Edwin Sikini

What if your grandchildren grow up in a world where paper money feels as outdated as a cheque does today? That possibility is closer than it sounds. I sat down with Edwin Sikini, a cybersecurity and virtual assets expert, to explore what happens when money stops being physical and what comes after bitcoin. We went far beyond crypto prices, we talk about Kenya's rapidly evolving virtual-asset regulatory landscape, the rise of stablecoins, the security red flags investigators look for when transactions are deliberately broken into smaller amounts, crypto-jacking, and why Kenya has become such an important market for peer-to-peer digital-asset activity.

But the conversation took an even more interesting turn because while much of the world is still debating Bitcoin, another shift is quietly taking shape, tokenization. What happens when real-world assets, property, commodities, securities, even agricultural value can be represented digitally and traded through new financial infrastructure? Kenya's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act already provides a framework for tokenised real-world assets and tokenisation platforms and the question for Africa is bigger than whether we will use cryptocurrency. Who will design the financial infrastructure of the next generation? Who gets access? Who owns the assets and what happens to financial inclusion when digital assets become accessible beyond smartphones and traditional banking? This is a conversation about money, technology, regulation and ultimately African agency. Because the future of finance is not simply something Africa will consume. It is something Africa can help build.