This is the name of a young Senegalese Bitcoiner called Bineta. Mama Bitcoin is the name of her pseudonym.
Her business, Bleu comme la mer, was the first store in Senegal (and maybe West Africa) to accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment.
She’s also the first person in her family to be able to read and write well.
Mama Bitcoin is a name that comes from the first letters of her name. The „mama“ not only reflects her motherly instincts, but it also encourages other women in West Africa to get into blockchain technology and Bitcoin as well (BTC).
When CoinNewsDaily asked her what she thought, she told us:
“There are very few women that are active in the blockchain space around the world and the situation is no different in Senegal. I wanted to shine a light on being a woman in the crypto industry.”
Bineta first came across Bitcoin in early 2017, thanks to a mix of good intentions and strange circumstances.
Her dream was to open the first bakery in her village, a fishing town called Mbour that is 90 minutes south of Senegal’s capital, Dakar.
That’s why Bineta needed money to bring warm pains au chocolat to the community each morning. She didn’t have it.
If you want to start a business in West Africa, it’s very hard to get a bank loan. It’s even harder for women.
Bineta had to look for other ways to get to school.
MLM: She tried one before hearing from a friend in Cameroon that Bitcoin might be a good fit.
After a lot of research, Bineta’s curiosity got the better of her.
A risky MLM scheme wasn’t going to be as important to her as Bitcoin.
Later in 2017, Mama Bitcoin had spent a lot of time reading about Bitcoin in both French and English, and translating what she could where it was possible, when possible.
In the end, she came to the conclusion that Bitcoin is more than just a „number go up“ technology. It could build far more than a new bakery in her village:
“The more I learned, the more I realized we need this. This kind of money will help overcome so many issues. Not only is Bitcoin a tool for freedom, but the technology underpinning Bitcoin such as blockchain and decentralization will change Africa‘s development.”
They changed their plans after they went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.
As a joke, it would have been called the Bitcoin Boulangerie. The bakery was dropped, and a plan for Bitcoin in West Africa took its place.
At some point in 2017, when the price of Bitcoin went up, she learned more about how it worked.
“Bitcoin isn’t just a means of self-financing without using a bank, it’s a technological revolution and a way of unlocking growth and development in Senegal.”
Why do so few people in Senegal talk about it? Why is the media not talking about this important issue? Why doesn’t Senegal use this tool, and why are so few women talking about it?
kept going through her head.
Bineta got to work. She started writing about Bitcoin on social media sites, reaching out to the Senegalese Bitcoin and crypto community, and rethinking her goals.
In business, Bineta used what she had learned and the fact that Senegal is near the Atlantic to allow herself to dream bigger.
She came up with the idea for and then started a huge seaside business called Bleu comme la mer.
Bleu comme la mer is a platform that connects fishermen directly with customers, cutting out the middleman.
People in Senegal can pay for things with Bitcoin. This is the first business in the country to do that.
They also accept Ether (ETH) and Tezos (Tezos) (XTZ).
Mama Bitcoin, in fact, started the Tezos community in West Africa, and she did it all by herself.
All kinds of seafood that can be caught in the Atlantic can be bought with cryptocurrency on the platform.
Bineta says:
“I agree with you, too. Payment with cryptocurrencies shows that, contrary to what many people think, Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment solution, not a speculative asset.”
The blockchain vision isn’t limited to using cryptocurrency to pay for things.
Bleu comme la Mer is a decentralized e-commerce platform that allows fishermen to log their catches and customers to see exactly what was caught and where. Bineta has worked hard to make this happen.
Not only does the decentralized platform try to make the fishing industry more efficient, but it also tries to stop overfishing, which is bad but common in the waters of West Africa.
However, „Senegalese and West Africans are very wary of Bitcoin.“
Getting more women interested in crypto, which is a project of hers, has been a long-term problem.
However, there is still hope.
There were three women out of the 20 people who came to Dakar’s first Bitcoin meetup in 2022, which took place in the city.
It’s a small but strong start, and Mama Bitcoin’s enthusiasm for cryptocurrency is likely to have helped.
