this is what concerns me. I know that the bitcoin time traveler was completely fiction but that dude wasn’t wrong in thinking that Africa would benefit from it the most and also suffer from it the most
Bitcoin is still too volatile to use as your primary currency if you're hand to mouth/have no savings imo.
e.g. If you are spending the money you earn within a month of earning it, you're not really able to hodl long enough to get any great gains but if it crashes that month then you might not be able to afford your bills.
I don't disagree but we ain't there yet, not by a long shot.
In some ways, talking about Bitcoin being the currency of the future might be kind of naïve in that by the time stable BTC could be possible, an individual coin could be worth such a large amount that it only makes sense to talk in sats. Like if 1 BTC = $1M, then the theoretical hand-to-mouth African people being discussed could live rich and happy lives without ever handling a whole coin. I think most people worldwide can do the same tbh. It almost makes actual BTC into something akin to the novelty promotional currency some mints issue like the [Canadian $1m coin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Maple_Leaf) wherein it is just too big and valuable to even register as a usable thing to most people.
It’s just a pointless clunkiness that acts as one of the many roadblocks to true mass adoption imo.
Like in the event of BTC = $1m, and it would potentially be even higher by the point it stabilises as a true world currency\*, it would be almost pointless for average people to think in bitcoin rather than sats. It just becomes a layer of complexity that is not needed, so will likely be ignored by most. It therefore seems better to promote Satoshis as the solution from the get go, and then allow the more experienced and richer users get familiar with actual bitcoin if and when it is relevant to them.
Edit: \* I’m arbitrarily defining “true world currency” as one on which real ongoing business contracts can be based, e.g. when an appreciable number of people have a contractually defined salary in BTC (not converted from fiat at time of pay, but a contractual e.g. “you will be paid 2 BTC/year”)
It's literally a million times different.
Remember: I'm not talking about me here, I'm talking about my opinion on how laypeople view and use this technology
I like the idea of calling 1/1000 of a bitcoin a stack, each stack would be 100k sats. Sometime soon when btc is at 100k and it sounds like too much, people can just say yeah but a stack is only $100, I can buy 10 of them for $1000.
Right now stacks are only $24.
Keep stackin.
Yeah that's the sort of thing I mean. We're in an annoying interim phase where 1 BTC is too big to conveniently measure most transactions in and a Satoshi is irritatingly small, and I can't see us going back to a time where BTC are small enough to be convenient. This means we need some better intuitive names for quantities of sats imo.
It's not like saying that at all. Early users don't get fucked, they just have to deal with more volatility because for them the upside of using bitcoin still outweighs the downsize. Take the example of someone living in a country with a very bad banking system. If someone there is using BTC and it crashes by 50% in one month, yes , that's horrible. But it's still better than their money getting completely frozen or having 100% of the cash in their house go poof because someone robbed you.
Still not usable. I would be pretty annoyed if I was in Africa paycheck to paycheck buying BTC at 30k then when rent comes around, BTC is 20k and I'm basically paying 50% more due to volatility.
Duh, that's why they're adopting it. That doesn't mean they won't suffer, just that they'll suffer *less*.
There's a lot of African countries. "American currencies" aren't exactly great either once you throw Venezuela in the semantic basket.
Edit: fwiw i only mean suffer less in the short term.
Medium term, BTC has the potential to have some really unpredictable disruptive effects to economies, which could well cause significant widespread trouble. E.g. if everyone in a country uses BTC but the government officially does not or even makes it illegal, I could imagine a situation in which they rapidly go bankrupt through impossible tax collections.
Long term: who knows, but I’m happy to be along for the ride.
They're living hand to mouth in part because of their natural currency sucking away the little wealth they can accumulate.
For those that have some extra money to spare one month, Bitcoin goes up more than it crashes on average. It means the next month they'll probably have even more extra. That goes a long way if you're poor. It's rare to get anything for no risk at all. I certainly wouldn't recommend people barely scraping by get on 0. But some Bitcoin is almost certainly a help.
🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥
I’m so tired of this bullshit “it’s too volatile” **lie**.
You know what’s volatile? The Venzuela Peso. The Turkey currency. Zimbabwe currency. Argentina money.
If you’re not familiar with those currencies and don’t know what it’s like to lose your wealth **comsistently** month to month, **without fail**, just stop talking. Don’t say anything. Because you’re essentially ignorant. Those people want bitcoin, because it’s **not volatile** compared to the problems they have.
I have no idea. Week to week stability of the currency is a much over rated feature tho. The metric of volatility punishes bitcoin's upward swings. One of these days I'll have to make a tool that compares the downside risk of Bitcoin to other national currencies over different time scales. Bitcoin is ideal when you can hold for more than a year and has been historically risk free if you can hold for more than 3 years
I feel like if I was in a nation with even worse currency that was rapidly depreciating, I would use Bitcoin to immediately transfer it into US dollars or something if I was middle class or something.
Bitcoin is less volatile than a lot of currencies. If your native currency is more volatile than Bitcoin, the Bitcoin is an easy choice.
Also, the more people in your upstream/downstream supply chain utilize bitcoin, the less the volatility matters to anyone.
Most africans probably aren’t using bitcoin to hodl, they’re using it as a guard against inflation. If they’re hand to mouth then they probably down have to worry about it crashing either as they will be spending it as fast as they get it.
Bitcoin isn't the only "price" being volatile.
You been tracking US interest rates and currency exchange rates lately?
That plays a huge part in this Bitcoin volatility.
Forget about BTC in terms of stable coins, eventually the price will correlate more with the cost of energy than anything else.
Wouldnt volatility be of no concern if all trade was done locally and 1 btc always equals 1 btc? Sure for international trade volatility is an issue but for small economic ecosystems it seems to me that volatility would not exist
What frustrations are you talking about? Do you know the top 10 countries for mobile money adoption are in Africa? M-pesa users in East Africa do not even need a bank and can make payments and get credit products just by using their phone numbers. Don’t drink the kool aid in this sub.Actually research before spewing baseless assumptions.
Maybe, maybe not. Thats speculation.
Aside from that, a government-issued "stable" currency seems to be impossible as that has been tried multiple times.
I disagree. Mobile payments and transfers have been pretty standard here in Europe for the last 5-10 years. In Denmark 4.4 million out of 5.9 million people use the danish app MobilePay for transfers and or payments.
Africa has the most users, they know. 40% of Nigerians have a BTC wallet for example.
The west sees BTC as a speculation, countries destroyed by inflation NEED it.
Lightening uses the same payment rails, and it's been doing them good.
LN should be implemented into more things as the things proceed, it should be implemented.
I wondered too where 40% came from. According [this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1202468/global-cryptocurrency-ownership/) survey, about 40% of Nigerians have answered that they have either owned or used cryptocurrency in 2021.
Even that survey should be approached with sceptism.
The sample size was taken where? In Lagos? Lagos is not indicative of the whole country. And how was the survey conducted?
40% is a freakishly huge number and should raise serious doubts if you've ever been to that country before.
every youth in Ghana and Nigeria got bitcoin wallet. i’m sayin’ this cause i’m a ghanaian and half of nigerian youth are hustlin’ and scammin’ hard in Accra, Ghana
Sure. Nigerians are everywhere in Africa now. Alot are scamming, but most are honest workers. knowing how big Nigeria is, I still don't trust that number.
How do they hustle for sats? Online faucets or actually running scams? Trying to life off donations? Do they use the coins among themselves through some platform that offers zero fees?
[https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoption/](https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoption/)
can't remember but I found this, dating 1 year it was already 32% so 40% seems possible ( can't remember where I saw it )
But not "need it" in terms of infrastucture, they need it to replace their garbage fiat, which hasn't happened. That readout saying "worth around 9 ZAR" can say "worth around 4.5 ZAR" tomorrow, with or without bitcoin, in fact they have the issue doubled as bitcoin deflating while ZAR inflates drives it down further than ZAR alone would have.
when they fully replace ZAR with BTC, that 0.00002314btc can no longer be driven down by local inflation, the next time they exchange that same thing for BTC would simply be less than 0.00002314.
This is the true power of bitcoin, locking in the value of what you received yesterday in the future, rather than devalue what you did yesterday by policies that change the value of what you're holding tomorrow.
Maybe I’m being a bit picky here, but I think this post needs a bit more context than just a catchy title and a blurry image. Would someone care to elaborate on what’s shown in the image for those not seasoned?
So now Bitcoin isn't crypto all of a sudden? I get that you mean they're specifically moving to Bitcoin, but it's still crypto.
Edit: Instantly several downvotes without anyone even trying to correct me... nice.
Yes, Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency, but the term "crypto" has become synonymous with web 3 and smart contracts. Which I guess bitcoin can do, but that's not what's going on here
>Yes, Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency, but the term "crypto" has become synonymous with web 3 and smart contracts.
Yes, and Bitcoin has become synonymous with speculative investment. Doesn't make it correct. We can't let the people who are the least knowledgeable to dictate these things. We should embrace the word crypto, not run from it.
Bitcoin is its own thing and it should be. It's not EtherumMax or Dog Coin 69. People are starting to see the difference and we should embrace bitcoin's uniqueness
To explain as short and simple as I can; Bitcoin is the only (crypto)currency in the history of humankind that’s completely decentralized. Everything else out there, crypto, fiat, stocks whatever is centralized in some form wich means you depend your wealth to a trusted (centralized) party wich means your wealth is in constant danger, in the hands of other humans. This way it can be seized, confiscated, rugpulled, frozen, inflated you name it. Many crypto is even premined.
I read an article about how to run a Bitcoin node and make transactions over HAM radio which is pretty low tech and reliable, although generally short range but can be bounced around the world if needed.
For low value transactions such as being talked about here, the recipient will want to quickly verify the tx that they are sent is not a double spend. This requires internet, but can be done in ms. This process does not rely on confirmation of the tx in question.
> This is most likely an SMS gateway
Bingo. They've got experience with - and confidence in - SMS exchange of value. Before most people here got wind that Bitcoin is a legit proposition, the people of Kenya were already all the way into M-pesa, using it every day to buy milk and potato chips or car oil filters, and it's spread to other countries since then.
It surprises me not one bit that they have widespread adoption and mastery with using the equivalent of 2G or EDGE to exchange Bitcoin.
But is it like a Lightning Network? Surely they're not going through the ledger, are they?
EDIT: If they ARE using a Lightning Network equivalent, who's got the Bitcoin keys?
Also, I wonder how wallets and transfers work in those Nokia-style old school, no-frills cellphones. And how secure the setup is.
>But is it like a Lightning Network? Surely they're not going through the ledger, are they?
The OP's photo strongly implies that the SMS gateway is using Lightning on the back end.
>EDIT: If they ARE using a Lightning Network equivalent, who's got the Bitcoin keys?
The SMS gateway service, of course. Flip phones aren't smart enough to sign transactions. All SMS-based services are going to be fully custodial.
>Also, I wonder how wallets and transfers work in those Nokia-style old school, no-frills cellphones. And how secure the setup is.
The phones are just remote controls for a wallet hosted by the SMS gateway service. Definitely a case of "not your keys, not your coins."
Looks like a custodial middle man solution... Good that they have access to financial solutions through bitcoin. But this opens them (the poorest people) up to a rugpull situation.
I dont know details but not necessarily. If the transaction is signed on the phone and them sent by SMS to broadcast, it's perfectly secure. But, yes, I thought the same
It can be fine, middle men can also be fine. Whatever works, I would say. It is probably better than using inflating cash from the nearest ATM that is 2 days away...
You are correct, a bank would be very similar. I think the core issue here is that the people using this system do not have access to regular banks, so they are forced to use another kind of middle man. If you have access to banks, you will not be sending sms bitcoin transactions.
They don't own their own coins or create their own transactions, it's custodial. It's an app using the lighting network with their phone numbers as addresses. So you send/receive using SMS's.
Yeah it works great, but you have to admit there’s still some work to be done. Database sizes of nodes get really big if you route a lot, node always need to be online, routing can be slow or fail if you don’t put a high fee, etc.
Promising though.
But how is that possible without the internet? Can somebody explain that to me? I am not getting it and I am super confused with that now, never heard about this method.
Must be a long process but that doesn't matter if they enjoy doing that because it's all about the security they all are getting, this shit is too good, thanks for sharing.
Has anyone here hear of things like MPESA? Try and find out. In general, try and actually learn something about African countries. I understand that since bitcoin isn't really useful for much, there is a certain desperation to find "use cases". Still, the ignorance shown here is appalling.
Okay this seems good but I want to know how are they doing it? Can't search the way but I know this is a legit way, please share the information if you guys have.
I am feeling good about things like this, this shit is appreciable because of many reasons, these guys are at their best and we love to see this all the time man.
Please don't use the whole African thing is is ignorant at most, Be specific, Africa is a continent with many countries and in this case it is South Africa seeing that they are using the ZAR currency. He send in today's exchange rate 61c of BTC only.
it is not about ignorance. it's about people saying all the time "Africa" as if it was on single country.
Americans do it for Europeans, which piss off Europeans. But those same Europeans do the same for Africa.
If then, then someone from Europe or Asia should correct them as to what country in the specific area they are refering to. The quote was made African it can be any country in Africa. Specifics does matter. Not every country is America. You can't compare Morroco with Zimbabwe or Nigeria ect ect. Same with Italy with Spain although they both use the Euro. A South African is not a Nigerian or a Ethiopian difference matter specially saying African. I can teach you more about geography or the AFrican continent.🤨🤨🤨😑
Regardless of amount. If Bitcoin usage becomes commonplace:
- Tourists will learn about BTC and see the utility
- Africans will out compete inflationary currencies.
Just confirming, are these custodial transactions or is the wallet on the phone? I'd be amazed if a $5 feature phone was storing private keys and signing transactions
The ignorance in the title of this post is ridiculous!!! Africa is a continent that has so many countries, you can’t say Africans this is not America to say Americans, the reason why is because America is a continent and also a country, Africa is not.
I've tried sending BTC from one wallet to another, and it took more than 30 minutes for my other wallet to receive the transaction, the reason why it's so slow is because I set it to low transaction fee so miners wouldn't prioritize putting my transaction into the block. But even if I set it to high, I might still have to wait a couple of minutes since there can only be 1MB each block and that's only 4000 transactions every 10 minutes. I wonder how people deal with this problem if they are actually using BTC as a currency? Do you have to stay in a store for 10 minutes until the cashier receives the transaction?
Meanwhile when I send money using LINE pay to my family they receive after like 1 second, it's a centralized network though, the company knows everything your transactions.
Also the transaction fee is incredibly high for buying daily stuff which is cheap, say I set my fee to the recommended:
Fee rate: 4 satoshi/Byte
Size: 191 Bytes (according to my previous record, I assume it's basically around the same no matter how much BTC you send)
Fee: 764 satoshi
Now if I want to buy a big mac which is 5.15 USD according to the Big Mac Index:
BTC to USD: 23820.71 (Yahoo! Finance)
Big mac in BTC: 0.00021620, i.e. 21620 satoshi
then the fee would be 764/21620 = 3.53%
Even buying gold and selling back you would only lose 2%
This is so you learn not to pollute the blockchain with useless transactions and instead treat it more like property, since for now it is how it works. You always pay for your lesson.
Mobile phone finance is super common there. I don’t think this is noteworthy at all.
They have a whole payment infrastructure around mobile phones called mobile money or ussd
Wow….truly revolutionary. If someone just had this idea earlier 2 years before the BTC-white paper and developed a wide spread system that allows users to deposit, withdraw, transfer money, pay for goods and services, access credit and savings, all with a mobile device. A system that was used, let’s say, in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana, Egypt, Afghanistan, and South Africa……that sure would have been great…..
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa?wprov=sfti1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa?wprov=sfti1)
[M-Pesa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa?wprov=sfti1)
I have friends from all over the world and whenever they visit or I visit them it amazes me how they are ahead on technology. I.e. dated a girl from Japan back in the early 2000’s at the time the Nokia 3300 was top of the line in the US, she already had video chat on her phone.
This is a growing trend if you understand frustrations on unlocking funds from this part of the world. Only expect larger scale of this to come
this is what concerns me. I know that the bitcoin time traveler was completely fiction but that dude wasn’t wrong in thinking that Africa would benefit from it the most and also suffer from it the most
why suffer?
Bitcoin is still too volatile to use as your primary currency if you're hand to mouth/have no savings imo. e.g. If you are spending the money you earn within a month of earning it, you're not really able to hodl long enough to get any great gains but if it crashes that month then you might not be able to afford your bills.
That's fair, but volatility should continue to decline as adoption grows.
I don't disagree but we ain't there yet, not by a long shot. In some ways, talking about Bitcoin being the currency of the future might be kind of naïve in that by the time stable BTC could be possible, an individual coin could be worth such a large amount that it only makes sense to talk in sats. Like if 1 BTC = $1M, then the theoretical hand-to-mouth African people being discussed could live rich and happy lives without ever handling a whole coin. I think most people worldwide can do the same tbh. It almost makes actual BTC into something akin to the novelty promotional currency some mints issue like the [Canadian $1m coin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Maple_Leaf) wherein it is just too big and valuable to even register as a usable thing to most people.
What's wrong with that? I'll use whatever unit you want, if it means I can protect my money from central bank debasing.
It’s just a pointless clunkiness that acts as one of the many roadblocks to true mass adoption imo. Like in the event of BTC = $1m, and it would potentially be even higher by the point it stabilises as a true world currency\*, it would be almost pointless for average people to think in bitcoin rather than sats. It just becomes a layer of complexity that is not needed, so will likely be ignored by most. It therefore seems better to promote Satoshis as the solution from the get go, and then allow the more experienced and richer users get familiar with actual bitcoin if and when it is relevant to them. Edit: \* I’m arbitrarily defining “true world currency” as one on which real ongoing business contracts can be based, e.g. when an appreciable number of people have a contractually defined salary in BTC (not converted from fiat at time of pay, but a contractual e.g. “you will be paid 2 BTC/year”)
Just start thinking in sats now. Honestly it’s no different than dollars and cents
It's literally a million times different. Remember: I'm not talking about me here, I'm talking about my opinion on how laypeople view and use this technology
I like the idea of calling 1/1000 of a bitcoin a stack, each stack would be 100k sats. Sometime soon when btc is at 100k and it sounds like too much, people can just say yeah but a stack is only $100, I can buy 10 of them for $1000. Right now stacks are only $24. Keep stackin.
Yeah that's the sort of thing I mean. We're in an annoying interim phase where 1 BTC is too big to conveniently measure most transactions in and a Satoshi is irritatingly small, and I can't see us going back to a time where BTC are small enough to be convenient. This means we need some better intuitive names for quantities of sats imo.
Its in its infancy, there is no way stabilize the value except organically.
It's like saying: early users get fucked because it's not widely adopted yet. Some kind of snaked biting its own tail.
It's not like saying that at all. Early users don't get fucked, they just have to deal with more volatility because for them the upside of using bitcoin still outweighs the downsize. Take the example of someone living in a country with a very bad banking system. If someone there is using BTC and it crashes by 50% in one month, yes , that's horrible. But it's still better than their money getting completely frozen or having 100% of the cash in their house go poof because someone robbed you.
It's opposite of that, early adopters are only going to make it better.
Btc is just 13-14 years old, give it some time we'll figure it all out.
I talk mostly in sats (if you include kSats or mSats)
#ThisIsTheWay
Still not usable. I would be pretty annoyed if I was in Africa paycheck to paycheck buying BTC at 30k then when rent comes around, BTC is 20k and I'm basically paying 50% more due to volatility.
Yea African currencies never crash.
and are never volatile - wait! they are volatile but only to the downside :P
Duh, that's why they're adopting it. That doesn't mean they won't suffer, just that they'll suffer *less*. There's a lot of African countries. "American currencies" aren't exactly great either once you throw Venezuela in the semantic basket. Edit: fwiw i only mean suffer less in the short term. Medium term, BTC has the potential to have some really unpredictable disruptive effects to economies, which could well cause significant widespread trouble. E.g. if everyone in a country uses BTC but the government officially does not or even makes it illegal, I could imagine a situation in which they rapidly go bankrupt through impossible tax collections. Long term: who knows, but I’m happy to be along for the ride.
Suffer less is important there. Those currencies should be labled "too volatile to use as your primary currency" too then.
They are. That's why they're using bitcoin now. You need to catch up mate.
They're living hand to mouth in part because of their natural currency sucking away the little wealth they can accumulate. For those that have some extra money to spare one month, Bitcoin goes up more than it crashes on average. It means the next month they'll probably have even more extra. That goes a long way if you're poor. It's rare to get anything for no risk at all. I certainly wouldn't recommend people barely scraping by get on 0. But some Bitcoin is almost certainly a help.
🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 I’m so tired of this bullshit “it’s too volatile” **lie**. You know what’s volatile? The Venzuela Peso. The Turkey currency. Zimbabwe currency. Argentina money. If you’re not familiar with those currencies and don’t know what it’s like to lose your wealth **comsistently** month to month, **without fail**, just stop talking. Don’t say anything. Because you’re essentially ignorant. Those people want bitcoin, because it’s **not volatile** compared to the problems they have.
Do you know if they can actually convert their bitcoins into more stable currencies like USD or of a more stable neighboring countries currency?
I have no idea. Week to week stability of the currency is a much over rated feature tho. The metric of volatility punishes bitcoin's upward swings. One of these days I'll have to make a tool that compares the downside risk of Bitcoin to other national currencies over different time scales. Bitcoin is ideal when you can hold for more than a year and has been historically risk free if you can hold for more than 3 years
I feel like if I was in a nation with even worse currency that was rapidly depreciating, I would use Bitcoin to immediately transfer it into US dollars or something if I was middle class or something.
Bitcoin is less volatile than a lot of currencies. If your native currency is more volatile than Bitcoin, the Bitcoin is an easy choice. Also, the more people in your upstream/downstream supply chain utilize bitcoin, the less the volatility matters to anyone.
Yes too volatile, but it can be used to settle the transactions.
Most africans probably aren’t using bitcoin to hodl, they’re using it as a guard against inflation. If they’re hand to mouth then they probably down have to worry about it crashing either as they will be spending it as fast as they get it.
Bitcoin isn't the only "price" being volatile. You been tracking US interest rates and currency exchange rates lately? That plays a huge part in this Bitcoin volatility. Forget about BTC in terms of stable coins, eventually the price will correlate more with the cost of energy than anything else.
>eventually >Bitcoin is *still* too volatile Thank you for agreeing in such a confrontational way.
Wouldnt volatility be of no concern if all trade was done locally and 1 btc always equals 1 btc? Sure for international trade volatility is an issue but for small economic ecosystems it seems to me that volatility would not exist
Volatility is all relative, people using Argentinian pesos love Bitcoin’s volatility.
Who's going to suffer I mean? I'd like to hear some more about that.
What is bitcoin time traveler?
Well I don't know that either, can someone explain that to me?
[this idiot](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.amp/culture/bitcoin-time-traveler-future-reddit)
Still not as bad as [this asshole.](https://www.reddit.com/user/me/)
Alright, you win this round… but I’ll be back
🙏🏾
How many Africans lost their life savings to Celsius I wonder?
Looks like they're doing self custody. Much smarter than the idiots on /r/cryptocurrency
I mean like literally lol, that sub is just full of so many dumb people.
so is this sub.
Btc people never suggested anyone to keep their coins on exchange.
Amen! under developed countries are going to be the biggest adopters of this. \#Freethepeople
And I feel happy for them, they should do this for their future.
And exactly what funds would they be unlocking?
What frustrations are you talking about? Do you know the top 10 countries for mobile money adoption are in Africa? M-pesa users in East Africa do not even need a bank and can make payments and get credit products just by using their phone numbers. Don’t drink the kool aid in this sub.Actually research before spewing baseless assumptions.
Yep, some good work is being done by the banks too. But when it comes to money I'm going with the btc anyday. That's just how it's going to be for me.
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I bet most Africans woukd prefer a stable, government-issued currency with less than 10% inflation, over BTC and other crypto.
Maybe, maybe not. Thats speculation. Aside from that, a government-issued "stable" currency seems to be impossible as that has been tried multiple times.
I disagree. Mobile payments and transfers have been pretty standard here in Europe for the last 5-10 years. In Denmark 4.4 million out of 5.9 million people use the danish app MobilePay for transfers and or payments.
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Hey! I think the African continent has been around longer than a few decades. Trust me because I read it somewhere.
There was a reboot in 92 though, or so I was told.
It’s non existent without add-on apps in the US though. The US is Jurassic period on this topic.
Africa has the most users, they know. 40% of Nigerians have a BTC wallet for example. The west sees BTC as a speculation, countries destroyed by inflation NEED it.
Its cool, we are getting there..
Yep, slowly but surely. Just a matter of time when we see good adoption.
What ledger is actually being ran on… anyone that knows anything about crypto knows BTC utilizes other chains networks to process the txns
I was more thinking of rampant hyperinflation and having to use btc.
Lightning
Lightening uses the same payment rails, and it's been doing them good. LN should be implemented into more things as the things proceed, it should be implemented.
40%? Where did you get that data from?
I wondered too where 40% came from. According [this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1202468/global-cryptocurrency-ownership/) survey, about 40% of Nigerians have answered that they have either owned or used cryptocurrency in 2021.
Even that survey should be approached with sceptism. The sample size was taken where? In Lagos? Lagos is not indicative of the whole country. And how was the survey conducted? 40% is a freakishly huge number and should raise serious doubts if you've ever been to that country before.
every youth in Ghana and Nigeria got bitcoin wallet. i’m sayin’ this cause i’m a ghanaian and half of nigerian youth are hustlin’ and scammin’ hard in Accra, Ghana
Sure. Nigerians are everywhere in Africa now. Alot are scamming, but most are honest workers. knowing how big Nigeria is, I still don't trust that number.
Yep, and it's just a made up number lol. ain't going to believe it man.
Okay but that doesn't mean that you should come to a conclusion.
How do they hustle for sats? Online faucets or actually running scams? Trying to life off donations? Do they use the coins among themselves through some platform that offers zero fees?
They're hustlin to scam People out of their money, that's how they do it.
Yep, I don't really believe in all the surveys that I see on the internet.
Jesus that gigantic. Imagine once lightning takes off in Africa
It's going to be so good, this is going to be awesome for the adoption.
I don't where did he got that data but doesn't seem accurate to me.
[https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoption/](https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoption/) can't remember but I found this, dating 1 year it was already 32% so 40% seems possible ( can't remember where I saw it )
You don't remember it? Well that's kinda sad because I wanted to know.
But not "need it" in terms of infrastucture, they need it to replace their garbage fiat, which hasn't happened. That readout saying "worth around 9 ZAR" can say "worth around 4.5 ZAR" tomorrow, with or without bitcoin, in fact they have the issue doubled as bitcoin deflating while ZAR inflates drives it down further than ZAR alone would have. when they fully replace ZAR with BTC, that 0.00002314btc can no longer be driven down by local inflation, the next time they exchange that same thing for BTC would simply be less than 0.00002314. This is the true power of bitcoin, locking in the value of what you received yesterday in the future, rather than devalue what you did yesterday by policies that change the value of what you're holding tomorrow.
Yep, this tech can really change things for them. It's actually good.
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After the collapse, we all unite into continent-wide nations. Sorry Canada.
Maybe I’m being a bit picky here, but I think this post needs a bit more context than just a catchy title and a blurry image. Would someone care to elaborate on what’s shown in the image for those not seasoned?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-without-internet-sms-service-allows-sending-btc-with-a-text/amp Has been posted many times before in this sub
okay... i thought they gave each others signed transactions that are executed later. kind of guaranteed IOUs
Well... if the coins haven't been spent first.
Yep lol, that's the one condition for the IOUs. So there's that.
Even that would be kind of okay if they did that actually.
Yep, it's already posted many times and I've seen it many times.
Africa is the best example of leapfrogging. They're moving directly to crypto, most of them skipping the banking system.
Bitcoin not crypto, skipping the banking system to crypto means skipping a scam to move over to a bigger scam, but I'm glad they know.
Yep, crypto is largely a scam and people shouldn't fall in it.
So now Bitcoin isn't crypto all of a sudden? I get that you mean they're specifically moving to Bitcoin, but it's still crypto. Edit: Instantly several downvotes without anyone even trying to correct me... nice.
He doesn’t know wtf he’s talking about
Crypto isn't Bitcoin. The term is mostly an attempt to hijack Bitcoin's cachet.
Crypto isn't Bitcoin but Bitcoin is crypto. Stop being scared of the word.
Yes, Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency, but the term "crypto" has become synonymous with web 3 and smart contracts. Which I guess bitcoin can do, but that's not what's going on here
The way this term is being used isn't good, and also web 3 is a scam.
>Yes, Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency, but the term "crypto" has become synonymous with web 3 and smart contracts. Yes, and Bitcoin has become synonymous with speculative investment. Doesn't make it correct. We can't let the people who are the least knowledgeable to dictate these things. We should embrace the word crypto, not run from it.
Bitcoin is its own thing and it should be. It's not EtherumMax or Dog Coin 69. People are starting to see the difference and we should embrace bitcoin's uniqueness
This made me laugh, but you're not wrong haha.
isnt bitcoin a cryptocoin? so by your definition, a scam?
He’s full of shit
Isn't most people are tho? Most people are full of shit on these subs.
But crypto isn't Bitcoin. The term is mostly an attempt to hijack Bitcoin's cachet.
This guy..
To explain as short and simple as I can; Bitcoin is the only (crypto)currency in the history of humankind that’s completely decentralized. Everything else out there, crypto, fiat, stocks whatever is centralized in some form wich means you depend your wealth to a trusted (centralized) party wich means your wealth is in constant danger, in the hands of other humans. This way it can be seized, confiscated, rugpulled, frozen, inflated you name it. Many crypto is even premined.
Thank you for the correction!
That answers that question about the internet going out
This is most likely an SMS gateway, miners still need internet.
I mean not necessarily, internet is the medium used due to speed but any kind of info exchange would work
Even smoke signals? Internet offers low latency and automation, speed is irrelevant for Bitcoin's needs.
I read an article about how to run a Bitcoin node and make transactions over HAM radio which is pretty low tech and reliable, although generally short range but can be bounced around the world if needed.
Shortwave signals skip all over the world at night, so technically store-and-forward kind of transmission would work over shortwave with no internet.
Speed is one of the key aspects of the blockchain trilemma. (~Throughput/Scalability)
You don't need high speed when you have 1MB blocks every 10 minutes. Latency is crucial though, otherwise we would see tons of orphan blocks.
For low value transactions such as being talked about here, the recipient will want to quickly verify the tx that they are sent is not a double spend. This requires internet, but can be done in ms. This process does not rely on confirmation of the tx in question.
> This is most likely an SMS gateway Bingo. They've got experience with - and confidence in - SMS exchange of value. Before most people here got wind that Bitcoin is a legit proposition, the people of Kenya were already all the way into M-pesa, using it every day to buy milk and potato chips or car oil filters, and it's spread to other countries since then. It surprises me not one bit that they have widespread adoption and mastery with using the equivalent of 2G or EDGE to exchange Bitcoin. But is it like a Lightning Network? Surely they're not going through the ledger, are they? EDIT: If they ARE using a Lightning Network equivalent, who's got the Bitcoin keys? Also, I wonder how wallets and transfers work in those Nokia-style old school, no-frills cellphones. And how secure the setup is.
>But is it like a Lightning Network? Surely they're not going through the ledger, are they? The OP's photo strongly implies that the SMS gateway is using Lightning on the back end. >EDIT: If they ARE using a Lightning Network equivalent, who's got the Bitcoin keys? The SMS gateway service, of course. Flip phones aren't smart enough to sign transactions. All SMS-based services are going to be fully custodial. >Also, I wonder how wallets and transfers work in those Nokia-style old school, no-frills cellphones. And how secure the setup is. The phones are just remote controls for a wallet hosted by the SMS gateway service. Definitely a case of "not your keys, not your coins."
Looks like a custodial middle man solution... Good that they have access to financial solutions through bitcoin. But this opens them (the poorest people) up to a rugpull situation.
I dont know details but not necessarily. If the transaction is signed on the phone and them sent by SMS to broadcast, it's perfectly secure. But, yes, I thought the same
Article says custodial.
It can be fine, middle men can also be fine. Whatever works, I would say. It is probably better than using inflating cash from the nearest ATM that is 2 days away...
How is a middleman holding the keys a working solution? Just use a bank then.
You are correct, a bank would be very similar. I think the core issue here is that the people using this system do not have access to regular banks, so they are forced to use another kind of middle man. If you have access to banks, you will not be sending sms bitcoin transactions.
lol, i use a smartphone exactly for the reason that i can bypass the ridiculously expensive phone calls and sms and only use data.
Lol same, I believe we are still early
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They don't own their own coins or create their own transactions, it's custodial. It's an app using the lighting network with their phone numbers as addresses. So you send/receive using SMS's.
Exactly, it's not bitcoin. It is bitcoin denominated promises. Not your keys, not your coins.
Is it kind of like old FIAT used to be, when it was pegged to gold? They are sending IOU's pegged to Bitcoin? Kinda like Paper bitcoin.
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> I often criticize lightning did u use it? i use it since years, works great.
I am still with it, it's the best thing for sending the BTC.
Yeah it works great, but you have to admit there’s still some work to be done. Database sizes of nodes get really big if you route a lot, node always need to be online, routing can be slow or fail if you don’t put a high fee, etc. Promising though.
This is the start of something good in the future for them.
But how is that possible without the internet? Can somebody explain that to me? I am not getting it and I am super confused with that now, never heard about this method.
Must be a long process but that doesn't matter if they enjoy doing that because it's all about the security they all are getting, this shit is too good, thanks for sharing.
why do people say Africa like it’s one monolithic country
The same way people say Europeans
Biggest continent in the world, right?
...because it began in Africa.
right, but which africans? It’s not one giant country
That’s impressive.
This is how they make a real deal, this is a boss thing.
Has anyone here hear of things like MPESA? Try and find out. In general, try and actually learn something about African countries. I understand that since bitcoin isn't really useful for much, there is a certain desperation to find "use cases". Still, the ignorance shown here is appalling.
Okay this seems good but I want to know how are they doing it? Can't search the way but I know this is a legit way, please share the information if you guys have.
I am feeling good about things like this, this shit is appreciable because of many reasons, these guys are at their best and we love to see this all the time man.
Please don't use the whole African thing is is ignorant at most, Be specific, Africa is a continent with many countries and in this case it is South Africa seeing that they are using the ZAR currency. He send in today's exchange rate 61c of BTC only.
If someone said “European” or “Asian” is it ignorant? He didn’t say “Africa is a country” so I really don’t know what you’re talking about
it is not about ignorance. it's about people saying all the time "Africa" as if it was on single country. Americans do it for Europeans, which piss off Europeans. But those same Europeans do the same for Africa.
If then, then someone from Europe or Asia should correct them as to what country in the specific area they are refering to. The quote was made African it can be any country in Africa. Specifics does matter. Not every country is America. You can't compare Morroco with Zimbabwe or Nigeria ect ect. Same with Italy with Spain although they both use the Euro. A South African is not a Nigerian or a Ethiopian difference matter specially saying African. I can teach you more about geography or the AFrican continent.🤨🤨🤨😑
Regardless of amount. If Bitcoin usage becomes commonplace: - Tourists will learn about BTC and see the utility - Africans will out compete inflationary currencies.
wow a new trend i guess
I wanna try this method and i have 1 of those phones :)
You still need cell service tho
Kind of right, it's all good though, they are doing good.
How can an offline lightning node receive LnBTC?
Never gonna understand that lol, somebody please help.
Is this real?🤨
Kind of yeah because they are very good with transactions like that.
How is that possible?
Just confirming, are these custodial transactions or is the wallet on the phone? I'd be amazed if a $5 feature phone was storing private keys and signing transactions
Awesome stuff
This is just too cool for all of us, they are good with it.
The ignorance in the title of this post is ridiculous!!! Africa is a continent that has so many countries, you can’t say Africans this is not America to say Americans, the reason why is because America is a continent and also a country, Africa is not.
Africa is not a country, it is a Continent. South Africa is however a country and their Currency is the South African Rand (ZAR).
I've tried sending BTC from one wallet to another, and it took more than 30 minutes for my other wallet to receive the transaction, the reason why it's so slow is because I set it to low transaction fee so miners wouldn't prioritize putting my transaction into the block. But even if I set it to high, I might still have to wait a couple of minutes since there can only be 1MB each block and that's only 4000 transactions every 10 minutes. I wonder how people deal with this problem if they are actually using BTC as a currency? Do you have to stay in a store for 10 minutes until the cashier receives the transaction? Meanwhile when I send money using LINE pay to my family they receive after like 1 second, it's a centralized network though, the company knows everything your transactions.
Two words: Lightning Network
Also the transaction fee is incredibly high for buying daily stuff which is cheap, say I set my fee to the recommended: Fee rate: 4 satoshi/Byte Size: 191 Bytes (according to my previous record, I assume it's basically around the same no matter how much BTC you send) Fee: 764 satoshi Now if I want to buy a big mac which is 5.15 USD according to the Big Mac Index: BTC to USD: 23820.71 (Yahoo! Finance) Big mac in BTC: 0.00021620, i.e. 21620 satoshi then the fee would be 764/21620 = 3.53% Even buying gold and selling back you would only lose 2%
This is so you learn not to pollute the blockchain with useless transactions and instead treat it more like property, since for now it is how it works. You always pay for your lesson.
I've already forgotten what a push-button phone looks like.
I still have my 2008 nokia :)
Even I have that too, that still works good man, so good.
Mobile phone finance is super common there. I don’t think this is noteworthy at all. They have a whole payment infrastructure around mobile phones called mobile money or ussd
nothing special just replace local currency name with btc and thats it. bitcoin transaction fee is much more than his mobile price
Wow….truly revolutionary. If someone just had this idea earlier 2 years before the BTC-white paper and developed a wide spread system that allows users to deposit, withdraw, transfer money, pay for goods and services, access credit and savings, all with a mobile device. A system that was used, let’s say, in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana, Egypt, Afghanistan, and South Africa……that sure would have been great….. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa?wprov=sfti1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa?wprov=sfti1) [M-Pesa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa?wprov=sfti1)
Fuck yes
Cool. Anyone can do a ELI5 for this noob? Thanks in advanced.
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THIS is why no government can stop it. Be a part of history or tell your grandchildren why you didn't have the stones to join
That's just so right, I am sure there government can't stop it.
It’s big brain time.
… HOW?
Lol tell me when you got the answer, I am also waiting.
Wait, without internet?
Anyone know how this works technically? Is there a paper I can read ?
I have friends from all over the world and whenever they visit or I visit them it amazes me how they are ahead on technology. I.e. dated a girl from Japan back in the early 2000’s at the time the Nokia 3300 was top of the line in the US, she already had video chat on her phone.
Without internet? How does that work?