Bitcoin Forum

BitPost has recently published an article explaining the ways Bitcoin could help African economics. Written by a writer from Kenya.
http://bit-post.com/africa-in-the-age-of-bitcoin/

Are here any African citizens? What's your point of view?

Africa is struggling with ebola and the problem is only going to get higher now... they can't focus on complex shit now, what they need is external help to stablish normality, then you can talk about stablishing a new economic system. Bitcoin could help in forms of donations for them, but it seems only DOGE and PND focus on charities.

agree. Africa needs medical stuff now not Bitcoin. 20% dead is among medical stuff and as it all progress, doubles every 2 weeks, it will run out of ot fast.

With casualties in US and the developing world, Ebola is back in focus now. Hopefully, pharma companies should come out with a cure soon.

Okay maybe my reading comprehension skills just suck today, but I didn't see him explain even a single way how bitcoin can uniquely help solve financial problems in Africa. 

The wire fee for Africa continent is quite high. Bitcoin transaction with decentralized exchange abroad can save them a lot of fee on simple transaction.

m-pesa has already taken the lead there.

and it works on a Nokia 1100 and similar models, "dumb phones" used by over a billion people in this world.


Market capitalization of $4.2 billion with only 15 million users..  same ratio as PayPal which has 150 million users ($40 billion).  Which proves that you can have something based in Africa still be worth a lot (after all the people using your service aren't the ones in rurals but the middle and upper classes living in the cities).

Of course if Bitcoin had 15 million users like M-Pesa or 150 million users like PayPal, then the capitalization would be in the $100s of billions or the $Trillions due to the asset characteristics of digital currencies.   In practice it's only 500K-2M users with a peak capitalization of $15-$18 billion.

The problem here is Bitcoin userbase expansion doesn't seem to be occurring.  If we take Bitcointalk as an coincidental example, the number of new registrations each month has been on the decline. 

There are a lot of local communities around social networks.
People no longer need to discuss Bitcoin on this forum.

let us together donated most bitcoin we have to help our brothers and sisters in Africa, they are now fighting against the ebola virus is endemic, it is not likely the virus will grow after poverty afflict many African people, we wish all these outbreaks quickly done and well-being of our brothers there is increasing, hopefully ...  8)

Last time I checked ebola is only affecting three countries (three of the smallest on the continent mind you).

It's extremely stupid to lump every country on the continent together, if you knew anything about the various countries you would avoid doing so.

I'm amazed at how easily some people are swayed by lazy media reports.

This thread is loaded with ignorance.

Surely.

Some years ago, some well-educated first-world tech-saviours " visionaries" mined a large bunch of btc for the cost of some hours of standardard-pc work.

Now they're trying to dump their coins to Africa at the cost of some hundred dollars each.

Immoral.

Bitcoin can solve "financial problems" everywhere, as it's vastly superior to fiat money.

I believe this is the service that facilitates payments via mobile phones. I would say they are certainly a competitor of bitcoin, the difference between m-pesa and bitcoin is that bitcoin is not controlled by any central company/person while m-pesa is which will prevent any disputes from arising with bitcoin while disputes will be a common occurrence with m-pesa (this will also increase costs with m-pesa as they need to pay people to deal with these disputes)

How so?

BTC is not inflationary. You can predict the monetary supply easily.

But inflation dont make financial problems. Inflation is helpfull for economy. Deflation is dangerous it can push economy in deflation spiral. This is what makes me most worry of Bitcoin, lack of inflation.

When some currency have inflation, holders are encouraged to spend it. or somehow invest to implement (start business yourself, lend to someone that makes business, buy shares, place in bank)
When currency have deflation you hold yourself to spend it you rather save. Why buy car today if you will be able to get car and a bike if you will wait till January for same money.


So is economy uses deflationed currency, start suffering from it. People less spend, companies less sell, companies less employ, workers get less salaries, workers spend even less, companies sell even less, companies employ even less, ...

Deflation spiral starts.

If we make the increase of BTC supply of 0.01% a year, would that alleviate your worry?

Price of bitcoin must decrease tiny bit every year. I dont see possibility that will ever happen. What i am saying is not. Bitcoin is worth nothing and wil never be used. What i am saying Bitcoin will not be most used currency that will economies use.

If you are talking about replacing government controlled currencies then the answer is yes it would help. Maybe to make it more accessible, i think it will benefit in a way if let's say bitcoin can be transferred using a normal phone rather than all the high end smartphones.

First African citizens need to be made technology literate. Then only they could be introduced to something like this. Else a few might misuse their knowledge...

Technology will not educate. Technology give chances to educate easier. When African governments will see how much Bitcoin can help, they will start education people about everything needed to know to use it.

If African countries are basically ruled by 1st world powers, it will not be as easy as you make it to be. The 1st world is interested in keeping 3rd world countries being 3rd world countries..

Topic UPD.

We've recently made an interview with Alakanani Itireleng, a wonderful woman involved with the Bitcoin Community in Gaberone, Botswana.

"Bitcoin  adoption is good for Southern Africa, for example, just sending money from Botswana to South Africa you incur a lot of expenses as if you are sending somewhere that is very far. The bank charges are ridiculous and with the percentage of people who are unbanked in southern Africa being this high bitcoin will really come in handy", she says.

Read more: http://bit-post.com/alakanani-itireleng/ (http://bit-post.com/alakanani-itireleng/)

It cannot. Because the problems in Africa are not financial. They are technological.

I do not live in Africa, but in South America, which is in better condition, but somewhat similar.

1st - for bitcoin you usually need internet. It is problematic here and much worse in Africa.

2nd - problem of 3rd world is not just the technology, much bigger problem is culture. Even here is no culture of hard work. It is all about party or family, then everyone is in debt immediately. Even the laziest hipster from US or Europe works harder. I suspect Africa is the same.

Few years ago I went to slum in Pernambuco, which is fairly poor area in Northeast of Brazil, looks exactly like Nairobi slums. I spent few weeks in this favela by guy who was soon after I left killed and met with locals. I picked up one extremely poor 20yrs old black guy, who was IMO brightest of all and he was speaking English, and took him out of the favela teaching him how to do things online.

To make story short - it utterly failed. I gave him computer, paid connection, food, his appartment. I was teaching him how to make money online. Although we were friends and he said he wants to be able to make money, he did not show effort. All he did was eating and going to church.

The problems of poor countries are much deeper, they are in culture and no mirracle will solve it. Not even BTC. It will help with money transactions but that is far not enough.

lol how is bitcoin going to help solve financial problems in africa when they dont even have the basic necessities

To the OP, what does the article say?

Lack of access to computers and the internet would be a significant barrier to BTC use in many parts of Africa.

Wow! This statement is grossly stereotypical at a minimum and racists at a maximum.

Any facts or evidence to support your claim that people in Africa have "no culture of hard work"?

Indeed!

By coincidence, a couple days ago I watched a documentary about some ancient slave chip which sunk a couple of hundred years ago just after leaving port after delivering its 'cargo', black Africans. The documentary also went on about the situation of those unfortunate people. Apparently, one of the reasons that preferably African people were enslaved was the fact these people, given the circumstances they had to deal with, were, sadly,  the best workers to be found... hence they were enslaved.

The fact is stated in my post. I live in 3rd world coutry, I see how it works here. I tried to deal with people here (black, white, mixed) and no success.
It is noit about race, but culture. Culture in poor countries is fucked up. I remember how I had to do something important on Friday night in Rio, so I was sitting with my laptop on sidewalk and WHITE WEALTHY guy stopped car in shock and started to shout at me that I am idiot that I am working on Friday night and let's go fucking some girls. Party here, party there.

I had few Africans from Egypt and Morocco on my payroll. They do not work either. It is their cultural (not racial) stereotype, where they believe, that it has no sense to work like Germans for example.

I really love hysterical US comments like yours. Move your ass and go to Africa and then tell me how hard the people work there. Until then you have no experience, just opinion. And you know how is it with opinions. Everyone has some as everyone has butthole...

Africa is the one of poor country on the world.
I'm sure with bitcoin, it has a high value on their currency.
With that high currency, African government can spend it for African people for good, especially for curing EBOLA disease

Africa isn't a country....

Do you actually know what you're talking about?

If so, please explain why you think your comment makes sense.

bitcoin cannot create wealth for an entire impoverished continent out of thin air.

maybe help with crazy inflation of certain african currencies, but that still is a gamble due to the wild btc exchange rate.  also, the level of technology available to the average person is probably very very different than in other parts of the world

Bitcoin is an enabling technology. In developed countries, the level of banking penetration is very high. You have many banks, with well established infrastructure in place. This is not the case in Africa.

Bitcoin may help Africa leapfrog over its infrastructure inadequacies. Now, all you need is a basic phone with an internet connection. You have your payment mechanism in place!!

But again, there is no wealth there in the first place. Payment systems don't mean anything without any money. Not to mention, is there a cellular/data network infrastructure in place to facilitate bitcoin use? Probably not in most areas. Again, a huge problem.

Facebook and Google are developing a good solution to cover huge areas with data network.

You shouldn't be painting the whole of Africa with a single brush. Africa is a vast and diverse continent. Agreed that on an average it is very poor, but that shouldn't be a reason for us to give up on the continent as a whole.

Its problems are also unique. The Ebola virus has set the development of a few countries back by a few years.

Africa needs political stability and infrastructure. Not a digital currency only popular with a small segment of the richest nations.

What they need is peace.

Everything will be balanced after the peace.

There are a lot of peaceful, impoverished nations.
They need a means to uplift themselves. Just aid will not work.

Nobody in this world will get peace just out of blue.

if you want peace, you have to fight. If you have to fight for it, you need resources. The weak are not protected. Never were, never will be. The weak die. In jungle and in capitalistic jungle as well. If weak nations have to survive they must get strong.

I do not see some nice future here for poor nations. Peple get stronger and harder by work. Not by slavery work, but with work, where everybody is risking a lot for future profit. This idea is both unknown and hard to realize in poor and unstable nations.

Poor will get poorer, rich will get richer. Even if they all use bitcoins. Well invested money with hard work produce other money and it does not matter if it is fiat or bitcoin and those money madeis money that someone else does not have quite often. (Actually it is much easier to redistribute fiat money to poor than bitcoins that are hard to confiscate or forge.)

One key enabler that would spread the use of Bitcoin around the continent is the ubiquity of the mobile phone.

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