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

Cointelegraph precocious traveled to Cape Verde, West Africa, to research whether Bitcoin (BTC) could beryllium a instrumentality for progress.

In the latest on-the-ground video documentary from Cointelegraph, planetary newsman Joe Hall investigates the remittances market, currency economies, and the challenges and opportunities faced by tiny land nations worldwide.

Cape Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an land federation successful the cardinal Atlantic Ocean. Cape Verde comprises 10 main islands and respective smaller islets, sitting 570 kilometers (350 miles) westbound of Senegal, West Africa.

Hall discovers that much Cape Verdeans unrecorded overseas than connected the country’s islands. Due to its tiny onshore mass, it struggles to cultivate and export goods abroad. The islanders of Cape Verde, particularly Sal, trust connected tourism to stimulate the economy, and relatives surviving overseas nonstop wealth home.

The operation of a tourism and remittance-based system presents aggregate issues. Due to the beingness of tourists year-round, Sal uses 3 currencies: the section Escudo, the U.S. dollar, and the Euro, though Hall discovered it’s besides imaginable to wage successful British pounds. Mastercard and Visa complaint upward of 4% for transaction fees successful stores, which merchants often walk connected to customers.

Hall receives “confused change” — a premix of euros and escudos — astatine the checkout. Source: Cointelegraph

Western Union and MoneyGram complaint customers arsenic overmuch arsenic 15% for remittances to nonstop wealth crossed borders. The precocious remittance costs enactment similar a taxation connected the higher incomes of Cape Verdean workers surviving abroad.

The Cape Verde currency system is besides hamstrung by precocious ATM and slope entree fees, arsenic good arsenic strict opening and closing hours. Cape Verdean banks adjacent astatine 5:00 p.m. section clip connected the islands, and during slope holidays, ATMs often tally retired of currency for withdrawal, presenting further economical hurdles for full-time workers.

Finally, ostentation runs higher successful Cape Verde than crossed the eurozone, adjacent though the escudo is “pegged” to the euro. Compared with Western economies, the islands’ incumbent fiscal systems impede Cape Verdeans from simply spending, redeeming and sending wealth the mode galore Westerners instrumentality for granted.

Related: One man’s program to orange-pill a nation: Bitcoin Senegal

While investigating these economical issues, Hall met with Renato Evarchi, 1 of the archetypal concern owners successful Cape Verde to judge Bitcoin. He shed airy connected the economical concern and explained however much and much Cape Verdeans were warming up to a borderless, immutable and decentralized net currency.

To larn much from Hall’s travels successful Cape Verde, ticker the afloat documentary supra and subscribe to Cointelegraph’s YouTube channel.

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