Bitcoin gaming and payments company Zebedee has debuted on African soil following its partnership with Bitnob. This move means African gamers can now send and receive small amounts of Bitcoin.
The expansion adds to its previously introduced operations in Brazil and the Philippines. Earlier in March 2023, Zebedee launched a payment feature on its app that allows users to instantly send any amount of money to five jurisdictions, including the Philippines and Brazil, at a minimal rate using Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.
The company’s latest partnership with crypto exchange platform Bitnob will offer payments and gaming reward options in Africa using the Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN), Yahoo reports. The scope of the partnership suggests that African users can earn Bitcoin through Zebedee-powered apps and games.
Zebedee’s offering acts as a second game layer, allowing developers to replace ambiguous in-game point rewards with satoshis, Bitcoin’s smallest denomination. These can then be converted to a local currency, such as the Nigerian naira, thanks to the partnership with Bitnob.
According to Ben Cousens, chief strategy officer at Zebedee, the partnership was motivated by game developers who wanted to use Bitcoin for tournaments and other gaming rewards.
“If I’m Activision Blizzard or EA Games and I have 30 million players of my games in Africa and I run tournaments or giveaways, I cannot pay those players on fixed-rate rails—it is too expensive. I am limited to the U.S., and I lose money from loss of engagement. Try sending $0.01 to these territories on another rail,” he said.
“This is about the $180 billion video game market, not play-and-earn or crypto gaming.”
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What Zebedee’s offering means for Africa
Recent claims suggest that Africa has been a growing area of interest for the Lightning Network, slightly on account of the network’s ability to process speedy and cost-free micro transactions.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Bitcoin Senegal founder Nourou said, “Microtransactions are our economic reality,” hence why he and other African founders and programmers are hellbent on exploring the perks of LN. He says Africa benefits from young, budding demographics and a digitally native population. He added, “We’ve seen consistent evidence of high demand for our platform across the African continent, where the purchasing power of Bitcoin is considerably higher than markets like the U.S. and Europe.”
Interestingly, the merger of the Lightning Network and gaming is growing increasingly popular amid the market’s downsizing that has been going on since the collapse of Terra Stablecoins in May 2022. Cousens said, “It is a natural evolution of the interactive entertainment landscape, where ‘Rewarded Play’ (in lieu of unsustainable play-and-earn) provides meaningful performance uplift for game developers against a backdrop of slowing growth in mobile gaming revenue while engaging players in a fun and creative way.”
The introduction of Bitcoin gaming in Africa set African users up for a different type of delicacy. It ushers in an ecosystem imbued with opportunities for African users to generate income and find more hope in the cryptocurrency evolution.
In the face of the uncertainties that soiled the perception of cryptocurrency in the hearts of crypto users, particularly African users, this union of gaming and cryptocurrency via the Bitcoin Lightning Network might be instrumental in readjusting Africa’s gaming ecosystem. Players can get an interactive, creative, and exciting gaming experience through this development. The future is bright for African gamers; interestingly, this is just the beginning.
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