Morocco is number one for Bitcoin trading in North Africa
Estimates from Triple A, a Singaporean cryptocurrency provider and aggregator, state that 0.9 million people, or roughly 2.4% of Morocco’s total population, currently own cryptocurrency.
That puts the kingdom as the top country in North Africa and in the top 50 holders of cryptocurrency population percentage, just ahead of Portugal.
Data from Useful Tulips — a platform that tracks peer-to-peer BTC trading across the globe — confirms the trend. The Kingdom of the West, as it’s known locally, has been the runaway North African leader for BTC trades in the past year, pipped by only Saudi Arabia when weighing up the entire Middle East and North Africa region.
Unfortunately for crypto enthusiasts, there has been no change in crypto laws in recent years. According to Morocco’s Foreign Exchange Office, it will not support a “hidden payment system that is not backed by any financial institution.” While the law came into being in 2017, the ban has not stymied adoption and as the data shows, Moroccan crypto enthusiasts continue to circumvent the ruling.
Nearby, the Egyptian pound is gaining on the Moroccan Dirham for BTC trades. On the 30 day period, UsefulTulips shows that Egypt is $20,000 short of catching Morocco. It remains illegal to trade BTC and crypto in Egypt, but even if a tiny percentage of its 102 million population and $360 billion GDP engage in the “illicit” activity, it will move the needle.
To bolster Morocco’s orange-tinted future, Harmattan Energy is set to build one of Africa's largest wind farms. The purpose of the 900MW behemoth wind site set in Dakhla, the Sahara region, is to “power blockchain computing.” As Bitcoin mining and trading is currently outlawed the group cannot openly purport Bitcoin mining.
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