Bitland, an organization that aims to provide services to allow individuals and organizations to survey land and record deeds onto the Bitcoin Blockchain, has announced that the blockchain initiative is being piloted with 28 communities in Kumasi, Ghana, with the intention of expanding across the African continent.

By providing a permanent and auditable record, Bitland will bring clarity to land ownership rights, thereby reducing corruption and opening up trillions of dollars in locked capital, as land that doesn't have a functional title cannot be used as capital, and securing a mortgage to build or purchase homes is not possible.

“In low-income countries like Ghana, people are concerned with basic needs and infrastructure such as running water and paved roads. The Bitland team will use blockchain technology to help accelerate infrastructure development by freeing up capital – without the corruption and abuses of power that have plagued such projects in the past”, Bitland said.

It plans to set up solar-powered Bitland centres that will function as hardware hubs for the Bitland Wireless Network. These hubs will also serve as education centres for locals to learn about digital solutions and how to get involved in the project.

The initiative is using the OpenLedger platform – built on top of the BitShares platform and its MIT-licensed Graphene blockchain technology – as the basis of their blockchain infrastructure.

"The OpenLedger team is very excited to be adding Bitland to the Decentralised Conglomerate," said Ronny Boesing, CEO of crypto exchange CCEDK – OpenLedger's Danish registrar.

In addition, Bitland will be issuing a digital currency called Cadastrals, which will act as the entry token for their blockchain platform.

"To get through the first year of operations, the team has allotted 20 million Cadastrals to be used in an ICO to establish the first operational Bitland Center," says Larry Christopher Bates, Bitland's Chief Security Officer. "The ICO will be hosted by CCEDK, and the funds will be held in escrow on the OpenLedger platform."

The ICO will run till June 1st, and any unsold tokens will be sold through the Omni Tether platform with a daily incremental price increase. The Bitland Fund will collect network fees and any money taken into the main reserve and redistribute them to projects within the Bitland communities, thereby directly funding infrastructure provision, with oversight from the relevant governments.

With further development of the OpenLedger platform, a voting system will be added to the Bitland project, enabling communities to become directly involved in decision-making.

CCEDK, to relaunch soon as Decentralized Conglomerate, recently announced that the crowdfunding campaign for a brand new initiative, Initial Coin Offering Openledger (ICOO) will launch on 20 May. This novel asset will allow holders to benefit from future ICOs by investing in them and making proxy tokens available to trade before they launch. The fund will purchase assets from supported ICOs and create tokens representing these on OpenLedger in the period before the official release of the project.

Bitland further stated that since the Decentralized Conglomerate establishes intra-DC support, 5% of the proceeds from the sale of ICOO will go towards the purchase of Cadastrals.

“Since the future plans for Bitland are to establish a network of smart contracts that back land, Cadastrals will be seen as a digital token representing land for the portfolio of ICOO. The Cadastral community becomes a pillar of ICOO alongside Digix and DAOHub”, it added.

Bitland will liaise with governments to help resolve disputes and register land titles on the OpenLedger blockchain. It seeks to build an ecosystem that will represent not just smart contracts, but smart cities.

“The Bitland project is about more than registering land titles: this is the first step to bringing true democracy and meritocracy to the world”, it said.