{"id":133,"date":"2013-11-27T22:21:57","date_gmt":"2013-11-27T14:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.www.innovationiseverywhere.com\/?p=133"},"modified":"2013-11-27T22:21:57","modified_gmt":"2013-11-27T14:21:57","slug":"bitcoins-explained-afrikoin-nairobi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/bitcoins-explained-afrikoin-nairobi\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoins explained at Afrikoin, Nairobi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While the hype around Bitcoin grows stronger everyday, the conference\u00a0on mobile money at\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.afrikoin.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Afrikoin<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in Nairobi and a discussion with a few startups in the crypto-currency business has helped to\u00a0<strong>debunk what Bitcoin is, and isn&rsquo;t.<\/strong>\u00a0In our exploration we&rsquo;ve listened to and chatted with:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_200\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/afrikoin-panel-bitcoins-crypto-digital-currencies-kenya-unbanked-online-payment-systems-pelle-braendgaard-elizabeth-rossielo-gianluca-iazzolino-ian-grigg-martin-pasquier-1024x768-3.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-200\" class=\"size-full wp-image-200\" src=\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/afrikoin-panel-bitcoins-crypto-digital-currencies-kenya-unbanked-online-payment-systems-pelle-braendgaard-elizabeth-rossielo-gianluca-iazzolino-ian-grigg-martin-pasquier-1024x768-3.jpg\" alt=\" Martin pasquier innovation is everywhere nairobi kenya afrikoin panel bitcoins crypto digital currencies kenya unbanked online payment systems pelle braendgaard elizabeth rossielo gianluca iazzolino ian grigg\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-200\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The tenants of Bitcoin as a payment system<\/p><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PelleB\u200e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pelle Braendgaard<\/a>, who\u00a0has worked in\u00a0<strong>cryptography<\/strong>\u00a0related businesses for 9 years and is now heading\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/kipochi.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kipochi<\/a>, an e-wallet that helps to converts Bitcoins for remittance services<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"ke.linkedin.com\/pub\/elizabeth-rossiello\/1\/b8b\/589\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Elizabeth Rossiello<\/a>, whose startup\u00a0<a href=\"bitpesa.co\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BitPesa<\/a>\u00a0allows the Kenyan diaspora to send and receive money in Bitcoins and MPesa, the local Kenyan mobile money<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"www.cas.ed.ac.uk\/research_student_profiles\/gianluca_iazzolino\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gianluca Iazzolino<\/a>, a\u00a0<strong>researcher<\/strong>\u00a0from the University of Edinburgh whose PhD project studies the movements of people and money among the Somali diaspora<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"iang.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ian Grigg<\/a>, founder of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dinero.sc\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dinero<\/a>, an app which digitizes the\u00a0<a href=\"en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chama_(investment)\u200e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">chama<\/a>, a group of\u00a0women who co-invest in rural and urban Kenya<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The trouble with Bitcoin and new technology<\/h2>\n<p>The first issue with Bitcoin is the\u00a0<strong>prism of the currency<\/strong>\u00a0(not even talking of the Silk Road) through which it is seen. All panelists emphasise that\u00a0<strong>it is a payment system more than anything else<\/strong>, and, yes, as any payment system, it is technical,\u00a0<strong>not sexy. <\/strong>Nonetheless,\u00a0it is part of our digital infrastructure and new services are popping up on top of it.<\/p>\n<p>Bitcoin, says Pelle,\u00a0<strong><em>\u00ab\u00a0is the Internet of money\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/strong>, and as such, is roughly\u00a0<strong>at the same stage as internet was back in the 1990s<\/strong>: people who understood how it worked were few and far between, and the uses were still nascent (having a website was not even considered necessary). The same applies here. It is hard to talk about what exactly Bitcoin is without employing words like\u00a0<em>\u00ab\u00a0pacquets\u00a0\u00bb, \u00ab\u00a0cryptography\u00a0\u00bb and \u00ab\u00a0low-level system\u00a0\u00bb, <\/em>all mind boggling jargon for the unacquainted. The simplest explanation would be this:\u00a0<strong>Bitcoin is a way to send money from point A to B at no cost, with complete transparency, period, without any exclusivity.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_261\" style=\"width: 614px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/unbanked-population-stats-demographics-world-bank-bitcoin-mobile-money-afrikoin-kenya-martin-pasquier-3.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-261\" class=\"size-full wp-image-261\" src=\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/unbanked-population-stats-demographics-world-bank-bitcoin-mobile-money-afrikoin-kenya-martin-pasquier-3.jpg\" alt=\" Martin pasquier innovation is everywhere nairobi kenya afrikoin unbanked population stats demographics world bank bitcoin mobile money \" width=\"604\" height=\"402\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-261\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The unbanked: A 2.5bn market<\/p><\/div>\n<h2>The Benefits and Potential of Bitcoin<\/h2>\n<p>What\u00a0<strong>Bitcoin solves is the \u00ab\u00a0complete inefficiency of the banking system\u00a0\u00bb,<\/strong>\u00a0and that coming from a former financial services specialist. Elizabeth left the industry and set up BitPesa precisely for this reason. The banking infrastructure we use everyday was\u00a0<strong>designed in the early 1980s. <\/strong>As it stands, it\u00a0is full of\u00a0<strong>gatekeepers<\/strong>\u00a0and secrecy and is not user-friendly:\u00a0<strong>fees<\/strong>\u00a0are an automated form of punishment and\u00a0<strong>this is why so many people are left unbanked (2.5bn people as of 2013)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Bitcoin is also a\u00a0<strong>hot topic for Africa in general, and Kenya especially<\/strong>. Because you can create an account without any ID verification or checks (even though the interface is not entirely user-friendly yet), it&rsquo;s an\u00a0<strong>ideal way to reach the unbanked<\/strong>. Startups in the Bitcoin sphere find Kenya ideal\u00a0because it&rsquo;s a\u00a0<strong>regional hub for East Africa<\/strong>\u00a0and because\u00a0<strong>banks are already challenged by MPesa<\/strong>, a mobile money service offered by the local dominant telco, Safaricom. For them, it&rsquo;s realistic to talk about Bitcoins reaching\u00a0a new mass of consumers in Kenya soon, whereas in Europe and the US, there&rsquo;s no real threat to the banking system yet (Paypal is still tightly linked to your bank account).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Remittances<\/strong>, as we saw in another\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/martinpasquier.com\/2013\/11\/21\/how-technology-and-bitcoins-can-disrupt-the-remittance-market-discussion-with-african-startups-at-afrikoin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wrap-up<\/a>\u00a0of Afrikoin, should be\u00a0<strong>a huge market for Bitcoin<\/strong>, as it would allow the African diaspora from all over the world to\u00a0<strong>send and receive money into and out of Africa at no costs.<\/strong>\u00a0(The\u00a0Western Union takes a 12%\u00a0fee\u00a0on transfers with African countries) BitPesa and Kipochi both work primarily on this market of remittances but other market segments will undoubtedly soon emerge.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_250\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/pay-coffee-in-bitcoin-afrikoin-martin-pasquier-crypto-currencies-mobile-money-unbanked-remittances-1024x768-3.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-250\" class=\"size-full wp-image-250\" src=\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/pay-coffee-in-bitcoin-afrikoin-martin-pasquier-crypto-currencies-mobile-money-unbanked-remittances-1024x768-3.jpg\" alt=\" Martin pasquier innovation is everywhere nairobi kenya afrikoin pay coffee in bitcoin crypto currencies mobile money unbanked remittances\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-250\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Where else than in Nairobi&rsquo;s iHub can you pay a coffee in tangible bitcoins \ud83d\ude09 ?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The challenges facing a nascent technology like Bitcoin revolve around\u00a0<strong>education and user experience<\/strong>. It remains complicated to get your hands on a Bitcoin but startups are here to make it simpler, just as they have simplified our relationships with travel payments, renting and selling\/buying.\u00a0<strong>Another hot topic will be the interoperability<\/strong>\u00a0with other payment systems, including banks. Cash is still king and when it comes to cashing out a Bitcoin, you&rsquo;re \u00ab\u00a0caught\u00a0\u00bb in the regulators&rsquo; nets once gain.<\/p>\n<p>For anyone interested in the Bitcoin,\u00a0<strong>do try to connect locally with the Bitcoin community<\/strong>. They are, in the same way that the early internet maniacs were, an\u00a0<strong>open-source community with a collaborative mindset and a will to change the world of banking. <\/strong>Anyone can agree that this is one industry that needs a wake-up call for all its shortcomings.<\/p>\n<p>Martin Pasquier<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the hype around Bitcoin grows stronger everyday, the conference\u00a0on mobile money at\u00a0Afrikoin\u00a0in Nairobi and a discussion with a few startups in the crypto-currency business has helped to\u00a0debunk what Bitcoin is, and isn&rsquo;t.\u00a0In our exploration we&rsquo;ve listened to and chatted with: Pelle Braendgaard, who\u00a0has worked in\u00a0cryptography\u00a0related businesses for 9 years and is now heading\u00a0Kipochi, an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47,52,49,51,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-countries","category-events-innovators","category-innovators-category","category-markets-category","category-research-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}