Bitcoin Payments in Africa 🌍
💡 Daily Reminder: Stay humble, stack sats
Bitcoiners,
People can now easily exchange value from the US to people in Africa in the cheapest way possible.
An announcement from the first African Bitcoin Conference details how an American payments company, Strike, partnered with an African-based payments company Bitnob to easily send US dollars to a few African countries using Bitcoin's Lightning Network.
Here's an overview of how the partnership works and how it positively affects bitcoin so you can better understand how bitcoin is being globally adopted.
How it Works
Strike's new feature called "Send Globally" allows instant payments from US dollars to naira (Nigeria's currency), cedi (Ghana's currency), or shillings (Kenya's currency) using the Lightning Network.
Traditionally, remittance payments across borders happened between major banks and remittance providers such as Western Union. The Send Globally feature uses Bitcoin as an asset to transfer value across the world. Bitcoin is transferred via the Lightning Network to make payments instant and near zero costs. The sender pays using US dollars, then Strike converts the dollars to bitcoin and sends it over the Lightning Network, which gets to Africa and is instantly converted to the native currency and appears in the receiver's bank account.
Significance
There are (2) ways this announcement positively affects Bitcoin:
Cheap remittances
Lightning Network capacity
Africa already has some of the highest bitcoin adoption rates in the world. This announcement will accelerate bitcoin adoption growth in Africa as more people both in the West and Africa realize the power of better payment technology. The people of Africa will thrive as cheap remittances put more money back in their pockets.
The Lightning Network has approximately 5,000+ bitcoin on the network worth about $85M USD. Onboarding Africa to the Lightning Network will create a need for additional bitcoin liquidity to be added to the network. As more bitcoin gets added to the network and more individuals use it, the stronger the network becomes. The goal is that one day there is enough liquidity and people using the network so that it becomes the dominant global currency.
Happy Tuesday,
-Pod
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Eric Podwojski
Founder, Bitcoin EDU
Twitter: @epodrulz
Disclaimer: This should go without saying: This is not financial advice. This is not investment advice. I write this newsletter for education and entertainment. Act accordingly.
