Bitcoin is spreading in Africa.
The payment company Block, which used to be called Square, said on the 6th that it had joined the seed round of the virtual currency mining company Gridless in Africa. Stabilize the market in Africa for Bitcoin (BTC) mining and renewable energy.
Gridless is currently helping a small energy generator in Kenya, which is in East Africa and where sustainability is a problem. We will start mining businesses at other bases in the future with the money we raise.
This time, an investment fund called Stillmark that focuses on block companies and BTC companies has put $2 million (270 million yen) into the company. Small energy bases tend to make less money, and the spread of renewable energy is a problem. So, we will build up green energy in Africa and make it easier to mine bitcoins.
Gridless CEO Erik Hersman said this about the money:
Africa needs electricity that is cheap. With our help, developers of renewable energy mini-grids will be able to grow faster and help more households in a more sustainable way.
Because of this investment and the great partners we are working with, we will have the money and strategic support we need to grow our business faster.
Also, Thomas Templeton, Head of Bitcoin Mining and Wallets at Block, which is run by Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, said:
We really want to speed up the rate of renewable energy around the world.
Gridless is supposed to work well with our plan to make sure that the Bitcoin network is powered more and more by clean energy, using Bitcoin mining hubs all over the world. It can help the community’s good effects while making sure the decentralised infrastructure that supports Bitcoin’s currency ecosystem is safe.
environmental issues and bitcoin
One of the problems with making renewable energy and green energy more popular is that there is still an imbalance between the amount of power used (demand) and the initial cost. In these kinds of situations, there is a strong belief that mining cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, will help spread green energy in order to keep computing power going.
When compared on a national level, Bitcoin’s power use will be 30th in the world in 2021, and mining activities that use thermal power generation, which are thought to be bad for the global environment, are said to be happening in some places. But, unlike regular data centres, one of the benefits is that it is easy to stop operations right away if the power grid needs it, like in the case of a disaster.
Since the top mining market share moved from China to the U.S., Texas, which has a big mining base, has been worried about how vulnerable the power grid is. For example, heavy snow in February 2021 caused the power grid to go down for a while. But in June 2022, the mining base, which was able to stop working right away because of the early summer heat wave, was looked at again.
The state of bitcoin in Africa
This time, the investment in Gridless was announced at the “Africa Bitcoin Conference,” which took place from November 5th to November 7th in Ghana, West Africa.
At the same time, Strike, a payment company that uses the Lightning Network, began implementing a “Send Globally” feature on the 6th. This lets people send money from the U.S. to Africa for less money. Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana are the first three places on the list.
Together with the African payment company Bitnob, the new remittance feature will be built. Users can now send money directly to their bank accounts in Africa in naira, cedi, and Kenyan shillings without having to pay any fees.
Strike is a company that focuses on making fast Bitcoin payments. The CEO of the company, Jack Mahlers, was one of the main people who helped get Bitcoin laws passed in El Salvador in 2021.
Statistics from the blockchain analytics company Chainalysis also show that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has seen the most rapid growth in the amount of cryptocurrency traded. In particular, trading volume went up in Egypt, which was ranked 14th in the world. This was made easier by the sharp drop in legal currency and the growing use of virtual currency in international money transfers.
Also, the use of cryptocurrencies in P2P transactions between people is growing quickly in Africa, where there are a lot of people who don’t have bank accounts, which is a problem for financial inclusion. The highest percentage in the world is for small remittances under $1,000.
