Small Islands, big problems: Can Bitcoin fix this? Cointelegraph Cape Verde video

Cointelegraph recently took a trip to Cape Verde, West Africa, to explore whether Bitcoin (BTC) might be a tool for progress.In the most recent on-the-ground video documentary from Cointelegraph, international reporter Joe Hall examines the remittances market, money economies, and the opportunities and challenges dealt with by little island nations worldwide. Cape Verde, formally the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country in the main Atlantic Ocean. Cape Verde consists of 10 main islands and numerous smaller sized islets, sitting 570 kilometers (350 miles) west of Senegal, West Africa.Hall discovers that more Cape Verdeans live abroad than on the countrys islands. Due to its little land mass, it has a hard time to cultivate and export items abroad. The islanders of Cape Verde, especially Sal, depend on tourist to stimulate the economy, and relatives living abroad send out cash home.The mix of a tourism and remittance-based economy provides several problems. Due to the presence of tourists year-round, Sal uses three currencies: the local Escudo, the U.S. dollar, and the Euro, although Hall discovered its likewise possible to pay in British pounds. Mastercard and Visa charge up of 4% for deal fees in shops, which merchants frequently hand down to customers.Hall gets “confused modification”– a mix of euros and escudos– at the checkout. Source: CointelegraphWestern Union and MoneyGram charge clients as much as 15% for remittances to send out money across borders. The high remittance costs imitate a tax on the greater earnings of Cape Verdean workers living abroad.The Cape Verde cash economy is likewise hamstrung by high ATM and bank access charges, as well as stringent opening and closing hours. Cape Verdean banks close at 5:00 pm regional time on the islands, and during bank vacations, ATMs often run out of cash for withdrawal, providing more financial hurdles for full-time workers. Finally, inflation runs higher in Cape Verde than throughout the eurozone, despite the fact that the escudo is “pegged” to the euro. Compared to Western economies, the islands incumbent financial systems hinder Cape Verdeans from just investing, sending out and conserving money the method lots of Westerners take for given. Related: One mans plan to orange-pill a nation: Bitcoin SenegalWhile examining these economic issues, Hall consulted with Renato Evarchi, among the first entrepreneur in Cape Verde to accept Bitcoin He shed light on the economic situation and explained how increasingly more Cape Verdeans were warming up to a borderless, immutable and decentralized web currency. To find out more from Halls travels in Cape Verde, see the complete documentary above and subscribe to Cointelegraphs YouTube channel.Magazine: Elegant and ass-backward: Jameson Lopps first impression of Bitcoin.

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