My Dialogue with Agbona Igwemoh, Africa’s Lead Ambassador for Beam

Cryptocurrency, also known as a digital currency is best known to utilize and maximize encryptions to generate money and better transactions. In my dialogue with Agbona, he narrates a platform that helps people invest and mine cryptocurrencies in a better way and create a high value experience for their users. Agbona elaborates on the possible advantages Beam adopts and how newbies can benefit from it.

Matthew: Tell Us about Beam?

Agbona: Beam is a peer-to-peer deflationary, confidential cryptocurrency that was implemented by the elegant Mimblewimble technology. MimbleWimble is the technology that ensures that transactions on the Beam blockchain stay confidential and hidden by default. So, in a nutshell, Beam is a privacy cryptocurrency, that gives its users the ability to carry out financial transactions without publicly displaying details about the transaction on the blockchain.

Matthew: In my last research, I got to discover that beam is a scalable cryptocurrency, I will love to know more about that

Agbona: Great question!

So, earlier I made mention of how Beam allows its users to carry out transactions without publicly displaying certain details of the transaction. This is made possible by the MimbleWimble protocol that ensures that the beam blockchain loads up/shows only headers of a transaction than the entire details.

This results in the reduction of the memory size of every transaction on the blockchain to the barest bytes and makes it faster to use than bitcoin, and memory-efficient than any other privacy coin out there. Beam is an impressively lean blockchain and there are lots of development that are near completion to make it even better.

Matthew: How can someone invest in Beam and how much does it take to start?

Agbona: Apart from stable coins (cryptocurrencies whose value is pegged to remain at $1), all cryptocurrencies are investment vehicles, Beam happens to be one of the cryptocurrencies one can buy, hodl, when it appreciates, you can sell for a profit.

How do you invest in Beam? First, download the Beam wallet for either Andriod or IOS then head over to Binance and purchase with your Naira debit card. Visit the Beam website to understand more about the project.

Matthew: How much does it take to start?

Agbona: You can buy Beam tokens for as little as N200.

Matthew: At what stage can someone start using his investments in Beam.

Agbona:Cryptocurrencies are mostly managed by the end-users themselves. If one should hold Beam as an investment, they can choose to start spending them whenever they want. Some people would rather buy and hold them for the long term while some others prefer to trade them as the market experiences highs and lows. Whichever works for a user is fine.

Matthew: Are there risk people should be aware about?

Agbona: There’s little risk for using such a coin as Beam. The blockchain is managed by a startup for the early period. There was no pre-mine by the team of developers behind Beam, and everyone can easily see all the coins that have been mined by the community, and all that will ever be mined. The risk of owning Beam is synonymous to every other Cryptocurrency that is not securities: As an investment vehicle with no sole proprietors, it’s the price is subject to the demands of the open market.

Matthew: What makes Beam unique from other Cryptocurrencies?

Agbona: Beam is unique from other Cryptocurrencies first because of its focus on privacy and scalability. Then, amongst other privacy coins, it doubles as a scalable one that is lightweight and doesn’t take up too much space in a node. Other privacy coins have their transactions sizes up to 16 times larger than Bitcoin. In the future, these blockchains would be harder to adopt because of the memory spaces they would take up due to years upon years of data. Beam is lightweight and fast. It only takes 59 seconds for a transaction to go through, and it has an extra feature up its sleeve: Transactions are private by default and users have the option to show their transactional records to legal authorities for audits and business deals.

Beam is also being managed as a startup from its early years. This makes it unique as the team behind the project can direct resources to ensure that developments are done and completed promptly by experts and that the blockchain is managed properly.

Matthew: A lot of people don’t believe that cryptocurrency is the future of money. What advice do you have for them?

Agbona: Money is an abstract concept that is represented in the real world. Anything can be money, as far as it has most/all of the properties that money should have. These include durability, portability, acceptability, divisibility, fungibility and limited supply. Hence, money doesn’t have to be in paper form.

Precious metals satisfy most of these properties, but they are not easily portable nor divisible. Yet, they’re still valued as money. Cryptocurrencies are relatively new, but they satisfy all of these 6 properties, even better than Paper Money that we use today.

The world is already adopting Cryptocurrency alongside paper money. It won’t take too long for everyone to completely prefer Cryptocurrencies for their daily transactions for all of its benefits.

Matthew: How do you think organizations can create partnerships with Beam?

Agbona: Organizations who need to reduce their cost of transactions using the banks, and would also like to keep their transactions a bit more private can partner with Beam to use their platform as a store of value.

Crowdfunding, humanistic or philanthropic organizations that support tipping from anonymous sources can also use the Beam blockchain to build apps that can help them achieve that purpose.

Matthew: Do you think Africa and especially Nigerians is ready for cryptocurrency?

Agbona: Nigeria is ready for Cryptocurrencies. You can tell because of the extreme pressure on the local currency: The Naira. The Naira is currently inflating at about 14% per annum. This means that 1 Naira will have lost about 14% of its current value by this time next year. Banks and the government have begun to place taxes on a lot of things so they can create more revenue for themselves.

Cryptocurrencies will offer a way to escape from the rising inflation of the Naira. It will also create a new means to earn revenue through investments, and it will reduce the reliance of Nigerians on banks, and lower the amount of money they spend on each transaction. Like Bill Gates once said; Banking is necessary, the banks are not.

Matthew: What are the Restrictions of using Beam?

I can’t think of any restrictions at the moment, you want to get some Beam tokens? Download our wallets, head over to Binance, buy the amount of Beam you can afford, and have it sent to your wallet. Then you can monitor the market, to know the value of the Beam tokens you are holding.

If you need help, we have a Beam Africa Community on WhatsApp who will be willing to support you should in case you experience challenges when trying to set up a Beam portfolio.

Matthew: What final word can you tell our readers about Beam?

Agbona: As at when this text was written, Bitcoin is valued at $9231 and Beam is valued at $0.57. To turn a $100 investment into $200. Bitcoin will have to double in value to become $18,462, and Beam will also have to do the same by becoming $1.14.
Which of these coins is more likely to do that?