Blockchain Africa Conference 2021: Beyond the Hype, Announces Keynote Speakers

Africa’s leading blockchain and cryptocurrency event, the Blockchain Africa Conference 2021, has once again assembled an impressive list of keynote speakers.

Charles Hoskinson, Founder and CEO of IOHK, Founder of Cardano and Director of The Bitcoin Project, will be speaking about Cardano’s projects on the African continent. Charles has several times spoken of the enormous opportunities offered by the African continent for the implementation of blockchain technology. He recently announced that IOHK is in the final stages of a large African government contract which would have multi million users being on boarded onto the Cardano platform for a real world blockchain implementation.The company’s focus countries include South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.

Sandro Ro, CEO at the Global Blockchain Business Council will be providing an overview of the blockchain landscape. Sandra says, “As blockchain technology and digital assets, driven by waves of meaningful use cases, continue to enter the mainstream, the continent of Africa is primed to reap the benefits of this groundbreaking technology and lead in categories like payments, mobile money, and track and trace, particularly as it applies to agriculture. Working together, the private and public sectors stand to leapfrog existing infrastructure and benefit from increased information transparency, accessibility, and most importantly, opportunities for many to participate and grow economies.”

Sam Bankman-Fried, Founder at Alameda Research and CEO and Founder at FTX, the fifth-largest crypto derivatives exchange in the world by trading volume, will discuss the decentralised financial ecosystem of the future. Sam’s keynote, will focus on the Serum project, the world’s first fully-fledged decentralised spot and derivatives exchange operating on the centralised limit order book (CLOB) on the Solana network, compatible with Ethereum.

Ben Zhou, Co-founder and CEO at Bybit, one of the world’s top five crypto derivative exchanges, will be participating on the fireside chat, hosted by Peter McCormack, on institutional and retail investment in crypto.

Stani Kulechov, Founder and CEO of Aave, will be introducing the Aave protocol, an open source and non-custodial money market protocol enabling users to earn interest on deposits and borrow assets.

Denelle Dixon is the CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation, a nonprofit organisation that supports the growth and development of Stellar. Her keynote will explore how the Stellar Network, an open-source blockchain network for money transfers from digital currency to fiat, is connecting the global financial infrastructure.

Yele Bademosi, CEO at Bundle Africa and Founding Partner at Microtraction will discuss the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies in Africa. Yele says, "The blockchain revolution is happening in Africa, not in the future but now. We are seeing more decentralisation driven by regulation across the continent and continued adoption. Blockchain Africa Conference is one of the longest running conferences on blockchain on the continent and is the best place to get up to speed about what's happening in Africa and where you can get involved".

Henri Arslanian, Global Crypto Leader, Asia FinTech Leader and Partner at PwC, will be discussing the latest global crypto institutional trends, certainly one of the hottest topics in the industry. Market adoption of cryptocurrencies has accelerated greatly over the last year, with tech and digital payment companies like PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and Square (NASDAQ: SQ) making large investments to offer new services to their customers.

Business intelligence, mobile software, and cloud-based services company MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), now owns a total of 72,000 bitcoin and just this week announced that the company will be borrowing US$600 million to buy more bitcoin. CEO Michael Saylor, said he sees the demand for bitcoin growing in the coming years, not only from institutions but from individual people around the world, which would have the effect of pushing its value upward.

Electric vehicle maker Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) also recently purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin including an announcement that the company will allow shoppers to make payments with bitcoin.

Most recently, Square provided the latest industry tailwinds, announcing the purchase of $170 million worth of bitcoin.

Topics throughout the entire event cover the full breadth and scope of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and decentralised finance, including an exciting Masterclass on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) on the second day of the conference.

The Masterclass, titled, ‘Introduction to CBDCs: To CBDC or Not to CBDC’, will be hosted in partnership with the Global Policy House.

The Masterclass will explore and highlight the opportunities of CBDCs to revamp payments in Africa, help support the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the various reasons that central banks may introduce their own digital currencies and the challenges in the implementation of CBDCs by central banks.

Tickets for the Central Bank Digital Currency Masterclass can be purchased here.

Over the two days there will be multiple networking events, 1-1 connection opportunities, panel and keynote discussions and a wide variety of exhibitors.The event will bring together 1500+ attendees from 45+ countries to the hottest topics in the industry.

For further information and to register for a free ticket, visit the website www.blockchainafrica.co.

About Bitcoin Events

Bitcoin Events is Africa’s leading blockchain and cryptocurrency event coordinator since 2015, attracting 280 global speakers and 5000 delegates representing 85 countries around the globe.

Bitcoin Events are the organisers of Africa’s premier blockchain and cryptocurrency events; the Blockchain Africa Conference, the Crypto Fest and the DeFi Conference.

For more information on the Blockchain Africa Conference 2021 visit the website at www.blockchainafrica.co or email us at info@bitcoinevents.co.za.