A little concern here – my post on Bitcoin is stressing many. As I read through the LinkedIn comments along with the digital bombs (expected: LinkedIn is contact sports; if you do not expect them, do not share), I want to help them. I am not attacking your beloved Bitcoin; I simply said “shine your eyes”. That phrase in Nigeria means “be careful”.

The liberator now needs liberation. Now, national parliaments should pass laws that would say “Bitcoin cannot go down but up”. Lol. Good people, let us show common sense: there is no way in this world where anyone can create his currency and yet everything would still work normal. Optimistic exuberance on your computer screen must not take away the reality that getting hard Naira is tough. MMM, Bitcoin… shine your eyes. Yet, blockchain remains an opportunity.

The basis of my post is simple: if you have a financial instrument that moved from about $19k to $3.4k within a year, it is possible regulators would investigate for underlying issues. Most likely, things cannot be overly normal for that movement to happen. Telling people to be careful in such a market seems like a sensible thing to do.

As I have noted, I will be the first to buy crypto created, hosted, mined and exchanged in Nigeria [I trust EFCC to keep order]; others can join but it must be natively Nigerian. If you have one, let me know. I will buy to support. But where there is none, in Nigeria, I will always tell you that our Central Bank is still a safer option than what is out there. There is “freedom” from government to “bondage” to other lords.

Yes, if the top 1% of Bitcoin Community controls more than 99% of Bitcoin Wealth (1000 people control 40% of the market), I do not see the decentralization. And if Bitmain controls 51% of Bitcoin mining hashrate, I have no understanding why the guy in Lagos thinks this is a level playing game.

Bitmain has attained approximately 42 percent control of the Bitcoin network hashrate. This figure brings the company tantalizingly close to 51 percent mark where things could get interesting. Bitmain is the biggest manufacturer of BTC mining hardware, and they also own the largest Bitcoin mining pools in the market.

…

Assuming the company decided to apply all of its mining resources to the BTC network, its control of the blockchain’s hashrate would increase. This increase, however, wouldn’t be linear since the mining difficulty in BTC exceeds that of BCH by over 70 percent. Thus, only an additional three percent would be added to Bitmain’s control if it stopped sharing its hashpower between BTC and BCH, focusing only on Bitcoin. By so doing, Bitmain would control 45 percent of BTC’s network hashrate.

Yet, I do not expect this explanation to reduce the stress. Take this that it is my attempt to make people have good weekends. And do not remind me of the value of blockchain (we all know that). I am simply saying “shine your eyes” as you turn a “currency” into an “investing instrument” where you buy ‘Naira” and then wait for it to “grow” instead of using it (as tender to settle debts) as most people typically use currencies!

Finally – be open to other perspectives no matter how fanatically you love Bitcoin. Sure, in the Bitcoin Age, it could be the hardest currency to create!

Good morning Nigeria – the Vice Presidential debate which took place yesterday was solid. Now, we need to ask Mr. President (Buhari, the APC flagbearer) to confirm to debate Mr. Atiku (PDP flagbearer) on January 19. While debate is not overly correlated with capacity to offer good governance, yet it forces leaders to learn things and understand things they might not have bothered.

So, the only way to get them to spend time thinking about us (the people) and the economy is to ask them to debate. When that happens, they at least spend time to know Nigeria before they arrive in their duty posts.

To the three men, and two women on the podium yesterday, well done. Now, Jan 19^th needs to happen. I want to watch Buhari and Atiku debate: Butiku.

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, said on Friday night that he was keenly looking forward to next month’s presidential debate, moments after watching the vice-presidential debate in Abuja.

Mr Abubakar expressed satisfaction with the showing of his running mate, Peter Obi, at the vice-presidential debate at Transcorp Hilton Hotels.

“I watched with pride as Peter Obi laid out our vision to get Nigeria working again,” Mr Abubakar said on Twitter, adding that he cannot “wait for the presidential debate.”

Mr Obi sparred with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and three other running mates in the five-person debate last night, focused mainly on the economy for about two and a half hours.

Mr Obi was widely praised for demonstrating a good grasp of statistics, and Mr Osinbajo received commendations for his ability to focus on what his government had done as against what the PDP did in its 16 years in power from 1999 to 2015.

Although the debate organisers said last week they expected President Muhammadu Buhari to participate at the presidential debate on January 19, there has been no commitment from the president.

LinkedIn Feed Comment

Butiku? A very tall order, at the moment, just a dream. Buhari handlers would give more reasons why their principal may not be there, and less about why he should be there. Unfortunately, most of the electorates that could decide the election don’t watch TV often, let alone debates. So when you hear some politicians speaking very arrogantly about how they will beat the other party merciless, they know how the game is played.

Again, something curious happened, with respect to the other three vice presidential candidates; going by their performances, I am sorry to note that Nigeria doesn’t have any viable alternative to APC and PDP, at the moment, that’s just the reality for now.

But to shake the table small, it could be spectacular to have Obi and Osinbajo as presidential candidates, but this is Nigeria, where dreams are more precious than gold. We are down, but rather than looking up, we are looking for shovel and digger to dig deeper, and then remain in the hole…

Mr Buhari, over to you… Jan. 19!

The United Nations Environment has run an interview I granted the global institution few days ago. The focus was measuring the earth to save the earth: yes, with precision agriculture we can at least understand what is happening to soils we farm.

For Ndubuisi Ekekwe, Nigerian founder of precision farming startup Zenvus, African farming must change because traditional practices keep many farmers trapped in a cycle of poverty.

“What we have been doing for generations has not worked so now there needs to be a paradigm shift to try something new that can turn farmers into business people rather than custodians of ancestral history and ancestral norms and dogmas,” he said.

“What will drive that change are new techniques, new procedures and new processes. We believe that precision farming is the separation between what was in the past and what we believe is going to be the future.”

[…]

For Ekekwe, data is the key to success and represents the real value of precision farming.

“The reason we are destroying this earth is because no one is even measuring anything,” he said. “What precision agriculture is really doing is saying, ‘at least, let’s know what is going on’.”