Bitcoin – Milestones etc

It waxes and wanes… right now the $USD value is hovering around $90… has been for a while. Went down to about $70 a week ago, but now is back.

Still…

Apparently 1 / 3 people in Kenya now have a bitcoin wallet.

This is bigger news than the fluctuating prices of bitcoin against the USD. There are a bunch of signal-changes to watch for with regards bitcoin uptake… it becoming a genuine favela-chic currency is one of them.

There are several different areas that will signal a sea-change in the uptake of bitcoins… eg: Alibaba.com… Ebay maybe (although given that Paypal is so under the thumb of the US govt that they’ve actually censored the word “Iranian”, this is dubious). In addition to that, in the information wars, the CC companies are actually coming down on the side of old and evil without even needing to be asked… so… the big online sales hubs are probably going to be last to the party. Anything that happens is likely to happen via someone offering the service “Buy anything on Amazon with Bitcoins“… but this introduces a middle-person, who will want to be paid… which (in the case of Amazon) works, because of the affiliate situation.

… but anyway, organised crime is another – and there is/was a bit of a race to see whether Favelas get there before crime… because when crime starts using bitcoin, governments are going to start cracking down on it. If the Favelas get there first (and it looks like they are), then this is going to become impossible.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

And of course one of the many things that it means for Africa, is that there is not trillions of dollars being skimmed by banks.