MENA crypto users receive $566 billion worth of crypto in one year

MENA crypto users receive $566 billion worth of crypto in one year

As per a recent Chainalysis blog report, MENA based crypto users received $566 billion worth of cryptocurrency in one year from July 2021 to June 2022. As per the news, this is a 48 percent increase from 2020-2021.

In addition Turkey, Egypt and Morocco once again lead not only in MENA region but globally. All three countries are in the top thirty list of countries with most crypto savings, usage of crypto for remittance payments and permissive crypto regulations.

These could be caused by these countries’ fiat currency devaluations and the huge remittance market in Egypt for example. This is why Egypt has become the fastest growing crypto market in 2022, while Turkey still remains the largest crypto market with its citizens receiving $192 billion.

The report also notes the role of countries in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), and cites the example of Saudi Arabia which is the third largest crypto market in MENA, while UAE stands at fifth largest. This is especially true given the recent stance of the UAE on crypto and the increased regulations as well as the licenses being granted to crypto exchanges the likes of Binance, and FTX.

In Chainalysis previous report from June 2020 until June 2021, the MENA region was also the fasted growing crypto market. At the time the Middle East region received 271.7 billion USD worth of cryptocurrency representing almost 7 percent of global crypto value received. This was an increase of 1500 percent compared to June 2019 until June 2020. The growth of crypto in Middle East was higher than the overall world adoption that had jumped 880 percent by June 2021.At the time both Turkey and Lebanon topped the MENA countries in terms of receiving crypto.

How can our most important and cherished chats and messages live on forever?

How can our most important and cherished chats and messages live on forever?

At one point in all of our lives, we have either deleted important messages we received by accident, or lost all our whatsapp conversations, and maybe even wished we knew how to find an important message on discord, telegram, or even a Web3 communication app we were using.  Well this has now been resolved with the advent of a Web3 blockchain enabled, ‘Eternal Message’

Today more than 3 billion people worldwide are using messaging apps, sending an average of 145 billion messages every day. While the majority of these messages are insignificant, some are very important to those sending and receiving them.

While Web3 messaging apps have come to resolve the issues of security and privacy, as well as offer fully encrypted and stored messages on the blockchain, yet none of them has thought about eternally capturing those we deem important so we can retrieve them easily later on.

In an interview with LaraontheBlock Mohamed Abdou Founder and CEO of Egyptian headquartered and UAE based Pravica, developers of a Web 3.0 Blockchain communication platform, highlighted the innovation that will save those very previous messages whether personal, business related or potentially those of historical significance , he explained,“ In both of our Web3 crypto native Pravica messenger and Pravica Club group chat platforms, we have developed a solution that allows users to save their text messages forever on the blockchain in the form of NFTs. We call it the eternal message.”

Explaining how it works, he adds, “Users can take pieces of their conversations and put it in plain text on the blockchain. The piece of conversation will be converted into a single transaction ID that users can share with anyone. It will forever be on the blockchain and can be verified and shown as a Proof of Chat.”

These minted text extracts of 1024 characters, called eternal messages, can be minted into NFTs (Non Fungible token). Eternal messages, which can not only save and engrave personal moments, like the first time someone said I love you, or a marriage proposal, but can also be used in business transactions, forged through a chat or even a historical statement made in a historical moment addressed to a community or group.

 So for example in the historical moment when Ethereum merged successfully, Vitalik statements to the entire Ethereum community could have been engraved eternally on the blockchain, so future generations could bear witness to the achievement decades from now.

With more and more business conversations happening on Web2 and Web 3 messaging platforms, deals, transactions, and partnerships will most probably be minted into eternal messages.

Pravica revealed the ‘Eternal message feature’ during their launch of the first DcFi (Decentralized Communications and Finance) platform, the Pravica Club, at CV Summit 2022, hosted by CV Labs in Switzerland.  Back in 2021, CV VC Labs had invested in Pravica.

Pravica applications, built on Stacks Blockchain and secured by Bitcoin, developed and launched a completely decentralized Web 3.0 communications platform utilized by both enterprise and individuals.

The DcFi platform allows for Web3 and native crypto conversations with seamless in chat payments, stacking pools similar to DeFi applications out there.

The CEO noted, “We are empowering the Web 3 creator economy. This is especially relevant in the era of the metaverse where individuals will need decentralized identities, secure communications and P2P financial transactions as well as features such as eternal messages. This is a gateway towards a truly Web 3.0 creators economy.” 

Central Bank of Egypt to fine crypto violators $516,000

Central Bank of Egypt to fine crypto violators $516,000

The central bank of Egypt has once again reiterated its warning against dealing in any types of cryptocurrencies, saying that crypto is risky, highly volatile, and is used in financial crimes and e-piracy.

In the Egypt independent article, the Central Bank of Egypt will fine anyone who violates the Law No 194 of 2020 which prohibits issuing, trading, promoting cryptocurrencies, operating crypto exchanges or any other related activities. The Central Bank will fine violators up to $516,000 ( 10 million LE) or face imprisonment.

The CBE statement reads, “Whoever violates this shall be imprisoned, and fined no less than one million pounds and no more than LE10 million ($516,340), or one of these two penalties.”

The Egyptian central bank issued a similar warning about cryptocurrencies in January 2018, specifically naming Bitcoin. At that time the Central Bank had noted, “Cryptocurrencies are not backed by any tangible assets and are not supervised by any regulators worldwide, and consequently, they lack the official governmental guarantee and support enjoyed by the other official currencies issued by central banks.”

Yet Egypt has one of the highest crypto usages across Africa and Middle East. In January 2022, TripleA published a report which noted that Morocco topped the Arab countries in terms of crypto ownership, followed by Egypt, then UAE and KSA.

The report stated that in 2021 global crypto ownership was estimated at an average of 3.9 percent, 300 million crypto users and 18,000 businesses already accepting crypto payments.

In addition as per the report there are 32 million crypto users in Africa, 160 million in Asia, 38 million in Europe, and 28 million in North America, while Latin America has 24 million users.

Morocco was reported as having 878,168 crypto owners which was 2.38 percent of the population. It was followed by Egypt which had 1, 791,185 million crypto owners at 1.75 percent of the population.

MENA Web 3.0 Blockchain communications platform, Pravica launches the first DcFi

MENA Web 3.0 Blockchain communications platform, Pravica launches the first DcFi

Headquartered in Egypt with a presence in the UAE, Pravica, the everyone-to-everyone communication platform, offering a native Web 3.0 Blockchain-enabled unified, secure and privacy-compliant messaging platform, has launched the first DcFi (Decentralized Communications and Finance) platform under the name Pravica Club.

The platform is an extension of what Pravica has already been working on for the past three years. Pravica applications, built on Stacks Blockchain and secured by Bitcoin, has developed and launched a completely decentralized Web 3.0 communications platform that can be utilized by both enterprise and individuals securely and easily. Pravica is one of the very few in this sector that offers live products, the Pravica Messenger for mobile devices and now Pravica club.

Mohamed Abdou, Founder and CEO of Pravica explains, “Today there is a high demand for decentralized secure and private communications applications. Projects of this kind have already raised millions of dollars, even though they have yet to build something. At Pravica we are aware that building in Web3 is not easy, especially when it comes to communications apps because of the large amount of data coming in and out, that is why we started early on solving all the problems using a different stack of tools to ensure we have a highly scalable and easy to use the product. We have a great advantage and are offering tangible products.”

The Pravica Club is the first DcFi platform offering several interesting features. It is a DcFi platform because other than allowing for Web3 and native crypto conversations it also offers seamless in-chat payments and stacking pools similar to most DeFi applications out there.

The crypto-native decentralized messaging features include:

Users of Pravica Club are on-boarded with their decentralized identity from BTC domains which are registered through a smart contract on Stacks Blockchain, secured by Bitcoin. No email, phone number or any personal information is required.

All messages are encrypted. Messages can be cryptographically linked back to the crypto wallet by signing special messages with currently the Hiro wallet. In the future, Pravica is working to enable full functionalities of wallet-to-wallet conversations, as well as enabling users to invite others using wallet addresses for full interoperability.

Gideon Greaves, Managing Director CV VC Africa, says, “Pravica club is truly disrupting the way we communicate online. It’s only a matter of time before the web3 community moves away from centralised communication platforms. I believe Pravica club is where they will go. The features, secure platform and team within Pravica are world-class.”

Users don’t need to copy and paste NFTs to be used as profile pictures, but instead, extract the NFT from their wallet and showcase it as a verified avatar. The NFT is authenticated by each user’s wallet. In the future, these NFT avatars will be utilized to unlock other offerings in Pravica Club.

Users can send cryptocurrency payments, as likes, and enter stacking pools. Content creators can thus monetize their content through “Write to Earn” or “Create to Earn”, just like predecessors “Play to Earn”.

One of the biggest and unique features of the Pravica Club is the “eternal message”. Users in Pravica Clubs or in Pravica messenger will be able to extract a text of 1024 characters and mint it as an eternal message. The eternal message takes the form of an NFT. The ramifications are huge, Eternal messages can be used to save and engrave personal moments, like the first time someone said “I love you” or even business agreements or historical statements.

Mohamed Abdou, Founder and CEO of Pravica, explains, “We are empowering the Web 3 creator economy. This is especially relevant in the era of the Metaverse where individuals will need decentralized identities, secure communications and P2P financial transactions. DcFi, presented as Pravica Club, is the gateway towards a truly Web 3.0 creators economy.”