Overseas Insights | Morocco: An Underrated Web3 Blue Ocean Market

Along the North African Atlantic coast, Morocco is staging a unique financial experiment. Once home to the world’s strictest cryptocurrency ban, it is also the country with the highest cryptocurrency adoption rate in North Africa.

When the official gates are closed, the grassroots doors are already wide open. From office buildings in Casablanca to markets in Marrakech, digital assets are becoming an invisible weapon for millions of Moroccans to fight inflation and break through foreign exchange controls. By 2025, with regulatory legislation easing, it is necessary to revisit this blue ocean with enormous potential.

(First-hand information obtained by the author during a personal trip to Morocco this month, including casual chats with passersby and shop owners on the streets of Casablanca, Marrakech, Fes, Chefchaouen, etc.)

If you only look at the legal texts, Morocco seems like a cryptocurrency desert. As early as 2017, the Office des Changes and the Central Bank of Morocco jointly issued a notice explicitly prohibiting the use of cryptocurrencies for transactions, with violators facing penalties for violating foreign exchange regulations.

However, data tells a completely different story.

According to the “Global Cryptocurrency Adoption Index” report released by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, Morocco has consistently ranked first in North Africa and among the top globally over the past few years. Especially between 2022 and 2024, despite being in a bear market cycle, Morocco’s ranking remained resilient.

Even more astonishing are the figures on holdings. Estimates from TripleA and several local fintech institutions suggest that the proportion of cryptocurrency holders in Morocco is approaching 10%-15% of the total population. This means that in a country with about 37 million people, millions have already or are in the process of engaging with crypto assets in some form.

This is not just a game for the wealthy. In Morocco, the popularity of cryptocurrencies exhibits strong “grassroots” and “youthful” characteristics. This large user base has grown naturally without formal exchanges, bank deposit and withdrawal channels, or even legal protections.

What market logic is behind this phenomenon of “banning more, burning more”? To understand the market’s enthusiasm in Morocco, we must first understand its financial pain points.

Morocco enforces strict foreign exchange controls. The Moroccan Dirham (MAD) is a non-fully convertible currency. For ordinary citizens, transferring large sums abroad or receiving small overseas commercial payments is not only cumbersome but also strictly limited in amount.

This creates the most genuine demand for cryptocurrencies, especially stablecoins like USDT.

Morocco has a large pool of young talent proficient in French and English, active on global freelancing platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, engaged in programming, design, and translation work. For these young people, receiving overseas remittances via traditional banks (SWIFT) is not only slow (usually 3–5 business days) but also costly, and funds may even be frozen due to source verification issues.

Thus, USDT has become the best alternative. In Morocco’s tech communities and social media groups, “P2P trading” (peer-to-peer transactions) is extremely active. Freelancers receive USDT, then exchange it for Dirhams via platforms like Binance P2P within minutes, transferring the funds to local bank accounts or directly exchanging cash offline. This process completely bypasses the restrictions of the SWIFT system and has become a vital infrastructure for Morocco’s gig economy.

Besides receiving payments, making payments is also a major challenge. Many Moroccan merchants engaged in cross-border e-commerce (such as importing small goods from China) find that applying for foreign exchange quotas through banks to pay suppliers is so slow that it may delay business opportunities.

Cryptocurrencies offer a possibility of “instant settlement.” Although this practice is in a gray area, settling part of the payments with cryptocurrencies in Casablanca’s business districts has become an open secret.

Real case: “Airdrop Aid” during the earthquake

If foreign exchange controls are a long-term driver, then the major earthquake in 2023 was a “stress test” that demonstrated the practical utility of cryptocurrencies to society at large.

In September 2023, a strong earthquake struck the Al Haouz region of Morocco, causing severe casualties and property damage. During the critical rescue period, traditional bank branches closed, ATMs went offline or cash ran out, and disaster victims urgently needed funds to buy supplies.

At this moment, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced an airdrop to Moroccan users.

This was not a marketing gimmick but a real case:

· Binance identified the most affected users in Marrakech-Safi via KYC address verification.

· Directly airdropped $100 worth of BNB (Binance Coin) to these users’ accounts.

· For active users outside the epicenter, smaller token amounts were also airdropped.

· The total donation reached up to $3 million.

While this money couldn’t rebuild homes, it demonstrated a core advantage of cryptocurrencies at that time: borderless, intermediary-free, instant transfer. Many users quickly converted these tokens via P2P channels to buy urgently needed tents and food.

This event had a profound impact on Moroccans. It made many ordinary people who were previously skeptical of “virtual currencies” realize that cryptocurrencies are not just speculative tools but also a value transfer network capable of operating in extreme environments.

Standing in 2025, the Moroccan market is undergoing a qualitative change.

As the Bank of Morocco (Bank Al-Maghrib) officially drafts and submits a regulatory law for crypto assets, this North African country is shifting from “total ban” to “embracing regulation.”

What does this mean for outbound companies and investors?

1. The opening of compliance tracks: As legislation advances, exchange licenses and custody licenses will become scarce resources. Whoever can be the first to establish in Casablanca Finance City (CFC) will capture this already-educated market of millions.

2. Explosion of payment scenarios: Morocco has a very high mobile phone penetration rate. Once compliance thresholds are lowered, mobile payments and remittance apps based on stablecoins will see explosive growth, directly challenging traditional remittance companies like Western Union.

3. Talent dividend: Morocco has one of North Africa’s best pools of engineers. Web3 developers here cost far less than in Europe or America, but their technical capabilities are not inferior.

Morocco is not the next Dubai, nor the next Singapore. It bears a unique North African imprint: young population structure, strong cross-border payment needs, and awakening regulatory awareness. The 6 million crypto users here are not created by advertising but driven by real-life needs. This market, rooted in genuine pain points, often has more vitality than markets driven solely by hype.

For Web3 practitioners, don’t just focus on Silicon Valley and Hong Kong. Between the deserts and oceans of North Africa, Morocco, this underestimated puzzle piece, may be the missing corner of the global map.

(Note: The data referenced in this article is based on the Chainalysis 2022–2024 annual report, TripleA global adoption rate data, and publicly available reports from Moroccan media Hespress on the 2023 earthquake aid.)