Importing cars and sending money to family

Bitcoin (BTC) is a tool for freedom and economic empowerment. For one young Zimbabwean, Ovidy, it turned his life around when he returned to his home country at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

An entrepreneur who first learned of Bitcoin while living in the United States, Ovidy has since built a business with Bitcoin at its core. Below, Ovidy (center) is pictured with Paco the Bitcoin traveler (left):

Day 276
Obidy imports cars in Zimbabwe using #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/Y2TmZZX6Bv

— Paco de la India⚡ (@RunwithBitcoin) June 20, 2022

Ovidy imports cars using Bitcoin. “I really like to import BMWs,” he told Cointelegraph, as well as enabling peer-to-peer remittance payments to friends’ families in Kenya and overseas. In short, Bitcoin makes him hopeful for the future.

Ovidy told Cointelegraph that he “came across Bitcoin when it was around $10,000,” during the 2017 bull run. However, he didn’t invest “because I didn’t have any knowledge about it.”

“I thought that you could Bitcoin one day and have $500; the next day you have $1,000 and it goes up and up.”

He stacked some sats over this period, but it took a few years’ learning and small experiments tinkering with Bitcoin — such as using BitPay to pay for clothes on Amazon — before he could get to grips with the decentralized digital currency. However, it was no more than a hobby and an experience that was soon forgotten.

Jump to the dark beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and Ovidy was obliged to return to Zimbabwe from the United States. In an unfortunate twist of events:

“I didn’t have anything to do when I came back to Zimbabwe. There were no jobs, so I considered foreign exchange (forex) trading.”

The forex account asked for him to deposit some Bitcoin and Ovidy remembered he had some “Bitcoin in an old Coinbase account.” He checked, and to his delight, the $500 he bought during 2017 and 2018 was worth more than $2,000.

A eureka moment, Ovidy immediately realized he could leverage Bitcoin for payments and investments. He could create work, and more importantly, a salary for himself. The Ovidy E-Wallet transfer hub was born.

He tapped into his network of contacts and began facilitating the import of cars from Japan. From BMWs to Toyotas to off-the-shelf Hondas, his Zimbabwe clients give him dollars after which he sends Bitcoin to Japanese car dealerships. Weeks later, the cars arrive. He…