In August 2017, when the plan to launch the first bitcoin exchange in Egypt was announced, it had more than 300 pre-registrations from interested Egyptians.

The enthusiasm was unprecedented, considering the government’s stand on the idea of cryptocurrency.

A year earlier, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) had issued a warning statement to Egyptians about cryptocurrency trading.

“In light of its monitoring of the recently circulated news about cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and others, the Central Bank reiterates its stern warning against trading in all kinds of cryptocurrencies, mainly Bitcoin, due to the extremely high risk associated with them,” the CBE said in the warning statement.

Just like many other central banks, the CBE expressed concern about “fluctuations and significant price volatility” of cryptocurrencies, and the fact that they are “not issued by central banks” and therefore, “not regulated.”

“Cryptocurrencies are not backed 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.

“In this regard, the Central Bank of Egypt calls on traders within the Egyptian market to use extreme caution and care not to engage in any trading in these high-risk currencies,” the CBE warning concluded.

Years after this warning, Egypt’s bitcoin market has witnessed tremendous growth spurred by the defiance of Egyptians who embraced cryptocurrency as a way out for millions of its unbanked population, and thousands of others who had no jobs. A 2018 World Bank report on financial inclusion revealed that about 67% of the population above the age of 15 has no bank accounts.

“Cryptoassets are happening whether (the Egyptian government) joins in or not. And by not joining they’re missing out on a very big market,” Bitcoin Egypt founder Rami Khalil said then in 2017.

In 2018, a year after the first bitcoin exchange was launched in Egypt; there were more drastic steps to limit the use of cryptocurrency in the Middle-East country. An Islamic degree was made in the form of a Fatwa, prohibiting the use of cryptocurrency in Egypt.

Shawki Allam, the Grand Mufti (the highest religious rank) of Egypt, declared the use of cryptocurrencies forbidden under Islamic Law, on the same excuse cited by the CBE but in addition said that its anonymity could facilitate tax evasion, money laundering, terrorist financing and other illegal activities.

Although the Islamic Law is not legally binding, the central bank augmented it with new amendment to Egypt’s banking laws. In September 2020, the government announced the amendment which declared dealing, issuing or promoting of cryptocurrencies without an applicable license from the CBE illegal.

The new law became a setback to the momentum that has been garnered through the bitcoin awareness campaign spearheaded by crypto enthusiasts like Khalil.

“There are no easy ways of purchasing crypto in Egypt. So any volumes that we see of people actively buying bitcoin is even more memorable given how difficult it is to acquire it … they are buying it in this really painful way,” Hany Rashwan, Egyptian entrepreneur and founder of crypto technology platforms Amun and 21Shares, told CoinDesk.

However, while the new laws limit cryptocurrency transactions in Egypt, as many who wish to trade and use it cannot do so freely, and people are not allowed to promote it, the volume of transactions recorded recently in the country shows unprecedented growth.

Trading volumes on peer-to-peer exchange platforms like LocalBitcoins recorded steady growth in 2020. Chief marketing officer of Local Bitcoin, Jukka Blomberg said new user registrations and trading volumes were up 100% between 2019 and 2020 in Egypt. He said that January 2021 was the best month within the last three years in terms of new registrations and trading volumes.

P2P crypto exchange service is a decentralized platform whereby two individuals interact directly with each other, without the need of a middleman to broker the deal. Instead, the two individuals negotiate their bitcoin selling and buying rate, and deal directly with each other.

For other exchange platforms, registrations and trading volumes have been up too between December 2020 and January 2021, with some recording up to 250% new users and trading volumes rising up to 400%. Egypt’s cryptocurrency activities moved in par with global trends in the reference period.

The push behind the surge

The defiance of Egypt’s crypto miners, traders and exchanges is baffling. According to 2020 Geography of Cryptocurrency report compiled by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, Egypt ranked 64th out of 154 countries on the firm’s global cryptocurrency adoption index.

The growth has been attributed to the high unemployment rate and recession that have been aggravated by COVID-19 pandemic.

“Unemployment and recession resulting from the spread of the coronavirus and the precautionary measures taken are the main reasons behind the youth’s inclination toward bitcoin trading and mining,” Wael al-Nhhas, Egyptian economist and financial adviser, who is also a bitcoin miner said.

More than half a million of Egyptians lost their jobs as the country’s economy came under the weight of COVID-19, shooting its unemployment rate up to 9.6% in the second quarter (Q2) of 2020.

Egypt’s unemployment rate recorded a positive shift from 7.3% in the third quarter of 2020 to 7.2% in the fourth quarter of the same year, according to data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). The state’s statistics agency also reported an annual inflation decline that puts Q4, 2020’s rate at 5.2%.

The shift indicates that more people got a job toward the end of 2020, a large number of them, by investing in cryptocurrency.

“Many young Egyptians started investing in small amounts despite the increase in the value of the bitcoin. They started mining satoshi, which is 100 millionth of a bitcoin, and on a daily basis they are making profits of 4% to 5% from the difference between buying rates during the timing of demand decline and selling rates at the time of peak demand,” Wael al-Nhhas said.

The Central Bank of Egypt is yet to start issuing licenses for bitcoin operations, and its unemployed population clearly cannot wait on the financial regulator.

While Egypt’s bitcoin market anticipates regulatory framework from the CBE soon, the traders have been growing the market’s trade volume using exchange platforms, particularly the likes of Local Bitcoin who provide P2P services.

The price showcase of Egypt’s bitcoin traders on Local Bitcoin indicates that bitcoin has been selling at premium in Egypt, their prices are more than $2,000 compared with other countries.

Wikipedia, the world’s most popular free encyclopedia, is planning to charge big tech companies for publishing their information.

The online encyclopedia was created by Larry Sanger in 2001 to provide valuable global information free of charge. Wikipedia is run by volunteers of writers and editors around the world, and has been functioning on donations as a non-profit powered by Wikimedia Foundation.

Over the years, Wikipedia has grown to become a source of knowledge to the world. It is the 8th most visited site in the United States and 13th in the world, welcoming knowledge seekers, and offering detailed knowledge about the tech industry free of charge, but that is about change.

Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have had their information published on Wikipedia’s site for years, now Wikimedia is creating a brand new division called Wikimedia Enterprise that will offer paid services to the biggest gainers of the free encyclopedia.

Wikimedia Enterprise is a new product from the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Enterprise provides paid developer tools and services that make it easier for companies and organizations to consume and re-use Wikimedia data.

Wired reported that conversation is already underway between the tech behemoths and the new subsidiary, Wikimedia LCC. And the next couple of months will be about seeking the reaction of Wikipedia’s thousands of volunteers. Agreement could be reached as soon as June.

“This is the first time the foundation has recognized that commercial users are users of our service. We’ve known they are there, but we never really treated them as a user base,” said Lane Becker, a senior director at the foundation, who is overseeing the Enterprise project.

The move is in contrast to what Wikipedia has been known for in over two decades of its existence – a non-commercial source of knowledge funded by donations.

However, the twist has been instigated by the somewhat greedy Silicon Valley big guys, who take everything along their way to the top and give a little back. Wired noted the “data dump” as well as a “fire hose” snapshots that contain everything that appears on Wikipedia’s site every two weeks, which is made freely available for users.

The snapshots come in different formats and help big companies to import whatever they want from Wikipedia freely, with no special insider-help.

Becker said “they all have teams dedicated to Wikipedia management-big ones,” and “making the different content speak to each other required a lot of low-level work-cleaning and managing-which is very expensive.”

Over the years, Wikipedia has depended on donors, especially big tech companies to function. There has been a kind of partnership between the encyclopedia and Google.

“Wikipedia produces the information Google serves up in response to user queries and Google builds up Wikipedia’s reputation as a source of trustworthy information,” Wired report noted.

Google’s failure in its attempt to break away from Wikipedia with its own version of user-generated articles – Knowledge (Knol), cemented their relationship.

Although the relationship has endured and flourished for two decades now, Google has been the major beneficiary, scooping billions of dollars from ad revenues served through information and links provided by Wikipedia. Although besides ensuring that Wikipedia gets deserving credit for the contents it served and putting it on top of search results, Google, alongside other big companies, has been donating voluntarily to help the Wikimedia Foundation stay on course, but it’s not enough.

The free software, as an ideology, is still something the Wikimedia foundation holds dear.

“The free, albeit clunky option will still be available to all users, including commercial ones” Wired reported.

But the formatting problems with the free version offer an obvious opportunity to create a product worth paying for, one tailored to the requirements of each company. For instance, Enterprise will deliver the real-time changes and comprehensive data dumps in a compatible format, the report said.

It explained that there will also be a level of customer service typical of business arrangements but unprecedented for the volunteer-directed project; a number for its customers to call, a guarantee of certain speed for delivering the data, a team of experts assigned to solve specific technical flaws.

While the foundation waits to get response from its volunteers, concern is rising that the move will mean that the big companies will hence get preferential treatment. Although the foundation said the new development will not affect its free services, that it will be available to all users, even the commercial ones, it doesn’t dismiss the concern.

Also, the Foundation is planning to host the new project on Amazon Web Services as it would help them serve customers better.

The aim, according to the Enterprise is to help ensure that commercial operators display the latest, most accurate version of articles and crack down on vandalism quicker.

Seitz-Gruwell said “a contractual relationship will also more formally recognize that these companies are extracting value from a volunteer project, and therefore must contribute back to the commons.”

Wikipedia has a budget of around $1 million funded by donations, and the Enterprise said it does not plan to substitute user-donations with the revenue from the companies.