Leadership behind SAFCOIN, an Africa-centric cryptocurrency founded in 2017, is convinced the offering will challenge international counterparts and exchanges, including Bitcoin.

SAFCOIN has allocated 500,000 ICO (Initial Coin Offering) tokens available for purchase at R70 per token. These are available exclusively in South Africa during the pre-sales stage prior to launch in the rest of the continent.

Neil Fereirra, co-founder of SAFCOIN, said, "SAFCOIN has eliminated the international buyers by only opening the ICO phase exclusively to South African bank account owners using i-Pay as the payment gateway. We believe that South Africans have lost out on many start-up opportunities throughout the years and this is why we wanted to give the SA market an exclusive opportunity in the start-up phase.

"In SA, most of our investment is in international ICOs and cryptos on international exchanges. There have been other crypto opportunities yes, but (the) majority will always be in competition with the international first-world crypto exchanges and investors. Our goal is to make the SAFCOIN exclusively for use in Africa."

SAFCOIN plans to make 5 million SAFCOINS available on the exchange for mining and trade by 31 October 2018, when all 500,000 ICO tokens are expected to have been purchased.

"We are not making unrealistic promises to become millionaires overnight. Our goal is to tap into the solutions blockchain technology and cryptocurrency can provide with growth in value being an added benefit and objective for us. We are very carefully selecting the exchanges we will be listing on – choosing the wrong exchange can cause a dead-on-arrival cryptocurrency and we want to ensure that SAFCOIN is successful," said Fereirra.

Despite some skepticism in the market, the response from potential investors to date has been excellent Fereirra added.

"Being South Africans and (having) been through a lot of scams in the past, we will always be skeptical, this we understand. We have to look past the negativity which the scam market has created and look at the positives, where we can improve South African investments and be in line with the rest of the world when it comes to technology. Although Bitcoin has taken off in SA and Africa the last two years, we still believe that there's so many uneducated people in the continent that want to be part of it - but the blockchain and crypto world can look very threatening if you have no idea of where to start..."To this end, SAFCOIN has established national remote service stations to facilitate the exchange.

"The SAFCOIN ICO token is already valuable as it cannot be sold on the Ethereum blockchain, there are only 500 000 available and it is exclusively promoted to South Africans. R70 sounds like a high price for a token but you are not trading with tokens here - you are actually buying a full SAFCOIN cryptocoin already. We believe that with the launch into the continent we will see high demand and we encourage people not to sell immediately as demand and volume will have a positive effect on the crypto price value. Most cryptocurrencies list on as many exchanges as they can and get lost in the thousands of other international cryptocurrencies, this reduces demand, volume and lowers the price. We are planning big things for Africa and we are looking at keeping it exclusive."

One the ICO is closed, SAFCOIN plans to embark on a marketing and awareness drive across Africa. Fereirra added that funds generated during the ICO pre-sales phase will be reinvested into SAFCOIN in a bid to increase its value prior to the launch.