To date in 2020, VALR, a South African cryptocurrency exchange, has recorded a 5-fold surge in crypto volumes, making it the country’s biggest exchange by trading volume over the previous six months.

Over 1,000 consumers joined the exchange on its first day of trading in June 2019, and over 80,000 customers have joined it since its debut.

Farzam Ehsani, a former member of the Rand Merchant Bank blockchain team, and his former coworkers ran the exchange, which transacted approximately 17, 000 bitcoins in September 2020 alone.

More than 50 cryptocurrencies are available for consumers to purchase and sell on VALR, the largest assortment of any exchange in South Africa.

Below are some stats about the VALR crypto exchange:

Started in June 2019
Over 80, 000 customers so far
5x growth in crypto volumes in 2020 so far
Backed by former FNB CEO Michael Jordaan and US-based Bittrex
Customers can trade up to 50 cryptocurrencies, the largest in South Africa
$300, 000 pay outs in referral discounts in September 2020
Pays out 0.2% taker and 0.1% maker fees

According to Farzam, the world’s careless financial regulation, worries that conventional currencies would depreciate, and flaws in the current financial system are all factors in VALR’s rapid rise.

“Crypto is as promising as the flaws in our antiquated finance system. It is insane that even inside the same nation, sending money from one person to another can still take days under the current financial system.

Nowadays, around 95% of money is digital, therefore transfers made digitally shouldn’t take as long. Consider how ludicrous and antiquated our existing banking system would be if emails took several days to reach their intended recipient.

Farzam Ehsani, VALR’s CEO

The US Federal Reserve is currently generating money digitally at a rate of more than $1 million per second. Farzam contends that the present legacy banks will have to adopt cryptography or risk being left behind.

The DeFi crypto world, which offers a return for lending your cryptocurrency in uncollateralized funding – without the need for a trusted intermediary – and also offers a token as something else of value that can be traded, will overwhelm out traditional financial institutions because banks have never offered their customers anything other than loans at interest.

“In my opinion, the development of the crypto asset class is still in its infancy. The total value of bitcoin is still simply a small dot in the global financial landscape. To put it into perspective, each bitcoin would need to be valued at $575, 000 if it had the same worth as all the gold in the world, which would be a 50-fold increase from its current level based on the current bitcoin market cap of $255 billion.

No South African with assets ought to be completely unaware of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

Farzam Ehsani, VALR’s CEO