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Romeo Fardeen's avatar

Looking forward to Part 2 mate! The data clearly indicates that local banks are going to take a heavy beating, not only on the plummeting USD deposit but also savings in local currencies.

Local stablecoins will solve the infrastructure issues most developing countries face but I don't see how they solve inflation (or arbitrary regulations like cash withdrawal limits) to make the currency more lucrative.

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Decim8e's avatar

I think the adoption of local stablecoins might be the first wake up call for these nations to comply with basic rules that will keep their currencies alive and not succumb to foreign pressure as most might take a while to catch up with the speed of adoption if things move or get better than the pace they are currently at, some nations might reach out for an outright ban to put a pause on the speed of adoption.

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Olivier Roland's avatar

But how do ChainAnalysis and other institutions or organizations studying this phenomenon manage to measure the level of usage in a given country? Do they rely solely on IP addresses accessing APIs, and if so, how do they get access to the API data? Exchanges and stablecoin issuers probably don’t share that information

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Marco's avatar

Very interesting article! Looking forward to the next part.

Sorry for self-advertising, but you might also find this paper, that estimates international stablecoin usage in a different way from what Chainalysis does, also capturing purely self-custodial transfers,--and links stablecoin usage to exchange rates-- useful: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2025/07/11/Decrypting-Crypto-How-to-Estimate-International-Stablecoin-Flows-568260

It should also answer the question that Olivier Roland raised.

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Nishil Jain's avatar

Is there any concrete data backing the adoption of stablecoins in Africa, particularly during currency devaluation in Nigeria and Ethiopia?

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Yoseph Ayele's avatar

Also check this out: https://ccaf.io/cdmd/

It doesn't show directly stablecoin adoption correlated to Nigerian or Ethiopian currency fluctuations, but it is interesting to track stablecoin flows by geography.

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Yoseph Ayele's avatar

The most concrete publicly available data is the Chainalysis reports: ttps://www.chainalysis.com/blog/subsaharan-africa-crypto-adoption-2024/

You can track earlier reports, and see growth / fluctuations. As I argue in this article, that captures only part of the picture, because the essence of crypto transactions is that they can't be tracked based on location (e.g. if fully onchain with web wallets), and most of the centralized exchange info is not available online.

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