Firm increases workforce, marks anniversary

A peer-to-peer finance platform, Paxful, said it has grown into an organisation with nearly 400 employees and offices around the world.

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Paxful, Ray Youssef, said this during the firm’s seventh anniversary, stating that it remained committed to growing its footprint globally and empowering users to take control of their financial future.

He said with Africans who were really leading the way through a strong presence since its inception, it plans to foster financial literacy and increase financial inclusion through education.

Noting that the firm had reached 10 million users on its seventh anniversary, he said the company, was founded in 2015 with a mission to advance a truly global economy by building a financial system that serves the 100 per cent, not just the one per cent.

According to him, Paxful has put financial education at the forefront of its mission, executing several initiatives on the continent.

He said last year, the organisation opened the PaxNaija Education Centre to empower Nigerians through bitcoin education, hosted several campus tours and workshops to encourage entrepreneurship and met with hundreds of community members to help increase financial literacy.

During the period, he said the firm also gave a donation to the Human Rights Foundation to fund the Qala Fellowship, a programme that aims to find and grow local Nigerian talent, starting with developers, to help them build careers in the bitcoin space.

Youssef said: “While many parts of the developed world are fixated on the speculative activity of bitcoin, people in Africa are teaching us about its true use cases and the opportunity it presents for greater financial inclusion. We want to downplay what is happening in the market and the economic situation globally, but this is an opportunity for companies in the ecosystem to zoom out from the short-term focus and put effort into how and why bitcoin creates an alternative financing option.

Globally, nearly $3 billion was traded on Paxful in 2021. Narrowing in on Nigeria, trade volume was over $760M last year and Nigerian users have climbed over the 2 million mark. Despite the global financial crisis, Paxful is seeing that peer-to-peer and interest in bitcoin is not slowing down. In the first half of 2022, trade volume in Nigeria reached nearly $400M, showing us that the emerging markets are still hungry for bitcoin.”