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36 sats \ 7 replies \ @optimism 17 Apr \ on: African Fiat Currencies on Robosats bitcoin

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.