币界网报道：
作者：Athena Y 来源：X，@Athenaweb33
As Token2049 comes to a close, amid deep conversations with colleagues and the pervasive negativity surrounding the question “Is the Crypto industry finished?”, I recall a small incident from a few weeks ago.
I have been living in Paris for two years now. One day, while working remotely at a small café near my home, I received a WeChat call from Uganda. After the surprise, joy, and confusion of our greetings, I realized that it had been seven years since I transitioned from traditional industries in Africa to the Crypto space.
The caller was a senior advisor to the Ugandan government, visiting China with the president for the China-Africa Cooperation Forum. During my years in Africa, I worked for state-owned enterprises and the UN International Development System, aiming to promote the industrialization process and inclusive finance on the continent. With his assistance, I collaborated on various projects, including investment promotion for China-Uganda cooperation and the empowerment of Ugandan women’s handicrafts, which forged a lasting friendship.
My experiences during those years in Africa could fill a lifetime of stories, ranging from the prestigious, such as discussing matters with the President of Senegal in his home, to the harrowing, like the tragic loss of a close friend’s boyfriend in a terrorist attack in a popular area in Nairobi, where we frequently visited. By a twist of fate, I avoided one of the deadliest airline disasters in Ethiopian Airlines’ history, but several acquaintances from my high school and friends’ networks were not so fortunate. Yet, my decision to leave Africa was resolute and firm.
The encounter that led me to the Crypto world is worth mentioning. Interestingly, seven years later, sitting in a café chatting with both new and old friends in Crypto, African stories remain a topic of great interest, almost like a utopia escaping from mundane hardships—a psychological refuge romanticizing exotic adventures.
However, I believe that the soul-searching questions and answers regarding the application value of Crypto actually lie within those seemingly romantic and ethereal stories.
The transfer of value—Where is the money, how is it spent? Where does it go?
Many might be familiar with Binance’s bold vision: to increase the freedom of money. To ponder whether the Crypto industry is finished, we should first take a broader view of historical global value chain shifts and where we currently stand in this historical development, considering why Binance has such a slogan.
Let’s start with the old “narrative.” There have been three global industrial revolutions in history. The “steam revolution” began with the invention of the steam engine in Britain, significantly boosting productivity and enabling small-scale handicraft textile production to evolve into large-scale industrial production. The “electricity revolution” saw breakthroughs in electricity, chemicals, and heavy industries in countries like England, the United States, Germany, and France, leading to the refinement of the industrial system across Europe. The third revolution, commonly known as the “information revolution,” involved advancements in information technology, computers, electronics, and automation, propelling the United States, Japan, and other nations to become significant players in the global economy. The “Four Asian Tigers” (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong) also rapidly industrialized in the latter half of the 20th century, developing advanced manufacturing and financial sectors while integrating into the world value chain system.
It is evident that each industrial revolution has transformed productive forces, leading to changes in production relations and encouraging certain countries to leverage their “comparative advantage” to participate in the global value distribution system. China benefitted from the reform and opening-up initiated in 1978, learning from the advantages of the rise of Singapore and the other Asian Tigers. By establishing special economic zones and industrial parks in developed coastal areas, and utilizing China’s low labor costs and large workforce, alongside market opening and foreign investment, China developed an export-oriented manufacturing sector and became the “world’s factory,” securing a crucial position in global value chain distribution.
The intricacies of these monumental industrial revolutions spanning over a century could fill volumes, but it is worth mentioning that each revolution also represents a process of wealth redistribution. Africa, due to its long history of colonization and various complex industrial policies and international political factors, has been largely excluded from this “cake-sharing” process.
So, is Africa really poor? Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, boasts the highest density of private jets in the world. After local payment channels were launched on exchanges, Africa’s per capita transaction volume far exceeded that of European and Asian countries. The wealth of Africa’s affluent class surpasses our general understanding and imagination. With abundant resources, especially oil and agricultural resources, the upper class in Africa can live comfortably for generations on the profits from raw material exports, while ordinary people are left to scrape by in the service sector. The continent lacks a manufacturing base, and the financial sector is monopolized, with astronomical costs of financial services due to inadequate infrastructure, making it impossible for many to even access a bank account or afford bank transfer fees. The stark wealth disparity has become a common reality for the average person in Africa.
During an international organization’s research project back then, the Djibouti government arranged for us to stay at the Kempinski Hotel, the most luxurious hotel in this impoverished East African nation, with a nightly rate of $300—equivalent to half a year’s income for many locals. I still vividly remember a moment at the hotel’s beachfront, where a white businessman, reclining in a chair and smoking a cigar, engaged in animated conversation, while a black waiter stood before him, balancing a tray with a perfectly straight back. Dressed in a white shirt and red vest, his skin contrasting sharply, he gazed out at the mist over the Red Sea, his expression one of numbness and confusion.
Our task at that time involved a group of young elites with degrees in economics, finance, and sociology from top global institutions, aiming to design how international organizations could allocate aid funds for Africa effectively. When a British girl who had just graduated from Oxford learned we would be staying at a $300-a-night hotel, she tearfully refused to check in, viewing it as an affront to our mission. Yet, upon witnessing the conditions where ordinary people lived—shanties covered with metal sheets, creaking in the scorching 50-degree heat—she silently retracted her stance.
It was around that time that I decided to leave that job. Though we were engaged in meaningful work, it felt…While it may seem compassionate, we often speak grandly about industrial transfer, discussing how to develop manufacturing in Africa, integrate into the value chain, and allow ordinary people to enter factories, learning from China’s and Southeast Asia’s experiences in garment and footwear manufacturing. I personally spent a month in a Chinese factory in Senegal, interviewing female workers and observing them produce low-end Adidas and Nike sports pants for export to Europe and America. However, this progress is too slow; within the vast traditional “aid” system, the ones who benefit the most are probably not the African female workers being “taught how to fish,” but rather the senior clerks sitting in London offices writing papers and conducting project audits, along with us, the elites of international organizations who stay in $300 hotels on business trips. Data shows that as much as 70% of the funds in the entire chain are consumed in the processes of “proving how the money is spent, where it is spent, and generating audit and impact reports.”
I began to see Blockchain, to see Crypto; the advent of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence marks the beginning of the fourth revolution, one that could change the fate of currency, the fate of Africa, and the fate of impoverished masses.
True decentralization is found in the markets of Kampala. A few years ago, the son of Uganda’s Prime Minister established a Crypto organization, gathering several “second-generation officials” who studied in the UK and the US along with tech enthusiasts. They launched several small Crypto-related projects, such as enabling peer-to-peer Crypto transfers using non-smartphones in areas without 3G networks. Africans understand their own needs better; most locals use basic phones that can only make calls and send texts. Since many Africans lack bank accounts and are unwilling to traverse half the city to find a Western Union or one of the few banks for transfers and remittances, the local remittance method is straightforward: using USSD technology, individuals can send money directly to friends via SMS, with each person’s phone number acting as their “wallet” or account, and their phone balance representing their account balance.
I personally experienced the seamless process of “registering an account, KYC, and transferring” with friends from this organization: I bought a $50 phone at a telecom operator near the Kampala market, queued up, and the staff, having performed the KYC process thousands of times, completed it all in three minutes. They helped me top up my “phone bill” with cash. The village has numerous official and unofficial kiosks, and when you want to “cash out,” you simply find the kiosk attendant, send them a text transfer, and they give you cash. The “recharge” process is the reverse. The entire experience is smooth and operates entirely peer-to-peer, with no third parties involved, eliminating any trust issues. This product and process are not limited to the capital; they have been extensively implemented in rural areas.
Later, I joined Binance, and my first year was dedicated to supporting CZ’s vision of “mass adoption,” laying down a truly blockchain-based and Crypto-integrated network in Africa, starting with the simplest charitable projects. Binance Charity was born, creating the world’s first fully “transparent” peer-to-peer donation platform. Thanks to blockchain’s characteristics, everyone on the internet can oversee each Crypto donation, ensuring it reaches the wallets of Ugandan villagers directly without any intermediaries. Villagers then use Crypto to purchase potatoes and cabbages from suppliers who accept Crypto, with no involvement of fiat currency. When farmers need fiat, they periodically convert Crypto into local currency through local exchanges or OTC.
We also launched the world’s first (and possibly the only) “value-stable coin” on Binance Smart Chain (now BNB Chain): Pink Care Token. Unlike other stablecoins, Pink Care Token is not pegged to any fiat currency price; instead, it is linked to the value of items: each Pink Care Token corresponds to the “value” of one girl in Uganda using sanitary pads for a year. This project originated from conversations with locals while distributing potatoes and cabbages, where I discovered that “menstrual shame” is still widespread among local women. Due to a lack of sex education and the high cost of sanitary pads, many resort to using leaves and grass during their period, leading to severe gynecological issues, while many girls are married and giving birth by the age of 14, exacerbating the problems and resulting in infections that can be fatal during childbirth. Girls receiving Pink Care Tokens can “exchange” them for a year’s supply of sanitary pads from our partnered eco-friendly suppliers.
To this day, I am deeply moved by the overwhelming support the Pink Care Token project received from many prominent figures in the crypto space, even during a deep bear market when the industry was grappling with self-criticism and doubt. The concept of a value-stable coin and the complete transparency and efficiency of the entire process based on blockchain served as a small validation of the social value of Crypto. The value-exchanging attribute of Crypto as “currency” was reflected in this simple manner.
As I increasingly struggle to understand the complex business models and lofty theoretical narratives, especially during the industry’s current predicament, I often think of the story-filled markets of Uganda and marvel at the clean, pure, simple applications of Crypto, which are genuinely unpretentious, where good deeds are rewarded. For example, the farmers in Kampala who accepted the challenge to be at the forefront of the Crypto revolution received only $6 worth of BNB. Perhaps they are the true believers in Crypto.
Back in bustling Singapore, PayFi emerged as a new hotspot at this year’s 2049 conference. The new narrative of Payment + Finance has revitalized many desperate capital and projects. How this narrative is translated is not particularly important, especially when another major figure humorously noted that PayFi could also be called FiFi, as payment itself is finance. What is truly interesting and meaningful is that after going around in circles, we are beginning to return to the fundamental attribute of Crypto related to payments, beyond investment and speculation.
Just as the redistribution of value and wealth follows fundamental historical laws, the development of all things in the world adheres to these basic principles. From a single product to an entire industry, what truly endures is that which generates positive value for society. By returning to this essence, our beliefs will not be so fragile and easily shaken.
I genuinely hope that after all these years of twists and turns, I can revisit those girls who buy sanitary pads with stable coins and the farmers who manage accounts with BNB; the original intention of Crypto may indeed be that simple
