Is Vodafone the best Value in Digital Currency?
Strangely a telecom company is probably the best value investment in digital currency today. Specifically Vodafone (NASDAQQ: VOD) has quietly solved many of the problems confounding cryptocurrency developers.
For example, Vodafone claims to have processed 529 transactions a second with its M-pesa unencrypted digital currency in December 2016. Therefore, Vodafone could have solved the blockchain scalability problem before most of us heard of it.
To explain, the blockchain scalability problem is the speed and size limit that keeps cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) from processing large volumes of transactions. For instance, Ethereum will process 15 to 20 transactions a second and it is faster than Bitcoin.
Moreover, Bitcoin’s capabilities are far lower than Ethereum’s. In particular, most estimates show Bitcoin will only process three to four transactions a second. Although, I have seen Bitcoin transaction volume estimates as high as 10 per second.
M-pesa, on the other hand, achieves high volumes of transactions by sacrificing encryption. Thus Vodafone is already using a solution that Ripple (XRP), the Lightning Network, and the Raiden Network are experimenting with. The solution is a sidechain, a less encrypted digital shortcut to speed processing.
Meet Vodafone’s M-pesa the world’s most successful digital Currency
M-pesa is the world’s best established and most successful digital currency. Vodafone claims M-pesa processed 614 billion transactions in December 2016.
Vodafone’s Safari.com subsidiary launched M-pesa in Kenya on 6 March 2007. By March 2017 there were 29.5 million M-pesa users in 10 countries worldwide, CNN estimates. In particular there were 18 million users in Kenya alone.
Significantly, there is a network of 287,400 agents (brick and mortar businesses) in 10 countries to accept M-pesa payment and sell the digital currency. Nations M-pesa is accepted in, include: India, Egypt, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Romania, Ghana, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Tanzania.
