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Business

Celo Africa Web3 fund program calls for Ugandan startups to apply

Celo Foundation will be in Kampala, Uganda hosting the next Web3 Fund program, which aims to assist Web2 entrepreneurs in advancing to Web3 and receiving financial investment from its ecosystem partners. This follows the recent successful Web3 fund workshops that were hosted in Nairobi, Lagos, and Accra. The Web3 fund workshop in Uganda will be happening on 8 November, 2022.

The call for Web2 startups and businesses is open to up to 50 Ugandan founders who will access equity investors, VC funding, technical, business, and marketing mentorship, as well as decentralized exchanges listing opportunities to interested candidates.

The new fund builds on Celo’s existing presence in Africa and targets various verticals in the financial innovation space, including payments, remittances, savings, and lending. The Foundation engages in meet-ups with local developer communities in the African region through ambassadors and pioneers projects focusing on microwork and decentralized finance (DeFi) lending. 

Sharing more about Web3 opportunities, Umar Sebyala, Uganda Lead at the Celo Foundation noted, “There’s great potential for Web3 adoption by startups in Uganda and across the continent, which is undeterred by the bear market. The Celo ecosystem is seeing continued momentum for building meaningful use cases in the East African region, from e-commerce marketplaces to projects for climate action.”

Some of the confirmed speakers for the Uganda workshop include members of Celo’s Alliance for Prosperity, such as Noah Baalesanvu from Cryptosavannah, Peter Kakoma from Kanzu Code, and Reginald Tumusiime from Capital Savvy.

Through the Celo Africa Web3 Fund, startups will be introduced to equity investors through venture capital (VC) firms like Unicorn Growth Capital, Echo VC, Uncovered Fund, and Flori Ventures, a seed-stage VC that invests in the Celo ecosystem. The Celo Developer Guild will also provide technical assistance alongside partners, such as blockchain development platform Tatum, and Ape Unit, a network of creators, strategists, developers, and designers. 

As part of the Celo Foundation’s global mission to create a more inclusive global financial system, the nonprofit organization launched the Celo Africa Web3 Fund in July to help scale African startup projects building on Celo in support of blockchain technology and Web3 adoption.

Please visit the Celo Africa Web3 Fund website to register and for more application details.

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Business

South Africans lose over $6 million in crypto scams

The National Consumer Commission (NCC), a consumer protection agency in South Africa, recently announced that it had uncovered the “Obelisk” pyramid scheme, a well-known crypto mining enterprise that defrauded over 4,000 citizens of $6 million.

The NCC received 25 complaints from victims who lost about R750,000 ($41,500), but its preliminary investigation shows that there were over 4,000 participants spread across eight WhatsApp groups who lost R112 million ($6.1 million).

Obelisk is a company that was established by a part of the team that worked on the Siacoin cryptocurrency. The main goal of the Obelisk developers was to build a community where ASIC mining is a preferable way of gaining coins.

After a series of complaints by investors, the NCC disclosed that it had to swing into action by investigating the activities of the company. The NCC noted that most of its victims were from different social media platforms.

Investors on the platform disclosed that they were charged between $18.75 and $24,000 per mining equipment on the platform which the NCC described as an outrageous amount. Additionally, they were asked to pay a certain initial fee at the point of registration which was undisclosed.

Also, for investors to be able to withdraw their funds, again they are mandated to pay another fee to upgrade their mining equipment.

In all of this, South African Regulator NCC revealed that the company paid a smaller portion of the investor’s returns on their first investments to convince them to invest higher fees which is a gimmick synonymous with pyramid schemes to lure more investors.

However, problems began when investors discovered that the withdrawal button on their profiles had been suddenly deactivated making it impossible for them to withdraw their earnings.

In a bid to inquire about the issue, they were blocked and removed from the community groups they were added to. Furthermore, the NCC also discovered that WhatsApp groups that investors were added to were estimated to be more than 20.

In 2021 alone, South Africa lost about R1.8 billion ($99 million) to scams according to the Global State of Scams report.

The good news is that the South African Government is moving to address these scams. Last Wednesday, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) announced that crypto assets in the country would be treated as financial products which will help authorities tackle fraud.

The FSCA also announced that starting next year, crypto platforms in the country will need to get licensed in order to continue operations.

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Business

Mastercard and BitOasis sign strategic partnership to launch crypto-linked cards

Mastercard and BitOasis, the region’s top cryptocurrency platform for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), have partnered to offer a series of crypto card programs that will make it easier for people to use cryptocurrencies on a daily basis at retail locations and on e-commerce platforms.

BitOasis customers will be able to convert their cryptocurrency holdings to fiat currency allowing the consumer to easily shop and pay at more than 90 million merchant locations globally. The first BitOasis cards are expected to launch in early 2023 in markets with regulatory approvals.

BitOasis customers, who can also access a range of Mastercard benefits, will be issued with virtual and physical BitOasis cards through a simple and compliant digital onboarding experience via the BitOasis app, allowing them to transact seamlessly physically and online.

Currently, cryptocurrency payments and cash-outs are considered cumbersome with the overwhelming majority of merchants not accepting such payments directly. BitOasis customer transactions will be enabled to take place in Fiat currency, thereby adding consumer protection such as provisions for dispute resolution and refunds which don’t exist today when paying with a digital asset.

The partnership aims to address such pain points and further drive customer awareness and crypto adoption in the region. 

Amnah Ajmal, Executive Vice President of Market Development, EEMEA, Mastercard, emphasized, “Changes in consumer demand, as they look for new, fast, and flexible digital experiences, are fueling an increase in the adoption of emerging payment technologies. With this comes a greater expectation for businesses to provide multiple ways to shop and pay.”

She added, “Through our collaboration with BitOasis, one of the most innovative crypto platforms in MENA, we enable the consumer experience to be seamless by using their cryptocurrencies in a safe and secure environment.”

Ola Doudin, CEO and co-founder, BitOasis,  also commented, “We continue to witness sustained demand amongst our customers for crypto to be integrated into, and relevant, for their daily lives.  Research tells us that 47% of the Middle East population now believes crypto is the future of money. As the largest crypto platform built for the GCC and MENA region, we are delighted to partner with Mastercard to enable BitOasis customers to benefit from the convenience of linking their BitOasis wallets to their BitOasis Mastercard Crypto Cards for use across Mastercard’s global merchant network.”

He further highlighted, “Our mission at BitOasis is to enable a new digital financial system that is transparent, inclusive, regulated, and relevant on a daily basis, whilst providing even greater safety and security for cryptocurrency payments. Today’s partnership helps us deliver against our mission”.

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Business

Binance CEO CZ Says The Company Is Investing Heavily In DeFi

Since its launch, Binance has established a reputation among cryptocurrency enthusiasts and users. The exchange that surfaced in 2017 has had one of the most remarkable journeys. It has grown to be one of the largest crypto exchanges on a global scale.

It offers a trading platform with more than 350 cryptocurrencies, 120 million users, and a daily trading volume of $76 billion. In spite of the severe market conditions, the exchange was one of the few to continue recruiting.

Even with such progress, Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), has stated that the company is heavily investing in DeFi.

Binance, according to the CEO, is aiming to spend $200 million on the Forbes media organization and $500 million in financing for Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase. Additionally, earlier this year, the Binance executive said the company plans to spend more than $1 billion on potential investments and acquisitions this year and DeFi and NFT projects are among the good options. 

Binance has also committed $325 million to 67 projects. CZ emphasized that before he invests in something, he wants to see real products that people can use.

Binance’s current investment ratio is higher than his 2021 investment of $140 million for 73 projects. The company is likely to spend over $1 billion on investments and potential acquisitions this year.

CZ’s exchange has proven to be one of the sturdiest in terms of riding the struggling wave that hit the market this year. The crypto market was hit with a major storm this year as the crypto bear market hit and also the collapse of the Terra ecosystem followed.

Many businesses battled to survive, some had to shut down while others went bankrupt. However, Binance was acting intelligently and had also hired staff when other companies were making major layoffs.

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Business

Yellow Card Receives Crypto Licence To Operate In Botswana

Pan African cryptocurrency exchange platform, Yellow Card has made another significant stride in the industry, becoming the first cryptocurrency company on the continent to be granted a Virtual Asset Service Provider licence to operate in Botswana. The exchange platform has revealed this today in a press statement.

According to Yellow Card, the licence, in accordance with Section 11 of the Virtual Asset Act, 2022 of Botswana, was issued by the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority (NBFIRA) on the 29th of September 2022 and will become the standard for crypto operations in the country.

According to Chris Maurice, CEO, and co-founder of Yellow Card, this is a monumental moment for the company, its customers, investors, and the crypto industry as a whole as it positively impacts everyone across the value chain. 

He said, “This opens up greater channels of expansion with regards to payment partners, banking, and expanding our client base across Africa. This will further show regulators in other markets that we are not just any other cryptocurrency company – we are pioneering, pushing boundaries, and setting the standard. All the more reason for them to work together with us as well.” 

The Bank of Botswana previously issued a warning about the risks of investing in unregulated cryptocurrencies. However, as part of efforts to tighten anti-money laundering regulations, Botswana’s lawmakers passed a bill in February 2022 to control trade in cryptocurrencies and digital tokens. 

The regulations require anyone seeking to offer cryptocurrencies or digital tokens in Botswana to get a license from the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority and adhere to a list of conditions.

Commenting more on digital innovation and the Botswana fiat currency, Yellow card highlighted, “Although Botswana has a small population, they boast a significantly strong purchasing power due to the Pula’s strength relative to other African currencies. When it comes to digital innovation, citizens have a high-risk tolerance and are always looking for the next big thing in the digital space. That said, the appetite for innovation and the challenges ordinary citizens face due to the lack of access is a massive gap in the Botswanan market that Yellow Card is catering to.” 

Keletso Thophego, Botswana Country Manager for Yellow Card also stated, “The majority of the population is unbanked because of the increasing difficulty of getting bank accounts for the average people who do not have payslips. There’s no doubt that because of  blockchain technology we have been able to cater to the unbanked in a faster and more efficient way.”

He added, “With the new licence in place, the future of cryptocurrency trading and other digital tokens looks positive. Yellow Card remains one of the most reliable, secure, fastest, and licensed crypto exchange platforms on the continent. Allowing Batswana to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT at the best rates with Pula.”

The licence announcement comes less than one month after the company closed a $40M Series B funding. The round was aimed at enabling the company to expand across the continent, develop new product products, and advance strategic partnerships.

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Business

Polkadot Co-founder Gavin Wood Steps Down From CEO Role At Parity Technologies

Polkadot’s co-founder Gavin Wood is leaving his chief executive officer (CEO) role at Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure company that supports the Polkadot ecosystem.

According to the Bloomberg report, Wood will still remain the company’s majority shareholder while also retaining his role as the chief architect.

Parity co-founder Björn Wagner will now take over as the CEO.

Speaking on the development, Wood said, “The role of CEO has never been one which I have coveted and this dates back long before Parity. I can act at being a CEO well enough for a short while, but it’s not where I’m going to find eternal happiness.”

With his resignation, Wood said that he is focused on making Polkadot and Web3 more relevant to large swathes of the population. This will begin by helping the community design and build several interesting chain-integrated social primitives, which he thinks are crucial for the company to deliver a true Web3 platform.

Wood played an active role in developing the second-largest crypto asset by market cap, Ethereum. He served as the blockchain network’s Chief Technology Officer. He later founded other blockchain networks like Polkadot and Kusama.

Polkadot’s value has reacted negatively to news of Wood’s resignation. The digital currency shed roughly 4% of its value and is currently trading for $5.82 as of this writing time.

The picture is grimmer on the thirty days metric as it has shed 7.4% of its value. The asset is trading at 89%, away from its all-time high.

Polkadot is among the top 20 digital assets by market cap. According to CoinMarketCap data, the network is worth $6.5 billion.

The recent resignation of the Polkadot CEO continues the recent exodus of crypto CEOs. Several crypto firms have seen top executives leave their positions behind because of the market situation. Embattled crypto lender Celsius saw its CEO Alex Mashinsky resign from his position.

Apart from that, Kraken’s Jesse Powell, MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, and FTX US President Brett Harrison also left their positions.

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Business

Nigerian Presidential Party, APC Says It Will Review The Country’s Blockchain And Crypto Policy If Elected

The All Progressives Congress (APC), the party of Nigerian presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, revealed in its newly released manifesto that it intends to set up an advisory committee to examine the current legal environment regulating blockchain technology and virtual asset services.

An excerpt from the APC manifesto states, “We will reform government policy to encourage the prudent use of blockchain technology in finance and banking, identity management, revenue collection, and the use of crypto assets.” 

The APC, which is also the party of the current president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, stated that the committee will make modifications as needed to create a regulatory framework that is more effective and business-friendly.

The 80-page APC manifesto states that the Tinubu government actually aims to change Nigeria’s approach to information technology.

The Nigerian Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) have implemented policies that discourage the usage of digital assets throughout the tenure of outgoing President Buhari.

Additionally, it’s believed that several firms were compelled to cease operations in Nigeria as a result of the CBN’s 2021 directive against crypto assets and the ensuing crackdown against entities disobeying the order.

However, according to the APC manifesto, the Tinubu Government will prioritize putting in place a regulatory framework that is business-friendly. In addition, the manifesto states that an APC Government will also encourage the CBN to expand the use of our digital currency, the e-naira.

Meanwhile, concerning the local currency’s exchange rate, the APC acknowledges that this may be the most evocative monetary issue of the day. The party argues, however, that since it influences the costs of imports, the competitiveness of exports, and net capital flows, management cannot be ignored nor left to the vagaries of an unrestrained market.

Even though it occurred on a parallel market, the collapse of the naira against the dollar has contributed to driving up inflation in Nigeria.

The fundamental reason for the naira’s ongoing devaluation is frequently attributed to Nigeria’s failure to produce enough foreign currency to cover its import bill. Nevertheless, the CBN continues to maintain the naira’s official peg at just under N450:$1 despite the currency’s decline in value versus the US dollar to just under N750;$1.

However, in its manifesto, the APC suggested it would take a different approach towards managing the exchange.

The APC said, “To ensure that exchange rate policy harmonizes with our goals of optimal growth and job creation driven by industrial, agricultural, and infrastructural expansion, we will work with the Central Bank and the financial sector to carefully review and better optimize the exchange rate regime.”

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Technology

Google picks South Africa for its first cloud region in Africa

To catch up to other leading providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, who made inroads into the continent a few years ago, the IT giant Google recently announced the creation of the launch of the first cloud region in South Africa.

In an effort to give its clients and partners in Africa access to full-scale cloud capabilities, Google stated that it is also constructing Dedicated Cloud Interconnect sites in Nairobi (Kenya), Lagos (Nigeria), Capetown (South Africa), and Johannesburg (South Africa). These sites connect users’ on-premises networks with Google’s grid.

Google plans to tap its private subsea cable, Equiano, which connects Africa and Europe, to power the sites. Equiano has been under development since 2019 and has so far made four landings in Togo, Namibia, Nigeria, and South Africa.

South Africa now joins Google’s global network of 35 cloud regions and 106 zones worldwide, and the announcement follows the recent preview launch of regions in Malaysia, Thailand, and New Zealand. Google Cloud regions allow users to deploy cloud resources from specific geographic locations, and access several services including cloud storage, compute engine, and key management systems.

Speaking more about this recent move, Google Cloud Africa director, Niral Patel expressed, “We are excited to announce the first Google Cloud region in Africa. The new region will allow for the localization of applications and services. It will make it easier for our customers and partners to quickly deploy solutions for their businesses, whereby they’re able to leverage our computer artificial intelligence or machine learning capabilities, and data analytics to make smarter business decisions as they go forward.” 

He added that the new region and interconnect sites will take its cloud computing services closer to its clients, allowing its customers to choose where to consume the products from.

Patel also stated, “What we’re doing here is giving customers and partners a choice on where they’d like to store their data and where they’d like to consume cloud services, especially in the context of data sovereignty. This allows customers to then store the data in the country should they choose to do so. I guess for me the most important element is that it gives customers the element of choice.” 

Users’ ability to choose where their data is stored is becoming more and more important as nations like Kenya establish privacy and data laws that force businesses to store their data within national boundaries and process it using servers with local hosting.

The decision to set up a region in South Africa was informed by the demand for cloud services and the market’s potential. Still, the company is looking to launch in more markets within the continent as demand for its products soars. Its early adopters include large enterprise companies and e-commerce firms like South Africa’s TakeAlot and Kenya’s Twiga.

According to a study by AlphaBeta Economics, which was commissioned by Google Cloud, the South African cloud region will assist the development of more than 40,000 jobs and over $2.1 billion in GDP by 2030.

According to Gartner data, the three largest public cloud storage providers worldwide are Google Cloud, Azure by Microsoft, and AWS. However, it is unclear why Google had not yet expanded into Africa until now.

With the advent of Google, South Africa is now home to four of the top cloud storage providers on the continent.

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Business

OlympusDAO Suffers $300,000 Exploit; White Hat Hacker Returns All Funds

Earlier, OlympusDAO users were briefly alarmed after a hacker exploited 30,000 OHM tokens worth $300,000 and then returned the funds.

It appears the hacker is a white hat hacker, he/she exploited a flaw in the OHM Bonds smart contract, a new product, and got access to the system.

OlympusDAO Confirms Exploit

Developed last year, OlympusDAO is a decentralized reserve money technology. Their OHM Bonds product recently began testing. The DAO alerted its members to the hack in the Discord server after discovering the exploit.

     “This morning, an exploit occurred through which the attacker was able to withdraw roughly 30K OHM ($300K) from the OHM bond contract at Bond Protocol. This bug was not found by three auditors, nor by our internal code review, nor reported via our Immunefi bug bounty,” the announcement read”

The funds impacted were restricted as a result of the staggered implementation, OlympusDAO added.

The amount stolen is merely a fraction of the $3.3 million bounty the hacker could have claimed if they had reported the exploit.

The DAO team announced at the time that it had stopped the affected markets and was now exploring for methods to make up for the affected users.

Hacker Returns Stolen Funds

The OlympusDAO team didn’t have to wait long, either, because the hacker returned back all the funds.

“Funds have been returned to the DAO wallet,” the community update for the DAO states. 

The hacker declined  to reveal why he decided to refund the money. Some have suggested that he might be drawing attention to the flaw, though.

Regardless, the hack exposes DeFi smart contracts’ vulnerability even as the technology advances.

In October, there were a record number of cryptocurrencies stolen from DeFi ecosystems.

The likes of Mango Markets, Moola Market, BNB Chain, and many others were among the compromised protocols that were used to steal hundreds of millions of dollars.

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Business

South African Financial Sector Regulator Declares Crypto Assets a Financial Product

According to a recently published South African government gazette, crypto assets have been declared as financial products under the country’s Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services (FAIS) Act.

The declaration became effective on October 19 after being signed by Unathi Kamlana, Commissioner of the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).

The declaration, which has received positive feedback from some participants in the South African cryptocurrency market, is applicable to any digital representation of value that is not issued by a central bank but can be electronically traded, transferred, or stored by both natural and legal persons for the purpose of making payments, making investments, or serving other purposes.

Additionally, the declaration comes just a few months after the deputy governor of the South African central bank, Kuben Naidoo, revealed that his institution would be treating crypto assets as financial products. According to the deputy governor, such treatment would allow the South African Reserve Bank to regulate crypto assets.

Reacting to the news, Farzam Ehsani, the founder and CEO of South African crypto exchange platform Valr, offered his perspective on what he thinks prompted this move. He tweeted:

“The reason for the declaration was cited as being due to the ‘mounting risk in the crypto asset environment’ but it also looks like this action was done to comply with a Financial Action Task Force (FATF) deadline for remediation of recommendations for South Africa. Recommendations not fully remediated or significantly progressed by October 2022 can lead South Africa to be placed on the FATF grey list, which could have materially negative consequences for the country as a whole.”

According to Ehsani, one consequence of this declaration is that crypto asset service providers (CASP) such as exchanges, now need to apply for a license under the FAIS Act. This has to be done between June 1, 2023, and November 30, 2023. 

In addition, CASPs will also be required to share information with the FSCA upon request.

The Valr CEO added,

“Overall this is a positive step for the crypto industry and South Africa in general. This Declaration will open the door to many of the large traditional financial institutions (TradFi) in South Africa to start providing crypto products and services.”

The CEO further stated that the declaration brings regulatory clarity, something which has been lacking.