The CoinGeek Toronto conference was bigger than many had anticipated, but showed how important Bitcoin SV (BSV) has become. Experts in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology were on hand to discuss what’s happening in the Bitcoin ecosystem and what the future holds, and one of the speakers on the main day of the conference was Lorien Gamaroff, founder and CEO of the Centbee BSV wallet. His presentation brings home the importance of BSV as a currency, showing how his company is working to ensure that it’s available for everyone, everywhere.
Centbee has its roots in South Africa, where it has become extremely popular. Gamaroff and Centbee are working to make it easier to acquire and easier to spend, working with commercial entities across not only South Africa, but the entire continent (1:34). The company has already established a number of relationships with the largest retailers in Africa, including Picknpay Hypermarket, Shoprite, Checkers, Builders Warehouse, Dion Wired, Ackermans, Pep and more.
Those relationships bring together a point-of-sale system (POS) offered by a company called Flash that allows users to purchase BSV directly through the POS or a kiosk. This is helping to facilitate BSV adoption by making it extremely easy to purchase and, ultimately, spend the cryptocurrency. With BSV’s extremely low transaction fees—fractions of a dollar compared to other crypto and fiat—it is becoming a way to pay for goods without losing income.
Centbee includes know-your-customer requirements (5:15) that meet local guidelines related to anti-money-laundering policies. Users in South Africa have to include their first and last name, as well as their ID number. In addition, BSV purchases have daily and monthly limits, in accordance with financial guidelines. Larger purchases are possible, but require users to supply more data.
During his presentation, Gamaroff included two real-world use cases, provided directly from BSV users. “Laura” and “Bill” shared their stories of why they have turned to BSV, as opposed to fiat, and how much it has improved their lives. Both are independent workers who constantly ran into trouble receiving payments for their work due to different reasons, but BSV has helped completely overcome those obstacles.
One commonality between them was the previous necessity of having to rely on bank transfers for their payments. These transfers would usually be delayed about a week or so, and result in fees being deducted from the amount as the transaction made its way from the sender to the recipient. After switching to BSV, payments are received in just a matter of minutes, and the fee is negligible—nothing more than a blip that’s hardly noticed. As Bill states, “[BSV] is the natural progression of where transactions should go.” (14:12)
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