Bitcoin (BTC) P2P marketplace Paxful has partnered with Spanish neobank Bnext to launch its first crypto debit card in Mexico. The partnership will allow Paxful’s Mexican customers to use their crypto funds to pay with a debit card in any national and foreign point-of-sale, or PoS, and even withdraw cash from ATMs without fees. Bnext customers will also have direct access to the P2P marketplace to buy and sell crypto. Paxful explained in the announcement that “strict banking regulations” in Mexico are encouraging people to focus on cryptocurrencies, and quoted figures from crypto exchange Bitso that revealed a growth of …

Paxful, a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency marketplace, has successfully defended against a number of serious threats, including 220,000 bot attacks and a variety of social engineering ploys — all in the span of two months. During the same time period, hackers managed to steal around $200 million worth of cryptocurrency from the KuCoin exchange, and another unconnected attack saw $5.4 million stolen from Eterbase. Paxful said that its alleged attackers attempted to use automated bots to brute force their way into accounts belonging to the project's users: “Bots, which are reported to generate about a quarter of global Web traffic, are de …

A report published by Arcane Research has revealed that nearly half of Paxful’s trade volume comes from trade between Bitcoin (BTC) and gift cards. The report found that, “purchasing Bitcoin with gift cards has been the preferred solution on Paxful each month throughout the five-year span analyzed,” and in June accounted for 48% of Paxful’s volume. Paxful processes nearly $40 million in weekly trade, which means up to $20M of BTC is exchanged for gift cards every week. Arcane highlighted the last week of June this year in the report, in which $16.2M BTC was sold for gift cards. Arcane …

2020 has seen an acceleration in African crypto adoption, with the continent emerging as the second-largest region for peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, and two African nations ranking in the top eight of the Chainalysis crypto adoption index. However, the booming growth has caught the attention of Africa’s financial regulators, sparking concerns that a rush to introduce heavy-handed oversight could quell innovation in the local crypto industry. Nigeria has led the continent’s growth in 2020, posting weekly P2P volumes of between $5 million to $10 million, followed by Kenya and South Africa with between $1 million and $2 million a week each. …

Peer-to-peer cryptocurrency marketplace Paxful announced Sept. 17 that it had broken ground on a new school in Nigeria. This is the fourth school of 100 planned as part of its #BuiltWithBitcoin initiative to bring quality education to emerging countries. The school, located in the Ankara Nandu community of Sanga Local, will serve an estimated 100–120 children between the ages of three and six years old, and double as an adult education center in the evenings. The city is home to 4,000 people, and currently has just one school providing both primary and secondary education. Paxful CEO and co-founder Ray Youssef …

Russia’s new cryptocurrency-related law, “On Digital Financial Assets,” or DFA, seems to have had little impact on the local cryptocurrency industry so far. In its current form, the DFA law essentially provides legal status to digital assets like Bitcoin (BTC), but prohibits their use for payments in Russia. As the DFA law is poised to be officially adopted in less than four months, Cointelegraph talked to major crypto firms operating in Russia to get their take on how the new law can impact their business. Based on comments from executives at companies like Binance, Waves, Paxful, LocalBitcoins, and Wirex, companies …

The recent crypto market slump has driven massive trade volumes on centralized exchanges, but peer-to-peer (P2P) trading platforms actually saw a sharp decline in activity. Latin-America was the only region to buck the trend. The top region for P2P trade, the United States, posted a 42% slump in peer-to-peer volume this week — plummeting from $23.4 million to nearly $13.6 million. Sub-Saharan African has been the second-largest region for P2P trade after North America for much of 2020. It saw P2P volume fall 32%, from roughly $12.9 million to $8.7 million — driven by a 38% crash in Nigerian activity. …

Even as fears of another blanket ban on India’s digital asset market linger on, peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading within the Asian powerhouse is still surging, hitting all-time highs over the first week of August. This immense growth was initially spurred by the Supreme Court’s unequivocal decision earlier in March 2020 to repeal an unconstitutional circular imposed by the Reserve Bank of India forbidding local banks and various financial institutions from providing services to crypto exchanges and investors. According to data aggregated by peer-to-peer Bitcoin (BTC) marketplaces Paxful and Localbitcoins, weekly trading volumes in India have been gaining ground consistently since April. …

Combined global peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin trading volumes have surged to their highest levels since January 2018, with nearly $95 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) changing hands on Localbitcoins and Paxful in the first week of August. The spike comes as many Latin American markets have seen trade activity rally into new highs over recent weeks, with the Bitcoin P2P markets in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Honduras, Paraguay, Uruguay and The Bahamas all posting record highs since the start of July. Venezuelan trade still represents the lion’s share of Latin America’s nearly $13 billion in weekly P2P trade, posting more than …

During an Aug. 4 panel on legal compliance within the cryptocurrency industry, major figures noted recent shifts in public perception of the industry, pointing to arrests within weeks of the Twitter hack as an example of how effective blockchain analytics can be for solving crime. The panel is part of an ongoing series from the Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists. Twitter and law enforcement Lana Schwartzmann, chief compliance officer for Paxful, said regarding the Twitter hack “It’s quite amazing how different this is from what we’d see in the traditional fiat world. You’d never have this resolved so quickly.” …

Data from Bitcoin (BTC) marketplace Paxful shows a huge surge of interest in cryptocurrency peer-to-peer trading in Russia, with 350% growth on a year-over-year (YoY) basis. According to the study, from the period of May 2019 to May 2020, Paxful is now seeing an average monthly trading volume of $4M in Russia. The company says that this number “exceeds expectations,” together with the YoY usage increase figures. The last three-months saw a 42% increase, with May recording the best monthly performance amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus is one of the major drivers of growth according to Paxful. Lack of …

Peer-to-peer Bitcoin (BTC) marketplace Paxful announced on July 14 that its platform has witnessed another surge in trade volume, hitting the $4.6 billion mark and reaching over 4.5 million wallet registrations. Paxful is also forecasting an additional two million users by the end of 2020, as the company is entering its 5th anniversary. Emerging markets play a large role Ray Youseff, the CEO of Paxful, noted that emerging markets in developing nations are a major factor in the platform's recent growth. He said, "When you look at our data, in Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya lead in terms of volume …