Switchless buys Africa’s largest Bitcoin exchange hoping to propel the global remittance market
The largest Bitcoin exchange operating in Africa, BitX, was recently bought by the South Africa-based Switchless, a firm that develops crytocurrency software for financial institutions. The deal was confirmed, but the values involved are still a mystery.
Marcus Swanepoel, the director of Switchless, told Coindesk the deal was something closer to an “aqui-hire”. The company’s total staff has grown and now has eight people, thanks to the addition of three new experts coming from BitX, including the former Google engineer Timothy Stranex, who co-founded the exchange back in February.
Switchless, which works with “exchange type of software and ways to keep your Bitcoins safe”, reveals the strategy of the firm “is to continue investing in building that out to other financial institutions”. They also want to boost BitX’s exchanging flow: the platform only processes around 10 BTC per day, which is considered surprisingly low for the biggest exchange trading in the African market.
However, Swanepoel says that this number is due to the fact that “a lot of other exchanges going on in Africa aren’t necessarily done online”. He gives the example of people meeting up in Zimbabwe to exchange cryptocurrency in person. Swanepoel believes the trading volume in the continent can grow dramatically in a short time period, while helping to solve the global remittance problem.
The director of Switchless assures BitX “will run as it is right now”. However, the company “will have some clients that come into the mobile space at some stage”.
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