From Kwame Nkrumah Circle To Dansoman – Virtacoin On Wheels

Sunday was coming from the other side of the city of Accra. He needed to use the local transport called in the local parlance “trotro” to get home. The Nigerians would say “Moloe” in Lagos and “Damfo” in Ibadan but the Kenyans call it “Matatu”.

He sat just behind the driver’s sit as other passengers climbed aboard, one after the other. Every now and then, a traditional medicine vendor climbed aboard the 33-seater Mercedes Benz bus to advertise his wares, make a few sales and disembark. When the bus got full and the driver got behind the steering wheel. Sunday noticed that there was no preacher on board. It was a usual occurrence for a preacher to be on board and preach the word of God.

Sunday got up, stood exactly where a preacher would have stood. He saw disapproval on the faces of the passengers, who were mostly young men and women, holding different shades and sizes of smart phones and earphones in their ears. They were probably Whatsapping, facebooking or listening to the latest Hip-life music and did not want any “preacher” to disturb their “peace”. Sunday asked the “congregation” to bow their heads for prayers. Only an elderly woman, three roles to the right did. He prayed anyway and committed the journey into God’s hands.

“I am not coming to preach to you. Neither am I coming to sell any medicine to you”, he told them. “I want to share with you something I discovered on the internet”. He got their attention now. Some raised their heads, others removed their ear phones. He asked, “Have you ever heard about BITCOIN?” Half of them said yes and others said no. One boy said, “My friends use bitcoin to buy stuff on the net”. Another said, “I use it to pay a guy in the U.S. who helps me to unlock phones”. Sunday told them that the generic name for bitcoin and other such currencies is cryptocurrecny. It was developed and launched by Satoshi Nagamoto in 2009. It was a new invention and not many people understood it. At the time, it could be acquired for a song but the price is currently between $250 and $280 or there about.

Sunday told them how another cryptocurrency was launched in July 2014 and has been doing the rounds since. He told them to get some before the price shoots up like that of bitcoins. He asked whether they would like to be taught how to get a few virtacoins for free. They obliged.

He asked them to open their internet, which they did. He asked them to type http://zapit.nu/jovirtacoinwallet into their URL and they did. One said, “I can see VirtacoinWallet, registration, Username, email, pass, confirm pass then "Register", all in descending order". Sunday asked them to fill the form and register. For the password, he told them to use at least one CAPITAL LETTER, one figure and one small letter and the password must be at least 8 characters long. As they filled the form, the bus had gotten to Obetseby Lamptey Circle. One of them said, “When I clicked register, it said a confirmation link has been sent to my email”. Sunday asked whether it was the same with the others and they concurred. He now asked them to open their emails and confirm the link. All but one was successful. The unsuccessful guy said the link in his email was not highlighted so he could not click it. Sunday told him to copy and paste it in the URL, and that would confirm the link too.

At this stage, Sunday asked them to go to www.virtacoinwallet.eu and click on login, then enter their login details. Most of them were able to login successfully. He asked them to describe what they could see. One listed the things – VirtacoinWallet, Username, email, Wallet Address, Registered Date, Last Changed, status, Referred By, Send Virtacoin and send bitcoin all in descending order. Two ladies and a guy were unable to login. They tried several times but to no avail. Sunday told them that there were three reasons for inability to login. 1. Account not yet confirmed, (not clicked on the confirmation lick). 2. Wrong password. Maybe they mixed up their password. 3. Any link that is not confirmed in 24 hours is automatically deleted. He told them to wait for 24 hours and try it again at www.zapit.nu/freevtahowto . The few elderly people in the bus could not understand what was happening so they just looked on unconcerned.

For those who were able to open the wallet, Sunday asked them to copy the virtacoin address to the clipboard. A cryptocurrency address is a combination of numbers and letters, both uppercase and lowercase and can be up to 34 characters long. It looks like this (13PjPFoqUteDuu37NKAwujE3TZUGmmaKw6). He asked them to now open zapit.nu/freevta and paste the address into the space for email/bitcoin and then, click sign in. As they did, they saw a timer counting up. It had three columns for seconds, minutes and hours running from right to left. One exclaimed, “I have 10 satoshis, no 12”. Sunday told them that the satoshis will continue to increase and that it was free. Another asked, “So what next?”. Sunday told them to wait for 5 minutes.

When the bus got to Salvation Bus Stop, he asked one of them to click on claim. She did and a captcha popped up. A captcha tests to see whether it is a human or robot that is interacting with the computer. All that was needed was to type the captcha (the captcha was “extra cheese”) and click submit, which was done. This lady got down at Sempe Bus Stop. Sunday managed to alert her to claim every few hours and that if her balance is 5500 satoshis or more by Sunday, the balance would be sent to her virtacoin wallet within 24 hours based on the prevailing exchange rate between bitcoin and virtacoin.

He also reminded her to write to [email protected] to ask for her account to be configured to receive bitcoins (only then can the virtacoins appear in her account) and also ask for her PIN to be sent to her. She needs the PIN to be able to spend her balance, pay for a service, donate to someone or tip a friend. Sunday managed to say all these and the lady nodded in understanding before disembarking.

At Methodist Bus Stop, Sunday asked the rest to claim too. Some got 100, 90, 96, and 87 satoshis and so on. After a successful claim, the satoshi started accumulating again. He also told them that when payment is made in bitcoins, the bitcoins will automatically convert to virtacoins because the account is configured to receive bitcoins. He encouraged them to get as many virtacoins as they can. No amount is too big. Once the opportunity is there, they better grab more.

Sunday advised them to keep their virtacoins safe and not to spend it on anything, till value rises to $1.00 per virtacoin.

Finally, before Sunday got down at the Karikari Bus Stop, he told them that if they ever found it difficult to coach someone to grab the same virtacoins for free, they should just send the person to http://zapit.nu/freevtahowto. He waved them goodbye and sauntered homeward.