Buycoins Basic is moving to Accrue

Helicarrier officially announces that it has today completed the signing of definitive agreements to acquire significant equity interest in Accrue. As part of this agreement, Buycoins Basic will be transitioning into Accrue effective immediately. “Embarking on this partnership underscores our dedication to democratising wealth building on the continent. Accrue has

Utility Today, Part 1 — On Africa & Global Digital Money

A lot of the time — I agree with detractors of cryptocurrency and all their associated technologies. There’s a lot to criticise: * Majority of proclamations are utopian, mostly exaggerated because they lack nuance and a thorough understanding of the technology’s constraints at different levels of the stack. * Majority of

It’s early days — here’s why

It’s very common to see proponents of blockchain/crypto/web3 technology talk about how it’ll completely change how the world deals with money. However, for most people today, it’s very difficult for them to connect their current experience with crypto to these proclamations of world upending greatness.

Hey, we’re Helicarrier now.

What’s in a name?

How we built the new Buycoins apps — Hybrid + “core” web technologies

At Buycoins, we don’t have “loyalty” to any particular technology stack. We think that technical decisions should be made based on goals & constraints. Goals — what are we trying to achieve? Generally, the answer to the first question is: * We’d like to be able to get a new

How deposits & withdrawals now work

On the 5th of February 2021 the Central Bank of Nigeria circulated a letter to all Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFs), and Other Financial Institutions (OFIs) in Nigeria. The letter, in summary, prohibited these institutions from working with cryptocurrency exchanges. What does this mean for BuyCoins? We

BuyCoins: Reflecting on 2020

Our mission has always been to usher truly borderless exchange of value across the African continent and beyond. We’ve always been aware that this mission is a complex, multistage marathon and in 2020 we took some important strides that we’re admittedly proud of – not because we’ve achieved

Simulation Not [Un]Important

Sometimes I think about those interviews where Elon Musk is asked about whether or not he thinks we’re in a simulation à la The Matrix. The question is somewhat nuts (like a lot of super broad, unanswered science questions) because it’s not necessarily straightforward to describe what being

Build for the world

Not (just) Africa

Decentralised Finance & Apps — A Primer

A month ago, I wrote an article about a dApp game that someone anonymous built on top of NGNT. A good amount of people responded to me (on Twitter) that it all sounds very interesting on the surface, but they don’t really understand what a dApp (decentralised application) is

Remote Work — How To Do It Well

I’ve been working with people all over the world, almost entirely remotely (from Lagos, Nigeria), as a software developer, project manager, CTO & CEO for more than 6 years now. Working from home (or anywhere, really) is something that comes naturally to me but I find that a lot

Sound Surround — My speakers, headphones & earbuds.

I was considering writing a separate review for each of these devices but given that I haven’t written any such thing since December 2018, I couldn’t trust myself to follow through with that plan. Instead, what you’re gonna get is a mashup style review of every single

Problematic – I was & I am

Aren’t we all?

2019.

(This read — and honestly any other one — would be nicer if you had any playlist from duduke playing in the background) I still struggle with what exactly these year reviews should be, despite having already written 5 of them (this one being the 6th). I woke up this afternoon (had

What does “Men hate women” mean?

“Men hate women” Feminists say it pretty often and they genuinely believe it to be true. However, most men vehemently disagree. How can he hate women? He thinks about the women in his life: his sisters, his mother. He remembers the women he has been attracted to throughout his life

A Nigerian’s Guide to Starting a Career in Tech

How to get a great job in tech without leaving Nigeria

The games we played

A couple of months ago, I was with a group of friends, chilling, gisting and laughing. Of course, we were all very baked. We talked through quite a diverse array of topics, as one is wont to do when wammed. We talked about how kids were so mean (in secondary

It doesn’t matter what she’s wearing

or doing.

Hey parents, I’m dropping out

This is the email I sent to my parents (siblings, uncle and aunties were CCed) a few years ago telling them of my decision to drop out of Unilag. Good day everyone, I think it’s important that I try my best to explain my thought process. I’ve attempted

Simpler parameter handling for Interactors

At BuyCoins, we use the Interactor gem for business logic. It works like this: Say you have an Interactor called SendCoins. You call can trigger it’s functionality by doing SendCoins.call(amount: 0.5, currency: Ethereum…) The has passed into #call will be available within the Interactor as attributes

2018.

悪いエネルギーは遠くに留まります (This read – and honestly any other one – would be nicer if you had Feral Thing by Josin playing.) *Cue the longest, most unnecessary intro ever!* Since 2014, I’ve been writing these end of the year things on Medium. It’s that time again and I’ve spent the

iPhone XS (Max) Review

iPhone XS Max Review I’ve spent a few months with the iPhone XS Max and I finally have conclusive thoughts. Here they are: (You can read my iPhone X review from earlier this year here.) The Screen The first thing I noticed immediately I held the iPhone XS Max

Ruby’s Prepend: How is it useful?

With a real world example This article introduced me to Prepend. It does a really good job of explaining the keywords below & the ancestor hierarchy. As such it’s a good idea to read it before mine. I decided to write this to show my real world use-case of

front-end vs back-end vs client-side vs server-side

If you’re an experienced (web) developer like I am, the words in the title make complete sense to you and are pretty basic. In talking to a few beginners recently, (as part of my attempts to come up with a sort of curriculum), I found out that they often

Introducing BuyCoins