Ms. Farida Nabourema
The Director of Togolese Civil Aid, Farida Nabourema, has pointed out that the rising number of bitcoin scams has rapidly increased over the past years due to the ignorance of the masses to learn the trading operations of Bitcoin.
According to Ms. Nabourema, in a media engagement during the opening of the maiden Africa Bitcoin Conference held in Accra yesterday, there were a handful of Africans who understood the trading regularities of Bitcoin and who used it as an avenue to scam investors and businesses on the continent.
“Those who understand the operation of Bitcoins are limited and some are using that and playing on the ignorance of the masses to scam them to invest into fake programmes that are not regulated or associated with Bitcoin,” she said.
“They sometimes tell people to give them two dollars in one month so they will become billionaires. Bitcoin does not work that way. We don’t want people to be deceived by scammers who use new information to take advantage of them,” she added.
Authentic Bitcoin is immutable and carries more value which prevents the government and leaders of any political organisation from blocking or refreezing resources based on the amount of money transferred from one country to the other.
The Central Africa Republic has adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender in their trading business while other countries are hoping to adopt the Bitcoin trading system in the coming years.
She further cautioned the government and lawmakers, not to formulate policies against Bitcoins based on speculations and unfounded rumours.
Ms. Nabourema further urged African governments to research the Bitcoin trading system and how it would strengthen their currencies to be economically independent.
“Check the data, do research and ask how this innovation will contribute to your country’s growth. Most elite people who are against it today are those taking advantage of the masses for their own profit,” she added.
The African Bitcoin Conference was launched to make Bitcoin more understandable and accessible to the African population. It is a technology of currency that provides a tremendous opportunity for Africans to understand the complexity of the technology in other to grow.
Bitcoin is a widely recognised cryptocurrency that enables peer-to-peer exchange of value in the digital realm through the use of a decentralised protocol, cryptography, and a mechanism to achieve global consensus on the state of a periodically updated public transaction ledger called a ‘blockchain.’
BY Prince Fiifi Yorke