Latest news with #BitcoinEkasi
Daily Maverick
3 days ago
- Business
- Daily Maverick
Is Bitcoin useful yet? The question explored in ‘Decrypting Crypto: the utility conversation'
Forget speculation – can you buy bread with Bitcoin? Daily Maverick's second Decrypting Crypto webinar tackled whether crypto's promise of real-world use is finally growing roots from South Africa's (SA's) townships and suburbs to shops and remittances. Bitcoin's rocket ride is well known – a single coin, worth around R3,300 at the end of 2014, then called the worst investment of that year, is now worth more than R2-million. While exchanges do exist to turn Bitcoin into fiat currency, the question remains: is Bitcoin gaining real practical utility for ordinary South Africans? The answer is that while it's still early days, cryptocurrency is becoming more practical to use in everyday life, thanks to growing adoption and an expanding range of real-world applications. In this second edition of Business Maverick's Decrypting Crypto webinar series held on 10 July 2025, crypto journalist Lindsey Schutters looked to unpack the issue beyond the hype of the marketplace, in conversation with Larry Cooke, head of legal for Binance Africa, and Hermann Vivier, founder of Bitcoin Ekasi and Chairman of The Surfer Kids. It's about simplicity For Vivier, Bitcoin's usefulness isn't just about whether it works as a payment system. It's about what it represents. 'Bitcoin was created specifically as a response against central banking,' he said. 'Satoshi Nakamoto recognised that the basic problem is the centralisation of control. So the answer to that is decentralisation.' Vivier's motivation isn't profit, but principle. 'Utility is a second-layer conversation. The first layer is ideology,' he explained. 'If my utility application of this thing loses sight of that core question, then I'm not doing it right.''I want to be able to do everything I do with normal money. I want to be able to do that with Bitcoin – in the simplest, most straightforward way possible,' he continued. Building Bitcoin Ekasi But ideals are tested in the real world – which is exactly why he helped launch Bitcoin Ekasi in Mossel Bay. Inspired by El Salvador's Bitcoin Beach, the project is building a circular economy around Bitcoin. Salaries are paid in crypto, and spaza shops are encouraged to accept it. 'We've onboarded about 50 businesses in the community,' Vivier said. 'We currently pay 22 staff salaries entirely in Bitcoin. The coaches at Surfer Kids use that money to buy essentials like groceries and electricity. Where Bitcoin isn't accepted, I sometimes convert to rand – but the goal is for crypto to be used as is.' It's not an overnight transformation, though. 'Adoption is slow. It's gradual. And that's normal,' Vivier said. 'Money changes very slowly. Just look at how long it took to go from gold to fiat, or for credit cards to become mainstream.' Everyday use, and a grocery pocket While Vivier is building grassroots use cases, Cooke sees crypto utility growing both personally and institutionally. At Binance Africa, he focuses on legal frameworks, consumer protection and enabling everyday use. Cooke uses his Binance wallet to pay for groceries at Pick n Pay via the Lightning Network, a fast and cheap transaction layer built on top of Bitcoin. 'Freedom of money – that's our slogan,' he said. 'It's about giving consumers control over their assets and allowing them to choose the tools that work best for them.' He distinguishes between personal utility – how individuals make their money more efficient – and general utility, where a broader ecosystem enables spending and saving with crypto. 'What you're trying to solve for is efficiencies,' he explained. 'How do I get the most out of my money? How do I make it simpler, better, faster?' Taxes, scams and the chain that doesn't lie Crypto may be borderless, but Sars treats it as an asset – every disposal triggers a tax event. 'We do enable tax regimes because we are global… we've created a tax tool that allows individuals to reconcile buying and selling and basically calculate their own tax,' said Cooke. 'It's not a certificate per se, but it's one of the closest things you'll find at this point in time.' And while scams are a persistent risk, the blockchain never forgets: 'Once the crypto transaction takes place, you can't undo it. You can't remove it off the blockchain… Eventually you will get caught.' The conversation repeatedly returned to the need for education and inclusion. 'A lot of people have burnt their fingers in past hype cycles,' Vivier admitted. That's why responsible onboarding and community-building matter. For Cooke, the future isn't about crypto versus banks, but about co-existence. 'We're not here to compete with banks or M-Pesa,' he said. 'It's about interoperability. All technologies are embraced. All systems function together.' He points to mobile money's success in Kenya and explains why SA – with its robust banking infrastructure – hasn't seen the same adoption pattern. 'South Africans weren't desperate for a mobile solution like M-Pesa. But crypto can still be valuable in a strong financial system – especially when it offers new ways to move money or store value.' Volatility bites Of course, Bitcoin's volatility remains a sticking point. But Vivier argued that fiat currencies aren't much better – especially across Africa. 'The value of Bitcoin comes from its decentralised network and its rules. It's run without fail for 16 years.' Cooke agreed, adding: 'Fiat is just as volatile in some African countries. What we offer with crypto is transparency and immutability.' That transparency is also a double-edged sword. While the blockchain can expose fraud, it's also why CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) are raising red flags. 'CBDCs are a surveillance tool,' Vivier warned. 'They represent the final merger of money and state. With that control, governments can switch off protestors' bank accounts. That's dangerous.' 'This is why we're doing this series,' Schutters explained to viewers. 'Crypto isn't just a currency play – it's a community education project too.' 'Even I fall victim to concentrating too much on the investment asset side of Bitcoin, and forget to talk about the everyday-use case,' he confessed. One (big) question at a time 'Is crypto useful yet?' asks Schutters in conclusion. In short: yes, but it's still early days. Crypto is being used in Mossel Bay townships, at retail tills in Pick n Pay, and increasingly in online services and cross-border remittances. But broader adoption hinges on community education, smarter regulation and practical use cases. Both DM guests had advice for crypto newcomers. 'Ask questions,' Vivier urged. 'Don't feel stupid. This is a paradigm shift. Every person you onboard brings us closer.'
Forbes
29-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
South African Bitcoin Circular Economy Project Deepens Community Ties
Bitcoin Ekasi, located in Mossel Bay, South Africa Frank Corva Founded in August 2021, Bitcoin Ekasi, a Bitcoin circular economy project based in a township in Mossel Bay, South Africa (Ekasi is slang for 'township' in Afrikaans) continues to expand thanks to the efforts of its dedicated members. Hermann Vivier, founder and Chairman of Bitcoin Ekasi, shared that the continued success of the project hinges in part on the work of The Surfer Kids non-profit, which Vivier founded in 2010. The Surfer Kids is an organization that teaches marginalized youth commitment and dedication through surfing and also provides them with after-school educational support. 'Bitcoin Ekasi operates with The Surfer Kids as its umbrella organization,' Vivier told me in an interview. 'The secret to Bitcoin Ekasi's success is the fact that we have a long-standing relationship with the community with which we work. We started operating in this particular community where Bitcoin Ekasi is based in 2015,' he added. This isn't to say that introducing Bitcoin into the community — one in which many of the residents have never even opened a bank account — was easy, though. Luthando Ndabambi, Project Community Leader at Bitcoin Ekasi and The Surfer Kids, recalled how challenging it was to onboard both merchants and everyday people alike to Bitcoin three and a half years ago. 'In the beginning, it was tough,' Ndabambi told me in an interview. 'Most shop owners in the township had never heard of Bitcoin, except perhaps from negative associations with scams, which made them understandably suspicious,' he added. 'I spent a lot of time walking them through how it worked. I demonstrated the process by using bitcoin myself to buy products. It took a lot of patience, and building trust was a slow process.' Now, however, 32 shops in the community accept bitcoin and the 21 employees for The Surfer Kids program earn their salaries in bitcoin. Many have been excited to see their bitcoin holdings increase in value since late 2022. And some of the most recent community members that the Bitcoin Ekasi team has onboarded to Bitcoin are the principal and teachers at the local public elementary school. Recently, the Bitcoin Ekasi team has been working more closely with the staff at T.M. Nanda Primary School, the local public school that approximately 75% of the youths who are part of The Surfer Kids program attend. 'We've built trust with the principal, teachers, and students through consistent engagement,' Thinus Mouton, Special Projects Coordinator at Bitcoin Ekasi and The Surfer Kids, told me in an interview. 'This has included regular visits as well as sponsoring a newly designed school emblem and entrance board,' he added. 'We also introduced the school staff and the students to international Bitcoin community members during the road trip that followed the Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town conference, which Hermann and Kgothatso Ngako, founder of Machankura, put on in conjunction with a local organizing committee including several of South Africa's most notable Bitcoin enthusiasts.' Vivier highlighted some of the other work that the staff members from The Surfers Kids and Bitcoin Ekasi have done with the school. 'We do quarterly meetups with the teachers and the principal where, amongst other things, we discuss Bitcoin,' said Vivier. 'We have created wallets for all of them and they have some sats (fractions of a bitcoin) in those wallets that they spend at the local shops.' Vivier, Ndabambi and Mouton all also mentioned that, for the past two years, the Bitcoin Ekasi team has recruited students from the school to join the Mi Primer Bitcoin diploma course that they offer at the Bitcoin Ekasi Center, a physical space dedicated to Bitcoin education in the community. The team is looking to build a bigger and better version of this space by the end of this year. The Bitcoin Ekasi project has had a center since the middle of 2022, as Vivier believed that it was necessary to have a location for in-person support if the community's residents were to truly adopt this new monetary technology. 'I knew from the very beginning we needed a place for support and education in the township itself,' said Vivier. 'It's for people who have issues with their mobile bitcoin wallets or for people who are curious about how to use Bitcoin. It's basically a walk-in support center,' he added. 'Imagine giving an iPad to your grandmother. If something goes wrong with it, she would have to have someone explain what happened and how to fix it to her in simple terms. You can't give her online resources to go and figure out what's wrong with the thing. This is what the Bitcoin Ekasi Center is for.' The current center, though, is simply a house in the community that the Bitcoin Ekasi team turned into a small educational hub. Vivier never planned for this location to be permanent. The current Bitcoin Ekasi Center Frank Corva 'Our current Bitcoin Ekasi Center has always been a temporary thing, and we've been planning to build a proper support center for a long time,' said Vivier. In April 2024, he submitted an application to the local government to purchase a small plot of land in the community, and, as of March 27, 2025, he received a preliminary 'yes,' though, the details of the purchase still need to be negotiated. If approved, the center will become a more official hub for the community, something to complement the newly-renovated Surfer Kids center and freshly-built international-standard skate bowl, which was funded by a Discovery Grant from Block last year. The recently-renovated center for The Surfer Kids Frank Corva If you take a closer look at the header image for this article, you'll notice the logos of Bitcoin companies and organizations painted on the sides of houses in the township. Vivier conceptualized this, as he wanted to freshen up the look of the homes, which are set against the picturesque backdrop of the ocean. He decided to use some of the organization's donation money to pay the residents of the homes 7000 sats per week (just over $6 at today's bitcoin-to-USD rate) under the agreement that they either save the sats or spend them in the community — they just can't trade them for South African rand (the local fiat currency). 'It's been a great way to get extra sats flowing into the community,' said Vivier. 'Plus, now we've come up with an additional requirement, which is that the people receiving those payments also clean up around their homes, which helps to drive the idea of being responsible for your property and taking pride in the appearance of your community,' he added. Ndabambi, who's been on the front lines of the Bitcoin Ekasi project since its inception, said that aside from the number of shops he's onboarded to Bitcoin, he's most proud of being able to reward the youths in The Surfer Kids program with sats for their successes and to see people in the community beginning to embrace Bitcoin. 'People are starting to feel hopeful, realizing they can save with bitcoin and build something for the future, which is an option they didn't have before,' said Ndabambi. With that said, Ndabambi noted that education is still a major challenge. 'Many people in the community struggle with reading and writing, so explaining Bitcoin, something they can't physically touch, to them is challenging,' he said. 'People are afraid of losing money or being scammed, so I'm always working to help them overcome those fears and build their confidence in the technology.' Mouton seconded the notion that education is a challenge and added that he, a white South African who isn't from the township, like Vivier, sometimes feels that simply earning the community's trust can be difficult. 'Winning the trust of residents directly can be challenging due to language and cultural differences, said Mouton. 'But by enabling these trusted locals to lead, I help bridge the gap indirectly, which feels like the most effective way to build credibility in a community I'm not originally part of.' For Vivier, the project's biggest success is simply that he can continue to run a daily program through The Surfer Kids to support dozens youths from a low-income neighborhood. 'It's amazing that we can sustain this, because, for the kids in the program, The Surfer Kids is everything,' said Vivier. The biggest challenge that persists, according to Vivier, is simply managing funds as a non-profit. 'Being a non-profit, you're reliant on donations,' said Vivier. 'I'm grateful for the 10 years that I spent running The Surfer Kids before starting Bitcoin Ekasi project because I learned the hard way that you have to manage funds today as if there is no future funding.' Vivier also noted that fundraising and spending in bitcoin is what gives the project leverage that other non-profits don't have. 'We're entirely reliant on donations, but because we operate on a bitcoin standard, we get three times the amount of work done with the same amount of funds donated,' he explained. 'Not only are the donations put to good use in supporting the kids, but our low time preference approach means we think very carefully about what we spend on so as to benefit from the long-term price appreciation of our reserves,' he added. 'Meanwhile the fact that we spend in bitcoin, which drives adoption, means that the positive ripple effects of the bitcoin has far wider wider effect than fiat donations would.'
