Bitcoin Shakes up the Money Supply in Central America and Africa (Op-Ed)

The efforts to expand Bitcoin development and adoption in Africa and Central America continue.

So the market is looking pretty comfortable with BTC after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and others with crypto exposure. After shocking customers, markets, and regulators earlier last month, their effect on BTC’s market value seems priced into the momentum.

While crypto yield scheme crashes and bank runs haven’t been able to keep down bitcoin’s price, something’s pushing it higher. That’s industry development and user adoption happening all over the world. Two of the most promising regions for crypto growth are Africa and Central America.

In Africa, where some of the world’s poorest countries are, around 50% of residents are unbanked today. That means they’ve never had a checking account, credit card, or access to any banking services, and Bitcoin fixes this in many ways.

Africa and Central America growth, Bitcoin tailwinds

Andrew Lokenauth, the author of the popular “Fluent in Finance” investor newsletter, recently wrote, “Many African countries experience high inflation, making Bitcoin a more stable store of value.” He touts Lightening Network’s low-bandwidth, low-fee BTC payment platform as a gamechanger for Africa:

“The Lightning Network is a layer-2 scaling solution for Bitcoin that can help to make Bitcoin more accessible and affordable in Africa. The Lightning Network enables users to send and receive Bitcoin payments quickly and cheaply, even with a low internet connection.”

Lokenauth also reports that Lightning Network devs in Africa are working on ways to expand the BTC L2 there. For example, Kgothatso Ngako has built an app in South Africa that allows users to send BTC via text message without the Internet.

The size of the market and the acceleration of its growth is incredible. Mobile network operating data reveals money transactions sent over mobile in Africa soared 39% to $700 billion in 2021.

Cryptocurrency is also taking hold in Central America. Earlier in March, a leading Latin American travel agency and Binance Pay partnered to enable crypto payments for travelers.

Meanwhile, President Nayib Bukele’s government in El Salvador has reproved crypto skeptic naysayers with its official adoption of BTC. The government recently showed off its financial strength with the repayment of one of two outstanding $800 million bonds.

Bottom Line: These Are Bullish Factors for BTC

Bitcoin’s spot price had hardly broken above $17K for months at the start of last quarter. Heading into Q2, it appears out of the woods after the long crypto winter. In fact, price momentum over the last month has analysts now wondering when BTC will break above $30K again.

Bitcoin continues to defy its obituary writers and elude U.S. regulatory overreach. The price shows strength and bullish trends because BTC has a large, varied, and carefully invested set of key stakeholders. They continue to drive development and adoption in the first world and developing nations in 2023.

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