Global P2P trade sees a massive tumble amid crypto crash

September 8, 2020
By Sam Grant

The recent sell-off has left mixed effects on exchanges with global P2P trade suffering a big drop

A majority of the centralised exchanges have gained positively from the sell-off. Sadly, the same couldn’t be said for P2P trade on Paxful which plummeted by almost 50% so far this week.

The crypto market slump witnessed recently has led to increased trade volumes on centralized exchanges. Peer-to-peer trading platforms, on the other hand, have plunged. According to Useful Tulip, the platforms posted a sharp fall this week.

Only Latin-America was able to record positive activity with all the others taking a nosedive.

The United States which typically leads P2P trade charts recorded a massive 42% decline in peer-to-peer volume this week. The region’s numbers fell steeply to $13.6 million from a previous $23.4 million. The Sub-Saharan African region also had a similar trend. The numbers posted revealed that the region’s P2P volume sunk by 32%. The Nigerian sub-region, in particular, saw a 38% decline in P2P trade activities. Overall, the numbers moved down from $12.9 million to $8.7 million.

The situation was no better in the Asia-Pacific region that saw a 25% crash.

The Latin America region had an increase in P2P trade volume moving to $13.2 million – an 11% upswing. Further analysis on the region showed that 43% of the overall Latin trade took place in Venezuela. The country’s trade volume translated to two-thirds of the volume swell in the region.

Chile, Colombia, and Peru recorded surges in trade volume as well. The three countries witnessed increases in the range of 10% and 20%. Brazil and Mexico were, however, on the other end of the scale as they both saw crashes in trade volume.

Interestingly, most of the slump in trade volume was ascribable to P2P platform Paxful. Save for the Sub-Saharan Africa region, the rest of the regions on Localbitcoins had an increment in trading.

An estimated $42 million worth of Bitcoin was exchanged on Localbitcoins last week. The hosted trades on Paxful didn’t exceed $20 million which was significantly less from the estimated $38 million it hosted previously.

Conversely, Bitstamp’s weekly volume was around $1.1 billion. The hosted trades on Coinbase summed to a total of about $1.7 billion in trade in that week.