Topic: Africa Isnt Ready For Bitcoins - page 3. (Read 1648 times)

Changes are to come. All in good time.
When Africa is ready, it too will have Bitcoin.

Why does Africa isn't ready for money? I think all of us are just thinking about the status of Africa in a 1 perspective look and let's just all be straight we are thinking that Africa is all about some ethnic tribe living and there are no internet or they are all living in a village with no electricity or something but if you are living in Africa I think you had a point with what you are saying, but not all African are all like that and I say that there are 5 richest kings in Africa that I think living a gorgeous lives and with that in mind do you still think they are not capable of getting internet or having their own bitcoin!

I will never agree on a lot that CW said in his last video, but one thing where I agree with him, is :

~ For Bitcoin to go mainstream, it has to improve their wallets interface and also enable people to use Bitcoin on normal phones. This WILL open

   up the financial systems to the poor and the unbanked.

They guy might be a asshole, but he has a point. India & Africa needs simple and easy technology, backed by good security and running on every

phone on this planet. 

I think that it will pass a lot of time before African people start using bitcoin in larger scales. I mean, some parts of Africa does not have electricity yet, and computer and phones run on them. And not to mention wars, and poverty. People does not have whet to eat there, so i do not think they will buy phone or computer before they have full stomach.

Lets not make a big assumption on one continent that far, and I really don't think Bitcoin usage depends on where you are located but it depends on the level of need of such thing. Also poverty won't be an issue if you really need and want to take advantage of Bitcoin then you can do so, a good example for this is the Venezuelan miners in which in order to escape poverty they do mining in order for them to earn and spend Bitcoin as a main currency. So I think that anyone can be ready for Bitcoin.

Even more than the smartphone propagation, that is the Internet one, as well as the electricity. I think not even 10% of people in Africa have access to it.

I don't know what happened to that tie-up, but I have seen posts from African users claiming that it is no longer working well. What happened with M-Pesa was a big disappointment. Because Bitcoin usage would have been very beneficial to the Africans, especially for small-scale trade and remittance. I heard that it is quite hard there to open bank accounts.

The price of Bitcoin doesn't matter. Transaction fees do.
High transaction fees kill micropayments and that rules out Bitcoin from poor countries.

Unfortunately Africa isn't ready for money at all, for some of the reasons OP listed, so they wouldn't be "eligible" (so to speak) to use Bitcoin to begin with. Here's to hoping this changes soon, not for Bitcoin, but for population living in absolute poverty and in remote areas without access to anything people in developed countries consider to be basic. As for the rest of Africa, it's just a matter of time. A few years back "1st world countries" didn't have access to internet, smartphones, etc and look where we're at...

Yeah recently M-pesa was quite successful in making a big profit from Africa. It too have levied a big transaction fee, but due to the declined value of their own currency and for business transaction with ease people started giving preference to these service providers.

Smartphone penetration is quite good in many of the Africa countries, and a number of Bitcoin ventures originated from there. I can see a lot of potential for Bitcoin in Africa. The M-Pesa/Bitcoin collaboration was quite successful in Tanzania and Kenya. There were a few other startups which dealt in Bitcoin as well. But one thing which is going to affect the popularity of the Bitcoin is the high fees.

        Bitcoins is fast growing with a purpose of becoming the worldwide currency. Daily, thousands of people are joining this movement and within the next decade if not sooner bitcoins would have taken over, but what will this mean for Africa? For a continent quite far behind (I don’t want to go through all the reasons why) but let’s face it we just aren’t ready for this revolution and here are my reasons;
TECHNOLOGY
Smartphones to be particular, have increased to almost a double with figures of about 226 million over the past two years in Africa mainly due to the drop in prices from $230 in 2012 to $160 in 2015 according to a report published by GSMA on Africa’s mobile economy. This seems a good thing right? Well maybe, maybe not for a continent of 1.216 billion people this means only about 18% of Africans own a smartphone. Our hopes now rest entirely on how fast the rate of smartphones will increase to how fast the world is taking in Bitcoins.
POVERTY
I honestly didn’t want to include this but Bit coins is a system dependent on money that is buying one to trade for one, and yes poverty is a worldwide epidemic but its rate is much higher in Africa considering the bitcoin worth is rising every coming day taking huge giant strides further away from us only benefiting the rich.
LEADERS
African leaders.....well lets just say for a system against corruption, I don’t think at least not now.