Botswana Gets First Bitcoin ATM at CoinFest Africa
Botswana's first Bitcoin ATM, a Skyhook model, has landed in the country. Originally owned by the Taurus Bitcoin Exchange, its relatively-long processing time was considered untenable in the saturated Canadian market. Its small size and extreme affordability, however, made it perfect for donating to send to Africa. It's headed to Satoshi Center in Gaborone, a cryptocurrency incubator soon to be established. The tech team there-eager to get their hands on relatively-expensive technology-will retrofit it to accept South African rands (commonly resorted to in the region) until the Botswana....
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A successful Coinfest event took place on March 20 in Kumasi, Ghana attracting crypto enthusiasts from all over the world. Similar events are also scheduled to be held in Tanzania and Botswana on March 27, with the latter expecting to receive Africa’s second Bitcoin ATM. Coinfest 2015 was supposed to welcome the participation of several African countries on the weekend of February 20 and 22. However, the Coinfest’s African counterparts have been pushed to March with one event already held in Kumasi on March 20 with others scheduled for March 27 in Gaborone, Botswana and Dar es Salaam,....
CoinFest-the first decentralized convention about decentralized currencies-will be returning for 2016. Known for its open source and free-to-attend nature, as well as the cryptocurrency-only rule, the community decided to move the date from February to April. CoinFest is building off of the success of CoinFest 2015, when it spread from Canada to being a worldwide celebration. The CCFR brought the decentralized festival to Moscow and St. Petersburg, despite the ongoing Bitcoin ban in Russia. A blockchain-based registration system was demonstrated in Colombia and Ghana, and Mr. Bitcoin made....
Bitcoin continues to make inroads in Africa. One particular African country pushing the penetration of the digital currency is Botswana. The Satoshi Centre in collaboration with GDG Gaborone and Partners are putting together the first ever Botswana Bitcoin & Blockchain Summit. It is scheduled from 25-26 November, 2016, at the Botswana University in Gaborone. With the theme ‘Bitcoin & Blockchain: The Only Chance for Africa to Empower her People’, the summit will host 150 people from across Botswana and Africa. Participation is free. Rationale behind summit. Coin Telegraph spoke to....
The Botswana government is set to present a “Virtual Asset Bill” to the country’s parliament, a move that could see it become one of the first countries in Africa to have laws regulating cryptocurrencies.
Preventing the Proliferation of Risks Associated With Cryptos
A Botswana government draft document that proposes to regulate new and developing virtual assets businesses, as well as to provide a regulatory body with its functions and powers, is now set to be presented before the country’s lawmakers, a recent government gazette has shown.
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Africa is often touted as the region most likely to benefit from Bitcoin. However, for the most part, the technology has yet to take off in any meaningful way. A recent survey by mobile platform Jana interviewed 1,800 people across 9 emerging markets. This included respondents from Africa's leading market, South Africa. Of the survey group, only 13% had heard of Bitcoin. This represented the lowest awareness of any emerging market. At present the continent has two full service exchanges, both in South Africa. One of these exchanges has made its services available to Rand holders in....