Can't be any worse than the Zimbabwean Dollar
Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa
11–17 of 17 posts
Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa
#12I just got back from Kenya 2 days ago. I was blown away at the M-Pesa penetration. They are skipping credit cards just as they skipped land lines.
Don't you like that part about technology/disruption? Normally, it would need to trickle down, which means some countries would always be decades behind others when it comes to a certain type of infrastructure or technology.
But thanks to disruption, not only can some countries completely skip one or two types of technology at once, and jump straight to the latest one, but sometimes they can actually get ahead of the "developed" countries, especially if those countries are too "entrenched" with a certain technology, and it resists moving on to the new disruptive one (so basically the same rules of disruptions that apply to companies, apply to countries, too).
If Bitcoin keeps going to achieve its true potential, I could see how the first country to declare Bitcoin as its national currency, wouldn't be a "developed country", but an African country or something.
Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa
#13I just got back from Kenya 2 days ago. I was blown away at the M-Pesa penetration. They are skipping credit cards just as they skipped land lines.
Don't you like that part about technology/disruption? Normally, it would need to trickle down, which means some countries would always be decades behind others when it comes to a certain type of infrastructure or technology. But thanks to disruption, not only can some countries completely skip one or two types of technology at once, and jump straight to the latest one, but sometimes they can actually get ahead of the…
Seems like that also falls in line with some of the points made by Thiel in his debate with Andreessen [0]
Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa
#14Very excited about this. I'm friends with one of the cofounders. Think remittances as a huge market for this. Also look at companies like Xoom that this takes on. or western union.
Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa
#15It's great, I hoped that we'll have more distributed p2p services.
Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa
#16I'm the CTO of Kipochi who is rolling out this service in Africa.
First of all this article greatly exaggerates things.
Anyone with a mobile data enabled phone theoretically has a bitcoin wallet using our service. We are rolling out feature phone specific services as well, but roll out is limited by operators.
Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa
#171/3 of Kenyans use M-Pesa, a mobile money transferring platform. M-Pesa recently added support for bitcoin. So while 1/3 of Kenyans have a bitcoin wallet, most of them may not even be aware of this fact.
They have added nothing of the sort, as far as I can determine. A bitcoin site added M-Pesa as an option for payment. If there is any official affiliation, I'd like to see the proof. No mention of bitcoins or Kipochi appears on http://www.mpesa.in/ You may as well say that 2/3 of Americans have a Paypal account because they have a credit card. I've seen several articles now that heavily imply that this is an official…
I am the co-founder and CTO of Kipochi.
This is not an official integration with M-Pesa. M-Pesa users don't automatically have a bitcoin wallet either.
There have been a small handful of good journalists covering the story, but way too many try to fit it into their very tiny world view and invent things that sound cool.
Unfortunately these kinds of sensationalist stories can cause us or anyone else working with Bitcoin problems in the future.