Lockdown News

Hello everyone,

I'm reaching out to update you on our project and want to apologize for taking longer than expected to make an update. I wanted to have some of the business built out before taking anyone's time to read up on it. But due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the initial meetups we planned to host had to be postponed and furthermore it's still impossible to meet or make business around the House itself, due to the lockdown.

Once the lockdown is lifted we shall operate the House to earn a side income as an internet-Café that serves a few refreshments and snacks. This is one module, that I didn't even think about until after the fact we raised funds and installed the WiFi. It's also completely independent from the cryptocurrency business and might be a good way to attract customers of any kind to our BCH project, simply by visiting the BCH House to work there using the internet connectivity we provide.

The listings of the merchants is dependent on inviting interested people to our meetings to learn more about the technology and our business model, which was the idea of providing a physical space. So a "grand opening" has yet to take place leaving me with not much to write about the last month.

Nonetheless, we still have managed to reach a few interested merchants, who have filled our online forms, showing interest of money changers,
day-traders and holders, who are willing to utilize their holdings as our payment operators and restock their holdings by exchanging the customer's cash back into BCH with us.

We are still on the lookout for more merchants and are still on to connecting to even more people who want to expand the project across Africa. Right now that would mean we have to be able to introduce our projects and details about our business for interested partners online as opposed to physical meetups. Which lead us to a conclusion, that many others also came to: Online Meetups.

Online conferences and tighter communications

The latest youtubestream during the BCH halving showed me how important it is to have the wider ecosystem be able to join in and introduce themselves and communicate efficiently with the inner circles and the BCH userbase. The fact that some of our core developers weren't aware of a BCH wallet called Zapit is something I want to change for the better.

We'll be publishing periodic videos (both streams and prerecorded) where individual developers like Rommit from Zapit or adoption teams from Latin America such as Team Ryver are able to introduce themselves and talk about their project in a wide and visible manner.

Today I had a short conference call for introducing the BCH House projects, that already have started to be worked on. Including Jaebz from BCH Uganda, Max from Nigeria, Mustapha from BCH Ghana and me. We're growing😎.

So we will have periodic internal conferences, where the project is being handled in a bigger sense, all Houses and their builders combined and well interconnected, changing the BCH Ghana project essentially into BCH House Africa.
Each House may still have their own suggestions and business models emphasizing on different aspects and industries, while sharing their ideas as well as their work with any other project, that might deem it viable to include in their own region.

For example, BCH Uganda created a neat online shop and is looking out for whole sellers. So if anyone from Uganda asks "well, what can I do with it, once I got the BCH?" you could simply show that person not only how to exchange it with the BCH House, but also an already working simple product, that he can relate to and use easily. It serves as an reassuring anchor to the old known, while introducing the new thing. Any region should work on implementing an online shop and listing sellers. Getting more products on that site and maybe finding/developing BCH based tools for these online shops are things we'll be working on. There is this beautiful online shop, bitbirdy. This might be such a tool right there.

Online Meetups and Online Archives

My next step is to create an online archive of the presentations and proposals we wanted to make in our physical meetups. It will include all the slides and important clips and videos that could be of help for anyone who is interested in BCH. These will be focusing more on services that might be more interesting for Africa and the Middle East, like remittance for example, nonetheless, it might even be a good general archive about any details we want to share about BCH.

We will also host and record online meetups for our African partner- and user base but also participate on the BCH online meetups held by the one and only BitcoinCast which will hopefully get the international adoption teams even closer together.

Update on BCH Ghana

Recently Mustapha registered a general Fintech business to be able to operate as a financial service, regardless of which technology we use. In fact, there is nothing about blockchain, Bitcoin or crypto mentioned in any of this, since it would be a lot harder to get the certificate granted by the office. So he went for "Chosen Fintech Solutions" which doesn't limit itself but of course includes the utilization of blockchain-technology.

He also send me this message detailing a bit about his operation that he integrated with the BCH House, while he was at the registrar office:

Chosen FinTech Solutions ('Chosen FinTech') is a startup founded to advance classical ideas of the fintech industry such as the blockchain, p2p lending/payments, crowdfunding, digital technology among others in Africa and beyond. The startup seeks to commit to the efficient and innovative use of technology to design & deliver borderless and more beneficial financial and digital payment practices.

Focal Modules:

⁃ Digital Technology/ Marketing

⁃ Blockchain & Cryptocurrency

⁃ Financial literacy

⁃ P2P services

⁃ Crowdfunding

⁃ Artificial Intelligence (AI)

- A VALUE TRANSFER NETWORK -

Chosen FinTech seeks:

• To advance financial inclusion and facilitate decentralized remittance, savings and payment solutions for everyone.

• To expand, connect and collaborate with other FinTech startups in the pursuit and execution of our common goals

• Incubate and nourish professional teams to independently develop tools dedicated to our business partners and userbase demands

BCH Nigeria Update

Read.Cash user @Maxdevalue.BCH, is in the process of building his own residence. And we had the idea to rent out part of it to use it as a BCH House.

Recently he added a new apartment dedicated for our House. With that, he can separate the business from the main building/residential. The building is located in Enugu, the capital of Enugu State Nigeria; That’s Southeast Nigeria.

Max is a trained accountant and has worked with some NGO’s and cooperative organizations for few years and later decided to stay on his own as a consultant.

What he does now is more of consulting work; He trains accountants and auditors on financial software like Sage 50, Quickbooks Simpler Accounting etc.

I'm happy to see him on our team as he will be a great specialist/contact person in matters related to finance and accounting.
We're also all welcoming Jaebz to our team, as he can help us with webdesign and editing going forward. I want to thank everyone, who is taking the opportunity and joined us to build towards a common goal of economic freedom for the entire world.

Conclusion

The first half year, that we have paid our rent for, is sadly almost over and due to the lockdown we weren't able to implement profitable business modules fast enough. Rent will be due in June. At that time, I will have enough money to pay for it on my own, so this is fortunately not much of an issue for now. It still would've been better to be able to send this money to Mustapha to buy him a new Laptop, since his seems to be about to give up its ghost.

Nonetheless, I'm happy to state that we can stay operational for the next half year. We also still have @cryptokidd with us who was introduced to us by Bitcoin.com for further cooperation and support.

I also reached out to Roger personally and we are both happy to share ideas on how we can work together with tools like local.bitcoin.com to provide the service solutions in the most efficient way. We invited him to join our next conference call and if the stars align correctly, meaning the timezone is convenient and he has time, we might have our first BCH Africa meetup video to share with a special guest.

If you happen to have an idea of how we could make business despite the temporary lockdown of our physical presence, feel free to comment. Maybe you thought of something, that I just didn't.

Until then I will get working on the BCH knowledgebase the Houses can link to. For now, I'll might host it on a subdomain under BCHGhana, if this archive gets big enough and covers general bases, then I am happy to put it on a general dedicated page. This archive will have the specialty of being written in plain English and explains things like Proof Of Work or for example the Simple Ledger Protocol in a very simplified way. It won't be for technically versed people to look up technical details, but rather for people, who just found interest in Bitcoin and simply want to understand, how all of this works under the hood, without being a rocket scientist to understand what is being described.

If you have any particular post, page or archive, that you think I could use as inspiration or template, please let me know. Until then I'll refresh my old wiki-editing skills and create a BCHwiki.

Thank you for reading and thank you again for all the support to our work.
We have reached quite a few people, who are enthusiastic to take the opportunity to expand the ecosystem around BCH. Let us expand our BCH community internationally, keeping everyone in mind and making it as easy as possible to work with us and our tools.

Until next update...

As always any tips received on this article will be forwarded to BCH HOUSE GHANA
If you want to donate $BCH directly to Mustapha from @BCHGHANA, you can do so via:

Quick note on Supporters and Sponsors. I have not forgotten my pledge to pay out SFRH tokens relative to your pledge amount. I keep tabs on the monthly subscriptions and will periodically send them to your SLP addresses. You should have received your first batches after the initial payout. Since it is not automatized the payout-periods might differ.