I’m Victor. I run Gidipex.

Gidipex is a crypto exchange. Spot, futures, OTC, P2P, contests, and an AI assistant in the same window. You can use it from the web or talk to it on WhatsApp.

Here’s what it is, and why I’m building it.

Most exchanges don’t fit the users I want to serve

I’ve worked in payments and crypto since 2013. Started on Hubtel Mobile Money’s PHP client, then a stretch at PayPlux Ghana on the engineering side. The pattern is always the same: someone builds an exchange for a generic global user, then the local team gets asked to staple payment rails on afterwards.

That works until something breaks. Then you find out the support team has no visibility into the local rail, the KYC vendor doesn’t recognise the user’s ID format, and bank-transfer reconciliation turns out to be a spreadsheet someone in the back office rebuilds by hand.

I wanted to build it the other way around. Settlement first, exchange behind it.

What’s in the box

A full exchange. Spot pairs, leveraged futures, OTC desk, P2P settlement. Everything a trader needs in one place, from a $20 trade to OTC-size flow.

The AI assistant works inside your account, not as a side panel. It reads your portfolio, pulls live rates, walks you through opening a position, explains a liquidation in plain English, summarises your week. WhatsApp or the web — same context, same balance.

Mobile money corridors and local bank rails are first-class on the backend, with operator tooling that traces every withdrawal across every hop in one window.

What you get

Local-currency deposits and withdrawals on local rails — no offshore wire, no SWIFT detour, no waiting on a foreign bank. Every market we serve, on the rails users already use. Spot pairs on the majors. Leveraged futures with the risk controls in the same view as the position: liquidation distance, margin headroom, take-profit and stop-loss, all before you click. OTC desk for size the order book can’t absorb. P2P routes for corridors where peer settlement is the cleanest path.

Trading contests with real USDT prizes. Round 1 ran from late February to the end of April: 17 traders entered, 3 paid out, top prize was $1,200 USDT, $2,000 total pool. Round 2 is live now. Free entry. Runs through June 30.

Where I’m going

An exchange where a Nigerian user — or Kenyan, or Ghanaian — doesn’t have to mentally translate between their bank, their phone, and their portfolio. The AI is the easy surface. The infrastructure underneath is what makes it work.

Gidipex Limited is registered in Lagos. The team is here. The compliance work is happening here.

Start at gidipex.com. Round 2 of the contest is live. Free entry.

— Victor