Table of Contents
TL’DR,
- Nigerian crypto startup Obiex bootstrapped its way to $731.5 million in annual trading volume and 100,000+ traders without any venture capital, proving profitability beats funding rounds.
- Faced with a product failure and a nationwide crypto ban, the founders pivoted twice—ultimately succeeding by building a trading platform that solved user pain points like confirmation delays and price swings.
- Obiex captured 70% retail trader market share and is expanding to five new African countries while maintaining bootstrap profitability.
Regulatory updates, positive trends, and better storytelling have made kickstarting your crypto venture much easier. For instance, starting a Kenyan or Nigerian crypto startup simply requires a blend of what you offer (solution), where you are building (blockchain), and who your benefactors are (Eye Base, Lisk, Solana, and Celo for grants).
It’s a straightforward, not much of an underdog, inspiring story, so the real content lies with our veterans. Obiex, a Nigerian crypto startup, survived multiple existential threats ranging from Africa’s well-known “scam culture” to the CBN crypto ban. For them survival was left to product improvement, marketing, trust, and prayer.
The result? An annual trading volume of $731.5 million with over 100,000 traders, the very definition of an underdog story arc. But the best part is they never got any kind of venture capital backing. In an industry where competitors routinely raise millions to fuel expansion, Obiex built profitability through bootstrapped operations, strategic pivots, and an unwavering focus on solving real problems for African traders.
A Nigerian crypto startup that turned constraints into an edge
Like every well-known African crypto startup, their story began with Bitcoin. In 2016, Obiex CEO Ikechukwu Okeke discovered Bitcoin, and like many of you, it was a “game-changing” opportunity. Alongside co-founder and CTO Chidozie Ogbo, Okeke launched what he described as “a Paystack for crypto,” a payment gateway enabling merchants to accept Bitcoin and stablecoins.
The concept was sound and practical, the execution solid; the market, however, had other ideas.
“Businesses saw crypto less as a payment tool and more as a store of value,” Okeke explained in an interview. Back then Bitcoin was seen as a long-term investment; think of money market accounts but with a 10x potential. Thus, the product failed, forcing the team to pivot to an instant crypto-to-naira off-ramp.
photo: obiex
The new app worked,processing transactions for hundreds of active users with minimal marketing spend. Then came the CBN crypto ban in February 2021, severing access to banks and payment partners.
“When the CBN pulled the plug, we couldn’t process automated payouts anymore,” Okeke recalled. “We tried to run it manually, but it wasn’t scalable.”
For the second time in its short history, Obiex’s business model had evaporated. Most founders would have moved on. Okeke and Ogbo went back to the drawing board instead.
So the question was if they couldn’t facilitate stablecoin transactions and couldn’t facilitate fiat withdrawals easily, what edge would their company have? The answer was simpler, going back to the industry’s first success: crypto trading.
In June 2021, Obiex rebuilt itself as a crypto trading platform that eliminated confirmation delays entirely. Traders could lock in value instantly, removing the risk of price swings during deposit processing. Combined with zero-fee trading and username-based transfers (eliminating the need to manage complex wallet addresses), the relaunched platform addressed multiple friction points simultaneously.
The Magic Formula Instant Locks and Zero Fees
As a standard Nigerian crypto startup, Obiex solved confirmation delays and sudden price swings through instant value locking. The third time was literally the charm, with the platform processing $2.93 billion in total swaps and tracking toward crossing $3 billion by year-end 2025. The startup’s swap volume alone grew from $588 million in 2024 to $832 million in 2025.
The Nigerian platform started processing millions, having a gross transaction volume of $8 billion in 2025 and over $19 billion since 2021. Perhaps more impressively, 70% of this volume comes from retail users, with business customers contributing 28%. Year-to-date in 2025, active users traded an average of $211,000, according to internal data.
As a crypto trading platform, Obiex diversified beyond swaps (which make up 11% of GTV). It built an OTC desk (launched in April) for large block buys and sells, added utility and remittance payments, and rolled out an API that provides wallets to other exchanges. Now what started as a fledgling Nigerian crypto startup is serving roughly 12 crypto exchanges within its region.
Obiex team; From L-R: Gospel Iroegbu (Head of Compliance), Christiana Adeloye (People and Culture Lead), Ikechukwu “Jerome” Okeke (CEO, Cofounder), Nwamaka Ofili (Head of Treasury Operations), Odinaka Esiagu (Head of Customer support), and Chidozie Ogbo (CTO, Cofounder) [photo:Obiex]
What profitability looks like for a bootstrapped fintech
“We started making money from day one. We bootstrapped Obiex and have reinvested everything back into the business to keep growing.”
The founding team “dug deep,” collectively investing approximately $150,000 in operational funding and providing liquidity themselves during the early days. It was more than a mere startup for the teams; it’s an all-in mentality that paid off in $731.5 million in annualized trade volume.
Today, the team sits at around 40 employees and maintains that the business is capital-efficient. While Obiex declined to share revenue figures, it claims strong revenue per active user. Hard lessons from the CBN crypto ban pushed the company to design around banking bottlenecks, a choice that continues to influence its architecture and operations.
For a bootstrapped fintech firm, it was more about handling an investment than just building a solution
The Next Chapter Across Africa
Obiex went from a twofold failure to a profitable crypto trading platform without having to give up equity to any third party. Today, the platform is focusing on expanding into Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda.
Africa has now shifted into a pro-regulatory front with Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria leading the way. With no fear of sudden “bans,” Obiex’s retail focus intends to onboard more users.
