Egypt: Bitcoin Usage Soars as the Pound Collapses

There is no more subtle, safer way to overturn the existing foundations of society than to corrupt the currency. In Egypt, Bitcoin (BTC) is theoretically illegal. Banned since 2020, condemned by a fatwa since 2018, punishable by imprisonment. And yet, peer-to-peer trading volumes (from person to person, without going through a centralized platform) have more than tripled. This coincidence is not accidental. It closely follows the fall of the Egyptian pound, which dropped below 52 to the dollar in the spring before stabilizing just above 50. A country that tracks Bitcoin with one hand pushes its citizens into its arms with the other.

Key points of this article:

• In Egypt, despite the strict ban on Bitcoin since 2020, peer-to-peer trading has tripled, exacerbated by the collapse of the Egyptian pound.
• The rapid devaluation of the local currency has pushed citizens towards Bitcoin, thus escaping the control of regulators, in a disastrous economic context.

Since 2020, Article 206 of Banking Law No. 194 prohibits the issuance, exchange, and promotion of cryptocurrencies on Egyptian soil. The text provides for imprisonment and a fine of up to 10 million Egyptian pounds. On paper, the penalty is frightening. In reality, it has melted away with the currency it is supposed to protect. These 10 million were worth about 636,000 dollars at the 2020 rate (15.7 pounds to the dollar). At the current rate, barely 196,000 dollars.

Two years earlier, in 2018, the Egyptian religious authority Dar al-Ifta had already ruled. Cryptocurrency trading, according to it, is haram. The Central Bank of Egypt has never deviated from this line, until the arrest in 2021 of a man from the Menoufia governorate for promoting Bitcoin on social media. Volumes on LocalBitcoins and Paxful dropped the following week, with no formally established causal link. That’s the theory.

In March 2026, the Egyptian pound lost more than 10% of its value in a single month. It fell to 52.34 to the dollar before rising somewhat to 50.95 in September. Inflation, meanwhile, does not loosen its grip, with 14.9% year-on-year in July compared to 14.3% the previous month.

In fact, the Central Bank has kept its key rate at 19% for four consecutive meetings. The International Monetary Fund is keeping an eye on the case. Its seventh review, completed at the end of July, unlocked an additional 1.8 billion dollars, bringing the total disbursed since the start of the program to nearly 7 billion.

Even the Suez Canal, usually the country's cash cow, is no longer helping as much, with revenues falling from 10.2 billion dollars in 2023 to 4 billion in 2024 and a recovery capped at 4.67 billion for the 2025-2026 fiscal year. The Treasury is therefore seeking air. According to the Bitcoin Policy Institute, peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading volumes have more than tripled after successive devaluations of the pound, although the think tank does not specify the exact period or dataset.

Why peer-to-peer specifically, and not a classic platform? Because these direct exchanges between individuals, without a centralized intermediary, are much harder to spot for a regulator who has neither the means nor the desire to monitor every WhatsApp or Telegram transaction. The Central Bank can shut down a platform overnight. It cannot close a private conversation. The phenomenon is, in fact, nothing new.

The flight to Bitcoin was already observed well before the most recent devaluations, driven by years of currency controls and dollar shortages. What has changed is the scale of the movement. A currency that loses 10% in a month makes saving in pounds less appealing than converting what one can into an asset that the state does not control. The same reflex runs throughout the region, from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon. The more local purchasing power collapses, the less the ban weighs against the fear of losing everything.

Egypt is not an isolated exception. The IMF may complete its reviews and the pound may stabilize somewhat above 50 to the dollar, but distrust is already established. A fatwa does not weigh against a bill that doubles. The rest of the African continent is watching the same dynamic repeat, each with its own currency in freefall and its own Bitcoin black market. Keynes was right about one thing: corrupting a currency mobilizes against itself forces that no regulator diagnoses in time. In Egypt in 2026, this is no longer an economist's thesis. It is a monthly bulletin from the Central Bank.