Excerpt
I’ve been supporting people to learn Bitcoin for a couple of years. The same question always arises: Is it legal to use Bitcoin? My answer: In 99% of all countries it’s not illegal to use it, so don’t wait for your government to legalize Bitcoin. Start your Bitcoin journey today.
Transcript
I have been working in the Bitcoin space in education in African countries since five years and the first thing I always hear about “Is Bitcoin not a scam?”. That’s the first thing because so many people have been scammed, it’s really sad. And the second thing is “Am I allowed to use it? Is it legal? What does my government say?”. And I tell you one thing, don’t wait for the government. I don’t know of any country where it’s illegal to use Bitcoin, not even in Zimbabwe. It might be that in Nigeria and maybe also in Kenya, I’m not sure about that, there is regulation that businesses and banks shall not use Bitcoin, but this is not valid for private people. And this is your time to start saving in bitcoin. I can tell you from my personal experience in Austria, like I started seven years ago in the education space, we didn’t really have a lot of regulation and we also pay back in those days we didn’t even have capital gains tax on bitcoin. Now we have it. So I used that time to save as much money and I didn’t have a lot but I put all I had into bitcoin basically I reduced my living costs that I needed to be able to save a lot and it pays off in the end. You need to think long-term and try to save and also use it. I’m traveling a lot. With bitcoin, it’s so easy to travel because everywhere you find people who are into this educational space and help you to exchange it to national currency. We came with no Kenyan shillings and immediately met with someone who exchanged bitcoin to cash and we’re using Tando actually every day to pay everyone who uses M-Pesa, like the taxi driver, the restaurant, everywhere. So it works and it’s a story by those people who want to keep us back, who want to keep us poor in a way that it’s illegal, it’s only a scam, it’s only for terrorists. It’s not true. It’s for everyone, it’s a technology, it’s like you say the internet is only for terrorists? Yes, they are using it, but a lot of regular people are using it as well. So please don’t be discouraged and don’t wait for the allowance to do something which is not illegal and it’s totally fine and it’s great that you use this tool.
