Will Africa become the melting pot for cryptocurrency?

Will Africa become the melting pot for cryptocurrency?

by | Feb 5, 2020 | News

More and more startups seem to agree that Africa is the future of Bitcoin and can possibly be the next Crypto Valley. And the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, agrees.

After his first visit to the African continent last year, The CEO of Twitter declared that this is the future of Bitcoin.

During his visit, Dorsey sought to find startup founders, such as Atsu Davon, the founder of Bitsika, a cross-border transaction app, based in Ghana.

Jack Dorsey announced that he will go back to Africa, and this time he will invite investors to come with him because the current challenges and workforce of Africa can prove to be exactly what Bitcoin needs to succeed.

Africa pays the highest remittance costs in the world and is one of the largest unbanked population. These can turn into opportunities for cryptocurrency startups.

But is this enough and will Africa lead the way to blockchain infrastructures and Bitcoin mass adoption?

What is the current progress of cryptocurrency in Africa?

According to Ray Youssef, the CEO of Paxful, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace, there is potential to bring Bitcoin into mass adoption, as he tries to teach people the use cases of crypto:

“Africans have had peer-to-peer financial systems in place for thousands of years,”

In Africa, sending money is so expensive and troublesome, that most of the time is better to go and deliver them yourself. That’s why Paxful is so successful in Africa and 45% of its subscriptions come from the African continent.

Youssef believes that the best asset of the African continent are its people:

“The greatest national resources in Africa are above the ground, not below it,”
“It’s the people—so driven, so ambitious, and just looking for a way to make a difference.” 

And the greatest feature of Africa is also young. 60% of the continent’s population is under 25.

Philip Agyei Asare, the CEO of BTCGhana, a remittance platform founded in 2015, recognises the usage of crypto as a means to store value, a medium for borderless transactions.

As for the regulations in Africa, Atsu Davon, the founder of Bitsika sees it like this:

“African crypto is like the Wild West, there are no legal hurdles or regulations,”
“Governments don’t know that much about crypto so they let people do whatever they want to do.” 

Atsu Davon also added that he knows about a case in which transactions of $30 million in Bitcoin were processed over the counter.

The potential of national digital currency in Africa

South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria are the three major economies in Africa and they are interested in crypto. South Africa and Ghana are looking into national digital currencies.

Africa cryptocurrency regulation
Crypto regulation in Africa. (Source: Baker and Mckenzie)

Senegal, one of the most liberal crypto state in Africa, is where the first crypto city has started being built by the rapper Akon. But the project seems to be stalled as an immediate improvement of education is more pressing.

Paxful started building 100 schools in 2017, using bitcoin.

Why Africa can be a giant sandbox for blockchain development

According to Bitange Ndemo, who heads Kenya’s Blockchain and AI Taskforce:

“Africa missed the first, second and third industrial revolutions, but we have a real opportunity to be a part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,”

Crypto and blockchain developments are obvious in the African continent. In Nigeria already exist blockchain commodity exchanges, while Kenya uses blockchain to establish land rights and to boost agriculture.

Cardano is a quite present platform, working to address local needs together with African governments.

At the moment, Africa can stop worrying about how it failed to develop the current technology because the future is here – AI, IoT and 5G. Africa can now focus on building all of these, better than the rest of the world.

The digital revolution has started in Kenya, where M-Pesa was founded, and it explores the applications of technologies like blockchain. AS the startups are thriving in Kenya, the government needs a trusted identity platform and to use biometrics to verify transactions.

The spread of smartphone usage in Africa led to the this digital revolution. Ten percent of GDP in transactions are made with mobile money

Many believe that in 2020, the African continent will have its own stablecoins. NairaEx is a crypto exchange from Nigeria which is working on Naira, a stablecoin backed by the national currency, while Bitsika is developing its own stablecoin.

The challenges of a big continent

Of course, Africa is huge and that means that we will see a lot of disparity in how technology is being used. Africa is home to over 1.2 billion people ans has 54 different countries.

What works in one country, can fail in another.

Although it is being regarded as a digital currency for the entire continent, M-Pesa’s success from Kenya wasn’t replicated in South Africa, and there is no explanation to it.

And while some countries make cryptocurrency very accessible, others have banned it, and Zambia is an example.

But what makes the African continent such a suitable place for a cryptocurrency revolution are its startup founders, who grew up in an era of digital transformation, and this alone could lead to Africa becoming the melting pot of cryptocurrency and blockchain developments.

Atsu Davon, the founder of Bitsika:

“Jack said the future of crypto is in Africa, and I totally agree,”
“If you just look at the freedom we have here, the talent and the attention we’re getting from outside—and the role and purpose these solutions serve—this is the perfect place. When I look at all the exciting companies being built here, I think that very, very soon, we’ll see a crypto valley happening in Africa.”

Blockchain’s scalability issue can soon be overcome

Blockchain’s scalability issue can soon be overcome

by | Feb 4, 2020 | Blockchain, News

After millions have been spent to find a solution for the scalability issue of the decentralized blockchain, a solution appeared in sight.

A former lead researcher at Microsoft, Jia Ping Wang, created the Asensys protocol and recently presented his solution for a scalable blockchain.

The Asensys protocol was designed specifically to test the concept Wang proposed, and it showed a greater capacity than the main blockchains during the tests. How?

According to Wang:

“Asensys is able to essentially ‘divide and conquer’ all network actions, thereby reducing unnecessary redundancy,”

The blockchain scalability trilemma

Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, came up with the concept of the scalability trilemma.

He says it’s easy to have a blockchain with only two key attributes, out of the three needed: security, decentralization and scalability. The ‘trilemma’ is to have all three at the same time, but usually, you have to give one up to make a network scale.

As District0x presented the issue:

“…if Ethereum nodes become too expensive to run, the network will be more susceptible to centralization. At the same time, requiring each transaction to be processed by every node will make it so Ethereum never scales.” 

Trying to overcome this problem, some Ethereum developers have tried to apply the sharding method, which essentially lets the network’s nodes process only parts of the transaction.

On the other hand, Bitcoin developers have exploited other solutions. such as Lightning, which doesn’t get the network clogged up with small transactions and allows them to be processed off-chain. Some believed this to not be a secure solution.

So what’s the big news from Asensys?

Supposably, Asesnsys has solved the trilemma, and it doesn’t go off-chain.

Wang started describing his method in the conference paper “Monoxide: Scale out blockchains with asynchronous consensus zones,”.

In his paper, Wang proposed to remove duplicating efforts on the blockchain and spreading the workload asynchronously.

On top of the increased capabilities of the network, “the Asensys protocol increases proportionately to the community size,” according to a press release.

We are still waiting to hear more about this solution, as it is in its early days and few details were revealed to the media.

We need inter-blockchain communication, and not one coin to rule them all

We need inter-blockchain communication, and not one coin to rule them all

by | Jan 31, 2020 | News

Andreas Antonopoulos, the author of Mastering Bitcoin, talked about inter-blockchain communication at the Blockchain Summit in October 2019:

“I find it astounding after all this time that people still try to follow this idea of ‘winner takes all.’ One coin to rule them all. One chain above all else. We’re coming for ya. The flippening,”

The market has the conviction that one day, one of these networks will surpass Bitcoin’s $170 billion market cap.

The Ethereum network would the next one in line, but even so, its market cap is at only $19 billion. But according to Antonopoulos, “The data just doesn’t support that hypothesis,”

We might have multichain in the near future

According to Andreas Antonopoulos, we will have many useful distributed blockchain in the near future.

The CEO of Bison Trails, Joe Lallouz believes that

“We’re going to continue to see blockchains get built with very specialized ideas in mind,” 

“Mass adoption will be more likely in the future of interconnected blockchains,”

Bitcoins have value and the Ethereum network operates smart contracts.

The blockchain space is expanding, as the Loom network reached out to Tron and Binance chains and Summa is providing interoperability solutions. A lot of investments have gone into Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) solutions and can eventually reach a consensus position in the industry.

Some may argue that the solution is already here and it’s the lightning network.

Bruce Fenton, founder of the Bitcoin Association and the Satoshi Roundtable, stated:

“Personally, I believe that the rising tide lifts all boats and that many projects can benefit from the efforts of each other,”

Keld van Schreven, a co-founder of crypto investment firm KR1, argued IBC yields an effect that is greater than the sum of its parts. 

“Without IBC we will just have a limited horizon of possibility,” he said.

If the industry decides to shift towards IBC, it could be some sort of enlightenment moment, and it can ever lead to a more united ecosystem.

But building this inter-blockchain communication system is much more complex than speaking about it.

Crypto World January 2020: Coinbase moves to Ireland, IPO approved in Switzerland, Deutsche Bank foresees widespread adoption

Crypto World January 2020: Coinbase moves to Ireland, IPO approved in Switzerland, Deutsche Bank foresees widespread adoption

by | Jan 30, 2020 | News

The first month of 2020 has come to an end and the crypto world has a lot going on. So what happened in the Crypto World in January 2020?

Coinbase is moving to Dublin, Ireland to serve European customers

Following the Brexit announcement, Coinbase has launched Coinbase Custody International Inc. in Dublin, Ireland, to handle European cryptocurrency deposits. The company has acquired an Irish e-money license in October 2019.

Coinbase explained their decision in a blog post and wrote:

“While Coinbase Custody has served European-based clients in the UK, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and more since 2018, our dedicated presence in Europe will allow us to offer these services in a completely localized way, with local staff, localized [service-level agreements] and in compliance with local laws,”

Coinbase and Coinbase Custody Internationa are two different companies and aim to provide support for the European demand for investment and cryptocurrency.

Swiss Incorporates a Blockchain IPO

Andriotto Financial Services , a Swiss company has been allowed to incorporate for an initial public offering (IPO) of tokenized shares on a blockchain.

The company has stated that it will be using the blockchain technology to keep the shareholders registry and tokens will be used to represent shares.

The firm’s IPO prospectus indicates an offering of 8,399,000 “common equity share security tokens” on the ethereum blockchain, with smart contracts provided by with EURO DAXX, a digital assets exchange based in the country’s “Crypto Valley” city of Zug. The offering price will be €1.25 ($1.38) per share.

IBM has received a U.S. patent for a token that can record its own transaction data.

Referred to as the “self-aware-token”, the token makes it easier for all participants to trace transactions, even when it’s used on other platforms, than the IBM payment platform.

The patent describes the ledger-based system, which is designed to record all data when is not used on the IBM platform. When the token rejoins the ecosystem, it automatically uploads the data.

Awarded by the U.S. Patent Office on Jan. 7, the patent outlines a ledger-based payments system that could make it easier for individual users, businesses and governments to track and trace transactions made using a cryptocurrency.

The token itself cannot store any information, but it would use personal devices or a dedicated database.

Such tokens can prove to be useful for a business trying to discover which crypto have been used for criminal activities, to ensure that they haven’t been corrupted or to enforce regulations.

Singapore Announces New Regulation for Crypto Businesses

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is updating its regulatory framework for digital payments.

Singapore announced the DPT (Digital Payment Token) as a service, to cover all crypto businesses and crypto exchanges based in Singapore, under the current anti-money laundering (AML).

As a result, any crypto business in Singapore has to first register and then apply for a license to operate.

MAS Assistant Managing, Director Loo Siew Yee, stated:

“The Payment Services Act provides a forward-looking and flexible regulatory framework for the payments industry,”

“The activity-based and risk-focused regulatory structure allows rules to be applied proportionately and to be robust to changing business models. The PS Act will facilitate growth and innovation while mitigating risk and fostering confidence in our payments landscape.”

Deutsche Bank Says Digital Currencies Could Be Mainstream in 2 Years

A report from Deutsche Bank states that digital currencies have “potential to radically change payments, banking, central banking and the balance of economic power.”

This could mean that we will see widespread adoption within the next few years.

Considering China’s digital yuan and the Facebook project of launching Libra, this could lead to introducing digital currencies to over half of the world’s population.

Ukraine Will Track Crypto Transactions Above $1,200

According to the head of the country’s Ministry of Finance, Oksana Makarova, Ukraine plans to track crypto transactions exceeding $1,200.

Last month, the Ukrainian president, Volodymir Zelensky, signed a law which reinforces anti-laundering practices for cryptocurrency transactions.

For the first time., The law included cryptocurrency as an asset to be monitored. The threshold for triggering the scrutiny process is 30,000 Ukrainian hryvnia (UAH), or US$1,200. 

The Ministery of Finance stated:

“If exchanges, exchangers, banks or other companies make payments in cryptocurrencies worth more than UAH 30,000 in equivalent, they must verify such transaction and collect detailed customer information,”

“The customer must provide comprehensive information about the origin and destination of their virtual assets.”

The Coronavirus Outbreak in China Could Weigh on Crypto Prices

After the Coronavirus epidemic broke out this month in China, most crypto clients cancelled their meetings in China, as nobody wants to attend any conference or meeting during this time.

China is a crypto investment hub and it has the most crypto exchanges in the Asia-Pacific region, and the epidemic will disrupt business and can potentially impact prices.

Marketing events are crucial for crypto investments, but these will be put on hold until the crisis goes away.

Jason Wu, the CEO and founder of non-custodial crypto lender DeFiner stated:

“The market might take a heavy blow if the money stops flowing into these crypto asset classes as it usually did before,”

Aside from the epidemic, the Chinese New Year is also a bad time for investments, as many prefer to cash out during this time. But VCs are confident that they will see those investments coming back.

The latest 5 blockchain technology trends in 2020

The latest 5 blockchain technology trends in 2020

by | Jan 22, 2020 | Blockchain, News

The Bitcoin and crypto hype of 2017 has worn off, but companies have continued to invest in research and development for the past years. And that’s not going to change in 2020. Here are 5 blockchain technology trends to look after in 2020.

According to analysts, blockchain ranks as one of the top 10 technology trends in 2020.

Even if the enthusiasts have become calmer, don’t fall to believe that blockchain is going away. Because the exact opposite is true. The blockchain technology is just in its infancy, and only a few companies have been able to successfully use it for their digital operations.

Blockchain’s future is tightly connected with the future of AI and IoT.

Here are some blockchain trends for 2020.

Other industries will follow the to implement blockchain

The blockchain technology became famous once Bitcoin started to gain popularity, and that’s why the finance sector was the first one to use this innovative technology.

But blockchain isn’t limited to digital currencies. The number of uses cases and examples grows with every month, as companies and developers become more open-minded. The blockchain technology can be incorporated into systems to stop frauds, as a settlement system, for the smart contract feature and of course, to increase the speed of digital transactions.

IBM, the company that helped launched more successful blockchain initiatives than any other company, believes that the investment of financial services in blockchain will increase in 2020.

Blockchain has immense value for services and industry that require secure ledger or transactions and need to keep track of everything. This includes agricultural products and luxury goods.

Facebook plans to bank the unbanked

For the past year, Facebook has been talking about how it will revolutionize the financial world, all over the world.

The launch of Libra is supposed to be in 2020, but many details are still unrevealed.

Since the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, many altcoins have been launched and many of those have sunk before anyone ever knew about them. But the world has yet to see a giant such as Facebook, launching its own crypto. This is something nobody has seen before and it can change the financial world as we know it.

The topic is controversial, as both Mastercard and Visa announced their withdrawal from the project due to regulatory concerns.

Libra, the cryptocurrency promised by Facebook, is technically a cryptocurrency, but its processing mechanism was described differently than the one Bitcoin has. It will rely on computer encryption to guarantee the integrity of the network, but the network will be centralized, as opposed to the distributed system used by all the other cryptocurrencies.

Even so, if Facebook makes its promise a reality, it will finally succeed in disrupting the current global monetary system.

The blockchain technology and its integration with AI continues

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be difficult to understand, due to the large volume of data that determines its decisions.

Some believe that the blockchain technology can be the solution to that, as it would make the decisions traceable and would allow humans to verify that the decisions were made based on verifiable information.

The two technologies can even help each other. The blockchain improves the use of the AI and the AI can make the blockchain more secure and easier to operate.

Using these two powerful technologies, companies can reduce waste in production, streamline supply chains, make predictions more accurately. It is likely to see the first cloud service providers that combine AI and blockchain in 2020.

Blockchain can be used to secure the Internet of Things

People are using and connecting more and more devices in their personal and business lives to process data, which can lead to more opportunities to corrupt that data if it would fall into the wrong hands. Or information can be simply misplaced.

Because more and more information is transferred machine-to-machine, a trustworthy and secure environment is necessary.

Luckily, blockchain technology can be used to get the current best solution known to man. All transactions and pieces of information are transparently recorded to all parties. This makes debugging, a much simpler task to understand where the error occurred and what caused the problem.

Studies have shown that the companies that have adopted IoT are planning to also implement blockchain in 2020 if they haven’t done so already.

Governments are pro blockchain

Wyoming is the first state in the US to adopt a framework that allows blockchain to flourish.

As the first cryptocurrencies appeared, the transfer of valuable assets became possible for the first time, for anyone in the world. This raised attention by the central banks, who were concerned by the obvious potential of money laundering and illegal activities.

To this day, these concerns have kept cryptocurrencies from mass adoption and why the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) consistently rejected applications for public cryptocurrency banks.

The decision of the Wyoming legislators doesn’t change that. But with their decision, they made public their belief that regulation should be an enabler and not a blocker of technology.

We hope to see more states and countries from all around the world to follow their examples in 2020.

Millennials love digital collectable card games built blockchain

Millennials love digital collectable card games built blockchain

by | Jan 21, 2020 | Blockchain Games

The market of digital and blockchain collectables is increasing by the minute and the Millenials love it. Some are even willing to invest big money in them, as a form of investment, and sell their collectables later, at a greater price.

If you’re still wondering if blockchain collectables is a niche market, then let’s explore together why millennials love digital collectable card games and what’s the value added by the blockchain collectables.

The potential of digital and blockchain collectables

Digital collectables offer a different approach, and it doesn’t necessarily offer an opportunity to make money (although it can and it does in some cases).

Let’s looks at some examples.

FootballCoin (independent blockchain fantasy football with digital collectables)

Let’s take the example of FootballCoin, a fantasy football manager game, built entirely on blockchain, with digital collectables.

As a blockchain game, it presents multiple facets of the game, and it is not only a football manager. As more and more Millenials get interested in obtaining and owning digital assets, the niche of digital collectables has begun to be of particular importance.

What makes this collectable game unique, it’s its own blockchain, independent of any other platform, on which all the assets and coins are created.

The in-game market of FootballCoin, features collectable football player cards, which were issued in limited amounts and can increase or decrease in value, based on the real-life performance of the particular footballer.

To make the most out of this free to play the game, you have to participate in the free contests and choose a team of 11 football players plus substitutes. This part requires some football knowledge.

Ethereum blockchain games

Today, most blockchain collectable games are based on the Ethereum blockchain and need users to buy ETH in order to buy or trade something in the game.

Some of these games got really popular, while others are still aiming to reach a wider audience, having a very niche market at the moment.

SoRare (collectable & tradeable blockchain footballer cards)

A good example of a collectable card game built on the Ethereum blockchain is SoRare. Although the collectables are on the blockchain, the game doesn’t offer its own crypto and it rellies entirely on Ether. The users need to have an Ether wallet installed on their browser. The good news is that the blockchain collectables can be purchased easily with a credit card.

This blockchain game offers the option to collect your favourite footballers’ digital cards, trade them or use them to build your team and to earn weekly rewards. With the promise to add more football clubs to their list, football fans can collect their favourites. And can make a profit by selling them.

Other examples of such blockchain collectable card games built on the Ethereum blockchain are CryptoSpells, Mythereum, Gods Unchained, Blockchain Cuties, MLB Champions, CryptoKitties.

Spells of Genesis was the first blockchain collectable card game was built on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Regardless of how the industry sees these games, they are gaining popularity, and that’s why more and more blockchain collectable card game appear each year. Millennials love them and are willing to buy these collectable cards.

Another perspective worth pointing out is the appeal of owning digital assets, which can be a piece of digital art or a collectable and it’s all possible because of the blockchain technology.

What makes these digital collectables so valuable to Millenials?

Similarly to cryptocurrency and digital tokens, blockchain collectables are issued in limited quantity which ensures the scarcity attribute specific to the crypto market. With every resell, they become more valuable.

The success of the blockchain collectable card game holds in their appeal to users.

Although these collectables serve no purpose other than an intriguing market for enthusiasts, reaching a bigger audience will definitely help awareness and add value.