The hustle of crypto traders in the heart of Africa.

in #cryptocyrrency6 years ago (edited)

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Africa has been a subject of a rapid growth over the last few years. More innovations started appearing and people started living and adapting the current worldly trend. Where there was no light, power solars lightened the place. Where there was no network, telecom companies established them and development started up to this actual level.

Africa is now living a cryptos age where most people are now motivated in joining and learning more about cryptos. The essence is that the reciprocal response of cryptos is massive, yet the infrastructure needed is still small. Some few developers and pro-active people joined the network, sensitizing people to join and persuading them to act as them.

Some people considered it as a spam and others believed but remained silent. No one could believe that money could be transferred without an intermediary agency. No one could understand that actually dicital currency can changee it value and fluctuate over time. All these were brought by the cryptocurrency era headed by Bitcoin.

Of course, everyone was excited but not everyone was able to join. Today, Uganda has realised a number of 200,000 bitcoins wallets and many people have started joining other cryptos steem, Ephereum, Ripple, Verge and others. News reached to everyone and people could thought of it but had only one burrier ‘’ How to transact?’’ or ‘’How to buy these coins?’’, This was and still the measure issue in Uganda. The issue is ‘’ I have the money, but how to join the crypto network? Or ‘’ How to make transaction using crypto’s?’’

This remind me a story of a young boy ‘’ Ronald ‘’going to school and waiting for school fees from the his immigrant brother in the U.S. Ronald was supposed to receive 40$ and the charges were 10$. His brother thought of bitcoin and he had some coins. He then told to Ronald that he should open a bitcoin wallet so as to receive money and transact it through exchanges. Ronald was so excited and joined a bitcoin directly to receive his coins. His coins reached the wallet and the boy started looking for anyone who may transact with him his bitcoins. At the all, Ronald couldn’t find a person to transact with his coins. So, sad.

The manual crypto trading.

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The story of Ronald incited a number of people to join the manual exchange industry. I would say that this was the early stage of cryptocurrency development in Africa. In most cases, cryptos are exchanged manually, yet there are multibillionaires companies around the world dealing in exchange. Crypto traders sell and buy coins manually which sometimes create informalities in the business sector. Only few people will be able to take on that risk if they are to do so. The idea is that in controversial, the people are looking for a safer way of which they can transact their coins peacefully without any barrier in the market. This will lead to thousands and millions of people in joining the cryptocurrency circle.

The manual exchange operate in a way that if a have money and I need your coins then I will give you the coins and you give me the money. Period. Could this situations occur to thousands of people? Where could I find these people? A number of questions is always asked to perform any transaction using cryptocurrencies.

Bitpesa has come, A monopolistic exchange company. Do you know what I mean?

BItpesa is an exchange company based in Kenya. It is considered as a monopoly company and does what ever they want. The charges are sometimes high or low, They only work 8 hours a day and sometimes the transactions can take long. Some people do actually prefer dealing with the manual system than bitpesa, but for formalities some others do transactions with bitpesa and swallow the high charges. The idea out of it is that the company decides and the people must follow to transact.

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The number of crypto users has increased rapidly and now reaching approximately 1,000,000 accounts but with only few exchange companies. Local manual traders have started losing their customers and people are now going back to the old way of transaction with banks.

Let look at how Steem is traded in Africa.

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source

There is no direct way of sending steem or steeem dollar to a personal account through Bitpesa. Bitpesa only acknowledges bitcoin. In other words, a person must perform 2 transactions in order to reach to the fiat currency. Remember, with the two transactions there are charges occurred. If I can exchange my steem dollar to bitcoin with some charges and then sending the bitcoins to the mobile money accounts with some other charges occurred. So, imagine all these stages to reach that particular transaction.

In conclusion, if only there was a way of introducing exchanges in Africa, especially in east Africa then there will be a massive investment in the crypto sector. The output result will rise and people will be more eager to join the new technological system and crypto can be considered worldly and not only based in Europe or U.S.A.

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Yes we need cyptocurrencies in Africa to cover up. Only that some people don't delieve in it and also those who believe and sign up lose hopes hurriedly.

People seem conservative to change. But
But if African governments put in support and efforts I don't think people will suffer like the way I they are per now.

Because crypto is a real business, a real money source, job and a support to many
Me inclusive.

Yeah....that true. Cryptos will change the country's economic and development sector

You are a pioneer among pioneers, @jona12. I am not in East Africa (yet!), but when I think of where we were, and how far international communications has come this century - internet, wi-fi, smart phones, social media, BTC et al., and of course Steem/Steemit - it is a matter of time and effort.
Five years from now, we'll be laughing happily (perhaps even together!).

Yeahhhh.....we all shall be laughing. Lol.

I just can't stop imagining the way it will be.

Thanks for the article, had been wanting to know more about bitpesa.. And as for exchanges i think everybody is just waiting to see what governments will decide about cryptocurrencies then investors can jump in.

Yeah....bitpesa has really brought revolution. Though with some charges, they have helped in solving and linking east Africa crypto users and cryptocurrencies.

Thanks for passing by.

Cheers

It's rusty everywhere and not at all user friendly. I would buy and trade coins a lot more than I do if it were easier and more user friendly, and fewer transactions. Like you said, two transactions to get to cash. It's very exciting, though, to be in on this in the beginning, and a few years from now we're going to be reminiscing about these days.

Yap.... tomorrow must be greater than today .

Resteemed your article. This article was resteemed because you are part of the New Steemians project. You can learn more about it here: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@gaman/new-steemians-project-launch

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