African Fiat Currencies on Robosats \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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806 sats \ 19 comments \ @siggy47 17 Apr bitcoin

When I checked Robosats this morning I saw an offer to buy bitcoin using the Central African Franc. I have never seen this currency before on the platform.

I'm not sure if it's meaningless, but lately I have noticed many more trades utilizing African currencies. I don't know if this indicates a growing interest in bitcoin on the continent, a greater desire to obtain P2P/No KYC bitcoin, or maybe the lack of reliable exchanges there.

Whatever the reason, I take this as a good sign.

In the past few weeks I have seen these currencies traded:

South African Rand (ZAR) Ghanaian Cedis (GHS) Ugandan Shilling (UGX) Central African Franc (XAF)

MTN seems to be a popular method of exchange:

https://momo.mtn.com/remittance/

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136 sats \ 1 reply \ @TheBTCManual 17 Apr

I've only seen one ZAR order in the last year and I was pretty quick to snap it up, honestly it's about damn time South Africans figure this out, given that all exchanges locally report directly to our local tax revenue service SARS.

if you're going above $2000 annually in capital gains you'll be subject to tax

eWallets are light KYC since you have to register your sim with your ID, not that it has to be your ID lol

eWallets are pretty lax and it's as good as cash. Once you get the pin code you can pull the cash from the ATM and you pay about 2-.2.5%.

A lot of foreigners also use it as their preferred banking rail if they are here illegally

As for momo, despite being MTN-backed isn't really a thing here in SA but I have seen it in stores in low income areas, they partnered with a specific retailer here called boxer, so you can go in and go cash to momo pretty easily

I do hope this catches on though so people figure out how cheap LN is versus the 2-2.5 they pay per transaction

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 17 Apr

Thanks for the great info. Over the past few weeks I think I've seen 3 ZAR orders. Maybe it's a trend.

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 17 Apr

Glad you're keeping an eye on this!

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 17 Apr

Seems like everyone wants to purchase btc.

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @Diego 17 Apr

Maybe @TheBTCManual can help?

36 sats \ 2 replies \ @398ja 17 Apr

That's interesting, I didn't know about this momo app at all!

121 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 OP 17 Apr

@optimism noticed the link I submitted was suspect. Here's a little more information:

https://www.worldremit.com/en/mtn-mobile-money

57 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 17 Apr

So it's not on the common host "null-route" lists hagezi/dns-blocklists or urlhaus.abuse.ch, which is where I would expect this to come from. I'm starting to wonder what's going on here...

36 sats \ 7 replies \ @optimism 17 Apr

Could this be another market probe? (I think ZAR is separate from the others in this)

https://momo.mtn.com/remittance/

This domain is on my DNS server "scams" blacklist and gets filtered at name resolution. Oof.

100 sats \ 6 replies \ @siggy47 OP 17 Apr

Maybe. Three orders, including ZAR, all looking to buy btc at -2 % discount.

From my limited research, trading in these currencies incur higher than usual transaction fees which would seem to rule out other than local buyers, at least IMO. What do you think?

113 sats \ 5 replies \ @optimism 17 Apr

Thoughts:

The current ZAR bid has a different freeform method field than the others: FNB E-Wallet Banks in SA🇿🇦 FNB - this is why I suspect that it's a different thing (people should really not be doing this, it's a publicly de-anonymizing datapoint!)
mtn.com being blacklisted raises suspicion for the currently listed XAF and GHS bids.
I'm not sure about the 2% discount indicating locals, but that does seem like a very reasonable pricing. At my current location people are most often in-person trading sats for cash at 5-7% premium vs local currency, 3-5% vs USD.
The quantities (622k and 425k sats respectively) are rather high for a probe. The probes the other day were all around 40-50k sats.
Ghana is close to XAF countries but actually surrounded by countries using XOF. Haven't lived there though so I'm not sure about any economic or cultural reasons for this to be (likely) the same person.

So I'm not sure really. Maybe someone is just looking to buy some sats on the cheap?

136 sats \ 1 reply \ @398ja 17 Apr

MTN is a South African telecom company, present in almost all African countries. Momo stands for mobile money...

XAF and XOF are the currency codes of the CFA Franc fiat used in former french African colonies, in West Africa (XOF) and Central Africa (XAF) - fun fact: they both have the same exchange rate but are not always interchangeable, your XOF will not always be accepted in an XAF country, lol.

57 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 17 Apr

Thanks re: MTN info. That's a good enough lead to further dig into why it's blacklisted (other than using dig)

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 OP 17 Apr

Thanks for this analysis.

36 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 17 Apr

One more thought, bit of a stretch though.

Last week an arrest of a Ghanaian person was made in the Caribbean in relation to a usdt-ponzi, and the rumor mill is saying that investigations are under way of copycat ponzis that - guess what - included a large group of Ghanaians too. Since those schemes only accept USDT, this could be a "let me convert my local $500 loan into USDT in a circumvent way" kind of thing.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 17 Apr

I like the theory. I'll check out those news reports.

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @hasherstacker 17 Apr

It's one at time. Soon everyone in Africa will be able to buy Bitcoin on Robosats and other KYC-free P2P methods.

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @kurszusz 18 Apr

This may be an attempt to suggest that interest in Bitcoin is growing in the African region. And this may be intentional...

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin 27 Apr

or maybe the lack of reliable exchanges there.

Bingo -- at least for BTC/CFA via Lightning.

Bitnob just expanded support for CFA: #962393 https://bitnob.com/blog/send-and-receive-xaf-xof-currencies-using-bitnob