NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

indesk, the leading Bitcoin news site, stated in its latest quarterly report (The State of Bitcoin and Blockchain) that one of the most heralded areas of bitcoin disruption, “banking for the unbanked” has been the most disappointing area of interest when it comes to investment. Only 0.12 percent of Bitcoin investment has gone to Africa. Of course, this seems to fly in the face of the assertions, which you won’t miss in the various Bitcoin forums as well as news sites, that Bitcoin is the technology that the poor in the developing world have been waiting to afford them cheap financial services. According to Michael Fraser, reporting leader at Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CAAZ):

“Bitcoin can be a paradigm shift for the unbanked. The effects are multifold: there will be change on a technological, political and economic level.”

In Coindesk’s Q3 2015 report, Africa and Latin America, at 40 percent and 20 percent respectively, are listed as the regions with the greatest potential for Bitcoin adoption, but much of the other data seems to tell a different story. The most disapproving of the numbers are regarding investment. The report shows that North America and Western Europe, as in the previous reports, took the biggest chunk of the money put into Bitcoin startups by investors between June and September 2015.