Why Sponsoring the African Cup of Nations is Big for Binance
Binance has been known for its consistent service as a crypto exchange over the years. It is quite a huge surprise that the company is considering the African Cup of Nations as the perfect stage to insert their name in Africa’s rising interest in cryptocurrency as well.
The AFCON has announced a deal that will bring in Binance as the sponsor for their league games. Binance is set to become the official and exclusive crypto partner of the tournament for 2022, which is ongoing in Cameroon. This changes a lot of pace for Binance as it shifts focus in the African market.
It is the world’s largest crypto exchange in terms of trading volume, which is around $76 billion worth of crypto every single day. These include transactions for punters who play Bitcoin games. With the new deal, the company is off to strengthen its presence in Africa especially when they launched a crypto trading platform in Uganda in 2018.
Binance’s growth over the years shows a lot of promise with their hopes of expanding to Africa. This is why the move to sponsor the AFCON for this year’s edition is a huge plus for the platform since it will give them more opportunities in attracting users.
There are bigger opportunities in Africa
Africa is one of the fastest growing regions for crypto adoption. It has grown more than 1200% by value that it got from the span of July 2020 to June 2021. That shows a lot about the potential that crypto trades can have in the continent. One trend that has driven crypto usage in Africa is the rise of the peer to peer (P2P) crypto exchanges. Users can trade with each other on this platform, and Africa’s stats shows them leading the world in the use of P2P - accounting for at least 1.2% of all African transaction volume and 2.6% of all volume for Bitcoin.
Most Africans use this type of trading to protect remittances and cross-border deals from high transfer fees. This avoids the risk of weakening currencies and aside from running an exchange platform, Binance has also built a P2P platform as Binance B2P.
Binance plans to tap into Africa’s young and internet-savvy demographic since sports could be a huge lever for crypto adoption. Another factor they consider is there are a lot of fans who use phones for sports betting.
Africa is a hot market for crypto
Africa is a great place for crypto, blockchain and other Web3 startups to position themselves in. Binance sees Africa as a hot market, which means that this will be the foundation of the platform’s successful expansion in the years to come.
Binance is set to compete with the likes of Yellow Card, Luno, Buycoins Africa, Paxful, and LocalCryptos. Other platforms such as LocalBitcoins, and Remitano are also considered to be options for those who play Bitcoin games in the continent.
While crypto is slowly gaining a lot of headway in Africa, the only problem left for Binance to maximise its reach is the lack of regulations in most nations. Full integration by Binance will take more time than they planned to begin with. Sponsoring the AFCON is just scratching the surface for Binance.