Nigeria may be forced to adopt bitcoin

[EconomicOracle]

I agree. The problem with USD is that it can be easily used to scam. If you get a scam email, I'd recommend you inform them about bitcoin and refuse to accept any other form of payment.

I'd also recommend you check out bitcoin if you haven't heard of it. It's the future of currency and it can't be used to scam, the government can't control it (so it's invincible), you can use it anywhere, and many more.

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[payb.tc]

very old thread, sorry...

can anyone recommend the best way for a Nigerian to convert his Naira to bitcoin? do any exchanges accept naira locally or they have to do an international wire?

[Mike Hearn]

The best way would probably be for somebody there to become a local exchanger. It only really takes one guy in Lagos or Abuja to buy some Bitcoins and then resell them for cash to set up a kind of local exchange network.

Rather than use a western exchange like MtGox, something that integrates with M-PESA is probably the way to go (maybe not in Nigeria but in Kenya and other places where M-PESA is common). Agent networks are apparently really important there.

On the wider issue, which I hadn't seen before, Bitcoin in developing countries is a topic I find really interesting. Whilst Nigeria is a bit of a stretch due to the flaky power and internet access there, the same problems can be seen all over sub-Saharan Africa to a lesser degree and Bitcoin could potentially find a niche there. Lack of robust trusted institutions, issues with international payments due to fraud, importance of mobile payments, etc.

Bitcoin wouldn't really help address the issue of people in the west being scammed. Most 419 scams rely on the fact that Western Union allows you to send money to one place (ie, London) whilst believing you sent it somewhere else (Nigeria), this is obviously a property of Bitcoin addresses too. Except it'd be even worse because Western Union agents do sometimes notify you of potential fraud when you go to send the money, whereas obviously Bitcoin never will. But it would help people there make purchases from outside the country more easily.

[ovidiusoft]

But certain countries have an unacceptable history of internet fraud (statistically).  So most online retailers block them from purchasing anything
(Romania

Please check your facts. *Most* online retailers *don't* block romanian cards or shipping addresses. I never had any problem with them since I began buying stuff online (+8 years). I used debit or credit cards, probably all possible variations from Visa and Mastercard. Except some delay with the shipments, I always got what I ordered.

So if you could just stick to writing about what you can check yourself, that would be great. Thanks.

PS: I think I should clarify. By "online retailers" I mean Amazon and the likes, not "smallbusinesswhosells3itemsadayandissofraidofhackurs.com". I wouldn't trust to buy from those either, so I guess it's ok if they don't want my business .

[DeepBit]

That said, bitcoin in Africa? Not bloody likely. They are lucky when the power stays on long enough to cook supper.

You won't believe me, but Africa is leading by mobile payments usage.

May be they just need a client for J2ME platform :)

[julz]

That said, bitcoin in Africa? Not bloody likely. They are lucky when the power stays on long enough to cook supper.

You won't believe me, but Africa is leading by mobile payments usage.

May be they just need a client for J2ME platform

Sounds believable to me..  With things like M-Pesa being such a big success in Kenya, I suspect the average person would look at Bitcoin and say 'why bother' - we already have an electronic payment system that works on even very modest phones, and there are exchangers and merchants for it all over the place.

[fornit]

for comparison, i just checked how expensive m-pesa payments are.

in kenya you pay roughly 0.27$ (30 ksh) for a standard size atm withdrawal or mobile payment. nominal per capita gdp is 875$, in western countries its around 40.000$, 45 times higher. so this 0.3$ feels like 12$ to the average kenyan. i dont know how many m-pesa payments a kenyan usually does per year, but 12$ sounds high enough to be an incentive to use an alternative where its possible.

also interesting: http://technology.cgap.org/2009/09/08/understanding-what-drives-profits-for-agents-m-pesa/

The number one cost for most agents was liquidity management – moving cash. Agents report a host of expenses, including bank charges, transport costs, and fees to aggregators who advance commissions and provide easy float/cash swaps for agents. On average, liquidity management consumed 30% of total expenses. Extending the network of aggregators would help alleviate some of the costs, and Safaricom has taken steps to calibrate the fees aggregators charge.

thats something that can completly vanish if you use bitcoin exclusively. of course that would require pretty much everyone accepting bitcoin. its still interesting to see how expensive it is to have digital money on top of a physical fiat currency.

[Mike Hearn]

Thanks fornit, that's really interesting.

For Bitcoin to flourish, you'd need either to repeat the process of building a large agent network (tough: Safaricom did it by bootstrapping from airtime resellers), or find some way to make it self building, like through a peer-to-peer exchange. Think Ripple combined with Bitcoin.

There are now $80 Android smartphones that have access to all the modern facilities, and I guess costs will only drop in future. You could potentially do something really game-changing with smartphone facilities. That said, an obscure currency and high-end phones are probably not going to be a winning combination anytime soon ... it may be that Bitcoin+Africa is something that'd have to wait.

Bitcoin+FSU seems much more interesting as a geographical focus point for now.

[payb.tc]

Bitcoin+FSU seems much more interesting as a geographical focus point for now.

Florida State University?
Finance Sector Union?
Feminist Students United?

please tell me what it is as i can't find a matching acronym, thanks.

[cablepair]

Duh...

you are way behind on the news, Nigeria already has their own cryptocurrency

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51737.0

[Mike Hearn]

FSU = former soviet union

[BootstrapCoinDev]

Please note not all nigerians are criminals. Some people from Nigeria are, that's true for any country or social group.

There is a related essay in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/my_doom.html.

I dated a girl from Nigeria for a few years and her and her sister talked about One timers. Supposedly people being kidnapped and sold to Voodoo practitioners. Is this real? If so what do you know about it?

[xkrishna]

title of thread is misleading

its news not title ......