Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s first decentralized cryptocurrency’s price has risen by more than 20% in the last week, reaching its highest level in more than a month.

According to The Independent, the cryptocurrency rose above $23,500 on Wednesday after seven straight days of price increases, providing investors with some much-needed positive movement after nearly eight months of a downward trend.

Regardless of its recent gains, bitcoin is still trading at roughly one-third of its peak from last November, with crypto analysts divided on whether a bottom has been reached or if this is just a temporary respite rally.

According to Vadym Synegin, co-founder of the Web3 platform WeWay, “while there is no guarantee that this latest upsurge will spell the end of the ongoing crypto winter, the fact that the market is recovering is a relief to investors, particularly long-term retail and institutional holders.”

“While many addresses are likely to be in losses at the moment,” Synegin concluded, “bitcoin has remained very popular among investors, with a good number viewing the coin as a viable hedge against inflation.”

The broader crypto market has mirrored Bitcoin’s revival, with Binance Coin (BNB), Cardano (ADA), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Polkadot (DOT) all seeing similar price gains over the last week.

Ethereum (ETH) has also seen tremendous gains, rising more than 50% since last week. The news that an event known as The Merge has a provisional launch date boosted the world’s second most valuable cryptocurrency.

This will result in Ethereum switching from a proof-of-work system to a proof-of-stake system, which will reduce the network’s energy consumption by approximately 99.95%. The cryptocurrency’s creators call it “the most significant upgrade in the history of Ethereum.”

The combined surge pushed the total cryptocurrency market back above $1 trillion for the first time since June.

“The reversal of recent capitulations in the crypto asset space is a very encouraging indicator that there is still value being realized by investors as new information and cycles take hold,” Simon Peters, an analyst at the online trading platform eToro, wrote in a note to investors.

A Peep into the African Crypto Space

Even though central banks in most African countries, such as Kenya and Nigeria, are hostile to cryptocurrency exchanges, forcing crypto traders in Africa to use P2P platforms as the only viable solution, unless they use VPNs to access servers in other countries, which can be inconvenient for many, the last year saw a 1,200% increase in crypto value in Africa alone. According to Chainalysis Insights, Africa has the highest transaction volume of peer-to-peer (p2p) payment platforms across all regions.

Also, the report says Africans received $105.6 billion in cryptocurrency payments between July 2020 and June 2021, a 1200 percent increase from the previous year.

Although cryptocurrency platforms offer decentralized peer-to-peer lending rather than traditional banking services, they can help level the economic playing field and expand finance options to underserved customer markets. Cryptocurrencies can address a wide range of economic challenges in Africa; from bridging financing gaps in the micro, small, and medium-sized enterprise (MSME) sectors to facilitating remittance transfers. Chainalysis estimates that cryptocurrencies such as Ripple facilitated up to $562 million in remittance payments out of the $48 billion remitted to Sub-Saharan Africa in 2019.

Crypto has come to play such a vital role in recent times in deepening the continent’s financial inclusion, hence, the impact of the goings-on in the crypto market – crypto gains/dips – trickles down to the economy and has a real effect on the people.