Backed by Coinbase and Alameda, African Exchange MARA Eyes Continental Prospects

East Africa is about to welcome a new cryptocurrency exchange backed by a slew of industry titans looking to tap into a continent teeming with potential users.

Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, Huobi Ventures, and other prominent venture capital firms and angel investors contributed $23 million to launch MARA. The exchange will initially operate in Kenya and Nigeria, providing new users with a basic trading platform to acquire, trade and withdraw cryptocurrencies.

The platform will provide more experienced traders with a professional exchange with a wide range of trading options and technical analysis tools. Plans are in place to develop the MARA chain, a layer 1 blockchain that will allow developers to build decentralized applications in the future MARA ecosystem.

The MARA team also confirmed a partnership with the Central African Republic. The African nation is following in the footsteps of pro-Bitcoin (BTC) nation El Salvador, legalizing Bitcoin as legal tender in April 2022. MARA will serve as the country's official crypto partner and will advise the government on best practices, strategy and planning as it looks to the wider adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Cointelegraph spoke to MARA CEO and co-founder Chi Nnadi to learn about the exchange’s launch and Africa’s outlook for the newly launched platform. Chi has lived in Nigeria for the better part of a decade, having recently moved to Kenya before the idea behind MARA was formed.

The status of Nigeria and Kenya as hotspots for cryptocurrency adoption on the continent was a driving factor behind MARA’s decision to launch its products in these two countries. According to Chainalysis, Kenya leads the rest of the world in peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction volume, while 35% of Nigerian adults hold or trade Bitcoin.

While African countries continue to have new crypto users, Nnadi acknowledged that sub-Saharan Africa’s young and tech-native population is making crypto a part of their daily lives, but there are still considerable hurdles:

“Many of the existing global exchanges are unable to operate in the region due to regulatory challenges and the difficulty of reaching African consumers in an authentic way. These barriers to entry significantly limit the number of people participating in the crypto economy and limit the potential uses of digital currencies in the region.”

Despite regulatory challenges and the nascent nature of the cryptocurrency space, Nnadi believes that the next generation of Africans will drive the continent's digital transformation. Noting that Africa has the youngest population in the world, Nnadi said that more and more young people are building transformative structures and solutions to adapt to new technologies in their societies:

"This places Africa at a critical inflection point: a younger generation is beginning to enter adulthood and exert influence. This transition represents a unique opportunity for the region to fully and rapidly transition to a new paradigm of digital ownership."

As for MARA’s role as a crypto partner in the Central African Republic, Nnadi said the firm will take on an advisory role as Central Africa looks to embrace the crypto economy. This will include guidance on how to build the necessary know-your-customer (KYC) anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) infrastructure, including standardized personal identification documents, to ensure the solid security of the country and its 5 million citizens. Base.