Morocco tops Bitcoin trading in North Africa

According to the Singapore-based crypto provider and aggregator Triple A, 0.9 million citizens of Morocco, or about 2.4% of the overall population, own cryptocurrency.

This places the kingdom as the most crypto-populous country in North Africa and in the top 50 countries with the highest percentage of cryptocurrency users, just ahead of Portugal.

The trend is confirmed by the data from Useful Tulips, a site that tracks peer-to-peer BTC trade around the world. When measuring the entire Middle East and North Africa region, the Kingdom of the West, as Morocco is popularly known, has been the clear North African leader for BTC trading in the past year, just behind Saudi Arabia.

Regulations have not changed in recent years, which is unfortunate for crypto fans. Morocco’s Foreign Exchange Office has stated that it will not allow a “hidden payment system that is not backed by any financial institution.” While the ban was enacted in 2017, it has had little effect on adoption, as evidenced by the data. Moroccan crypto lovers continue to circumvent the rule.

Morocco and Egypt remain the stars

For BTC trading, the Egyptian pound is gaining on the Moroccan dirham. Egypt is $20,000 short of catching Morocco over a 30-day period, according to UsefulTulips. Trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are still illegal in Egypt, but even if a small percentage of the country’s 102 million citizens and $360 billion GDP indulge in the “illicit” activity, it will have an impact.

Harmattan Energy plans to create one of Africa’s largest wind farms to help Morocco’s bright future. The 900MW wind farm near Dakhla, in the Sahara region, is designed to “power blockchain computing.” 

Because Bitcoin mining and trade are currently illegal, the group cannot openly claim to be mining Bitcoin. Bitcoin miners all over the world have been accumulating huge amounts of king coin units in the past year, and as TheCoinRise reported, the Bitcoin miners’ unspent supply approached the peak.