In the unemployment and economic crisis time, a large Egyptian popular is shifting to BTC. Egyptians are developing an interest in the bitcoin world in the period of downtimes.
In the BTC community, Egyptians are rising not only for showing interest but also for trading and mining activities.
The Egyptians show a greater rise towards Bitcoin. In the COVID-19 pandemic, where issues like economic crisis and unemployment are rising, Egyptians enter the bitcoin world.
Bitcoin turned out to be a thriving trade
One of the prominent members of the Bitcoin Community of Egypt, Muhammad Abd el-Baseer, came out with some surprising facts about Bitcoin’s popularity among Egyptians. In the current time, Egyptians are shifting more towards Bitcoin mining and trading activities. Even when the economic crisis is hitting everyone and unemployment turns out to be a headache, Egyptians do not lose hope. Egyptians got access to several opportunities to enter the Bitcoin world and invest their money. Within the ongoing phase, above 16,000 new community members came into the Bitcoin Community of Egypt. Not only this, much more Egyptian population is developing interest in the cryptocurrency market.
He also gave an explanation that “some measures taken as a precaution like reduction in working duration, curfews, and work from home online began applying from March to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in the area of Egypt.” The long working hours minimized to work from home shifts online, curfews, and less working duration, made the Egyptian population encouraged to pay attention to other ventures online such as cryptocurrency trading and mining activities involving bitcoin.
In the pandemic situation, many Egyptians faced unemployment and lost jobs. It was the time when Egyptians paid attention to Bitcoin trading. As a result, everyone knows that the Egyptian population is showing more interest in Bitcoin. Egyptians faced unemployment rising from the first quarter from 7.7% to 9.6% within the second quarter of the 2020 year. It means above a million of the Egyptian population faced job loss, as per the Egyptian CAPMS (Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics).
As per the Cryptocurrency Geography Report 2020 collected by Chainalysis (firm for blockchain analysis), Egypt got the 64th rank on its Global Crypto Adoption Index Ukraine stands in the first rank, other following countries include Russia and Venezuela. Lastly, China also follows Ukraine in the Index. Most of the Egyptians trading in bitcoin involves exchanges like Binance, FTX, Okex, Bitfinex, Bitmex, Huobi, and Coinbase.
With a P2P (peer-to-peer) network, bitcoin trading is done for small BTC amounts. For instance, just 10 Bitcoins were traded within Localbitcoins within September last week, but there was a steady rise in the transaction volume on Localbitcoins.
Wael al-Nahhas (A financial adviser and economist from Egypt) came up with a statement for the publication:
“With the spread of coronavirus, it resulted in the rise of unemployment and economic recession. And the adoption of preventive measures framed a reason behind young Egyptians shifting towards Bitcoin trading and mining activities.”
Even when the Bitcoin price is high, Egypt’s young generation invests in Bitcoin not by a large amount but with small shares. Youngsters are going behind Satoshi mining that is known as Bitcoin’s 100 millionths.
Mohamed Mohsen (Bitcoin miner and lawyer from Egypt) stated that laws in Egypt do not put a criminalization charge upon cryptocurrency trafficking. He said that those who got arrested or faced a criminal charge were not involved in direct crypto trading but abused it for criminal activities like financing terrorist and fraud purposes.
Ahmed Shuair (Cairo University professor for economics) believes that legalization for cryptocurrencies might happen soon by the Central Bank of Egypt. He stated that the Central bank was already involved in framing a law with this effect and issue in January. Though, the bank’s decision paused with the occurrence of the coronavirus pandemic.
With Egyptians’ rising interest in crypto trading and mining activities, many were worried that it could lead to people getting accused as unauthorized or fraud ones with no legislation or a proper law for it. As per the experts, a new law might emerge with legal activities and not legal ones for cryptocurrencies.
