The difficulty of getting a bank loan in West Africa led Bineta to look for Bitcoin as a crucial part of her plans. Mama Bitcoin sees the pioneering cryptocurrency as a technological revolution to unlock development in Senegal.
Bineta, also known as Mama Bitcoin, is a woman who owns the first retailer in Senegal to accept BTC as a means of payment. She also belongs to the first generation in her family who can read and write without problems.
The initials of her name, along with her maternal instincts, inspired the pseudonym Mama Bitcoin. She seeks to motivate other West African women to learn about blockchain technology and the pioneering cryptocurrency. She recently said very few women are active in the blockchain space worldwide, and the situation is the same in Senegal.
A combination of good intentions and incongruous circumstances helped Bineta find out about Bitcoin in early 2017. She had dreamed of opening the first bakery in her town, Mbour, 90 minutes south of Dakar, the capital of Senegal. However, she needed money to deliver freshly baked Neapolitans to the community every morning.
In West Africa, it is too difficult to get a bank loan for a business idea, especially for women. For that reason, Bineta looked for alternative means until a friend from Cameroon told her Bitcoin could work for her.
Bineta Learns Bitcoin Can Help Her People Overcome Problems and Reach Freedom
The curiosity of Bineta grew dramatically after exhaustive research, as she quickly realized that Bitcoin was crucial to her plans. By mid-2017, Mama Bitcoin had spent many hours reading Bitcoin-related content in French and English, translating whenever she could.
She concluded that Bitcoin could help her build much more than a new bakery for her people. The more she learned about the crypto asset, the more she realized they needed it to overcome many problems. She believes that BTC is a tool for freedom, and blockchain technology and decentralization will change the development of Africa.
Bineta changed the course of her plans for the bakery after learning about Bitcoin. She abandoned it since the idea of promoting BTC among women in West Africa took its place. In 2017, the progress and price of the crypto asset increased along with her understanding of the protocol.
Mama Bitcoin sees the pioneering cryptocurrency not just as a means of self-funding without using a bank. She also considers it a technological revolution to unlock growth and development in her country.
Bineta started to write articles about Bitcoin on social media, reaching out to the Senegalese cryptocurrency community and reassessing her goals.
She Accepts Bitcoin for Her Services, Proving It Is Not a Speculative Asset
Given her business experience and the proximity of Senegal to the Atlantic Ocean, Bineta decided to dream big. She created the first business in Senegal to accept cryptocurrencies as payment to connect fishers directly with consumers. She stated that transactions in Bitcoin prove it is a peer-to-peer payment solution, not a speculative asset.
Even though her retail business aims to streamline the fishing industry, it strives to undermine overfishing in West African waters.
Since Senegalese and West African people are skeptical of Bitcoin, attracting more women into cryptocurrencies remains a long-term project. However, Mama Bitcoin has infected a few of them with her enthusiasm to learn about the Leading crypto asset.
By Alexander Salazar
