South African Crypto Exchange Hits Milestone 3M Wallets, $5M Volume

Major South African crypto exchange Luno has continued growing — processing crypto worth more than $5 million a day in August 2019.

Marius Reitz, general manager for Africa at Luno, claimed crypto exceeding more than 80 million South African rand ($5.4 million) was processed on Luno’s South African platform on a daily basis in the past month, local tech publication TechFinancials reported on Sept. 10.

Three million wallets milestone

Reitz reportedly added that South Africa is one of Luno’s strongest markets, amid a rising appetite for crypto trading in the country. 

Luno has also seen a significant surge of new customers, having reached a milestone of three million wallets across 40 countries on its platform. In comparison, Blockchain.com, one of the most popular global crypto wallets, has about 41 million wallets to date.

According to Reitz, reaching three million wallets indicates increasing global adoption and reinforces the company’s purpose of “reimagining a financial system where money is cheaper, faster and safer with open and equal access for everyone.”

London-based South African exchange

Backed by major global Internet and entertainment group Naspers, Luno exchange was founded in 2013 by two South Africans: Marcus Swanepoel, a former investment banker, and Timothy Stranex, a former Google’s software engineer. Luno is headquartered in London and operates across Africa, South East Asia and Europe.

Luno offers operating major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) and is the 105th-biggest crypto exchange by average daily trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap. On Aug. 23, Luno added support of Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

In late August, Luno’s CEO Marcus Swanepoel claimed that the majority of its clients use Bitcoin as a tool for investing and speculating, while transaction purposes account for a small share of use cases on the platform.