Binance. Huobi (now HTX). LocalBitcoins. Paxful. These names might not mean much beyond “crypto companies” (which you probably learnt with a bit of digging). But they were a significant part of Africa’s crypto economy.
These foreign companies were part of the group that first productised informal peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, and provided an underground market where Nigerians could buy and sell crypto without risking their bank accounts getting frozen during the crypto ban. Today, two of those companies have since pulled out of Nigeria. One bit the dust in 2023. And the last one, Paxful, is shutting down on November 1, 2025.
What happened? Paxful says it is winding down because of alleged “historic misconduct” by its former cofounders, Ray Youssef and Artur Schaback. The company says years of cleaning up after that era made operations unsustainable. Paxful had already closed its Nigeria business in April 2023 under Youssef’s leadership before returning one month later.
Since then, it appeared stable, showing no signs of financial strain until this month’s announcement. The company maintains the closure is strategic, not a result of insolvency.
Between the lines: The decision signals a broader cooling toward P2P trading in the Global South. Nigeria, Paxful’s biggest market, has previously restricted P2P activity and driven Binance out of the market. While P2P platforms still exist—Bybit, for instance, continues to serve local traders—but Paxful never recovered the dominance it once had.
Youssef responded to the criticism: “Paxful should have closed down when I left the company two years ago. Regulators don’t want people in the Global South to have the same access to finance as people in the West. It’s financial apartheid.”
The big picture: African regulators are moving to formalise crypto activity—tracking trades, taxing income, and flagging suspicious flows. As this unfolds, P2P platforms may fade, replaced by licenced exchanges. How regulators eventually fold P2P under their oversight, if at all, remains to be seen.
