Bitcoin Kenya film shows the dark side of MPesa mobile payments

Bitcoin in Africa is a hot topic, and Kenya, with its mobile payment precedent, is no exception – so it is at first curious that coder Stephen Gornick begins an interview ‘At this point there is very little Bitcoin activity in Kenya.’
When asked whether the attention the country was getting was media hype, Gornick even agreed – ‘yes it’s hype because there’s not much going on.’
His words mark the opening of Bitcoin in Kenya, a documentary film released this week by IAmSatoshi and director Tomer Kantor. Far from continuing the buzz surrounding Africa’s Bitcoin progress, however, the film eyes the potential of Bitcoin in diversifying the current market, while noting the shortcomings of its main competitor, MPesa.
‘There’s huge potential especially because of the traction MPesa already has which has given people the familiarity with using their mobile phones to store value and transfer money at a peer-to-peer level,’ Gornick continues.
MPesa became an oft-touted name in the previous media coverage of the Kenyan Bitcoin story, gathering a fair measure of integrity along the way as a great facilitator of bank-free financial freedom for the masses.

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2014-09-11.