Founder of Kenya’s first Bitcoin startup on Why Kipochi Service Was Shut down

Kenya’s cryptocurrency and blockchain news website BitcoinKe.io recently interviewed Pelle Braendgaard, the founder of Kipochi, the first Bitcoin wallet and the first to integrate M-PESA into a crypto product in 2013.

Braendgaard says that Kenya’s Central Bank was open to new ideas especially given that they had allowed M-Pesa to begin operating in Kenya.

However, he notes that it is Safaricom’s parent firm Vodafone that ordered the shut down of his service dubbed Kipochi, a wallet that was designed to allow users to receive and send bitcoins across the world while allowing Kenyans to convert the same to and from an M-Pesa balance.

“I heard that the order to shut us down came from London and not from the Safaricom Office,” says Pelle Braendgaard.