How crypto innovation is sweeping the world

by Arthur · September 7, 2022

Crypto innovations are happening all over the world, from Latin America to Africa to Asia.
Investment, payments, art, identity — the range of applications is vast.
This article is part of “Master Your Crypto,” a series from Insider that helps investors improve their cryptocurrency skills and knowledge.

The crypto market may be in a historic downturn, but innovation around it is happening all over the world.

Since June, Insider has been mapping Web3 applications across time zones for a series we call “Master Your Crypto.”

Here are some of the highlights.

Table of Contents

Africa

While crypto is most often associated with investment, Insider’s reporter Lisa Kailai Han has noted Africa’s many concrete daily use cases across the continent. Ghana’s Mazzuma offers a range of payment and remittance options, with blockchain leveraged to cut costs. In Zimbabwe, FlexID helps with identity management, having verified more than 1 million banking credentials in the country over the past three years, all built on WhatsApp.

Nelly Chatue-Diop was raised in Cameroon and is the CEO and co-founder of the investment platform Ejara. Chatue-Diop told Insider’s Morgan Chittum that she wanted to level the playing field for crypto access to make the investment grade something that consumers outside of the ultra-wealthy could dive into. Doing so would allow users to hedge against ups and downs in sovereign currencies as well .

Crypto “streamlines the entire flow” of payments, Luno Expeditions CEO Jocelyn Cheng told April Joyner.

“If you’re looking for instant settlement or very fast settlement, it avoids the need for the supplier to have huge cash reserves in the destination countries,” the venture capitalist said.

Asia

Singapore loves crypto. Advertising firm BBH Singapore told Parisa Hashempour about its survey of 1,000 investors in the city-state in May and June. It found an astonishing amount of loyalty despite the downturn, with nearly two-thirds of investors saying they would continue to invest. 69 percent agreed that cryptocurrency was the future of money, the firm said.

Cryptolender Finblox operates from Hong Kong and serves all of Southeast Asia. CEO Peter Hoang graduated from Harvard Business School and founded both a gaming company and a social networking company before launching Finblox, which allows users to invest in or lend against 23 coins. He was careful to note to our reporter Katie Canales that crypto was not a shortcut to riches.

“The golden rules of investing – the higher the risk, the higher the return and time in the market is more important than timing the market – hold for crypto as well, and people should not misunderstand this asset class as a get-rich-quick scheme,” he said.

Latin America

While El Salvador’s Web3 ventures haven’t panned out — Rolling Stone recently asked if it would be the first country to be bankrupted by crypto — interest in the area is high across the region. Brazil, Colombia and Argentina are among the 20 nations with the highest crypto adoption, according to a 2021 report by blockchain data firm Chainalysis.

The biggest player is Bitso, a unicorn in Mexico City, which was founded to serve the unbanked in the region and create easier access to financial instruments such as money transfers, reports Katie Canales. Investing in crypto can also help users hedge against inflation, like the 70% rate gripping Argentina.

US

In less than two years, digital art has exploded. One of the lead curators in the space is Kevin Rose, known in previous iterations of the tech universe as the founder of Digg. He recently premiered the pixel art collection of owls, Moonbirds, with the cheapest costing over $20,000. His “Proof” podcast aims to be the “Wine Spectator” of digital art.

How does he decide what to collect?

Start with how it makes you feel.

“I want it to be something that even in the worst bear market, I’m not going to sell it because I love it,” Rose said.

This article is intended to provide general information designed to educate a broad segment of the public; it does not provide personalized investment, legal or other business and professional advice. Before taking any action, you should always consult your own financial, legal, tax, investment or other professional for advice on matters affecting you and/or your business.