If you don’t know about Bitcoin and blockchain, you should – especially if you want to accumulate wealth in Africa. Bitcoin is the virtual currency challenging governments, circumventing banks and threatening to blow oldschool currency out the water.
Just 10 years ago, Bitcoin was another office joke in Africa. The rare few who took it seriously have made millions.
“One year and seven months ago. November 2015. That was the month I started with R3,500 ($260) and now it’s worth R37,000 ($2,800). A Bitcoin was $260. Exactly one year later that Bitcoin was $900. It grew over 300%. Today it’s $2,800.”
This was the moneymaking turning point for communications and marketing employee Shireen Ramjoo who, at the age of 32, was so taken by Bitcoin she left her job in the bank to start her own consultancy, Liquid Crypto-Money.
From humble worldwide beginnings Bitcoin, a digital currency, otherwise known as crypto-currency, was born from block-chain technology – a mass linking of computers. The midwives are an estimated 5.8 million users generating a market value of $27 billion, which represents a level of value creation on the order of Silicon Valley success stories like Airbnb, according to the 2017 Global Crypto-currency Benchmarking Study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
The impact of Bitcoin has been compared to the day paper money replaced gold and silver. It is so new that like there were no computer technicians before computers, there are few Bitcoin experts, more educated guessers.
Crypto-currencies are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to block-chain technology. Many financiers argue it will transform the world money system and maybe be the next dotcom-style boom in Africa. Up for grabs are billions more as peer-to-peer networks spark new business platforms and threaten to wash away established business practices that have been around for centuries.
This story is from the September 2017 edition of Forbes Africa.
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This story is from the September 2017 edition of Forbes Africa.
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