela.
