Bitcoin is once again proving itself to be a major commodity on the continent of Africa. One small business owner – Abolaji Odunjo – can offer a testament to the cryptocurrency’s power. As a mobile phone provider, he recently did the unthinkable… He began paying his phone suppliers in bitcoin.
Africa Continues to Remain Attractive to BTC Enthusiasts
At first, this might seem like a very risky move for both parties involved. For one thing, bitcoin remains very volatile, which means there’s always a risk that someone might wind up losing money. However, what remains even more strange is that his suppliers asked Odunjo to forgo fiat payments and dish out cryptocurrency in exchange for products. This is something his suppliers are asking for, which threw him off big time.
However, Odunjo says that his profits have been huge as of late, and that shelling out BTC for the items he gets from both China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been one of the smartest decisions he’s ever made as a businessman. One of the big benefits to utilizing bitcoin is that he no longer needs to purchase dollars using the naira, which is the native currency of Nigeria. In addition, he does not have to pay fees to middlemen or third-party financial firms.
In a recent interview, he described how much his business environment and operations have changed:
Bitcoin helped to protect my business against the currency devaluation and enabled me to grow at the same time. You don’t have to pay charges and you don’t have to buy dollars.
Over the last few years, Africa has become a major hotspot for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Jack Dorsey – the CEO of both Twitter and Square – recently announced that he was moving to Africa for a period of three to six months so that he could potentially bring the benefits and advantages of bitcoin to more people, though at the time of the announcement, he had not stated where he was planning to stay or which countries he was considering.
So Much Potential for the Continent
In addition, the spread of the coronavirus pandemic has likely put a halt to Dorsey’s plans, though one can see that even mega entrepreneurs see the continent’s potential when it comes to spreading the notions of crypto throughout the financial world.
One of the biggest reasons that bitcoin has found a home in Africa is because it is the home of several migrant workers, many of whom are working abroad or in other regions and looking to potentially send money to their families. With so much corruption and failure spreading throughout Africa’s politics and financial infrastructure, inflation has become a serious problem for many of its national currencies, and utilizing bitcoin and other forms of crypto has allowed these workers to forgo the complications of currency exchanges and the remittance fees that often come with these monetary transfers.