Regional News of Monday, 14 March 2016

Source: GNA

Ghana Dot Com makes first crypto currency in Africa

A Ghanaian total IT Solutions Company, Ghana Dot Com (GDC), has established a Bitcoin producing farm, thus adding several hundred Tera hashes per second capacity to the global Bitcoin producing pool.

A statement issued by GDC, and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said this was the first in Africa.



The first crypto coins were produced on February, 8, the statement said, and expressed the optimism that the year would be a good one in terms of technology for Africa.



According to information gathered by the Ghana News Agency on the Coin Desk’s website, Bitcoin is a form of digital currency, created and held electronically, with no one controlling the currency, which also were not printed, unlike dollars or Euros.



It explained: “Instead, bitcoin is created digitally, by a community of people that anyone can join. Bitcoins are ‘mined’, using computing power in a distributed network.



“They’re produced by people, and increasingly businesses, running computers all around the world, using software that solves mathematical problems. It’s the first example of a growing category of money known as cryptocurrency.”



“This network also processes transactions made with the virtual currency, effectively making bitcoin its own payment network.”



Professor Nii Narku Quaynor, the Chairman of GDC, and the Internet Pioneer in Ghana, said: "As one of the first African computer scientists, we have an interest in seeing the adoption of Computing Sciences in Africa,” according to the statement.



He said: “We pioneered Internet development and will similarly promote Bitcoin development in Africa.



“Our interest is in the Blockchain technology used in Bitcoin, which has numerous other applications beyond crypto currencies.



“It's a computer scientists delight to see encryption technologies, hashing, linked lists, trees, proofs and more altogether!"



The Internet was introduced to Ghana and other African countries by the pioneering company Network Computer Systems (NCS) in 1993.



Internet has since been adopted in all African countries.



However, NCS was shut down on November 26, 2003, over a land dispute.



GDC is a descendant company of NCS, a next generation IT Solutions company.



GDC, following the footsteps of the Internet pioneer company, NCS, was determined to pioneer and lead a drive towards adoption of crypto currencies in Africa, the statement said.



“With Bitcoin as the most successful crypto currency, GDC considers investment in blockchain technology as strategic for Africa.”



According to the statement, The General Manager of GDC, Ms Nancy Dotse said: "Our approach has been to focus on future technologies and to build communities around the technologies for rapid adoption.



“We invest in Africa's technology future. NCS pioneered the Internet in Africa and GDC seeks to pioneer Bitcoin in Africa. GDC will announce its Crypto currency products soon.”



The statement said GDC planned to collaborate with academic institutions to build technical capacity in developing Blockchain applications locally.



Ghana Dot Com Ltd, a successor company of NCS, was established in 2007 as an IT Software company, providing ICANN Accredited Domain Name Registrar services, Hosting, Web and e-Commerce Developer tools and other applications development for web and mobile devices.



GDC is certified as an aggregator to interconnect to GHIPSS Internet payment gateway to enable local bank cards to be accepted for online payments.



The GDC eShika product reduces the barrier to starting an online store locally.



A software developer called Satoshi Nakamoto proposed bitcoin, which was an electronic payment system based on Mathematical proof, according to Coin Desk.



“The idea was to produce a currency independent of any central authority, transferable electronically, more or less instantly, with very low transaction fees.”

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