If you’ve held Bitcoin for five years, you’re now sitting on a negative return
by u/TrueBirch
Hilarious.
Mentalgator aggregates blogs and websites that I read regularly
by Stowe Boyd
If you’ve held Bitcoin for five years, you’re now sitting on a negative return
by u/TrueBirch
Hilarious.
by Emeka Okafor
by Emeka Okafor
Most of us go to the Bahamas for the sun and surf. Central bankers may be visiting for another reason: to check out the country’s new digital currency, the Sand Dollar. The Bahamas is one of three countries to launch a digital currency, along with China and Cambodia. Sand Dollars are now loaded in mobile wallets on smartphones; to buy a beer, simply scan a QR code—more convenient than swiping a credit card or using a grubby dollar bill...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
by Emeka Okafor
A leading provider of comfortable land and housing in Africa, Bamboo Real Estate and Construction Limited has concluded plans to accept service payments in cryptocurrency...[more]"
by Emeka Okafor
Osiri and her peers are embracing some of Bitcoin’s most controversial features and virtues of privacy and decentralization, to stick it to the man and turn it into fortunes...In the midst of the digital economy that is taking root in Africa, Bitcoin , a rare, radical, anti-central bank digital asset has found its way into the hands of thousands of young Sub Saharan African digital native, like Osiri...Osiri and her peers are embracing some of Bitcoin’s most controversial features and virtues of privacy and decentralization, to stick it to the man and turn it into fortunes...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
The rise of virtual internet platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram, Kakao is challenging established regimes of state and sovereignty, monetary policy and issuance of currency, control, ownership and governance of virtual resources in developing countries in Africa.
Billions of users, including Africans, are spending more time on virtual networked platforms that command the attention of far greater audiences than the populations of individual nation states. WhatsApp has 1 billion, Telegram 200 million users, and Facebook has 2.3 billion users worldwide.
Now, these virtual platforms are all getting into the business of issuing currencies using ‘blockchains’ or shared ledgers to monetize all the possibilities of economic activity within the confines of their platforms.
Out of all of them, Facebook’s Libra coin drew the most attention. No surprise at all considering the sheer size of its 2.3 billion people user base.
What does this mean for Africa’s fintech industry and policies, that tech giants from overseas can monetize the digital economy of Africa through non-sovereign means including the issuance of digital currencies?
What follows is a transcript of conversations between Michael Kimani and Andile Masuku, about the current shift to internet virtual platforms, and currencies, and what lies ahead for Africa’s Fintech policy.
Michael Kimani is Head of Business Development East Africa at Zippie, a mobile blockchain platform, a Fintech Innovation Advisor for Visa and Secretary-General of the Blockchain Association of Kenya. He is one of East Africa’s renowned digital money analysts.
Andile Masaku is a Co-founder and Executive Producer at Africa Tech RoundUp.
Some parts of this Q&A were pulled from a podcast with Andile, while some of it is from phone discussions with Malak Gharib of NPR and Ronit Ghose of Citi Bank.
The structure is presented in the format of a Question and Answer. Enjoy!...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
During the police brutality protests in Nigeria in October, bitcoin saved the day when the government shut out protesters from using local payment platforms for collecting donations to support it.
The young, tech-savvy protesters quickly switched to using bitcoin, and in about a week bitcoin accounted for around 40% of the nearly $400,000 raised. It was just one high-profile example of how young Nigerians increasingly use bitcoin to navigate a complicated and restrictive banking and monetary system...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday designated the title of “securities” to crypto assets and hence will be regulated by it. According to the regulator of the capital market, its power to regulate the crypt asset class derives from Section 13 of the Investment and Securities Act, 2007...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
by Emeka Okafor
by Emeka Okafor
Africa appears to have eight nodes total. From this map, entrepreneur and IT guru Chimezie Chuta inferred that he is the only person in Nigeria known to be running a Lightning node.
A crucial caveat is that many users might be running nodes without exposing them to the world. But, all told, Lightning activity looks sparse on the planet’s second-largest and second-most populous continent.
Chuta wants to change this. Like many Bitcoiners, he believes running a network node is one of the best ways to become truly financially independent. A Lightning node in particular, while experimental and maybe risky to use, allows Africans to earn a little cash by way of fees for relaying money across the network, he said...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
Demand for bitcoin is still surging across Africa, regardless of the broader economic crisis, according to peer-to-peer exchange data from Paxful and LocalBitcoins...[more]
...As the world races to lead the way in blockchain technology, could Africa have an advantage? This documentary follows the journey of Bitcoin pioneers as the continent seeks to leverage cryptocurrency to leapfrog standing world economic powers.
by Emeka Okafor
Youthful Somali hawadalars from East Africa are complementing an age old informal financial practice with an odd piece of a new digital resilient tool – bitcoin.
The importance of informal finance arrangements is a reverberating theme across Africa. Informal doesn’t necessarily mean bad or evil or dirty, it’s just that rather than rely on the heavy hand of the law, some communities prefer to place their trust in reputation and social networks for all trade commerce and financial relationships whether offline or online...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
Over 100 companies are building distributed ledger technology solutions on the African continent. See the open-sourced map here...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
Gabriel Abed, founder of Bitt.com and Vice President of the board of directors, describes how he went from mining Bitcoin to persuading governors of central banks to not quash Bitt's goal to create central bank digital currencies in the Caribbean and getting the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank to pilot one starting next year...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
Bitcoin has been designed to be resilient against not just technological attacks, but also political ones. Cryptography, incentives and decentralization are all tools used to give the Bitcoin network a high level of resiliency. Here I will discuss how communication decentralization is important for Bitcoin’s resiliency and how this feature can be enhanced with alternative last-mile communication technologies such as mobile mesh networks...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
I wrote down a few thoughts on Facebook's cryptocurrency efforts, and how they might affect their work in developing markets. I welcome all criticism and arguments.
Spend a minute looking at Facebook’s Q1 2019 Report and you’ll find a healthy business firing on all cylinders. In spite of all the negative news on Facebook, it seems to be doing well - profits are up, user numbers are growing and all is well with the world. On deeper examination, one sees the justification for some of Facebook’s recent moves...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
With the advent of Blockstream Satellite and widely broadcasted, passively-receivable Bitcoin data, a new era of Bitcoin adoption can occur. Areas without access to fast broadband connections can now trustlessly verify Bitcoin blocks and transactions, and receive BTC discreetly with common cheap hardware. With the Satellite API, those same areas can now receive arbitrary data — current market data, private messages, and data from exciting new use cases not thought of yet. All free. The broadcasts are free and the software is free with code available for auditing and improvement by the community...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
Crypto economics – A vision
Five and a half years ago my co-founder and I got started planning a new city development in Zambia. After a year and a half of planning, we started marketing the new town development and got busy doing the actual work of development. Four years in, we’ve done quite a lot, but there’s still a lot for us to execute before the town starts to actually look and feel like a town. Part of what makes what we do interesting is that it’s an exercise in the sort of planning typically done by municipalities and central governments, we have to think about schools, utilities, home affordability, access to healthcare, sanitation, jobs etc. Starting from the ground-up, with resources we’ve built through aggressive pre-sales, and conservative financial planning—we typically have to approach everything from the basis of first principles. Further, given that the city is already self-funded, and with no external investors; we treat our development company like a lean start-up. The first priority is to get the minimum viable product ready, iterate and improve from there. It’s easy to be idealistic when the purse is unlimited, the opposite is true when you have to think of the best and highest use of every dollar spent...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
...is bringing the best of the blockchain and cryptocurrency world to small farms in Africa. Loans for solar power, mostly used to pump water for irrigation are paid back when extra energy is used to mine crypto.
by Emeka Okafor
by Emeka Okafor
As an African social entrepreneur in the technology industry, I am forced than most to think in terms of “whole systems”.
Not a single technology I have worked on has ever been deployable without building a whole ecosystem afresh. This means that I need to be exceptionally attuned to the cultural and political economy context of technology. It also means that I find most of the debates around blockchain somewhat naïve because of the perennial failure to address its ideological baggage and consider how other cultures might relate to that ideology...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
At the beginning of March, some of the brightest minds from the blockchain world joined representatives from the financial, legal, and global technology industries to discuss widespread blockchain adoption. But the event wasn’t held in fintech hub London, or startup mecca San Francisco. It was in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the fourth edition of the Blockchain Africa conference hosted at the Microsoft HQ...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
Timi Ajiboye is a 24-year-old software developer from Lagos Nigeria, who likes to create things. His love for creating things has lead him to build a wide array of products like Workstation, Eat.Drink.Bot, Timeline Expert, and a few others which you can see on his projects page.
The most recent, and perhaps the most interesting is Bitkoin Africa an online exchange for Bitcoins in Nigeria and soon the whole of Africa...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
We live in constant change - there is no pause button.More here
While there is a misconception that cryptocurrency are bad for governments and countries, we believe the opposite is true. Blockchain technologies and cryptocurrency will be mainstream. It’s inevitable. Just a matter of time. Early individual adopters have already become billionaires, as evident from the latest issue of Forbes. The same applies to governments. Early adopters will become new financial leaders of tomorrow. The opportunity is right in front of us, now!
by Emeka Okafor
More here
There is a new blockchain ledger-keeping app in town. Dubbed ChamaPesa (co-founded by Michael Kimani), the start-up targets social saving groups aka Chamas in Africa using blockchain technology to create a platform where groups can move their records from traditional systems that are mostly cumbersome and costly.
by Emeka Okafor
CGTN's Rachelle Akuffo spoke to Digital currency expert and bitcoin advocate Papa-Wassa Chiefy Nduom about Venezuela's new Petro cryptocurrency.
by Emeka Okafor
Llew Claason, director of the Bitcoin Foundation, discusses how cryptocurrency can be used to transfer units of value. He breaks down the fundamentals on how Bitcoin works and the potential it has to launch Africa into a new technological horizon.
by Emeka Okafor
BitPesa, the first and largest blockchain payments platform for Africa and Europe, announced today their acquisition of TransferZero, an international, online money transfer platform that specializes in sending money to consumers and companies in 200 countries using over 50 different currencies...[more]
by Stowe Boyd
by Emeka Okafor
I spent the first week of the New Year with a great group of Wharton undergraduates visiting many of our tremendous alumni in the San Francisco Bay Area. To say it felt very different from the East Coast is an understatement. And I am not talking about missing the “bomb cyclone,” which we did.
I am talking about blockchain/bitcoin/cryptocurrencies, which are much more than a speculative Chinese-cum-millennial obsession.
Whereas most people on Wall Street remain skeptical, playing a wait-and-see game, Silicon Valley is all in. Literally every meeting I participated in, from the biggest tech companies to the smallest startups, was rich with enthusiastic and creative crypto conversations...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
by Emeka Okafor
As cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin gain importance in the economic lives of African societies, Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn explore the implications of this revolutionary financial technology on African countries.More here
by Emeka Okafor
In July 2016, Manasseh Egedegbe, an Abuja-based investment manager, was caught in the cross hairs of Nigeria’s dollar crunch and had some difficulties making an international payment. At the time, with Nigeria’s foreign reserves and revenues shrinking amid an economic slump, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) put up currency controls to restrict access to dollars. For Egedegbe, and many other Nigerians, that presented a problem. In his desperation, he turned to the cryptocurrency wave of the moment: bitcoin.
“I was able to use bitcoin to do just one transaction and then I got hooked,” Egedegbe tells Quartz...[more]
by Stowe Boyd
What is Bitcoin Really Worth? Don’t Even Ask. | Robert Shiller
The academic literature tells us that volatility of an underlying asset often fallsafter the establishment of new futures markets for it. But the ability to short an asset more easily won’t necessarily overcome the power of investor excitement.
In 1936, John Maynard Keynes suggested why. He played down the role of quantitative analysis and probability estimates in human thinking of the assessment of ambiguous future events. People in such situations are vulnerable to a play of emotions and at times a “spontaneous urge to action” that he called “animal spirits.” He argued that much of what happens in financial markets has to do with people learning, from price movements, about each other’s animal spirits.
I believe that Mr. Keynes was correct about animal spirits in general and how they affect markets like the one for Bitcoin. George Akerlof and I expanded on his perspective in our 2009 book Animal Spirits, which argued that the driving force behind human enterprise cannot be reduced to the rational optimization emphasized by traditional economics. Darwinian evolution produced a human species whose behavior sometimes seems to be emotionally driven.
Neuroscientists, psychologists and economists are leading us toward new models of human decision-making. They may help to explain phenomena like the Bitcoin price rise.
Scott Huettel, a Duke neurologist, and other researchers showed in 2006, for example, that when making decisions involving ambiguity, people do not use the parts of the brain required for calculations of probabilities and expected values. And the economists Anat Bracha of the Boston Federal Reserve and Donald Brown of Yale have provided an alternative to conventional economic theory of human behavior under uncertainty. They define a different kind of rationality — one based on Mr. Keynes’ views, not on calculations of utility — in ambiguous situations.
Furthermore, a paper by neuroscientists including Benjamin Lu that was presented at the Society for Neuroeconomics annual convention in Toronto in October, showed that psychologically stressful experiences can result in changes in neurological processes when ambiguous situations arise.
In short, the Bitcoin market is a marvelous case study in ambiguity and animal spirits. It is providing invaluable information about how millions of human brains process stimuli coming, in this case, from public acceptance, imagination, and innovation surrounding cryptocurrencies.
It’s a mass hallucination.
(image Michael Waraksa)
by Emeka Okafor
via Smile & Mobile
Lightening labs Cofounded by Laolu Osuntokun is developing Lightning: an open protocol layer that leverages the power of blockchains and smart contracts to make cheap, fast, private transactions available to anyone around the world.
by Emeka Okafor
Envion has developed a system of Mobile Mining Units (MMUs) that can tap electricity directly at the source: at hydro, solar, wind and fossil power plants in every corner of the planet. Our MMUs are based on standard intermodal (sea) containers, equipped with mining hardware, communication and industry 4.0 automation features, remote control capabilities and a break-through cooling system that only makes up ~1% of the system‘s total energy consumption. Altogether it’s a high-tech solution that can be seamlessly deployed globally and allows us to use the cleanest and cheapest energy mix wherever it is available. The flexibility of the MMU system helps us to fuse two of the most important sectors of the 21st century: blockchain technology and renewable energies. Using the dynamics of exponential growth for both, we promote climate preservation and the welfare of our token holders. It is the physical incarnation of the blockchain spirit: a robust and decentralized system that can withstand disruptions in government policies, price structures and the energy supply.
by Emeka Okafor
Bitcoin is now the 6th most valuable circulating currency in the whole world, and it did this in about eight years, with roughly only about 0.01% of the world’s population owning or using it.
So, we could be watching one of the biggest financial bubbles in history unfold with this cryptocurrency mania. Yet on the other side of the coin, there is also the non-trivial possibility that we are witnessing something remarkable happening before our very eyes — the return of the separation of cash and state...[more]
by Stowe Boyd
This Daily’s title could refer to the snowfall we had here in NY state, but it doesn’t. It’s really about a weekend where I am trying to get out from under a great number of dangling commitments that have been starved of my attention as I have made the transition to this version of the Work Futures experiment.
………
ON ORGANIZATION
Gloria-Mona Knospe and Lara Portmann of Nothing Interactive describe their first six months as a peer-to-peer organization:
Peer-to-peer (or short: P2P) describes the key idea behind our organisational system: Everybody participates as a peer. There are no hierarchies—at least not between people. We do have hierarchies of work or hierarchies between roles, but more about that in a bit. Our P2P system is based on a few simple but important principles:
* We don’t have fixed job titles but take on autonomous roles. Within these roles, we can act independently. This way, decisions are made by those who know what they’re talking about—in the right place and at the right time.
* Instead of having job descriptions or task lists that are set in stone, we structure our work through purposes. For instance, each role has a purpose (or goal, one might say) attached to it, which allows us to judge what ought to be done without being limited by rigid rules.
* We make rights, responsibilities, and expectations explicit. This allows us to both avoid misunderstandings and enable people to act autonomously.
* Our P2P system is evolutionary, that is, we continually improve the system itself. Because of this, it is specifically tailored to Nothing Interactive. It grows and evolves with us.
The biggest positive change they report is ‘increased clarity about what people’s rights and responsibilities are – and, simply, the increased clarity about why we do what we do. We owe both to the introduction of roles.’ The clarity comes as a result of being very explicit about a role’s purpose, and 'accountabilities’.
They also learned that such a change takes time, and requires a great deal of commitment to working through roles, rather than simply following ingrained habits, for example in decision making. As the authors point out,
The biggest challenge is—when failing—to not fall back to industrial age patterns.
………
ON MONEY
Derek Thompson cuts through the hyperbole about bitcoin, and says it looks a lot like investing in gold.
Luckily, the craze is localized: around 1000 people own 40% of all bitcoin, so when the inevitable crash comes it won’t act like the housing bust or the dot com collapse. Just a small group of speculators will get smacked.
………
ON MEDIA
Cory Doctorow summarizes the discourse about the Patreon 'PR fumble’ (as he put it), which was triggered by a major revision in Patreon’s fee model. ………
ON REVIEWS
Rob Walker, the NY Times Workologist columnist, disses anonymous peer reviews.
………
POETRY
Shirt | Carl Sandburg
I remember once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering
shirt of you in the wind.
Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and
the picture of you shivered and slid on top of the stuff.
And again it was nobody else but you I heard in the
singing voice of a careless humming woman.
One night when I sat with chums telling stories at a
bonfire flickering red embers, in a language its own
talking to a spread of white stars:
It was you that slunk laughing
in the clumsy staggering shadows.
Broken answers of remembrance let me know you are
alive with a peering phantom face behind a doorway
somewhere in the city’s push and fury.
Or under a pack of moss and leaves waiting in silence
under a twist of oaken arms ready as ever to run
away again when I tag the fluttering shirt of you.
by Stowe Boyd
by Emeka Okafor
by Emeka Okafor
by Emeka Okafor
by Emeka Okafor
Besides being a platform for cryptocurrency users to automatically convert to fiat currency and then transfer into a local bank account, Bitpaya’s merchant gateway service lets online businesses accept bitcoin as a mode of payment and its OTC (Over The Counter) trade feature allows users to trade in bulk. It doesn’t end there. There’s a utility payment option which allows users to have a diverse use of bitcoin...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
The Blockstream Satellite network broadcasts the Bitcoin blockchain from space, giving almost everyone on the planet the opportunity to join the economic revolution.
The satellite service allows users to operate and maintain a bitcoin node, a part of the bitcoin network that keeps a copy of the bitcoin blockchain and is also used to perform the task of validating and relaying transactions.For additional context read
The company claims it’s the world’s first public satellite service that allows anyone to operate and maintain bitcoin nodes without the constraints of traditional network connectivity. Blockstream Satellite sends blocks in real time, as well as recirculates older blocks, providing free access to the Bitcoin blockchain for both veteran and new users of the cryptocurrency.
For those who are interested in the nerdy aspect of these things, the Blockstream Satellite network consists of three geosynchronous satellites at various positions over earth that cover four continents: Africa, Europe, South America and North America. Although the company has ignored Asia and Oceania for now, it plans to add additional satellites to the network by the end of the year, because it apparently believes no living soul on Earth should be without the ability to operate a bitcoin node...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
Financial crises and hyperinflation influence bitcoin adoption, writes Garrick Hileman
Which markets have the greatest potential for bitcoin adoption?More here
With over $250m of venture capital invested in bitcoin startups to date, much is at stake in understanding which markets will prove most fertile for bitcoin. In addition, many governments and regulatory agencies are seeking to better understand the economic opportunities presented by bitcoin along with the perceived risks.
The new Bitcoin Market Potential Index (BMPI) is the first attempt at providing a rigorous answer to the above question, assembling a new data set to rank the potential utility of bitcoin across 177 countries.
by Emeka Okafor
by Emeka Okafor
Praveen Kumar, Chairman and CEO of Belfrics Global SDH, has announced that his outfit will be launching Bitcoin exchanges across Africa in the coming months.
Speaking at the Launch of Belfrics' Bitcoin Exchange in Kenya on Saturday at the Villa Rosa Kempinski, in Nairobi, Praveen outlined plans to open exchanges in Nigeria, Ghana and Botswana soon, and follow it up with other countries...[more]
by Emeka Okafor
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin & Ethereum have ushered in a new era for the world, with Bitcoin hitting highs of nearly $6,000 yesterday. Most of us in the industry have been caught off-guard by how (and why) the market capitalization of crypto currencies & assets has exceeded $150bn so quickly this year. I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about this and where we are going to next and so I’m going to try to weave a number of seemingly unrelated observations together in this post to, hopefully, light the way...[more]