Will Africans Embrace Cryptos?
by Marvin Dumont
Sound money and economic prosperity go hand-in-hand. Too little (or none at all) will lead to a barter system, and decrease in productivity: Manufacturers won’t produce goods because they won’t get paid in a desirable commodity and/or valuable currency.
The Spanish Price Revolution 300–450 years ago showed that even too much money harms the economy: The Conquistadors mined gold and silver in the New World, and shipped it back home. The result? High inflation in Western Europe for 150 years.
When everyone’s got money, merchants charge higher prices for a limited supply of goods.
The Promise and Peril of Africa
Africa is a case study of bad currency (e.g. Zimbabwe), monetary mismanagement, and colonial theft (e.g. Malawi gold). These are mostly the result of centralized actions.
But therein lies the promise of cryptocurrencies, as Africans can benefit financially from decentralized systems. Lagos, Nigeria (population 21 million) in early 2019 ranked as the top African city for online searches of Bitcoin (BTC). Other tech hubs are big cities in Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, and Ghana.
Apollo all-in-one privacy currency (APL) gives adopters the advantage of a crypto that lets them stay anonymous — that’s powered by blockchain, and which operates on unregulatable platform. (It’s obvious why that’s helpful in the context of local bureaucracies.)
African freelancers who provide outsourced services (e.g. writing, research, programming, web development, etc.) can get paid online via cryptocurrencies without coercion or hassle from a middleman.
A few things need to happen.
They’ve got to be educated about how the innovation works (such as wallets and passphrases). Be courageous in adopting tech that can make them prosper, especially retailers.
Leverage the local mobile infrastructure to transact. Spread the word, and gain network effects.
There was an age when Europe (before the Industrial Revolution) was a poor continent. Poverty, whether national or individual, doesn’t have to be permanent.
Apollo (APL) all-in-one privacy currency combines features of mainstream cryptocurrencies in a truly private and unregulatable platform. With two-second block speed, APL is one of the fastest cryptos on Earth. The privacy platform lets “Apollonauts” transact and send data anonymously via Encrypted Messaging, Private Ledger, Decentralized Exchange, IP Masking 2.0 and Coin Mixing. Learn more at www.apollocurrency.com
