Morocco ranks the top among Bitcoin trading nations in North Africa
The Singaporean crypto provider and aggregator, Triple A, has estimated that 0.9 million people, which is nearly 2.4 per cent of Morocco’s total population, is currently owning cryptocurrency.
A spot ahead of Portugal, the current estimation has placed the kingdom among the top nations in the Northern African region that are the top 50 holders of cryptocurrency population percentage.
Useful Tulips, a platform that has been tracking peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading across the globe, has gathered data that sufficiently confirms the trend. The Kingdom of the West, as it is known locally, is a runaway North African leader among countries that have engaged in Bitcoin trading in the past year, pipped by only Saudi Arabia when it had weighed up the entire Middle East and North Africa region.
However, it is unfortunate for crypto enthusiasts that there has been no significant change in crypto laws in the previous years. According to official communication from Morocco’s Foreign Exchange Office, it would not be supporting a “hidden payment system” that cannot be backed by a financial institution.
While the law had come into existence in 2017, the ban did not limit crypto adoption, and as per the data, Moroccan crypto enthusiasts are continuing to circumvent the ruling.
Nearby, the Egyptian pound has been gaining on the Moroccan Dirham for Bitcoin trades. On the 30 day period, UsefulTulips data also showed Egypt being $20,000 short of aligning with Morocco. As before, it remains illegal in Egypt for people to trade in Bitcoin or crypto.
The report says even if a tiny percentage of the Egyptian 102 million population or its $360 billion GDP does engage in the “illicit” activity, it would set the ripple across.
For bolstering Morocco’s orange-tinted future, its local Harmattan Energy is slated to build one of Africa’s biggest wind farms, wherein the primary goal of the 900MW behemoth wind would be utilized for powering blockchain computing. The location for the wind farm site is Dakhla in the Sahara region. Since Bitcoin mining, as well as trading, has currently been outlawed, it is difficult for the group to openly purport Bitcoin mining.
Cointelegraph had reported the project’s call to tender back in 2018, selling about 20 per cent of its electricity output to the Moroccan government as a workable solution. First results from Harmattan ix are scheduled at the end of quarter one this year.
In April 2020, Binance had added support for various crypto purchases via the Moroccan dirham and a third-party platform called Simplex. It is known to work the same way that the Naira would purchase for Bitcoin work in Nigeria. It isn’t as easy buying Bitcoin on Binance as is in nearby UAE. Although the Emirati nation has a direct fiat on-ramp, it has a promising start.
Whether or not Moroccan lawmakers can backtrack on banning Bitcoin, that time will tell. As it stands currently, Morocco would be continuing to lead the bandwagon in North Africa even though it remains largely an underground activity.
