Over the years, the value of the Zimbabwean Dollar (ZWL) has been on a massive downward trend compared to the US Dollar (USD). This has led to the latter accounting for most of the domestic transactions in the Southern African country. The ZWL went from 10,152.5 to USD 1 as of January 1, 2024, to 30,674.3 on April 1, 2024. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is introducing a gold-backed digital currency as a legal tender to stabilise its currency.
The share of sub-Saharan Africa with bank/mobile money accounts in 2021 is twice what it was in 2011. The proportion of males aged 15 and above with bank/mobile money accounts is also higher than that of females of the same age.
FTX, one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, went bankrupt. Before its bankruptcy, the price of Bitcoin rose to $21,000 and fell back to $19,000 on November 7, 2022, when Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao revealed that his company would be selling off FTX's native coin, FTT.
In 2017, the price of Bitcoin suffered a hit when it crashed following a huge crypto boom that saw the price go from $400 in 2016 to $19,118 in 2017. Bitcoin went down to $3,000 in 2018, losing 447% of the value it had accumulated in 2017. By 2019, the market saw a positive trend with the price of bitcoin reaching $36,833.
Mobile App transfers increased by 174% to ₦53.21 trillion 20 2021, it also increased by 108% to ₦111.12 trillion in 2022. There was also a charge increase in the volume of funds transfers done on mobile apps. The Central Bank of Nigeria, in its figures, separated Mobile App transfers from those of Mobile Money Operators (MMOs).
The value of transactions conducted over Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) in Nigeria in 2021 was ₦5.2 trillion, 73% higher than 2020 figures. The total transaction value dropped by ₦685 billion in 2022, a 13.3% decline. The transaction volume also witnessed a 6% decline.
As of 2021, 6 in every 10 males aged 15 and above in sub-Saharan Africa had an account with a financial institution, compared to almost half of all females of the same age in the region. Check out the share of sub-Saharan Africans with bank/mobile money accounts.
According to Chainalysis, over $520 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from services and individuals through hacks and non-technical attacks like social engineering and phishing efforts in 2020.
