Ahead of the February 25 presidential election, Peter Obi maintained a lead in a third and final nationwide opinion poll commissioned by Anap Foundation and conducted by NOI Polls Limited (NOIPolls) in results released by the President and Founder of Anap Foundation, Atedo Peterside.
Paxful, a peer-to-peer (P2P) trading platform for bitcoin (BTC) owned by Ray Youssef, has been discovered to be one of the promoters of the the ANAP poll that predicted that Labour Party's presidential candidate Peter Obi as the winner of the 2023 general election, SaharaReporters has learned.
Ahead of the February 25 presidential election, Peter Obi maintained a lead in a third and final nationwide opinion poll commissioned by Anap Foundation and conducted by NOI Polls Limited (NOIPolls) in results released by the President and Founder of Anap Foundation, Atedo Peterside.
The third poll which was concluded in the first half of February 2023 followed two earlier polls carried in September and December 2022.
According to top sources, Paxful was one of the institutions that trended the poll to attract more Nigerian audience towards their line of line of business.
Ray Youssef, the company's CEO, had now succeeded in defrauding approximately 1.5 million Nigerian users who invested in the company, which already suspended operations indefinitely.
"The guy called Ray Youssef scammed Nigerians with his Bitcoin company called Paxful with 1.5million Nigerian users. The company already shut down. He helped promoted bogus ANAP poll before the election that showed Peter Obi leads with 21%, Tinubu 13%, Atiku 10%, Kwankwaso 3%.
"The company was forced to suspend operations in the U.S. due to regulatory challenges. I can bet it that Ray Youssef will be indicted at some point by US Federal prosecutors for white collar crime," a top source said.
"Ray Youssef did what people who are normally targeted by Feds for white collar crime likes to do. Suspends operations to cover up. As I have said, he is under investigation. The Feds are coming to get him.
"The sad thing is that while the US investors he scammed through his company could get some of their money back. Nigerian investors who put their money as an investment in his “Bitcoin” are not going to get anything in return," another source added.
Youssef also mentioned regulatory challenges, particularly in the P2P market and in the United States. According to Youssef, the Paxful Wallet will remain operational so that customers can retrieve their funds. Customers are encouraged to use self-custody or other service providers such as Bitcoin payments company Bitnob and newly launched peer-to-peer marketplace Noones.
Paxful suspended ether trading on the marketplace in December, citing the network's switch to proof-of-stake from proof-of-work as the reason. The platform has only traded bitcoin since then.
SaharaReporters had on Friday reported that the shutdown of Paxful appeared to have significantly affected the Nigerian cryptocurrency market.
On April 4th, Paxful declared that it would halt its operations without providing reason for this decision.
According to the founder and CEO Ray Youssef's blog, was due to "key staff departures" and the regulatory environment.
Meanwhile, Ray Youssef is an ardent supporter of Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate and had predicted in February in a tweet that Obi would win the election by a landslide.
According to "The 2020 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report" by Chainalysis, Nigeria ranked eighth in crypto adoption and usage among 154 countries included in the study Acceptance and usage of crypto in Nigeria were not as high until Paxful pioneered the use of peer-to-peer technology in the country, helping expand the crypto industry.
A Nigerian crypto user, Emmanuel Susegh, had told Cointelegraph that the shutdown of Paxful feels like "the death of a loved one," as the exchange helped him make his first $100,000. Susegh went on to say that Paxful was the go-to platform he used to trade gift cards from Amazon and Apple for Bitcoin as far back as 2015.
Over-the-counter (OTC) vendor Akeem Abdullahi expressed that a generation of OTC vendors was created by Paxful's escrow service the vendors could buy gift cards from individuals who wanted to sell and were not literate enough to use the platform.
Some community members took to Twitter to express their worry about users getting their funds back. However, Youssef has assured users in a tweet that the Paxful team is working on clearing users' send-outs.
Another member of the Paxful Nigerian community, data analyst Obinna Uzoije, mentioned that in the early days of his career, he used Paxful to exchange the dollars he received from his employers as pay for Nigerian naira.
At some point, freelancers in Nigeria who worked for international companies were paid through Skrill, an online payment platform. Certain users on Paxful accepted the funds, so the freelancers could easily exchange it for Bitcoin or cash.
Uzoije explained that this shutdown leaves a lot of other crypto enthusiasts in Nigeria wondering what the future holds for crypto marketplaces.
Over-the-counter (OTC) vendor Akeem Abdullahi expressed that a generation of OTC vendors was created by Paxful's escrow service. The vendors could buy gift cards from individuals who wanted to sell and were not literate enough to use the platform.
Some community members took to Twitter to express their worry about users getting their funds back.
However, Youssef has assured users in a tweet that the Paxful team was working on clearing users' send-outs.