US-based PowerDFI acquires Nigerian blockchain startup, Naijacrypto

By Rosemary Iwuala

PowerDFI, a recently founded Wyoming-based Blockchain financial startup, has acquired Naijacrypto, a Nigerian-owned leading cryptocurrency exchange platform focused initially on the African markets.

Naijacrypto, which recently expanded its offering to include multiple African countries and the United Kingdom, is one of the few exchanges with some presence in the Caribbean and has indicated an interest in expanding to other Latin American countries.

Despite Naijacrypto’s growing geographical scope, it seems PowerDFI’s main interest in Naijacrypto is its vast growing technical infrastructure which has been streamlined to meet not just retail needs but also B2B use cases.

“The acquisition allows us to bring the future of financing vast amounts of critical assets to the blockchain,” Tim Webb, CEO of PowerDFI, said.

No other DeFi platform is making it possible for tokenised assets to be leveraged for staking, loans, and derivative creation.

“Adding the work done by Naijacrypto to what we are building in PowerDFI fills out our technology suite to handle trillions in assets over the next decade,” Webb said.

He said that his company is set to lead the transition of the $57 trillion shadow banking market to the blockchain to improve transparency and security.

While explaining to email subscribers, Chiagozie Iwu, CEO of Naijacrypto, said that the company was transitioning to a business model set to disrupt the financial markets while still maintaining aspects that have made users stick to it for years.

He added that even though many structured products would be made available on the exchange, stablecoin-based remittance instruments would keep serving their initial purposes and even be made better by the support PowerDFI can harness.

“Naijacrypto was set to leverage its already massive B2B networks by offering hedge instruments to businesses and individuals exposed to exchange rate risk,” the CEO explained.

PowerDFI enables users to leverage digital and physical assets via the blockchain. The startup uses Blockchain-based financial engineering techniques to unlock trillions in equity in physical assets. It not only tokenizes assets but also instantly enables utility of tokenized assets by collateralizing or securitizing to streamline the lending process or smoothen staking a physical asset.

Naijacrypto’s infrastructure will help offer exposures against utilities created on PowerDFI and also add liquidity to such utilities. A quick glance at the Beta version of PowerDFI shows that it leverages the Ethereum network in building out its services. This comes when Ethereum is transitioning to a more sustainable technological and validation method.