Articles by Alexandria – Bitcoin Magazine
My name is Alexandria “The Great”. I am a citizen of Zimbabwe and in my second year of a bachelor’s degree at Liaoning Shuhua University in China. While studying Business Administration – I also work with two jobs within the Bitcoin community. The first is with Money On Chain, where we build Defi on Bitcoin for Bitcoiners to let them improve the performance of their Bitcoins while retaining full control over their private keys. The other is Global Bitcoin Fest where we are the first and only Podcast / Twitter site that actually interviews personalities from the Bitcoin communities from all countries.
My Bitcoin history begins at the age of 11 when I became one of the many millions of Zimbabweans who reached multitrillionaire status. As amazing as this sounds – you really could not imagine the lifestyle of a multitrillionaire in Zimbabwe at that time. Our lifestyle had many luxuries that included waking up as early as 2am in the morning to walk and queue for basic items outside outlets across the country. In most queues – one could wait for as long as six hours just to get essential products like bread and water. Those who would stand in line outside banks or ATMs to make cash withdrawals would only be allowed to make local cash withdrawals equivalent to $ 2 US dollars, and this was a daily allowance imposed on us by our own banks. You see – by the year 2008, hyperinflation had reached a staggering 89.7 percent. This was quite the life of many trillionaires! After this phase – we had a few years of stability when the country dollarized. Unfortunately, this did not last long since the government decided to return to a local currency by introducing a pseudo-currency known as the “Bond Note”. It was rolled out as both paper money and electronic currency. The electronic version of it became known as RTGS and could be used in interbank transfers as well as through the electronic wallet with the dominant e-wallet k known as Ecocash. This bond note currency is not offered in any other country. It can only be traded locally. To prevent foreign exchange trading in the black market, the government introduced a 2% transaction fee on all payments and money transfers between local accounts. This has since gone up to a total of around 6% transfer fees which include 2% tax fee as well as bank fees.
Given the backdrop illustrated above, as well as many other reasons not mentioned in this article – I think Zimbabwe, without a doubt, has the biggest use case for Bitcoin.
Solution: My main goal through employment with Global Bitcoin Fest and Money On Chain is to improve Bitcoin scalability in Zimbabwe. By creating the first Bitcoin community that trades, collaborates and supports ourselves. I am also working with a few Bitcoiners on our first Bitcoin mining operation that will create local access to Bitcoin at the lowest possible cost ratio of 1: 1, which can then allow the most affordable exchange, and for Bitcoin to take market share in terms of remittance and takeover from bottom and up.
