Bitcoin is not some kind of magic wand that one can wave over a dilapidated country ad miracles happen... no, I think Venezuela needs to get its politics right as well as effectively dealing with social ills like corruption and government bureaucracy.

Getting the regulatory aspects of the currency right is key to Libra’s success, particularly in markets like India, which is proposing a new law that would make owning and selling cryptocurrency a crime and punishable for up to ten years in jail.

Point of correction, as of 2019, the estimated population of Nigeria is over 200.96 million, ranking 7th in the world

Yes true, Ibn Khaldun was a forerunner of most modern disciplines such as economics, history and sociology. It is a pity that today's world rarely acknowledges the impact of his contributions to the shaping of the way the world works and reasons. His works and writings on supply-side economics are classics and timeless. I remember reading elsewhere that at one time, the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, cited Ibn Khaldun as an influence on his supply-side economic policies, also known as Reaganomics!

“A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean” – Will Durant
I thought of this quote then I saw this thread, A stoic believes in going through hardships without complaints. An epicurean believed that pleasure is the greater good. In this case, stuffing on unhealthy foods because they are an easier option and shunning exercise and healthy foods because these are hard and less glamourous. So the quote implies that a nation is born of people willing to endure hardship, but fails as it's population places personal pleasure above everything else.

Besides health options, here are other obvious things that I also think that they may damage a country's economy
1. Corruption and greed
2. War - because it's costly and time-consuming
3. Intolerance - segregation of people according to race, religion, politics etc.
4. Unreasonable government policies that stifle investment and innovation
5. Lack of unity, national vision and social cohesion.

Most Africans have been sceptical about Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrencies for sometime now and this has been perpetuated by the possibilities that virtual currencies can be manipulated towards crime, tax evasion and money laundering. However, as more information is beginning to filter through African communities as well as the availability of testimonial enlightenment being administered by those who dared to try cryptocurrencies to their peers, more people are increasingly embracing cryptocurrencies.
In Nigeria, I know for a fact that the institutional abuse of the volatile Naira assisted the rise of bitcoin as Nigerians are trying to preserve the value of their wealth and earnings.

According to the research carried out in August 2018 by Localbitcoin,  Nigeria came first in Africa in terms of bitcoin trade and $258 million dollars worth of BTC was transacted in 2018 alone by Nigeria. This means that BTC is already working in Nigeria and it is filling a certain role that the Naira is failing to do.


 1. Remittances
Bitcoin can also be useful for remittances in African countries like Nigeria that are constantly facing currency and forex challenges. According to the World Bank, remittances to sub-Saharan Africa grew from $37.8 billion in 2017 to around $39.2 billion in 2018 and $39.6 billion in 2019. Again, Nigeria topped African recipients with $22.3 billion in 2017. You can clearly tell that this is one area that BTC is disrupting and will continue to do so.

2. Sub- Sahara Africa has a large number of unbanked people.
The World Bank estimates that Sub-Saharan Africa has around 350 million unbanked adults, and cryptocurrencies like BTC can fill this gap to move in to fill in the gap as they can move money across communities and borders with ease. In Nigeria, you will find that in some areas Muslim communities shy away from banking institutions where existing financial products on offer might not compatible with the principles of Islamic finance. These gaps can be Plugged by BTC.

3. Most economies in Africa are highly informal and that includes Nigeria.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that more than 85.8% of all employment in Sub-Saharan Africa is in the informal sector. It is therefore easy to see that this is one of the factors that have influenced the adoption and embracing BTC as young startups that are tech-savvy move to align themselves with the world's pace.

4. Stability
Nigeria has had a long history of military coups and corruption and this has largely affected the Naira. If one was to do a study in Africa you would see that Nigeria is not the only victim of doggy politics affecting the economy as the financial stability of economies in Africa is an oasis enjoyed by a few countries. Currencies have been known to lose value in a whiff and people’s savings wiped in the wink of an eye. Bitcoin offers a stable option as it is international and is not tied to any company, government or geographical location.
 
5. High literacy rates
Nigeria is one of the most learned countries in Africa, in fact, there is a running joke for years in Africa that says if you throw a stone in random in Lagos there is a 50% chance that you will hit a graduate. So it's easy for Nigerians to adopt BTC and they can use that literacy to earn for themselves trading and innovating new services and products around BTC.

However, there are several hurdles and roadblocks that BTC faces in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. Such roadblocks include; power issues (Nigeria suffers from incessant power cuts), Internet Connectivity issues, Internal conflicts (Boko Haram etc.), Low-income levels etc

I too used to wonder why we should do KYC to trading on cryptocurrency exchanges given that crypto came about out of the need for people yearning to stay anonymous from governmental financial tracking of transactions online. But then for exchanges to conform to regulations in countries where they operate it seems like they cannot do without KYC especially where the movement of large sums of money are involved.
KYC (Know Your Customer) refers to a process that banks and other financial institutions use to gather identifying data and contact information from current and potential customers. Its purpose is to prevent fraud, money laundering, and other illicit activity, as well as the misuse of financial accounts.

So to answer your question around the benefits of KYC to crypto, KYC helps in reducing and eliminating money laundering and financial fraud, remember Silk road. Also, there are fears around the world especially in security circles that funds moved and exchanging hands anonymously can end up being used to finance terrorism and extremism activities.

BUT if one wishes for ways to circumvent KYC, you can diversify your portfolio of crypto holdings to different exchanges. That is, if you’re not comfortable to give away your KYC data to any exchange, the solution is for you to separate your funds into different exchanges. This is possible because most exchanges provide daily 2 BTC withdrawal for non-KYC users

Also as a rule of thumb, you don’t want to keep all your eggs in one basket. (Even if the basket is the BIGGEST baskets in the world Binance) That’s another reason for you to separate your portfolio into different exchanges.

Pretty much, I think the era of the ICO has passed, it was fun when it all started but then like all bubbles the burst effect was pretty bad. In the end, people were starting to relate crypto with scams because of rouge ICOs that took investors' money and time and ran. I think it will be a good thing if we could all move on from ICOs and just work on making the crypto space safe and attractive for investment and growth.

Smells like a possible scam to me, its better to stay away from such

Just be yourself and be open-minded about learning new ideas. Getting merit should not be your end goal but some additives that you bump into along the way.

Looks like these ICODROPS guys  only curate a listing of ongoing ICOs and bounties but they do not manage the campaigns themselves

For now, it seems like its only Bitcoin that is a viable investment option, Ethereum used to be another better option but it seems like it lost its steam with the death of ICOs. However that having been said, Bitcoin's unique premier place in the crypto market also means that it tends to act as a rudder for the whole market, guiding the general direction but also providing a volatility buffer in bear markets and a springboard for promising new projects and currencies during bull markets. I feel that for cryptocurrencies to revolve into formidable investment avenue there is an urgent need to discard the necessity to hold multiple accounts across many exchanges as this tends to be confusing and risky for new and inexperienced investors.
 The current market scenarios where investors have to constantly keep up with numerous cryptocurrencies rapidly shooting up due to unnatural pumps and dumps as well as technically unsound hard forks whereby rebel factions try to replicate a currency but do not have the same integrity of intentions or infrastructure as the original currency is unsustainable and posses a hurdle to market growth.

There might be a need for passive index investment products that allow investors to participate in the broader cryptocurrency market without needing to hold the underlying assets themselves. Traditional Index products have been so successful that Warren Buffet even made a 1 000 000 USD bet with a hedge fund manager that a passively managed SP500 index fund would outperform sophisticated hedge managers over a 10-year period. He won. Why such products have been so successful is they are not dependent on any given company or member of the index, but rather profit from the success of all companies as a whole while discarding unsuccessful companies and including successful ones as they enter and exit the index.

It should be possible to invest in say the top 50 or so cryptocurrencies in terms of their market capitalization and also weigh them to an index of some sort by their market capitalization. Market capitalization being the number of coins available times the price of a coin which gives the value of the total coin supply. The index being the price is calculated every minute.

I think over the past 10 years Bitcoin has been able to build a formidable track record to pass past the test of being 'fools Gold' with flying colours. No funny money can survive for 10 years and rise to the current BTC price without support from the 'Establishment'. Believers/Investors cannot, therefore, be described as foolish or low IQ people, it might just be sour grapes utterances from those who failed to get onto the gravy train when it left the station

No one knows for sure how Libra is going to impact the world's financial systems but I think if Facebook manages to go through current regulation hurdles they could surely put a dent in our monetary system. Libra might not be able to compete against the more established US dollar or BTC which has more unique and superior features to its name, Libra might find a more conducive environment in emerging economies and developing countries.

Take a country like India for example, it desperately needs a more efficient vehicle to move diaspora remittances — given that nearly 200 million people use WhatsApp (According to the Digital Information Report https://urlzs.com/cPXDY). The Asian country’s market for diaspora remittances is one of the biggest in the world, with the World Bank estimating that about 80 million United States dollars were remitted to the country in 2018 alone. Information on hand paints Libra coin as a viable vehicle that is going to ensure that digital banking services reach the unbanked parts of the world.

I think it would be naive to undervalue the impact and traction that Facebook has in developing and emerging economies, I think Facebook Libra is going to piggyback on this traction. While most first-world markets around the world lean on messaging services like Apple’s iMessage for communication, the high-end smartphones on which such apps run on are priced out of many third world markets. Instead, the more generic apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger can run on various entry-level smartphones, some of which cost under one hundred dollars and allow for cheap and effective communication.

In most African countries innovative Mobile Network Operators have been coming up with internet connectivity products tailor-made for social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook bundles that offer exclusive access to these platforms at cheaper rates.

There are some countries where people actually believe that Facebook is the internet!

 Facebook seems to have been studying towards answering the, how to serve the unbanked world population question, as Libra coin is leaned towards serving the ‘forgotten ones’ — remember when Mark Zuckerberg made a surprise visit to Nairobi to learn about mobile money?

Now with Facebook having announced that to store and exchange Libra, you’ll need to use a “wallet”; a service that will be integrated into existing apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger & Instagram. Adoption and scaling in developing countries is likely to be a breeze as most people are more familiar with how to navigate around these apps.

Just my thoughts

Democratically elected Emmerson Mnangagwa???  The guy gained power via a coup and rigged the July 2018 elections! The economy is just negatively reacting to his election fraud, simple!

There is a need for careful selection and elimination of undeserving participants because not every entrant is good for your project.
Even high rankers can turn out to be unfaithful individuals who may just try to game your campaign and earn undeserved rewards. A good bounty campaign is as good as its participants and more importantly, its manager.

I am a Zimbabwean based in Zimbabwe and I can tell you we have come into a full circle in a space of 10 years, from the massive hyperinflation of 2008 (I have written an article on medium about this here https://urlzs.com/zzQvY).

 We then had an inclusive government in 2009 -2013 and we adopted the USD after the local Zimdollar crushed and the economy grew during this period. Then Zanu pf(the ruling political party) came back into power and things went haywire, the economy went into a downward spiral and USD notes vanished from the banks and people were left with electronic balances in their accounts.
The government thought it could solve this situation by printing what they termed ''Bond notes'' a local currency, not internationally recognised but which was pegged at par with the USD. But as you know according to Gresham's Law, ''Bad money drives out good money'' so this worsened the situation and the parallel market for money emerged. As I write to this post the Bond note is trading at 10:1 to the dollar. The government also thought it wise to ban the usage of the USD for transactions but as you know that won't work in a country that imports everything including toothpicks!.

And to answer your questions

Where is the Zimbabwean Economy going?
With the current Zanu pf government in power, there is no hope for improvement. To make matters worse they are backed by the military which even carried out a coup on the previous Zanu leader and replaced him with another Zanu leader in 2017! No one has confidence in the government and the recently introduced RTGS dollar. Memories of lost investments and pensions of 2008 are still fresh on people's minds and it will take a lot for the government to regain that confidence. The biggest elephant in the room is CORRUPTION and lack of rule of law. The country is a bad debtor internationally and because of past and present human rights violations perpetrated by the ruling party, we are under sanctions. Given the above, you can easily tell that the RTGS dollars is poised to go in one direction, down.


How we are protecting ourselves in these times.
1. People are buying foreign currency and keeping it in homes as it is more stable
2. Trade in cryptocurrencies was banned by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe but people are relying on bitcoin to make foreign payments and to receive remittances easily as services like Western Union are usually overwhelmed and it can take more than 2 weeks for one to get their money. Since crypto exchanges like Golix were banned we now rely on Telegram and Whatsapp groups were massive peer to peer trades take place.

There is the need for Zimbabwean entrepreneurs to come up with more innovative ideas to move money quickly and easily using the blockchain like in the case of SPENN in Rwanda as well as ways by which people can make real and secure investments in Bitcoin and crypto.

Mpesa is in Kenya, Zimbabwe uses Ecocash which is a USSD code-based mobile money system.

One of the best bounty managers on bitcointalk this guy!

How is this different from the LyCI token? The LyCI token allows customers to purchase the top 25 cryptocurrencies tracked by the LyCI Index in one click https://medium.com/@tendaitomu/imagine-scooping-up-the-top-25-cryptocurrencies-with-one-click-1cf533096a45