Yet, at least two operators say competition is compressing margins. Costs do not fall with volume, and the customers driving the most revenue are hard to retain. Peer-to-peer (P2P) trading became a lifeline for Nigerian crypto users after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) barred banks from servicing crypto transactions in 2021.

It forced local startups to find workarounds as global platforms like Paxful, a P2P marketplace that has since shut down, and Binance competed for the same users. Nigerian startups began offering a broader range of products, including P2P and bill payments, around that time. The serious push into stablecoins, B2B payment rails, futures, and more complex financial products accelerated from 2023 onward to diversify income beyond the volatile retail cycle.

Recently, that strategy has become more pronounced. Several crypto startups operating in Nigeria, including Busha, Roqqu, Dantown, Luno, and Blockchain.com, have all expanded beyond retail crypto trading. Startups like Yellow Card have shut it down entirely to focus on the B2B side of digital currencies, signalling that the pressure on retail margins is acute enough to force a complete strategic pivot.

Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d'Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events Next wave Entering Tech Subscribe The maths behind a single trade The unit economics of running a crypto retail trading business begin with one trade. On a typical $100 retail transaction, the gross revenue a platform earns ranges from about $0.3 to under $1.40, three crypto startups told TechCabal.

One founder, who asked not to be named to speak freely due to the sensitivity of the details being disclosed, breaks this down: a 1% transaction fee earns $1, while foreign exchange (FX) spread on the naira conversion adds roughly $0.35. After deducting direct costs like payment processing and liquidity, gross profit exceeds $1.25. Another operator, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that gross profit after all costs is $0.30 to $0.50, reflecting the startup’s leaner, flat-fee pricing model with zero spread.

In normal market conditions, a startup keeps between 0.5% and 1.6% of every transaction, a figure known as the blended take rate. During volatile periods, when spreads widen, that range climbs to between 1.6% and 2.3%, according to the three startups. One startup charges a fixed flat fee regardless of market conditions; others run tiered models from 0.35% to 1% depending on trade size.

The cost side is where things get complicated. Running a regulated crypto trading platform means carrying expenses that do not shrink when trading slows: staff, security, compliance, banking and payment partnerships, and the infrastructure needed to move money reliably. These costs are largely fixed regardless of the number of trades a platform processes.

When retail trading activity slows, revenue falls, and sometimes becomes disproportionately lower than these fixed expenses, according to the three operators who spoke to TechCabal. “While certain costs scale down with lower activity, a significant portion of the cost base is fixed or semi-fixed,” said Joshua Avoaja, chief technology officer and co-founder of Azza, a Nigerian WhatsApp-based crypto payments startup that said it has processed over $17 million. “Costs don’t compress proportionally during periods of lower trading volume.” A typical active retail customer makes between two and six trades a month—rising to eight during market peaks—and spends between $13 to $15 per trade, according to the range provided by the three operators.

Taking the midpoint—about four trades monthly at $14 per trade—and applying the 1% take rate, a crypto startup would earn about $0.56 per customer per month in gross revenue. Set against a customer acquisition cost (CAC) of between ₦8,000 and ₦22,000 (about $5 to $14), recouping that investment on the average user spans between nine months and over two years. For a business solely dependent on retail trading, it needs a deep runway to sustain its operations.

“[Crypto retail trading] is a solid but structurally constrained business,” said Avoaja. “Customer acquisition costs are relatively low, gross margins