Rebirth of England.

Chapter 917 Additional Issue
Just as the BitC conference was held, Anchorage, a subsidiary of Matrix Capital, announced that it would issue an additional 4 million USDA.

Because the USDA is pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar, this also means that they will replenish $4 million in reserve funds.

One of the reasons why Anchorage issued additional USDA this time is naturally because the bull market of BitC has started and the global related transaction volume has increased significantly.

Especially in markets outside the United States, the demand for digital coins such as USDA that are anchored to the US dollar has increased. The 1 million USDA coins originally issued by Anchorage are no longer sufficient and need to be issued in larger quantities.

Another reason was something they hadn't expected...

That is Africa, especially many countries in West Africa, where people actually exchange part of their savings for USDA and store them in their mobile phone accounts.

According to estimates, the number of USDA deposited in mobile phone accounts has exceeded 3000 million...

This has to start with the cooperation between United Bank of Africa and Klarna Pay.

As early as 2011, the United Bank for Africa partnered with Klarna Pay to launch a mobile payment application in Kolo and surrounding countries.

With the development in the past two years, especially after Kolo Telecom entered the Nigerian market this year, the number of Klarna Pay users in West Africa has begun to grow exponentially...

Earlier this year, as Kolo Telecom signed an agreement with Nigeria to further deepen economic cooperation between the two countries, Kolo Telecom entered into Nigeria, the largest market in Africa, through an acquisition.

In February, Kolo Telecom successfully completed the acquisition of Globecom, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary and thus entering the Nigerian market.

Currently, there are 26 telecom operators in Nigeria, but most of them are fixed-line operators, and there are only four mobile operators, namely NITEL, MTN, Globacom and Vmobile.

Nigeria issued four 2007G licenses in 3 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 with full-service qualifications besides the state-owned operator NITEL.

Globecom currently has a 27% market share in Nigeria, 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 its 3G network in Nigeria's major cities and their surrounding areas. At the same time, in order to compete for the domestic telecommunications market in Nigeria, they started the "select a package and get a free mobile phone" business.

Of course, this activity is not only carried out in Nigeria, but also in Kolo and the neighboring West African Free Trade Area countries.

The mobile phones given away are mostly models of Dopod brand under Honor Electronics produced in Colo.

This can be regarded as Kolo Telecom's contribution to the popularization 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 increasing penetration of smartphones in the region. As mentioned before, many countries in Africa have very poor electricity bills. So for some families with better conditions, it is better to use a more convenient and low-power smartphone than to buy a computer that consumes more power.

This has also led to a high penetration rate of mobile payments, mainly Klarna Pay, in a considerable area of ​​West Africa...

In addition, many African countries have another characteristic...

That is, the degree of depreciation of their currencies is relatively high.

Take Nigeria for example. 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 2007 US dollar to 1 Naira in 117 to the current 1 US dollar to 165 Naira... It should be noted that the US dollar has also depreciated significantly in this process due to 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 depreciation, but in comparison, the degree of currency depreciation in some African countries is somewhat exaggerated.

You know, 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 considering export issues. Generally speaking, the Kolo shilling still maintains an exchange rate of 10 CS=1 USD with the US dollar, and there is no obvious depreciation relative to the US dollar.

It is also for this reason that when the currencies of countries surrounding Kolo were relatively depreciated and the depreciation was not small, many people converted part of their deposits from their own currencies into Kolo shillings in order to maintain the purchasing power of their property.

But the problem is that although Colo has relevant financial cooperation agreements with the countries of the West African Free Trade Area and Nigeria.

However, out of consideration for protecting the country's financial security, although their acceptance of the Kolo shilling is slightly more relaxed than that of foreign currencies such as the US dollar and the euro, there are still restrictions on the total amount of Kolo shillings that can be exchanged by their citizens.

This also leads to the black market price of the Kolo shilling in these countries having a relatively high premium, just like the US dollar.

At times like this, many people have discovered another way to exchange “foreign currency”, and that is USDA.

As mentioned before, starting this year, many websites and applications have begun to support BitC payments. In fact, even earlier, in January this year, bitpay, which is used for BitC payments, received $1 in financing, aiming to become the PayPal of the BitC world.

Although Klarna Pay does not support BitC payments, Barron understands that BitC, a coin with an unstable price and huge price increases, is not suitable for payment.

The instability of the price is secondary. The key is that due to 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 wait for more than ten minutes or even half an hour for the transfer to be confirmed by the block?

Not to mention that as the price of BitC rises, the mining fee required for its transfer (which can be understood as the transfer fee) will become more and more "expensive" - ​​it is possible that the mining fee you need to buy a cup of coffee is much higher than the price of this cup of coffee.

Therefore, if BitC is used as a "currency", it certainly cannot be this decentralized way.

But shortly after the launch of the dollar-pegged USDA, Klarna Pay has already supported USDA in quite a few countries.

The most important thing is that USDA, as a digital coin anchored to the US dollar, is not considered a "foreign currency" under the supervision of almost all countries currently.

At first, some people who came into contact with BitC transactions found that if the USDA could really remain stable, it could serve as a substitute for the US dollar in many ways.

Then, starting this year, some West African users who had never come into contact with digital coins such as BitC but understood the significance of USDS anchoring the US dollar on Klarna Pay began to try to convert part of their own national currency assets into USDA and store them in Klarna Pay...

So far, more and more West African users are using this method to combat the sharp depreciation of their national currencies.

More than 3000 million USDAs have been deposited in Klarna Pay users’ wallets, which means that assets worth more than 3000 million US dollars have been exchanged for USDAs.

If the USDA had not been issued for a long time and its trustworthiness was still questionable, then this number would be higher...

(End of this chapter)