Chapter 917 Additional Issuance
Just as the BitC conference was being held, Anchorage, a subsidiary of Matrix Capital, announced that it would issue an additional 400 million USDA.
Because USDA is anchored 1:1 to the U.S. dollar, it also means that they will add $400 million in reserve funds.
This time Anchorage issued USDA, one of the reasons is naturally because the bull market of BitC has started, and the global related transaction volume has surged.
Especially in markets outside the United States, the demand for USDA, a digital coin anchored to the U.S. dollar, has increased. The 100 million USDA originally issued by Anchorage has become insufficient and additional issuance is needed.
There are other reasons that they did not expect...
That is, in many countries in Africa, especially in West Africa, people actually exchange part of their savings into USDA and deposit it in their mobile phone accounts.
According to estimates, the number of USDA accumulated in mobile phone accounts has exceeded 30 million...
This also starts with the cooperation between the United Bank for Africa and KlarnaPay.
The United Bank for Africa cooperated with KlarnaPay as early as 2011 to launch a mobile payment application in Kolo and surrounding countries.
With the development of the past two years, especially after Kolo Telecom entered the Nigerian market this year, the number of KlarnaPay users in West Africa has begun to grow exponentially...
At the beginning of this year, as Kolo signed an agreement with Nigeria to further deepen economic cooperation between the two countries, Kolo Telecom entered Nigeria, Africa's largest market, through acquisitions.
In February, Kolo Telecom successfully completed the acquisition of Globecom, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary, thus entering the Nigerian market.
Currently, there are a total of 26 telecom operators in Nigeria, but most of them are fixed-line operators, and there are only 4 mobile operators, namely NITEL, MTN, Globacom, and Vmobile.
Nigeria issued four 3G licenses in 2007, to these four companies.
Globecom, which was acquired by Kolo Telecom this time, obtained Nigeria's second full-service telecommunications license as early as 2002. It is the only operator other than the state-owned operator NITEL that has the qualification to operate full-service operations.
Currently, Globecom has a market share of 27% in Nigeria, ranking second only to the state-owned operator NITEL and ranking second among the four major operators.
After completing the acquisition of Globecom, Kolo Telecom began to improve 3G networks in and around major cities in Nigeria. At the same time, in order to compete for the domestic telecommunications market in Nigeria, they began the business of "selecting packages and free mobile phones".
Of course, this activity is not only carried out in Nigeria, but also in Kolo and neighboring West African Free Trade Area countries.
Most of the mobile phones given away are mobile phone models produced locally in Kolo by the Dopod brand of Honor Electronics.
This can be regarded as Kolo Telecom’s contribution to the popularity of smartphones in West Africa...
At the same time, the United Bank for Africa has also opened many branches in West Africa, including Nigeria, because of the increase in the share of smartphones in this region - as mentioned before, many countries in Africa are very weak. , leading to high electricity bills, so for some families with good conditions, buying a computer that consumes more power is not as good as a smartphone that is more convenient to use and consumes very little power.
This has also led to the high penetration rate of mobile payments, mainly KlarnaPay, in considerable areas of West Africa...
In addition, many countries in Africa have another characteristic...
That is, the degree of depreciation of its currency is relatively high.
In the case of Nigeria, its legal currency is called Naira. Since the outbreak of the subprime mortgage crisis, the exchange rate of Naira against the US dollar has skyrocketed from an average of 117 Naira to 1 US dollar in 2007 to the current 165 Naira to 1 US dollar... ... You must know that the U.S. dollar has depreciated quite a bit in this process because of its quantitative easing policy.
Although after the subprime mortgage crisis, due to the quantitative easing policy of the United States, most other countries in the world had to "print money" together, resulting in varying degrees of devaluation. However, in comparison, the currencies of some African countries have depreciated. The extent is a bit exaggerated.
You must know that although the Caulo Shilling (CS) has also depreciated due to related financial policies...
But this is mainly due to the "active devaluation" carried out by the Kolo government in consideration of export issues. Generally speaking, the Kolo shilling still maintains an exchange ratio of 10CS=1USD with the US dollar, and has not depreciated significantly relative to the US dollar. .
It is also for this reason that when the currencies of the countries surrounding Kolo depreciated relatively, and the extent was not small, many people exchanged part of their deposits from their national currencies into Kolo shillings in order to maintain the purchasing power of their property. .
But the problem is that although Kolo has relevant financial cooperation agreements with the countries in the West African Free Trade Area and Nigeria.
However, in order to protect the country's financial security, although their acceptance of Kolo shillings is slightly looser than that of foreign currencies such as the US dollar and euro, the total amount of Kolo shillings exchanged by their own citizens is still There are restrictions.
This has also led to the black market price of Kolo Shillings in these countries, which is the same as the US dollar, with a relatively high premium.
At this time, many people have discovered another way to exchange "foreign currency", and that is USDA.
As mentioned before, since this year, many websites and applications have begun to support BitC payment. In fact, earlier, in January this year, bitpay, which is used for BitC payment, received US$500,000 in financing, aiming to become a leader in the BitC industry. paypal.
Although KlarnaPay does not support BitC payment - because Barron understands that the price of BitC is still unstable and there will be a huge increase in Coin, it is not suitable for payment.
The instability of the price is another factor. The key is that because of the decentralized operation of BitC, its transfer efficiency is not high, especially when the network needs to process more transfer information...
Can you bear to buy a cup of coffee and have to wait for more than ten minutes or even half an hour to transfer and wait for block confirmation?
Not to mention that as the price of BitC rises, the mining fees required for its transfers (which can be understood as transfer fees) will also become more and more "expensive" - it is possible that the mining fees required for you to buy a cup of coffee are much higher. for the price of this cup of coffee.
Therefore, if BitC is used as a "currency", it will definitely not be in this decentralized manner.
But soon after the launch of USDA anchored to the US dollar, KlarnaPay has already supported USDA in quite a few countries.
The most critical thing is that USDA, as a digital coin anchored to the US dollar, is not considered a "foreign currency" under the current supervision of almost all countries.
At the beginning, some people who came into contact with BitC transactions found that if USDA can really remain stable, it can serve as a substitute for the US dollar in many aspects.
Then, starting from this year, some West African users who had not been exposed to digital coins such as BitC, but understood the significance of USDS anchoring the US dollar on KlarnaPay, began to try to convert part of their national currency assets into USDA, and Deposited in KlarnaPay…
As of now, more and more West African users are using this method to combat the sharp depreciation of their own currencies.
There are more than 30 million USDA deposited in KlarnaPay user wallets, which means that assets worth more than 30 million US dollars have been converted into USDA.
If USDA had not been issued for a long time and its degree of trust is still questionable, then this number would be higher...
(End of chapter)