Nearly every afternoon, surf instructors descend the sandy hill separating their township from Mossel Bay beach to earn bitcoin in exchange for teaching children how to catch its famous waves.
Crypto investors took a series of batterings this year: bitcoin’s value has fallen by about 60%, while digital coins Luna and TerraUSD collapsed, and the implosion of major crypto exchange FTX left an estimated 1-million creditors facing billions of dollars in losses.Ashlin Simpson, responsible tech expert at UCT's Centre for Social Science Research
“We are seeing everyday [bitcoin] adoption out of necessity for the unbanked billions,” Vivier told the Reuters. He was inspired by — and now is partially funded by — the Bitcoin Beach in the El Salvadoran surfer town El Zonte, where businesses began accepting bitcoin payments in 2019, before the digital coin became legal tender in the country last year.The project uses donations to top up shop owners’ bitcoin savings to their previous rand equivalent if their value slides by more than 30%.
“We keep praying bitcoin will go up again ... [The drop] hit us small businesses hard,” said Vuyisa Sakela, a police officer and convenience shop owner, who estimates 20% of their payments are in bitcoin.
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