October 2020 Philippines Bitcoin Transaction Volume Report
Bitcoin transactions has decreased in October 2020 as per data on key P2P marketplaces in the Philippines.
November 20, 2020 — The volume of Bitcoin transactions in the Philippines in October 2020 has decreased by 23.16% compared to the previous month according to data available for peer-to-peer exchanges Paxful and LocalBitcoins. This is the first time Bitcoin’s P2P monthly volume has experienced a major decline in a single month on the marketplaces since the year began.
For the month of October, the combined volume of transactions for both Paxful and LocalBitcoins totaled $3,247,682 based on the data from usefultulips.org, which aggregates information from the Paxful and LocalBitcoins APIs. This is a significant decline when compared to September’s volume of $4,226,732 as well as for the months of August ($4,161,728) and July ($4,243,449). The chart above shows the volume since May for both marketplaces, showing a major increase in Paxful’s volume while LocalBitcoins’ remained static:
September saw strong transaction volume as the industry started to talk about an end to crypto winter. As we entered October, Bitcoin, for the first time has never gone below $10,000 in the last 30 days and by the 20th, it made a strong movement above $12,000 closing the day with a solid candle at $12,808. This increase in price appears correlated with a decrease in transaction volume suggesting users were keen to hold their Bitcoin to watch the price increase. Note that it was also around the 20th when news of PayPal officially supporting cryptocurrency came out.
Apryl Albero, Community Marketing Manager at Paxful Philippines said traders in the Philippines were savvy when it came to looking for profits. She explained that while transactions decreased, “around 90% are “sell” trades in October” indicating Filipinos were sensibly trying to lock profits as the price was rising, although she added ‘“buy” trades have also slightly gone up.
“Price speculation was another factor when buy trades increased and sell trade decreased as we saw an uptrend market around the 20th of October and vendors have a tendency to hold rather than sell,” Ms. Albero told BitPinas.
The value of virtual currency exchange transactions on licensed exchanges soared to $1.2 billion (Php 59 billion) according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) from January to June 2020. “This suggests the growing public acceptance of virtual currencies to facilitate payments, remittances, and other virtual currency-related transactions,” said BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno.
This article is first published on BitPinas: October 2020 Philippines Bitcoin Transaction Volume Report
