Bitcoin Isn’t Legal, Says Zimbabwean Central Bank Official as Price Nears $15,000

This year has seen cryptocurrency bitcoin shatter all growth expectations, continuing to defy dark predictions. In Zimbabwe, its growth has been particularly striking, all the more so amid recent political turbulence.

Bitcoin trade values on the only crypto-currency exchange platform, Golix had surged to $1 million for the month of October. On Tuesday, bitcoin prices on the Zimbabwean bitcoin exchange peaked at $14490 in morning trade on Tuesday against world averages of around $8000.

Bitcoin has been popular in Zimbabwe for quite a while now. After the country's hyperinflation crisis of 2008 and 2009, huge amounts of personal savings were lost and Zimbabwean citizens were understandably eager to find new ways to secure their own savings and assets.

"Bitcoin had a surge in value a few years back in Zimbabwe and from what we can tell it's mostly used as a transactional device, but not so much for local payments. It's primarily for remittances. There are so many Zimbabweans working abroad and they are sending the money home with bitcoin."

When the Zimbabwean dollar went out of use in 2009, it was replaced on the streets with various other, more secure global currencies such as US dollars and South African rand. However, they too are now in sharply falling supply in their physical form, and as the political uncertainty continues, Zimbabweans, both at home and abroad, are increasingly willing to put their trust in bitcoin as a means of securing the value of their own money.
"If I have $500 in the bank I won't get it back and I will be losing value, but when I have my bitcoin, it is going up every day," Arnold Manhizwa, an IT worker in Harare, told Reuters last week.