Despite a falling Bitcoin (BTC) price having triggered a widespread devaluation for basically all cryptocurrencies, trading volumes on peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin trading platforms – namely LocalBitcoins and Paxful – are seeing record highs, particularly in countries located in the Americas.

LocalBitcoins With More All-Time Highs

Per newly published data retrieved from Coin.dance, LocalBitcoins – the world’s most popular platform to execute peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchanges on – has experienced recent record-breaking weekly trading volumes in each of Peru, Chile, Venezuela, and Canada.

Of the three South American nations, Venezuela is the one that continues to set new weekly trading volume records, having done so for each of the past five weeks. For the week ending June 9th, 7.6 million Venezuelan bolívar (Bs) was exchanged for Bitcoin; nearly double that of four weeks prior. Worth noting, however, is that Bs has been suffering from unprecedented rates of hyperinflation.

More genuine growth on LocalBitcoins seems to have been experienced in Peru, with weekly Bitcoin trading volumes having produced all-time highs – when measured against both BTC (106) and Peruvian sol (over 2.7 million, or, ~$US830,000) – for the week ending May 26th.

Chile has been the other South American country that LocalBitcoins has thrived in recently. Earlier last month, the most Chilean pesos (over 234 million, or, ~$US370,000) were exchanged for BTC in one week than ever before.

Up north in Canada, the week ending May 19th saw record LocalBitcoins trading volumes when paired against both BTC (1,265) and the Canadian dollar (over 12 million).

Paxful Proving Popular

As for the second most used P2P Bitcoin trading platform, Paxful has seen its customers in Sweden and the U.S. transact with one another at (or near) record totals.

For Sweden, the week ending June 9th marked the second most Swedish kronor traded (22,700); with the third most having occurred on the week ending May 19th.

As for the U.S. Paxful market, a new record was set for the week ending June 2nd, with almost $US17.8 million having changed hands. Interestingly, the past six weeks now account for Paxful’s six highest volumes recorded by their U.S. customers.

Privacy a Priority for P2P Traders

Whilst LocalBitcoins.com is by far the most established P2P Bitcoin exchange, Paxful has achieved significant growth over the course of 2018; tracking at near-record weekly volumes (USD). All this has transpired whilst LocalBitcoins’ weekly volume has continued to decline.

The reason behind these opposing trends is likely (at least in part) due to LocalBitcoins’ recent decision to start requiring Know Your Customer (KYC) details from customers deemed to be using their services on a frequent basis.

Previously, the anonymity that came with using LocalBitcoins represented a key drawcard versus centralized exchanges like Huobi Pro or Binance. Having not yet enforced such KYC requirements, Paxful (and to a lesser extent, Bisq) seem to have benefitted from their competitor’s unpopular policy change.

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