Another week has come and gone, and as it is now tradition, we gathered the news you need to read about what is happening in the African cryptosphere. Starting with an exciting one involving Cardano.
Cardano Subsidiary in Partnership with Pan-African Venture Studio
EMURGO is the official commercial arm of Cardano blockchain; This investment is part of EMURGO Africa, a subsidiary of EMURGO’s new $100 Cardano ecosystem investment vehicle; The undisclosed funding will support Adanian Labs with its mission to build 300 tech startups across Africa
Adanian Labs, a pan African Venture studio recently announced its partnership with EMURGO, the official investment arm of Cardano blockchain to scale tech startups in Africa and grow the Cardano ecosystem. EMURGO has invested a 7x figure undisclosed amount as a seed investment to Adanina Labs through its newly launched EMURGO Africa investment entity.
The investment is focused on achieving one of the goals of Cardano which is to bring financial and educational empowerment through its blockchain platform to the billions who lack the opportunities.
The Adanian Labs-EMURGO Africa partnership signifies a new dawn for the African technology evolution that aims to foster private sector growth and see a burgeoning middle class emerge.
Next up we have the Crypto Exchange platform Luno, announcing that it has accumulated 9 million customers with a million added in just over 4 months.
“Luno’s growth has accelerated significantly since then,” General Manager for Africa, Marius Reitz, said in a statement.
“In the last year alone, we have added over 3.6 million new customers.”
South Africa is one of Luno’s strongest markets with over 30% of the new 1 million customers residing locally.
According to Reitz, the average value of new customers’ first deposits is around R550 (USD37)
Reitz said 67% of the new customers bought Bitcoin while 43% bought Ripple & 20% bought Ethereum.
https://bitcoinke.io/2021/10/luno-hits-9-million-users/
Ghana is not falling behind when it comes to adapting to crypto and is working to develop offline capabilities for its forthcoming central bank digital currency (CBDC) in a bid to promote its use across all segments of the Ghanaian society.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Kwame Oppong, head of Fintech and Innovation at the Bank of Ghana (BoG) revealed that the country’s digital currency “e-cedi” will support offline transactions during the Ghana Economic Forum.
Oppong emphasized that offline functionality will allow Ghanaians who lack reliable access to electricity and internet connectivity to embrace the country’s CBDC.
https://news.bitcoin.com/ghana-central-bank-working-to-make-cbdc-available-to-offline-users/
And to drive the hype around Africa’s adoption of crypto even higher, Xend Finance, the first decentralized finance (DeFi) platform in the continent has announced the continent's largest hackathon.
Dudded “Decentralizing Africa and Beyond”, the first Xend Finance DeFi Hackathon is focused on promoting the dreams and visions of blockchain and cryptocurrency as well as decentralizing the financial sector, invariably giving the masses financial freedom.
The hackathon corresponds with the Xend Finance Software Developer Kit (SDK) release, allowing individuals to build on top of the Xend Finance DeFi platform, a Layer-2 DeFi infrastructure.
Binance Smart Chain, Google, Huobi, Polygon, and Coindesk will be amongst the judges and speakers of the three-month Hackathon. Also, Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital, Zack Seward, Managing Editor of Coindesk, among others will also participate in the event.
Ugochukwu Aronu, CEO of Xend Finance in a statement noted that the hackathon will help facilitate the growth of blockchain and cryptocurrency in the continent and Nigeria as a whole.
He said, “The Xend Finance Hackathon is a movement for the future of blockchain and cryptocurrency usage throughout the African continent.”
Over $1,000,000 worth of prizes are being offered, including $100,000 from Xend Finance, along with individual prizes from Binance Smart Chain, Huobi, Polygon and other partners.
There will be weekly workshops with experts on developing DeFi protocols, building on the various blockchains, blockchain gaming, NFTs, fundraising for startups, and more. The contest is open to all companies and individuals and will have several categories for winners.
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2021/10/xend-finance-google-africa-bsc-join-africas-largest-hackathon/
Talking about hype, SushiSwap Commits $12.6m to Celo’s Global DeFi Initiative
Leading DEX SushiSwap has partnered with Celo in an initiative to make DeFi more accessible to the estimated 6 billion mobile phone users around the world.
The DeFi for the People initiative- which comprises a leading selection of top crypto protocols- is offering more than $100m in funding for educational initiatives, grants, and incentives in a bid to assist Web3 projects in making DeFi accessible globally on mobile devices.
To support the initiative, the Celo Foundation and SushiSwap have committed $12.6m in joint liquidity mining rewards in both $CELO and $SUSHI with selected pairs.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sushiswap-commits-12-6m-celo-105238023.html
And last, but definitely not least, we have our own exciting update. We’ve finally launched our video series about the adoption of crypto in Africa. In part 1 of this series, we’ll provide insight into the adoption of cryptocurrency in Africa looking at the continent, we explore why people are so into cryptocurrency and the benefits for everyone involved and what the future looks like for the continent. You can watch the whole video on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltbOmgslVwE
That does it for this week’s News Digest. Stay alert and don't miss out on upcoming news. Don’t forget to follow us on our social media, so you get all the updates on our project, as well as a lot of fun content we have in the works.
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