Bitcoin Is More Popular In Nigeria & South Africa Than Anywhere Else In The World

According to Google Trends, Bitcoin is most popular in Africa than anywhere else in the world.

As a matter of fact, Nigeria and South Africa respectively took first and second spot for searching the term “Bitcoin” in the last year.

Besides those two African countries, Ghana actually comes in at number five with Austria and Switzerland rounding out the top five in searching for Bitcoin.

While it may come as a surprise that these African nations are showing such interest, it cannot be deemed totally unexpected as the benefits that blockchain and cryptocurrency have for African nations is immense.

Indeed, a study conducted by Binance Research found that relative search trends of the term “Bitcoin” have been shifting from west to east since 2011, and Africa has now taken centre stage.

A couple of months back, Binance Research — the research and analytics arm of the world’s largest crypto exchange — published an animated chart showing the changes in heat ranking of “Bitcoin” in Google Search. The short video showed visualized changes in heat ranking of “Bitcoin” in Google search by country.

Visualized changes in heat ranking of “Bitcoin” #BTC in Google search by each Country/Region from Jan 2011 to today.

Noticeably, relative search trends of “Bitcoin” within each country have shifted from West to East, and most recently, Africa. pic.twitter.com/9Gxx2CGJwr

— Binance Research (@BinanceResearch) September 26, 2019

Nigeria topped that list with South Africa coming in second place.

According to the data, Bitcoin began spreading from the western world to parts of Africa in 2016. South Africa remained the region with the most Bitcoin searches for a few months in 2016, followed closely by Malaysia and Singapore. The three were overtaken by Nigeria, which has kept the record for the most Bitcoin searches up until now.

The popularity of Bitcoin in both Nigeria and South Africa has been put down to the fact that both countries have been rattled by shaky economic reforms and suffered currency devaluations. The populace seems to be resorting to Bitcoin increasingly due to financial and political uncertainty.

Interestingly, Ireland seems to have been the first country to catch onto Bitcoin. In January 2011, Bitcoin was searched for the most in Ireland, followed by Belgium. The following month, Bitcoin briefly exploded in Kenya but was soon overtaken in popularity by searches from Finland, Estonia, and Iceland.

The shift in the popularity of Bitcoin from the west to the east, however, began in 2013 was in full swing in 2014, when Hong Kong and Singapore caught onto Bitcoin.

Both countries saw Google searches for Bitcoin shoot up and they remained among the top 10 regions for Bitcoin searches throughout 2015 as well.

Featured Image Courtesy: BitcoinNews