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Beautifully written and a well painted grim picture. I encourage you to read the article, but I'll try to sum up what Nabourema wrote here.
She starts by explaining a story many of us have heard before. Africa has many countries, and many currencies. There's a big issue in cross boarder payments, forceful currency conversions, predatory government loans, chaotic exchange rates that common people have no control over, and clear efforts to keep it that way. So, it's no surprise that when she first learned bitcoins fundamentals are rooted in clarity and fairness, she found hope. Hope that Africa can use, finally, a stable and fair monetary system as a foundation for genuine growth. She says at the end "The objective was never to build organizations that survive on Bitcoin. The objective was, and remains, to build an Africa that can thrive because of it."
You see, there's a big, nasty issue that she's bringing awareness to: Bitcoins message of sovereignty or freedom is being exploited by what she describes as an "NGO-style savior complex". She describes quite sadly that on the surface it may look like bitcoin is flourishing there in the continent as "Hundreds of Bitcoin initiatives now claim to exist across Africa. New projects surface almost weekly, new communities appear on social media every month, and new organizations announce, with great confidence, ambitious missions to transform the continent." But don't let that fool you. In her article she highlights these projects as initiatives as ungenuine. They are using the African people as proof of their "help" to receive clout and more importantly, funding from elsewhere. She writes: "the community itself remains largely unchanged, while the one person whose life consistently improves is the founder who built the project in its name."
You can tell she's worried. She's worried about her home, her people, and the state of Bitcoin in Africa currently. With the seemingly endless projects sprouting up resources and funding are being diverted away "from the builders doing serious work" and subjects, yet again, the very people being dubbed helped to exploitation. She desperately wants the objective to shift back to Bitcoin being used for African growth instead of Africans being used for the financial growth of a few grifters.
My thoughts:
It seems to me the issue is the same as everywhere else in the space. We need real users and we need users encouraging others to use. I suspect that will forever be true. I am hopeful, however. Perhaps I'm foolishly optimistic, I've been told such, but I can't help but smile when I think of the resiliency slowly being hardened underneath the immense weight of bullshit that sits on top of genuine growth and adoption. The grifting NGO-style groups she mentions, treasury companies, financialization of bitcoin, in fighting, commercial-scale mining, shitcoin scams, the funneling KYC squeeze of government and large-scale exchanges. Under all that weight and pressure, the diamond at the center of it, real adoption, slowly grows. Resilience grows, users grow, Bitcoin grows.
https://btcmap.org/merchant/34660
https://btcmap.org/merchant/35190
go to these palces! No matter where you're from. Owner seems to be on the right path, but i'm the only person who's spent sats there so far. I don't want to lose them :(
This was such a cool read and by far my favorite piece from you, thank you for making it. I would love more incite from the hacker who tried to break bitcoin early on. I wonder at details of what he tried to do and how it didn't work. And I'd love more details on him thinking either a team or a genius defending the network. I want to know, too, where and how "attack removed" was posted.
Fascinating read!
This whole thing is really great I will be sharing to many! I felt for Bitcoiner A, we're similar haha.
Spark seems scary . . . it's so widely accepted and seems to gain traction day by day. The scary part is it's being thought of as bitcoin and one day, if millions are using "bitcoin" and transactions start to get doxed, censored, or trapped in KYC cages, it's a PR nightmare.
When the merchant goes to finalize the transaction they click checkout every time. Then they're given options to select cash or credit. Bitcoin is added to that list too. So if you're asking for the merchant to check if they do all you have to do is tell them it should be on the list after checkout.
This gives me an idea for a long term SN reporting project. A phone call or email to every business listed on BTC maps. Asking just a few questions like:
Do you accept bitcoin?
did you know you are hosted on BTC maps?
If no to question one, are you interested in accepting bitcoin?
Any question suggestions for this short survey?
It would be cool to compile long term results for this and start to develop some stats based on geographical locations
When you guys orange pill a coffee shop, do you go down the SoV route or the recieve Bitcoin and spend it on the business as a circular economy?
When orange pilling a small business in the farmers market or a coffee shop there's one huge advantage over the case your described here. Transaction fees. Most high volume low margin merchants light up when you tell them that accepting bitcoin is free and that fees are the burden of the sender. That's generally my shoe in. The rest comes later.
All you have to do is ask \ stacker news
All you have to do is ask - an update \ stacker news
In these two posts I answer all of your questions here :)
The if the merchant is using the square terminal to generate a lightning invoice then the sender may use any lightning wallet. They don't need to have cashapp themselves. If you want to pay with bitcoin, you'll have to ask of course. It's only awkward if you make it awkward however :)
Very cool! Is there a time frame you'd like us to adhere to? Or since this is a long going project, if it takes me until past May to post, I'll just be among the June posts? :o
Ill comparison because those numbers are directly proportional to money and effort going into marketing not because everyone is dying for seedless bitcoin custody. I won't go as far as saying this is an attack (yet) but surely you see the danger in thousands being unable to simply move their seed into some other open source option if need be? This to me seems like yet another way to cajole the masses into a pin that locks from the outside. It's dangerous.
Ok seems I copied and pasted the first youtube link during a commercial so that's Annoying and embarrassing.
Though I do love the chessbrahs, epecially of old, my name is as you guessed my repertoire and no influenced by the brahs. I basically only play the English as white attempting mostly to get some sort of Botvinnik and I have for a long time exclusively play the French against 1.e4 Love the French :)