Headline found in Business Insider dated 2025.
This is science fiction, which is a fun way to speculate on the future – just ask Arthur C Clark, the science fiction writer who is credited with the idea for geo stationary satellites for telecommunications in 1945.
Warning: the value of Bitcoin can go down as well as up. Please don’t bet your kid’s college fund on this outcome.
I thought about interviewing real experts on the subject of Pan African Monetary Union by reaching out to crypto experts in Africa and people at the World Bank, but figured that nobody sensible would want their names associated with an idea as crazy as this.
Here is how the story unfolded:
- 2016: the politicians in the member states of Africa could not agree among themselves on how to create a Pan African currency, so the idea of using Bitcoin starts to circulate in policy journals and it gets the label AfriCoin.
- 2017: America, Japan and ECB export inflation through money printing. A minor problem in the West becomes Zimbabwe level hyperinflation in some African countries. Confidence among African people that politicians can create a stable Pan African currency plummets.
- 2018: somebody creates AfriCoin with 100% convertibility with M-Pesa and launches it on Reddit and HackerNews. It catches fire. African tech entrepreneurs bill and pay in AfriCoin. AfriCoinTrends on Twitter and then hits mainstream media.
- 2019: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation writes a big cheque to fund AfriCoin. Goldman Sachs writes a report on AfriCoin.
- 2020: Xapo does its IPO and offers 1 million free vaults to store AfriCoin.
- 2021: China buys agricultural land from Africa priced in AfriCoin.
- 2022: AfriCoin labelled a money laundering tool.
- 2023: AfriCoin labelled a terrorist financing tool. Anybody discussing AfriCoin by phone, email or text sees the black helicopters circling outside.
- 2024: South Africa declares AfriCoin a parallel currency to the Rand. Egypt, Morroco, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria quickly follow suit.
- 2025: World Bank records more cross border trade happening on AfriCoin than through US $.
For the record, I think AfriCoin is a great idea with odds about 99 to 1 against. Anybody want to take this bet onto Augur?
Please login to join discussion