Bitcoin gaming enters Africa with local crypto exchange partnership

Players in Africa can now send and receive small amounts of Bitcoin (BTC) while playing classic titles like Counter Strike.

Zebedee, a fintech and payment processor targeting the gaming space, has partnered with crypto exchange platform Bitnob to offer payments and gaming reward options in Africa using the Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN).

Within the partnership, African users can earn Bitcoin through Zebedee-powered apps and games. Zebedee’s offering acts as a second layer in games that allows developers to replace vague in-game point rewards with satoshis, the smallest denomination of Bitcoin. Through the partnership with Bitnob, these can in turn be converted into a local currency such as the Nigerian Naira.

Zebedee’s Chief Strategy Officer Ben Cousens explained that the partnership was driven by game developers who had Bitcoin in mind for tournaments and other game rewards.

“If I’m Activision Blizzard or EA Games and I have 30 million players of my games in Africa and I run tournaments or giveaways, I can’t pay those players on fiat rails – it’s too expensive. I’m limited to the US and I losing money on loss of engagement. Try sending $0.01 to those territories on another railroad,” he said.

“This is about the $180 billion video game market, not play-and-earn or crypto games.”

In general, Africa has been a growing area of ​​interest for the Lightning Network, in part due to LN’s ability to facilitate microtransactions. Bitcoin Senegal founder Nourou told Cointelegraph, “Microtransactions are our economic reality,” which is why he and many other African builders and developers are exploring LN.

Africa benefits from young demographics and a digitally native population. Cousens continued, “We have seen consistent evidence of high demand for our platform across the African continent, where the purchasing power of Bitcoin is significantly higher than markets such as the US and Europe.”

In fact, the matchup of LN and games is a growing trend during the bear market. Cousens said it is “A natural evolution of the interactive entertainment landscape, where ‘Rewarded Play’ (rather than unsustainable play-and-earn) provides a meaningful performance boost for game developers against a backdrop of slowing mobile game revenue growth while engaging players in a fun and creative way.”