Bitcoin Countdown. 7 Days Till Aug 1st. Middle East and Ripple Meet. Coinbase Bans Cuba. Tanzania.
Hello fellow subscribers and new watchers. My name is Nick, and welcome to the Sobuka channel. We are just 7 days away from Aug 1st. As I’ve mentioned on my show, Aug 1st represents a symbolic date for the Bitcoin network. So what does this mean without the technical minutia of terms like Segwit and BIP numbers? Well we can expect faster transaction times when sending and receiving Bitcoins anywhere in the world sometime after Aug 1st as well as lower transaction costs. Yes. It’s really that simple. If you need more technicalities on that simply google the term ‘User Activated Soft Fork’ and Segwit as every single YouTuber has covered this topic to death. Stay tuned for the rest of the news as I will be covering what’s going on with respect to Africa, Latin America, Middle East, and the Asian Pacific.
Reporting on the Middle East and Asian Pacific: Saudi Arabia and Japan.
Alright so Ripple should be happy about this news though this article I am reading is dated on June 26th of this year. But I’ll share it anyways as none of the Youtubers bothered covering it. So let me begin with the headline of this article which says “World’s Largest Islamic Bank Successfully Completes Ripple Blockchain Trial”. Okay, so the largest bank in the Middle East turns out to be Al Rajhi. They handle about 200 remittance centers all around the world. And what remittances are is institutions that allow people to send and receive funds. So supposedly the big guy at this Middle Eastern bank tested the Ripple platform by sending money from Saudi Arabia to Jordan. And that transaction processed is just a few seconds which seamlessly appeared to be faster than what they currently have. Now it does not say if this bank will be adopting Ripple, but it does mention how they were well pleased with Ripple’s performance.
I have written several articles by now on how the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia are currently trying to adopt blockchain technology as they look for ways to find fast technologies that can deliver on cheaper costs. One of their cryptocoin is DubaiCoin. In addition to that, there is a public blockchain called ArabianChain (which is suppose of to act as the Ethereum of the Middle East). If you are interested about reading more on this, please see the link to the Steemit article below or my YouTube’s description section. Or you can do a Google search for 'Sobuka' and 'ArabianChain'. Link to ArabianChain article is here from a past post:
And as for the price of XRP, this news did not impact its price at all. XRP is Ripple's cryptocurrency. I guess this Ripple-Middle Eastern news did not make enough noise on social media in the past. Though the Ripple platform was tested, it is unknown if Saudi Arabia even tested XRP at all. Currently XRP is down more than 20% for the month of July as of the time of this article.
Reporting on Latin America: Cuba
So it turns out that a US resident after returning home from Cuba was denied access to his Coinbase account. What happened was that the Coinbase customer went down to Cuba from the US, opens up the Coinbase app on his smartphone to take a look at his funds and then he closes his app on the smartphone. A few days later after returning back to the US, and going online to check his account, there was a notice telling him that his account had been closed and pending disablement. He was further notified to contact the US Treasury Department to request permission to open up his funds. From what I understand, Cuba still has international financial restraints that prohibit people from participating in money transferring activities in and out of the country. But what is so frustrating about this situation was that the guy contacted Coinbase before traveling to Cuba to let them know of his situation. And so this guy did not hear any proper response from Coinbase before visiting Cuba. Currently his issue is resolved and Coinbase did re-open his account with the funds. But this gentlemen had to threaten Coinbase with a lawsuit before anything could be done. Quite recently, I have heard similar problems on certain exchanges with people having problems trying to get answers about their funds and having to threaten the exchanges with lawsuits in order to hear anything back. So I have heard lawsuits work at the least. Coinbase response to the whole argument is that they are short staff and the company is looking to hire more people. Just recently, Coinbase had added more than 100,000 new customers unto their system.
Here are some ways I have heard people deal with this type of situation before traveling:
Contact the exchange and let them know that you are going somewhere overseas and what action you should take.
If you do not hear anything back from an exchange, I suggest leaving your hardware (where your coins are stored) at home where the exchange will legally recognize it. If you do have your coins stored in a hardware wallet and want to travel with it abroad, please keep in mind that in certain countries you may have to declare the amount of funds you are carrying. So you need to do your homework by checking with the visiting, foreign country.
My last suggestion is try not to look at the online app at all until you get back to your country.
The above are just my suggestions and might be common sense for most people already. There may be others on this list that I have left off. It is up to you to do your due-diligence before transporting or viewing cryptocurrency data from one country to another.
Reporting on Africa: Tanzania
Year to date, the bitcoin volume on LocalBitcoins with respect to Tanzania has more than quadrupled just in the third week of July. The trading volume summed up to be under 20 Bitcoins for the past week. And yes, I know that number is relatively small but that has been a 4 fold increase in the month of July alone. I think for any start-up exchange or small investor willing to step out there to the crypto space, Tanzania might offer some investing opportunities. Coin Telegraph calls this volume a "July Growth Spurt". However I believe we might see more growth in the future within this country as its citizens look for cheaper and faster remittances, store of value out of its inflated fiat, and ways to transact cross-borders as I have already reported for other African countries on Steemit. The chart data below is from coin.dance.
If you guys have any comments about this specific news please feel free to share. If you like this video/blog-post, give it a thumbs up or up vote. If you want to find more information like this, you can follow me on Steemit or hit the subscribe button on YouTube.
Below are helpful references towards our discussion.
It is Baby Steps But Bitcoin is Taking Root in Africa.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/it-is-baby-steps-but-bitcoin-is-taking-root-in-africa
What Coinbase's Cuba Problem Says About the Bitcoin Business
https://www.coindesk.com/coinbases-cuba-problem-says-bitcoin-business/
World's Largest Islamic Bank Successfully Completes Ripple Blockchain Trail
http://www.livebitcoinnews.com/worlds-largest-islamic-bank-successfully-completes-ripple-blockchain-trial/
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