Originally from SA, but living in UK. Worked in Nigeria and Kenya. Bitcoin was an essential tool for moving money back and forth between countries, especially with SA’s tedious capital controls.

I think SA has been ahead of the curve for a long time - BitX (now Luno) was there back in 2013 and pretty liquid. Unfortunately it’s now very shitcoin focused and keeps asking for more and more personal information, so user experience for non shitcoin trading use cases has deteriorated IMO. (Competitors don’t seem much better)

Growing up in SA and having Zimbabwean friends really helped me appreciate how the government controls your property - from asset seizures (SA and Zim farm expropriation) to weakening currency and inflation. Also high levels of physical crime make you appreciate how important it is to be able to keep your family and wealth protected.

Funny coming to the UK and seeing no appreciation of this generally, but now starting to see some wake up to the inflation issue at least.

Obviously Bitcoin helps solve many of these problems for me, but also I see stacking as a partly altruistic act - we need Bitcoin to have value and liquidity if it’s going to be useful throughout Africa and the world. And we need more tools to be built so we don’t need to rely on compromised businesses like Luno.

People don’t appreciate enough that as a holder of Bitcoin in a western country you can sell your bag very easily without affecting the market, and could buy any other asset you want. Therefore holding Bitcoin and shilling it is mostly helping advance adoption (rather than increasing your personal ROI) so more people can get the freedom it enables. I would do that even if my stack didn’t gain purchasing power.