
Though Bitcoin's popularity is still low in parts of Africa, the newly-appointed South African Executive Director of the Bitcoin Foundation, Llew Claasen says Africans are not missing out.
Claasen says the currency, which currently trades at about US$652 = 1BTC, is still in its early adoption stage globally. "No, I don't think anyone is missing out if they don't already have Bitcoin. It's still very early days in the adoption of Bitcoin. It is true that there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin mined and that 15.7 million of them have already been mined, but this does not mean that in the future there will be those with and those without Bitcoin. There are 100 million Satoshis in a Bitcoin and only 100 cents in a dollar or euro. There is a lot of room for growth in the smaller denominations and value exchange will flatten out the distribution."
According to fiatleak.com, which provides a realtime overview of global currencies and their flow into Bitcoin, South Africa is one of the top users of the digital money.
African countries that have recorded a significant amount of Bitcoin-related transactions include Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, despite questions over the crypto-currency's stability and its storage of value to poor communities.
"I think there are pioneering Bitcoin startups in Africa like Bitpesa that are doing a great job. I think that Bitcoin is part of the solution to many challenges in Africa in the areas of money as a medium of exchange and as a store of value," Claasen says. "The availability of smart Bitcoin-embedded technology solutions to these problems will be met with strong demand for alternatives."
Claasen points out that consumers need to be able to earn Bitcoins, store them in a digital wallet and eventually exchange them both at point of sale and peer-to-peer, which is hard to achieve within short periods of time, particularly when compared to credit card networks that "didn't crack it in Africa" despite more than 50 years of widespread adoption.
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