How Bitcoin is driving crypto adoption and financial access across Africa

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the adoption trends across Africa are affirming many of Bitcoin’s founding use cases.

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20 years a buddy of mine was dating a girl that went on some type of peace corps mission to Africa. One night she is telling him about all the shite that the village doesn't have, worse than 17th Century America.. He asked are you on a cell phone, she says yes there are cell towers everywhere. That was two decades ago.

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From the email I received:

One of Bitcoin’s core use-cases is the ability to move money quickly and cheaply without any intermediaries. In Africa, where sending money — within and across borders — can be complicated, Bitcoin and crypto technology have been making a difference for large populations without access to the traditional banking system.

Now, a new generation of entrepreneurs in countries including Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa are looking to accelerate the use of crypto by creating payment and banking alternatives using Bitcoin, stablecoins, and other blockchain tech. Let’s dig in.

Roughly 50% of African citizens don’t have banking access, making Bitcoin an attractive alternative.

To fill the banking gap, cellular companies have built a patchwork system around mobile wallets and payments tied to phone numbers — but most of these systems aren’t interoperable, and sending or receiving money from abroad often means high fees or running into government currency controls.

“If someone wants to move money to the country next door, normally, you’d have to fill up a suitcase full of cash and move it over the border,” said Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful, a peer-to-peer BTC exchange.

These pain points are a major reason Sub-Saharan Africa is among the fastest growing crypto markets on earth, with 6% of all transactions being peer-to-peer, more than double the share of the next closest region. Another big reason: inflation. Many countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Sudan, and Ethiopia struggle with high currency inflation, making crypto a viable alternative.

In 2022, Paxful saw 140% year-over-year growth in remittance payments in Kenya and 55% growth in Nigeria. Nigerians are also increasingly using BTC to import goods from abroad due to currency controls from the government. (Read Coinbase’s recommendation to the White House to further study the benefits of crypto remittances.)

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network is key to making BTC more accessible

While BTC payments can be much faster and cheaper than international transfers via companies like Western Union, Bitcoin’s network can see transaction speeds slow down and fees spike during periods of high traffic.

This is where the Lightning Network comes in — Bitcoin’s layer 2 scaling solution moves transactions off the main blockchain, which lowers fees and improves speed, even during periods of high network demand.

Bitnob, a Nigeria-based crypto startup, is using the Lightning Network to enable cheap international transactions that settle in local currencies, and uses the Bitcoin network to move the money across borders. “We’re able to settle into bank accounts or mobile money accounts, without the recipients having to interact with bitcoin themselves,” co-founder Bernard Parah explained to CNBC.

One developer has even created ways to access BTC without the internet.

South African developer Kgothatso Ngako built a Lightning Network-enabled wallet that enables anyone with a basic phone — no smartphone or WiFi required — to transact with BTC via text message. Right now, around 3,000 users across eight countries including Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria are using the wallet, dubbed Machankura, which is South African slang for “money.” But with an estimated 3 billion people without internet access globally, Ngako told Decrypt he sees plenty of room for growth: “I believe the tool could help Bitcoin the un-Bitcoined.”I'm just newbie in crypto at this moment I just use Exolix

Why it matters... It can be easy, amid all the regulatory headlines of the past few months, to equate crypto solely with the news and debates taking place in the United States. But crypto is global and borderless, and the adoption trends across Africa are affirming many of Bitcoin’s founding use cases. “In 10 years or so,” Marius Reitz, general manager for Africa at crypto exchange Luno, told Coindesk, “Bitcoin could become a regional currency or it could even become a common currency across the African Union.”

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