Africa’s Largest P2P Marketplace, Paxful, Delists ETHER to Protect Users – Only...

Kenyan crypto startup, Kotani Pay, has won a $100,000 grant in the 11th round of Stellar community fund (SCF), courtesy of Stellar Development Foundation.

Kotani Pay is a technology stack that connects blockchain protocols to local payment channels such as M-PESA in Kenya. Fintech companies integrate Kotani’s technology seamlessly into the local payment channels accessing a reliable exchange service to reach a wider customer base.

Thanks to the platform, users can access the blockchain via Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD). USSD is the primary mode of the mobile interface for a majority of the population in developing countries.

The platform makes revenue through transaction fees when users transact, in addition to consultancy fees and advisory services. The platform’s market include humanitarian organizations, gig workers, and savings and lending groups.

The grant program started with a 4-day virtual Bootcamp on the SCF Discord where the selected teams went through an intensive Design Sprint Process created by DFS Lab. After the Bootcamp, 47 out of 50 teams pitched their projects on the SCF discord. In the end, 21 projects were awarded their requested budgets.

“A big thank you to the Stellar Development Foundation team for this opportunity. This win will play a big role in our growth and expansion plans for the year 2023. And a special thank you to our technical mentor, Rick Groothuizen, for his guidance throughout the Bootcamp.” – Kotani Pay

A panel of 45 judges drawn from both the Stellar Development Foundation and the greater Stellar community and ecosystem voted to award 21 teams their requested budgets, and to give away a grand total of over 13M worth of $XLM.

Winning teams include:

• Horizon as a Service
• Flora
• StellarCarbon
• Space Walk
• A Scam Flagging System
• WireCash
• Zig3V2
• Paystreme
• Kotani Pay

The Stellar Foundation says it will open submissions for the next iteration of SCF early2023.

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Paxful CEO, Ray Youssef, has announced the delisting of $ETH from the marketplace starting on December 22 2022.

We finally kicked #ethereum off our marketplace. 11.6m humans safer. Integrity over revenue Who is next ? pic.twitter.com/JTJXa5RYJ8

— Ray Youssef (@raypaxful) December 21, 2022

According to Youssef, the move will affect his company’s revenue but will boost its integrity, coming one month since FTX collapsed amid reports of abusing customer funds.

Only Bitcoin will be available for trading on Paxful which, according to its CEO, is the best solution to liberate poor economies.

“I want to see a world where Bitcoin frees billions of people held back by this evil system, especially those unnecessarily harmed living in the Global South,” Youssef said.

In this regard, Youssef believes ETH is not helping the industry, but causing more problems. In an email to customers, Ray wrote down the reasons why Paxful is delisting ETH:

• ETH switched from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake – Proof-of-Work is the innovation that makes Bitcoin the only honest money there is, whereas Proof-of-stake has rendered ETH essentially a digital form of fiat

• ETH is Not Decentralized – It is controlled by a small group of people and one day you will need permission to use it

• ETH had Some Utility in Real Use Sases, such as Credit and Lending, but it Thrives Because of Tokenization – The tokens that ETH has spawned have been scams that have robbed people of billions. They have stolen valuable momentum away from Bitcoin and cost us years on our mission

CEO of Paxful, @raypaxful just sent this email to 11 million users pic.twitter.com/ACoc0BNjdP

— Documenting Bitcoin (@DocumentingBTC) December 21, 2022

$ETH is the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap and the gas currency running on the Ethereum blockchain. In addition, the network supports varying types of tokens that enable more diverse crypto products and use cases such as NFTs and DeFi. The blockchain transitioned from using a Proof-of-Work system to Proof-of-Stake, cutting the network’s energy consumption by 99% among other benefits.

This the second major announcement made by Paxful in a space of 3 days.

On  December 19 2022, the company asked its customers to self-custody their funds.

“My sole responsibility is to help and serve you. That’s why today I’m messaging all of our users to move your Bitcoin to self-custody. You should not keep your savings on Paxful, or any exchange, and only keep what you trade here,” Ray said.

Ray, a Co-Founder of Built with Bitcoin Foundation, recently opened a Bitcoin Technology Center in Kumasi Ghana, and said companies like Paxful should be taking more responsibility to protect users.

“Our industry is under attack right now – which means our responsibility to protect our users is greater than ever before. We are not perfect, but we’ll always do the right thing, even if it’s not popular, and even if it costs us money.” – CEO, Paxful

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