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For Bitcoin to succeed, human experiences need to take a forefront and they take a backseat.

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Our first goal is to mine Bitcoin profitably.

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And we do that by pushing energy to the edges in Africa and decentralizing the Bitcoin network.

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That's the whole mission of Gridless.

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We have crossed the chasm in the conversation about, no, this is not a charity.

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This is something that needs to work.

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It needs to work for you as well.

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And you need to have a stake in it.

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If you have no cold storage for medicine,

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if you're having a baby at night,

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you're doing it under the light of your phone flashlight.

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The story of human progress is the story of energy.

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In five years' time, you will not fund an energy project

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that doesn't have Bitcoin money attached to it

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because it won't make financial sense.

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We need a beer.

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We do need a beer.

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We definitely don't need a beer.

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I mean, not at this time.

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It's 11 o'clock.

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It's a shame we weren't doing it at a different time so we could have a beer.

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There we go.

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That's better.

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Yeah.

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It would be better if we're sitting on the shores of Lake Turkana doing this conversation.

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Well, that was the plan.

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But then nothing in Africa runs on time, apparently.

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This is one of the things I've learned.

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We've completed Africa.

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Yeah, yeah.

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I mean, completely completed.

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I don't even know where to start.

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I think we should start with you, Eric, telling everyone what we've just done.

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Because I could try.

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I can say we've been to the Ethiopia border, but I was basically just in your car.

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I was a passenger for the entire trip.

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You tell everyone what we just did.

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I think you want it in more flowery language with some hyperbole.

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Exactly.

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Which means that he should tell us what we must do.

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Okay, Philip, take us away.

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Explain this trip.

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Yeah, so we set out actually on part of the Trans-African Highway.

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So that is the main route that you travel north to south.

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It felt like the main route, didn't it?

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There was a road for some of it.

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So the challenge was like, when we were initially looking at it, there was a place that we could

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have cut into the interior, but we decided to go all the way up almost to the Ethiopian

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border and then essentially drive across the Ethiopian border.

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So what's funny is like we went through this town.

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So right after breakfast, we went through this town called Isiolo.

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That used to be where the barrier was, and they would check you into the Northern Frontier

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District and wish you luck because they would not support you past that point.

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For us, we just drove through it today.

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Now it's like a modern road.

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Well, you were saying that was one of the most dangerous roads in Africa.

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For a very long time, that was the most dangerous section of any road in Africa.

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You told me that after the trip.

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The funny thing is, this was meant to be like we were coming here.

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We were going to go to Kenya.

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We were going to go do safari.

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We were going to hang out with you guys.

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And then, like, I don't know, two weeks before the trip, Eric calls me.

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He's like, do you want to go on an adventure?

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Hey, listen, we had some guys drop.

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So I was like, hey, there's only a couple of us now.

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We could do something that most people would get to do, you know?

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So, yeah, it's like, Danny, you want to do something a little different?

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You've been on a safari before already.

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Let's do something different.

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And it's like this idea is like, hey, let's go up to this area that used to be called the

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northern frontier district of Kenya, which is really like the land that time forgot, right?

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It's like north of Isiolo. And let's look at one of these communities that doesn't have any

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electricity. And the government of Kenya has no plans to ever bring electricity. There's no plans

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that they'll ever have electricity there. So why are they forgotten? Because I know like Saru,

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which is the town we went to at the end, isn't even on the map. But like, why is there no plan

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to try and bring electricity there? Is it just too hard? Yeah, it's just too hard. I mean,

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The transmission lines alone, imagine where we went.

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You'd have to build 300 kilometers of transmission lines, right?

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But 300 kilometers of transmission lines is a hell of a lot of money.

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And you're going to send it to, what, 5,000 people?

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Yeah.

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They'll never get a return on investment, right?

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I mean, 5,000 people, you mean in the entire region?

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No, I mean in Saru.

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Is Saru 5,000 people?

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It is.

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Oh, wow.

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But it's 5,000 in the greater metropolitan community.

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Well, that was one of my favorite things about turning up to this town.

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I'm going to make sure there's like pictures on the podcast because otherwise it's very hard to explain what we actually saw.

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Yeah, and I'll send you the map that actually shows the government's plan for building energy.

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Yeah.

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And you'll see I've got Saru overlaid on it because it doesn't show up on the map.

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It's not considered even a village in Kenya yet.

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And you'll see that it's not only not going to have any electricity ever planned for it.

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a thousand kilometers south is the same thing right so it's like this whole section of the

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country but the idea was can we get up there can we can we get off grid like really off grid and

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show you what africa looks like to the people who who never get there because this is the kind of

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place and i mean mark you can speak to this this is the kind of place that kenyans never get i was

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gonna say like you guys have been places most kenyans would not in their wildest you know

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horror dream think about going like nobody would go up there in fact just hold that quite close

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in fact actually normally when we're leaving sometimes when we come out of places like this

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they literally tell me when you go back say hi to kenyans because they they actually sometimes

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don't even feel like they're kenyans because they are totally ostracized and when we stopped

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at one of the places, somebody came and told me actually,

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thank you so much for coming here,

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because hardly anybody comes here.

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Yeah.

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And the Kenyan gentleman was in the car with you guys.

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Andrew is his name?

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Andrew, yeah.

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Andrew was telling me, in fact,

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he finds it difficult to connect with people

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who've never been to the north,

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because he feels like there's a fundamental part of him

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they don't understand.

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And when you drive with him to these places,

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the conversation you were having with me in the car was different because it's like now you see

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where I come from. Now you see where some people live in this country. And yeah, it's super,

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super remote. I am a Kenyan. Nobody I know has ever been. And I'm what? Like, I'm not a young man.

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purchased. It's funny because like I've been to Nairobi before then we went and did safari so we

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saw like the Masamara which was somewhat similar to that but again very very different. Yes um

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it had green. Exactly and there's a real stark contrast even just in Nairobi like we went to

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Kibera on the first day that's very different to like where all the consulate buildings are like

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There's sort of two sides to Nairobi.

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But then there's an entirely different side of Kenya

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that it was really shocking, to be honest.

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Because it's got to be one of the harshest places in the world to live.

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It's hot as hell. It's windy.

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There's no water. There's no food.

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No vegetation.

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The funny thing is, I was talking to Mark when we were in the car.

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And I was trying not to say it, but I was like,

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why do people live here?

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Because it's so hard.

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And I was very happy that Mark, as a Kenyan, was like,

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yeah, I don't know.

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Yeah, to me, it is like, to me, in fact, you have these places where you have a little bit of an oasis, and then you have the harshest, rockiest exposed places.

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And then for some reason, that's why they pop the village.

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Yeah.

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And then I'm like, you literally are exposed to all the elements.

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Yeah.

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The harshest winds, and you saw the wind can be super harsh.

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Crazy.

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And I'm like, what's the logic behind choosing this particular spot for the village?

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I would try to find a tree as rare as they are and pop my house there.

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So even for me, it's like, so I come from hardship, but there are levels to hardship.

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When you go to these places, you're like, okay, like I'm lucky.

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Because if you see how the deck is tucked against these people, we have access to the internet, we have access to power.

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Now imagine being born there.

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you had water even the basic necessities already are difficult and you're like man

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the deck is truly stacked against this and that's why things like electricity potentially internet

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would be can you imagine what that could do in such a place if you electrify like

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gridless electrifies or helps electrify people in kangema in moranga and that's already

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quite a step.

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But yeah, it's transformation.

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Do you know what a man told me

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when we were doing the survey?

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We found an elder having the Ethiopian beer.

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And then we walked up to him

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and Andrew asked him,

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these guys want to bring solar electricity

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to this community.

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He told me, dude, if you do that,

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I'll give you two acres of my own land.

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Oh, wow.

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You can have anything, just do it.

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He's like, if you do that here

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for this village of for my people i'll offer you two acres of land gratis he's he's learned that's

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how important it is to him yeah so there it would be a game changer so let's actually so you asked

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earlier what the like what's a recap and so let's let me just see if i can get it done quickly so

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first off you landed and we we mark took uh took us down to kibera the big slum in nairobi one of

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the big slums in Nairobi that has a pretty great uh circular economy of Bitcoiners then the next

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morning at 5 a.m well then Eric landed at 10 p.m and uh by 5 a.m we have we were dragging him out

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of bed throwing him in a car we drive for 14 hours to get to our first place to sleep for the night

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and then the next next two days we're trundling across some of the harshest places that you can

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drive for a total of 1,100 kilometers.

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But this isn't 1,100 easy kilometers.

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These are the hard miles.

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And so we visit a community up there that doesn't have any electricity.

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We go through a bunch of other ones that we don't stop at, right, that don't have any

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electricity, or they had something that was built by an NGO and has been defunct for three

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years.

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Then we finally get to Lake Turkana, and we do a little bit of fishing, very little bit

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because they were slow.

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There was almost a fish caught.

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And then we spent a night on an island.

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And then we got back in the car.

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We saw Africa's largest wind farm.

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And then we jumped in an airplane, fly back to Nairobi so we could get to this event.

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Yeah.

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That's the recap.

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That was our crazy four days.

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That's four days.

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During that, I'm just going to flash up pictures so people can see.

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Because you can't understand this.

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It was like I would never have guessed what we were going to do.

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Like you told me it was going to be wild.

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It was more wild.

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We undersold it.

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You can pack a lot in a few days.

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You didn't realize that, did you?

233
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That was a crazy part is just, it's like within all of northern Kenya, there was, I don't even know,

234
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like I felt like we drove through like 10 to 15 different, just like,

235
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it looks like a completely different country in a different part of the world.

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And it's just like you drive for 30 minutes through this like very harsh desert.

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And then you enter this like beautiful oasis.

238
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And then we go up into the highlands.

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And all of a sudden I feel like, you know, me being from Colorado,

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that was one of the first thing I noticed was a lot of the vegetation up there is very similar to

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like what I'm used to in Colorado and I was like I would never would have guessed I'm in Africa up

242
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here and and we hit all of these different places and um and yeah it was it was wild I think um

243
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seeing the the the most interesting thing to me I feel like that I learned on some of it was and

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we were talking about this when philip and i were when we met the community up in saru

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if these people have basic needs um then it gets them to a certain standard of living where

246
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i almost feel like you know when where we come from in the us and we have all these people living

247
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in apartments and they're sitting in this box and they're looking at their phone all the time and

248
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and we have all these you know mental health crises and all these things that are happening

249
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nowadays and you see these communities and it's like oh this is this is how we evolved to live

250
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and this is how what we're used to and i was blown away at how happy a lot of people were in these

251
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communities and in the way that they were interacting with us and with each other and i was

252
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telling philip i was just like honestly i'm like i'm like jealous of a lot of the connection that

253
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you can see that they have they have these very compact communities everybody knows each other

254
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you know all there's 40 little kids running around like the second we hop out of the cars we're

255
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were getting sworn.

256
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And Eric was the main attraction.

257
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They somehow all congregated to Eric.

258
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This Eric.

259
00:15:11,760 --> 00:15:14,200
That's quite interesting, though, because, Philip, you were talking about this,

260
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how community, like what we think of as community in the West

261
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is very different to how they do community out there.

262
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In what way?

263
00:15:20,580 --> 00:15:21,480
Well, I mean, we saw it.

264
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So, one, think about where in the West would, like,

265
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an entire little town allow their the all of their children just to run around go up to strangers

266
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you know there's no no parents around uh but what was interesting at one point is they they did start

267
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to cross the line of being pestering yeah and a guy came over and like you know made a single call

268
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and they all just scattered off so i mean you could just see that there's uh an expectation

269
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and the whole community is interacting together

270
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at every level.

271
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And it's not like my pocket and your pocket.

272
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Right, because in the Western world at least,

273
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we have, people have communities around churches

274
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or some other organization that's involved locally.

275
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And that's fine, but I think the difference is

276
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is when everybody lives with each other like that,

277
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like there are no secrets.

278
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Everybody knows who each other are

279
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and they're right around the corner.

280
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And I think that really changes the dynamic

281
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with how they interact with each other.

282
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It's a very real and authentic community that you're saying.

283
00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:27,740
And you can also see it in the decision-making.

284
00:16:28,360 --> 00:16:31,140
So let's say you come to me in Nairobi and you say,

285
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oh, you don't have electricity, I can give you electricity.

286
00:16:33,980 --> 00:16:34,240
Right.

287
00:16:35,320 --> 00:16:39,520
The knee-jerk reaction in an individualized society is,

288
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oh, install it in mine first.

289
00:16:42,220 --> 00:16:44,220
But when you go to these communities and you say,

290
00:16:44,340 --> 00:16:47,320
oh, we have a project where we want to electrify your community,

291
00:16:47,320 --> 00:16:54,500
the immediate reaction is wait and speak to our collective decision-making structure.

292
00:16:55,120 --> 00:16:59,840
So that's why we had to wait until we talked to the elders who represent everybody.

293
00:16:59,840 --> 00:17:03,040
And that is instead of a person saying individually,

294
00:17:03,200 --> 00:17:06,580
oh, come, let me show you where my home is where you can install electricity.

295
00:17:07,140 --> 00:17:11,100
It's like they think about the common good.

296
00:17:11,640 --> 00:17:15,800
And so they say, let's look at this as a holistic benefit for our community

297
00:17:15,800 --> 00:17:20,340
and let's discuss it at a holistic level and how it benefits everyone.

298
00:17:20,720 --> 00:17:25,420
And that's a different way of thinking about the community first and not self first.

299
00:17:25,720 --> 00:17:29,020
So it says, wait with however nice your project is.

300
00:17:29,280 --> 00:17:30,300
Electricity is amazing.

301
00:17:30,720 --> 00:17:36,100
But before we can make a decision, let's first consider everything for the community.

302
00:17:36,100 --> 00:17:37,680
And we have a structure to do that.

303
00:17:38,120 --> 00:17:39,140
Let's use that structure.

304
00:17:39,220 --> 00:17:40,300
And for me, that's beautiful.

305
00:17:40,760 --> 00:17:42,640
And we saw this with the elders.

306
00:17:42,900 --> 00:17:44,880
So Eric and I got to go sit down with the elders.

307
00:17:45,800 --> 00:17:48,700
And literally the only question we ask is,

308
00:17:49,020 --> 00:17:51,820
is there a piece of land that we can put this on?

309
00:17:52,620 --> 00:17:53,940
And these guys, they're old guys.

310
00:17:54,040 --> 00:17:56,620
They're sitting underneath, you know, a tree in the shade,

311
00:17:56,840 --> 00:17:59,200
chewing mirah, which is like this stimulant.

312
00:17:59,520 --> 00:18:01,700
So it's a plant that's grown in the north.

313
00:18:02,040 --> 00:18:03,980
And they're just sitting there like chewing these leaves

314
00:18:03,980 --> 00:18:05,160
and spitting them out.

315
00:18:05,560 --> 00:18:07,200
And most of them didn't say anything.

316
00:18:07,400 --> 00:18:09,460
I mean, they just kind of like sat there, you know.

317
00:18:10,360 --> 00:18:13,440
And then, you know, the senior guy,

318
00:18:13,440 --> 00:18:18,140
and they were speaking, you know, their local language.

319
00:18:18,140 --> 00:18:20,880
So we didn't understand a word they were saying.

320
00:18:21,880 --> 00:18:24,180
But you could just see this interaction, this older guy.

321
00:18:24,260 --> 00:18:26,000
It was like almost argumentative, you know.

322
00:18:27,180 --> 00:18:29,260
And then this guy would like give a response.

323
00:18:29,800 --> 00:18:31,780
And then occasionally one of the guys that's just sitting there

324
00:18:31,780 --> 00:18:34,200
chewing these leaves would like say a word or something.

325
00:18:34,720 --> 00:18:38,060
And, you know, at one point I kind of felt like maybe it was going sideways.

326
00:18:38,680 --> 00:18:40,980
And then all of a sudden like, okay, we've made a decision.

327
00:18:41,220 --> 00:18:42,520
This is where we want you to put it.

328
00:18:42,520 --> 00:18:44,980
And they immediately walk us out to this plot of land.

329
00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:46,400
Like, it was quite incredible.

330
00:18:46,700 --> 00:18:49,260
So I realize I've done a really bad job as the podcast host here.

331
00:18:50,080 --> 00:18:51,940
Philip and Mark have never been on the podcast before.

332
00:18:52,200 --> 00:18:53,860
So Philip works at Gridless with Eric.

333
00:18:54,180 --> 00:18:57,280
Mark, you're like OG UX designer out of Kenya,

334
00:18:57,740 --> 00:18:58,840
doing a lot of stuff on Bitcoin now.

335
00:18:58,880 --> 00:18:59,660
So there's the context.

336
00:18:59,660 --> 00:19:03,020
But the thing that I've also missed is why we were even in Saru.

337
00:19:03,380 --> 00:19:04,900
So maybe, I feel like you should explain,

338
00:19:05,020 --> 00:19:06,840
like, what are Gridless trying to do out there?

339
00:19:07,200 --> 00:19:11,820
You know, so Gridless, we started out by focusing on finding stranded energy

340
00:19:11,820 --> 00:19:13,860
and helping to monetize it with Bitcoin mining.

341
00:19:14,220 --> 00:19:19,360
We very quickly realized that the real need in Africa is developing new energy projects.

342
00:19:19,720 --> 00:19:24,520
And so we've kind of been focused on predominantly finding hydro.

343
00:19:24,940 --> 00:19:29,240
And we've been pursuing hydro simply because of unit economics.

344
00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:34,220
So it was a couple of months ago, Eric and I got on a call with some folks down in Namibia.

345
00:19:35,300 --> 00:19:41,160
And basically, they enlightened us that the cost of solar and storage has come down so much

346
00:19:41,160 --> 00:20:01,810
that we approaching the same unit economics of hydro And for those that don think of Bitcoin mining like this it just energy like it an energy arbitrage So Bitcoin mining pays X as long as Y is substantially less than X then you make gross margin and you can you know successfully fund this energy

347
00:20:02,450 --> 00:20:08,310
And so, you know, we started down this road of like looking at modeling out, can we do solar?

348
00:20:08,310 --> 00:20:14,130
we, you know, with Bitcoin mining, we really need them to run 24 seven. So obviously storage is

349
00:20:14,130 --> 00:20:21,150
required. And then a few weeks ago, Eric took his family just on kind of a fun trip up to this part

350
00:20:21,150 --> 00:20:26,530
of the country and ended up finding this little village. And so we're like, this is perfect. I

351
00:20:26,530 --> 00:20:32,490
mean, this is a village nobody will ever, ever, ever think about taking electricity to. And we can

352
00:20:32,490 --> 00:20:39,070
go there, build a pretty substantial energy plant. It will make sure that they have as much

353
00:20:39,070 --> 00:20:45,190
electricity as they want for, you know, the next three or four decades. And we can do that

354
00:20:45,190 --> 00:20:49,430
profitably because of Bitcoin money. So it's just a great story. So that's a really important thing,

355
00:20:49,430 --> 00:20:52,630
I think. And we've talked about this on the podcast before, Eric, but this isn't like a

356
00:20:52,630 --> 00:20:56,790
philanthropic play. Like there's massive benefits to the local community, but you're doing this

357
00:20:56,790 --> 00:21:01,850
because it's highly profitable. Yeah. I mean, nothing we do. Like, I think some people look

358
00:21:01,850 --> 00:21:05,750
at Gridless and they'll think that we're a nonprofit or a charity. We are a for-profit,

359
00:21:05,950 --> 00:21:13,490
VC-backed company. Our first goal is to mine Bitcoin profitably. And we do that by pushing

360
00:21:13,490 --> 00:21:20,530
energy to the edges in Africa and decentralizing the Bitcoin network. That's the whole mission of

361
00:21:20,530 --> 00:21:26,790
Gridless. So we would never look at a site if we were going to make money, right? So this idea,

362
00:21:27,030 --> 00:21:31,430
we were talking to this actually in Namibian, a very large-scale Namibian solar guy who told us

363
00:21:31,430 --> 00:21:35,930
about the new pricing changes, we like triple verified this with different

364
00:21:35,930 --> 00:21:40,090
Chinese manufacturers, European guys who knew the future. And sure enough, the

365
00:21:40,090 --> 00:21:46,910
prices have dropped. And so in Saru, we're like, okay, this community might start

366
00:21:46,910 --> 00:21:53,390
with like a demand of maybe 20 to 50 kilowatts, but we can drop a megawatt in.

367
00:21:53,390 --> 00:21:58,190
Right now, a megawatt of solar only gives you about 250 kilowatts of always on

368
00:21:58,190 --> 00:22:03,550
energy because if you have a megawatt of solar you know three quarters of it has to fill the

369
00:22:03,550 --> 00:22:07,130
batteries during the day and so you can only use a quarter of it to mine during the day and then all

370
00:22:07,130 --> 00:22:13,510
night you can run it okay so it's a one to four ratio basically um and uh but the numbers work

371
00:22:13,510 --> 00:22:18,910
the numbers actually work finally the economics work what's interesting about that though is it

372
00:22:18,910 --> 00:22:23,330
means like what we were doing gridless is known for run of river hydro that's what we're mostly

373
00:22:23,330 --> 00:22:27,370
do we have a couple we have a geothermal we have a biomass but really run of river hydro is what

374
00:22:27,370 --> 00:22:34,010
good at and um as we start expanding across the the continent we're saying hey we're gonna have

375
00:22:34,010 --> 00:22:40,970
you know about maybe 10 to 20 megawatts that come online over the next year or two that's great can

376
00:22:40,970 --> 00:22:46,730
we double that now because solar is a lot faster we can put up a solar site in three to six months

377
00:22:46,730 --> 00:22:52,010
uh whereas with hydro you're you're looking at you know 12 to 18. so there's there's something

378
00:22:52,010 --> 00:22:57,050
really interesting here and it's like the numbers work the economics work for the bitcoin mining

379
00:22:57,050 --> 00:23:01,690
Even if nobody were to buy a single kilowatt of power in Saru, which we wouldn't like,

380
00:23:02,070 --> 00:23:02,270
right?

381
00:23:02,310 --> 00:23:04,730
But even if nobody did, we would still be profitable.

382
00:23:05,550 --> 00:23:07,750
Now, if they buy, we make more money.

383
00:23:08,530 --> 00:23:13,990
So the incentives are aligned for everybody to come out looking good on this.

384
00:23:14,110 --> 00:23:16,830
And if they pay more than Bitcoin mining, right?

385
00:23:17,670 --> 00:23:21,990
Their price is still going to be less than what we pay in Nairobi.

386
00:23:22,130 --> 00:23:24,690
So they will actually have some of the cheapest energy in the whole country.

387
00:23:24,690 --> 00:23:29,490
Well, this is one of the things that shocked me because what's the town called us about an hour away from Saru?

388
00:23:29,490 --> 00:23:35,330
So Dukana Dukana and so there they have a solar site set up was that from an NGO? Yes, okay

389
00:23:35,330 --> 00:23:40,370
And then they set that up and then there was some controversy in the town politics got involved

390
00:23:40,370 --> 00:23:44,530
Well, and now they're paying 72 cents a kilowatt hour. Yes, 75 cents

391
00:23:44,530 --> 00:23:49,250
So that's like I don't know four times as much three times as much as a normal us household

392
00:23:49,650 --> 00:23:52,610
Well, and it's in Nairobi. We paid 25 cents a kilowatt

393
00:23:52,610 --> 00:23:59,390
crazy so it's three times as much as as people in Nairobi yeah pay on the on the national grid

394
00:23:59,390 --> 00:24:07,190
and but the reason that happened is this NGO set it up and then you know they they weren't they

395
00:24:07,190 --> 00:24:11,150
weren't really monitoring and managing their stuff very well people started tapping the line and

396
00:24:11,150 --> 00:24:16,250
stealing power so they turned everything off the the the community came up you know we became a

397
00:24:16,250 --> 00:24:21,170
little upset about that the paying customers did and they said well stop these guys from stealing

398
00:24:21,170 --> 00:24:24,830
They didn't stop them from stealing so eventually what they ended up doing is just saying

399
00:24:25,850 --> 00:24:29,830
Fine, we're gonna turn it back on but we're now raising the price from 50 to 75. Yeah

400
00:24:30,410 --> 00:24:35,390
Crazy and like these towns don't have tons of spare capital to be spending that much money on electricity

401
00:24:35,390 --> 00:24:39,230
So I assume what happens is just people who use far less of it and then the benefit is obviously

402
00:24:39,870 --> 00:24:44,310
Way small way less. I mean so you're you're dealing with the people with them with the least amount of

403
00:24:44,610 --> 00:24:50,850
Disposable income in the country and they have the highest cost of energy crazy. It's ridiculous. It's it's upside down

404
00:24:50,850 --> 00:24:53,550
And so they're paying 75 cents a kilowatt hour in Decano.

405
00:24:53,890 --> 00:24:56,590
What will you be able to offer it to the local people in Sowerwood?

406
00:24:56,650 --> 00:24:59,830
So the wholesale price coming out of where we are will be something like 12 cents.

407
00:25:00,650 --> 00:25:01,430
Now, that's wholesale.

408
00:25:03,810 --> 00:25:04,170
Sorry.

409
00:25:04,570 --> 00:25:05,890
We have a little bit extra noise around here.

410
00:25:06,170 --> 00:25:09,710
So let's say we wholesale it to 12 cents to either the community co-op

411
00:25:09,710 --> 00:25:12,430
or the local little mini grid distributor, right?

412
00:25:12,970 --> 00:25:15,790
He might charge another five or six cents on top of that.

413
00:25:15,850 --> 00:25:18,030
So let's call it 18 cents total.

414
00:25:18,330 --> 00:25:19,770
And then he makes a little profit.

415
00:25:19,770 --> 00:25:20,930
So he has another two cents.

416
00:25:21,090 --> 00:25:26,550
So 20, 20, even if you were to charge 20 cents or the local co-op were to do 20 cents, it's still cheaper.

417
00:25:26,870 --> 00:25:27,070
Yeah.

418
00:25:28,230 --> 00:25:28,930
Significantly cheaper.

419
00:25:28,970 --> 00:25:30,970
It's actually 20% cheaper than Nairobi.

420
00:25:31,510 --> 00:25:32,090
That's amazing.

421
00:25:32,450 --> 00:25:36,750
And like one of the interesting things was in the school, someone had put a solar panel on the roof.

422
00:25:37,270 --> 00:25:41,590
And I think the only other place that I saw with solar was the pharmacy in the village.

423
00:25:42,370 --> 00:25:45,970
But the solar on the roof of the school is nowhere near enough.

424
00:25:45,970 --> 00:25:48,930
He said it can only actually light two of the classrooms,

425
00:25:48,930 --> 00:25:50,410
and they had eight or something.

426
00:25:50,410 --> 00:25:52,250
And the interesting thing as well is,

427
00:25:52,250 --> 00:25:53,290
they're not just using it for that.

428
00:25:53,290 --> 00:25:54,850
Everyone's going there during the day

429
00:25:54,850 --> 00:25:57,730
and charging their phones and external batteries.

430
00:25:57,730 --> 00:26:00,530
And then in the chemist, he said, or the pharmacist,

431
00:26:00,530 --> 00:26:03,130
he said that it doesn't even run the fridge all night.

432
00:26:03,130 --> 00:26:05,170
So they are vastly underpowered.

433
00:26:05,170 --> 00:26:08,210
It will make an incredible difference to that community.

434
00:26:08,210 --> 00:26:11,130
Yeah, if you have no cold storage for medicine,

435
00:26:11,130 --> 00:26:12,650
if you're having a baby at night,

436
00:26:12,650 --> 00:26:15,930
you're doing it under the light of your phone flashlight,

437
00:26:15,930 --> 00:26:22,690
right? If you want to study at night, where do you go? So everybody, everything is worse when you

438
00:26:22,690 --> 00:26:30,230
don't have energy, right? That's it. In fact, when we were interviewing the community to find out

439
00:26:30,230 --> 00:26:36,430
what having access to energy would mean to them, one of the people we spoke with is the headmaster

440
00:26:36,430 --> 00:26:43,990
of the school. And when it's exam time, he literally has to carry his printer on the back of a bike

441
00:26:43,990 --> 00:26:46,650
all the way to Ducana to print the exams.

442
00:26:46,810 --> 00:26:47,510
Yeah, that was insane.

443
00:26:47,530 --> 00:26:48,690
You can't print the exams at the school.

444
00:26:49,350 --> 00:26:51,430
And he's like, yeah, if you brought his energy,

445
00:26:51,610 --> 00:26:53,670
that would actually help because of that.

446
00:26:53,730 --> 00:26:54,790
And even the vaccines.

447
00:26:55,270 --> 00:26:59,690
So for young children, some vaccines require refrigeration.

448
00:26:59,890 --> 00:27:01,530
And they have a small solar fridge.

449
00:27:01,530 --> 00:27:05,310
And the capacity that they have, and you heard all of them say,

450
00:27:05,810 --> 00:27:10,490
they get very cheap Chinese batteries, which are super expensive, $320.

451
00:27:10,490 --> 00:27:16,530
and every year or so they have to replace them and so for them they're like if if you could take

452
00:27:16,530 --> 00:27:22,750
that cost out of our hands with a reliable source of power that would be a game changer there's even

453
00:27:22,750 --> 00:27:28,450
there's a guy who was telling me um i was i was like he's got the business where people were

454
00:27:28,450 --> 00:27:32,610
having alcohol and he's super entrepreneurial he was like listen i actually don't even like

455
00:27:32,610 --> 00:27:38,290
selling alcohol my my main passion is welding and there are all these bikes that are beaten up and

456
00:27:38,290 --> 00:27:43,510
on this terrain can you imagine if i set up a shop to repair the bikes welding the frames

457
00:27:43,510 --> 00:27:48,090
that's actually my passion and so it's like if you immediately come over with power

458
00:27:48,090 --> 00:27:52,450
that that would would be super helpful but i think for me

459
00:27:52,450 --> 00:27:59,370
we've got some serious background going on yeah so yeah you're right like there are so many ways

460
00:27:59,370 --> 00:28:06,450
for health for education for nutrition even yeah because um there's somebody who said they only

461
00:28:06,450 --> 00:28:07,950
slaughter a goat strategically.

462
00:28:08,390 --> 00:28:09,710
Yeah, because they don't have a fridge to keep.

463
00:28:09,730 --> 00:28:13,830
Yes, they don't have a goat, they don't have a fridge to, so they actually don't even provide

464
00:28:13,830 --> 00:28:16,570
the right nutrition because of some of these constraints.

465
00:28:17,070 --> 00:28:22,830
So another aspect that, you know, when you look at like these solar home systems, these

466
00:28:22,830 --> 00:28:30,250
like rooftop, tiny little, it's like the bare minimum electricity to provide function, but

467
00:28:30,250 --> 00:28:31,550
it's not an abundant power.

468
00:28:32,170 --> 00:28:35,870
And I think the difference in what we're talking about with Gridless is going into that community

469
00:28:35,870 --> 00:28:38,010
and not giving them just enough to survive,

470
00:28:38,530 --> 00:28:41,470
but going in and making enough electricity available

471
00:28:41,470 --> 00:28:44,830
that the welder can actually set up a business

472
00:28:44,830 --> 00:28:46,590
because he has reliable power

473
00:28:46,590 --> 00:28:48,090
that he can run his welding machine,

474
00:28:48,370 --> 00:28:49,570
he can fix bicycles.

475
00:28:50,410 --> 00:28:52,330
And I think that's one of the challenges

476
00:28:52,330 --> 00:28:54,530
in some of the efforts.

477
00:28:54,830 --> 00:28:55,770
And Eric, remind me,

478
00:28:55,810 --> 00:28:58,070
who was the organization that counts

479
00:28:58,070 --> 00:29:01,330
like solar home systems towards the energy?

480
00:29:01,350 --> 00:29:02,630
Oh, that was Power Africa.

481
00:29:03,010 --> 00:29:05,630
Yeah, so, you know, their numbers sucked.

482
00:29:05,630 --> 00:29:10,690
Like, they're not, like, all of the effort that's gone into bringing electrification to Africa has failed.

483
00:29:11,170 --> 00:29:17,970
I mean, you know, and so in order to make their numbers look better, they changed the definition.

484
00:29:18,610 --> 00:29:20,710
You know, it's not real energy access.

485
00:29:20,890 --> 00:29:26,550
It's like, but, you know, there's a solar panel nearby, so we're going to count that as being energy access.

486
00:29:26,710 --> 00:29:28,930
And I think this is where we have to completely change the narrative.

487
00:29:28,930 --> 00:29:45,310
You know, there's no reason that a community like Saru, which is unheard of, not on the map, like there probably are, other than the people in Saru and maybe a few people around there, probably nobody else in the world has ever heard of it until right now.

488
00:29:45,470 --> 00:29:49,430
Like, you know, Saru is being announced to the world for the first time.

489
00:29:49,430 --> 00:29:58,370
But why do they not deserve to have the economic potential that abundant energy, abundant cheap energy would bring?

490
00:29:58,810 --> 00:30:00,470
And let's see what they do with it.

491
00:30:00,610 --> 00:30:01,410
Yeah, of course they do.

492
00:30:01,470 --> 00:30:08,390
But the interesting thing here, and we were talking about this a little bit, is like the philosophical implications of them having abundant energy.

493
00:30:08,710 --> 00:30:09,510
Like that's real Africa.

494
00:30:09,630 --> 00:30:13,090
That's how Africa's existed for however long.

495
00:30:13,090 --> 00:30:17,990
But if they get abundant energy, like how does that change the community?

496
00:30:18,130 --> 00:30:18,950
What happens there?

497
00:30:18,950 --> 00:30:21,890
Well, yeah, and on that, like, because that was one of the questions I had.

498
00:30:21,950 --> 00:30:26,270
It's like, let's assume we have just like a complete abundance of energy in one of these communities now.

499
00:30:26,670 --> 00:30:28,530
You know, they're able to have a refrigeration.

500
00:30:28,750 --> 00:30:30,830
You know, they're able to create these basic necessities.

501
00:30:30,830 --> 00:30:32,770
They're able to have more entertainment because of it.

502
00:30:32,850 --> 00:30:33,970
You know, all these different things.

503
00:30:34,710 --> 00:30:36,010
What are they constrained by then?

504
00:30:36,550 --> 00:30:37,790
Like, what's the next follow-on?

505
00:30:37,850 --> 00:30:44,810
Because it seems like, like, one of the things I was noticing culturally is that people have time.

506
00:30:44,910 --> 00:30:47,490
That's not a scarce resource in these communities.

507
00:30:47,490 --> 00:30:48,870
They have time to do things.

508
00:30:49,150 --> 00:30:52,650
And I think that's because people are less punctual because of that.

509
00:30:53,410 --> 00:31:01,390
And the question is, okay, well, now that if they have enough energy to where they can actually be leveraging their time more efficiently,

510
00:31:02,130 --> 00:31:05,790
then what are going to be the constraints in terms of being able to do that?

511
00:31:05,910 --> 00:31:12,430
So if we take the guy who wanted to be a welder, for example, where is a lot of the inputs for his welding going to come from?

512
00:31:12,430 --> 00:31:19,350
And I was curious as to how, like, what would be the next step that they would need if they had abundant energy?

513
00:31:19,550 --> 00:31:24,950
And then what would that allow them to do to really, like, you know, not industrialize, but you know what I mean,

514
00:31:25,010 --> 00:31:29,330
have some sort of greater degree of sophistication around how they're running their communities?

515
00:31:29,350 --> 00:31:31,510
But, I mean, we've actually seen this to a certain degree.

516
00:31:31,650 --> 00:31:33,990
Danny's seen it in Bondo on Mount Melange.

517
00:31:33,990 --> 00:31:44,450
You know, like that's that is a similar kind of socio and economically positioned community that has now had electrification for, you know, a decade.

518
00:31:45,530 --> 00:31:50,730
And I don't know about you, but I mean, just like interacting with the people, there is a lot of similarities.

519
00:31:51,070 --> 00:31:51,350
Oh, yeah.

520
00:31:51,370 --> 00:32:01,350
You know, and even interacting with the elders, there's a lot of similarities in talking to the elders that are on Mount Melange in Malawi and the guys that are sitting up in Saru.

521
00:32:01,350 --> 00:32:08,090
So I don't think we're going to take away something from them.

522
00:32:08,090 --> 00:32:15,650
I actually think we're going to catalyze them to continue to live the lifestyle that they want to live,

523
00:32:15,750 --> 00:32:19,750
but have that ability to keep food fresh, keep vaccines.

524
00:32:20,170 --> 00:32:21,910
But I don't think you're taking away anything either.

525
00:32:22,030 --> 00:32:29,510
It's an interesting dynamic where they're essentially being teleported from the same way they'd have lived 500 years ago, basically,

526
00:32:29,510 --> 00:32:31,210
to the modern world.

527
00:32:31,210 --> 00:32:32,730
Probably 5,000 years ago.

528
00:32:33,070 --> 00:32:33,850
So it's wild.

529
00:32:34,050 --> 00:32:36,850
That is like an overnight shift in how their society works.

530
00:32:37,910 --> 00:32:39,230
It's going to be really interesting.

531
00:32:40,430 --> 00:32:42,730
Yeah, and they get to determine that for themselves, right?

532
00:32:42,850 --> 00:32:43,010
Yeah.

533
00:32:43,070 --> 00:32:44,010
And that's the experiment.

534
00:32:45,050 --> 00:32:46,570
That's the experiment as well.

535
00:32:46,570 --> 00:32:50,830
For them, because different people pick different priorities,

536
00:32:51,170 --> 00:32:53,610
and we don't dictate what they do.

537
00:32:53,890 --> 00:32:54,990
And then you try to...

538
00:32:54,990 --> 00:32:57,350
For me, that would be a very good experiment, like you're saying.

539
00:32:57,350 --> 00:33:01,810
Imagine if we took this trip five years after getting adequate power.

540
00:33:01,970 --> 00:33:03,470
And what would we observe?

541
00:33:03,850 --> 00:33:05,490
What are the differences we'd see?

542
00:33:05,850 --> 00:33:11,250
And how would they counteract any potential opportunity?

543
00:33:11,370 --> 00:33:13,870
I mean, how would they take advantage of the opportunity of power?

544
00:33:14,190 --> 00:33:14,790
Right, right.

545
00:33:14,950 --> 00:33:19,430
What I was curious about is, are there communities that export goods?

546
00:33:20,370 --> 00:33:22,790
Is there a community that's very well known for,

547
00:33:22,870 --> 00:33:26,550
we create this one thing that we're actually selling to a lot of the other communities?

548
00:33:26,550 --> 00:33:36,750
Even in a very small scale, the little electricity that is available, another town over, basically it's almost like the small export of Ducana.

549
00:33:37,410 --> 00:33:41,930
Like the fact that you can come here to store your vaccines and then take them over.

550
00:33:42,290 --> 00:33:44,390
The fact that you have to come here to print your stuff.

551
00:33:44,490 --> 00:33:49,910
There's some economics that are now playing out between these two communities because one has electricity.

552
00:33:49,910 --> 00:33:55,030
and now you can imagine a farmer, I mean a businessman in Dukana saying,

553
00:33:55,030 --> 00:34:01,170
what if I could store some vegetables and I'm the guy who actually exports vegetables to Saru.

554
00:34:01,590 --> 00:34:04,110
You can see already some play of that.

555
00:34:04,810 --> 00:34:10,550
So, you know, what's interesting about the north is that a lot of the ethnic groups up there

556
00:34:10,550 --> 00:34:13,130
hold their wealth in camels, right?

557
00:34:13,370 --> 00:34:14,990
You guys saw this, right?

558
00:34:15,690 --> 00:34:19,470
And it is one of the places in the world that has the most camels per capita.

559
00:34:19,910 --> 00:34:26,790
right it is a lot of camels and very few people um but do you remember how much a camel's worth

560
00:34:26,790 --> 00:34:31,510
a thousand dollars yeah there we go a thousand dollars right and so you'd see herds of hundreds

561
00:34:31,510 --> 00:34:42,070
of camels right so they're asset rich cash poor yep and what that means is when when first of all

562
00:34:42,070 --> 00:34:45,670
when you want to build power up there you want to do something up there they can sell a camel

563
00:34:45,670 --> 00:34:48,930
to finance another business, right?

564
00:34:49,030 --> 00:34:49,850
They can do that.

565
00:34:50,030 --> 00:34:52,050
So to buy a welding machine, they can do it.

566
00:34:52,250 --> 00:34:53,810
A lot of the communities that we go to,

567
00:34:53,970 --> 00:34:56,150
they don't have that high value asset.

568
00:34:56,650 --> 00:34:58,410
So when we're down in Malawi, in Mulanje,

569
00:34:58,770 --> 00:35:01,230
they grow pineapples, they grow tea,

570
00:35:01,690 --> 00:35:03,130
they grow some vegetables, right?

571
00:35:03,150 --> 00:35:03,490
That's it.

572
00:35:04,290 --> 00:35:06,650
They're not sitting on a lot of wealth all the time.

573
00:35:07,710 --> 00:35:10,410
So when you think about what do you do with the energy

574
00:35:10,410 --> 00:35:11,550
once you get it, right?

575
00:35:12,790 --> 00:35:14,610
It really is determined by the community

576
00:35:14,610 --> 00:35:16,830
what they want to do by the entrepreneurs in the area.

577
00:35:17,350 --> 00:35:18,610
That's like everywhere in the world.

578
00:35:18,730 --> 00:35:19,550
It's the same, right?

579
00:35:20,070 --> 00:35:24,850
But I think the thing that the people from the north have going for them

580
00:35:24,850 --> 00:35:28,130
is they have an asset they can liquidate in the form of a camel,

581
00:35:28,590 --> 00:35:30,830
and they can finance their welding machine.

582
00:35:31,090 --> 00:35:32,490
They can finance a refrigerator,

583
00:35:33,050 --> 00:35:35,470
and they can make a business out of that too.

584
00:35:36,830 --> 00:35:41,270
In a ruby, I actually know a person who actually sells

585
00:35:41,270 --> 00:35:46,270
a lot of expensive...

586
00:35:48,910 --> 00:35:50,890
Actually, I know a guy who said-

587
00:35:50,890 --> 00:35:51,770
His timing's amazing.

588
00:35:51,770 --> 00:35:52,630
Yeah.

589
00:35:52,630 --> 00:35:54,890
If you actually go to a Nairobi supermarket,

590
00:35:54,890 --> 00:35:58,250
you'll see these caramel milk products

591
00:35:58,250 --> 00:36:02,050
that are super expensive, like 10X normal cow milk.

592
00:36:02,050 --> 00:36:03,630
And he's made a business out of that.

593
00:36:03,630 --> 00:36:06,370
So imagine if now I have refrigeration

594
00:36:06,370 --> 00:36:09,430
as there is a way to actually transport my caramel milk

595
00:36:09,430 --> 00:36:11,230
and add value to it.

596
00:36:11,230 --> 00:36:14,330
And that would be an incredible partnership between,

597
00:36:14,330 --> 00:36:17,470
because his challenge is he doesn't have enough camel milk.

598
00:36:17,470 --> 00:36:19,770
There's a lot of people who want this camel milk product.

599
00:36:19,770 --> 00:36:20,710
It's super high value.

600
00:36:20,710 --> 00:36:21,550
Yeah, it's super high.

601
00:36:21,550 --> 00:36:22,370
Like it's really expensive.

602
00:36:22,370 --> 00:36:25,770
Yeah, and so I could see they have camels

603
00:36:25,770 --> 00:36:28,350
and if you have refrigeration and so on,

604
00:36:28,350 --> 00:36:32,350
imagine a partnership where it's actually economically viable

605
00:36:32,350 --> 00:36:35,550
to take some of the milk from them

606
00:36:35,550 --> 00:36:38,390
and then take it to sell it to the bougie Nairobians.

607
00:36:38,390 --> 00:36:39,550
Yeah, and you just reminded me,

608
00:36:39,550 --> 00:36:44,130
We skipped an important cultural experience, which is having camel milk chai.

609
00:36:46,550 --> 00:36:48,050
I'm not too sad we missed that one.

610
00:36:48,090 --> 00:36:48,410
Oh, no.

611
00:36:48,850 --> 00:36:50,030
It's like smoky.

612
00:36:51,270 --> 00:36:52,670
He's still not sad he missed it.

613
00:36:53,330 --> 00:36:56,230
I also know as a lactose intolerant guy.

614
00:36:57,350 --> 00:37:01,670
I mean, maybe the coolest cultural experience was Eric slaughtering the goat.

615
00:37:02,710 --> 00:37:03,550
You should tell the story.

616
00:37:05,130 --> 00:37:06,610
We were going to have a goat.

617
00:37:06,610 --> 00:37:14,530
We're gonna split a goat with the Saru tribe elders for dinner as like a gesture of goodwill as well to wanting to work with them

618
00:37:14,530 --> 00:37:16,530
and they brought a goat up and

619
00:37:17,010 --> 00:37:19,010
I never slaughtered a goat

620
00:37:19,330 --> 00:37:24,610
So he raised his hand. So I said I'll take this one and this is funny because Danny and I were talking about it

621
00:37:24,610 --> 00:37:31,210
Danny's like I couldn't do that. I was just like well, we're gonna eat it. So I know the greater man

622
00:37:31,210 --> 00:37:33,210
And then the man slaughters the goat.

623
00:37:33,210 --> 00:37:35,210
He looks the goat in the eyes.

624
00:37:35,210 --> 00:37:38,210
I know I was being hypocritical, but that's like, that's up close to day.

625
00:37:38,210 --> 00:37:39,210
I don't know.

626
00:37:39,210 --> 00:37:47,210
Yeah, it was, but then what was interesting is one of the elders, he wanted to do like, you know, like the last cut because it's halal.

627
00:37:47,210 --> 00:37:52,210
He needed to technically, a Muslim needed to slaughter the goat or something, but it was a good goat.

628
00:37:52,210 --> 00:37:53,210
You did the hard work.

629
00:37:53,210 --> 00:37:55,210
I did. Yeah, I did the heavy lifting. It was a good goat.

630
00:37:55,210 --> 00:37:59,210
And I said to Danny, Danny, you have a good camera.

631
00:37:59,210 --> 00:38:05,690
you film him and danny's like i don't even want to see that you know like doing that with the

632
00:38:05,690 --> 00:38:11,610
community is actually a very interesting thing because one we gave them cash we bought the goat

633
00:38:11,610 --> 00:38:18,010
at a market price so they actually they earn the you know the asset value they got paid the asset

634
00:38:18,010 --> 00:38:22,250
value um but they don't go around slaughtering goats all the time they're not sitting there

635
00:38:22,250 --> 00:38:28,090
gorging themselves on meat and so to have somebody else buy the goat and then invite you to enjoy the

636
00:38:28,090 --> 00:38:34,610
goat and not have to worry about eating as much as you want.

637
00:38:34,610 --> 00:38:39,590
It really is an incredible gesture in a community like that and it's fun.

638
00:38:39,590 --> 00:38:40,590
It tastes good.

639
00:38:40,590 --> 00:38:44,850
So you know, most of the time we focus on energy and Bitcoin mining.

640
00:38:44,850 --> 00:38:45,850
I mean, we're kind of simple.

641
00:38:45,850 --> 00:38:46,970
That's all we do.

642
00:38:46,970 --> 00:38:53,130
But it does, if you think about it, it does beg the question, what else could be done with

643
00:38:53,130 --> 00:38:55,770
Bitcoin in these same places?

644
00:38:55,770 --> 00:39:00,610
If they already understand assets in the form of camels, could they understand assets in

645
00:39:00,610 --> 00:39:03,050
the form of Bitcoin and have more liquidity?

646
00:39:03,050 --> 00:39:10,890
Because it's actually pretty easy to sell one camel, it's hard to sell 10.

647
00:39:10,890 --> 00:39:14,390
Often people ask us, hey, what do you guys do with the community for Bitcoin?

648
00:39:14,390 --> 00:39:16,490
And we're like, well, we don't do very much.

649
00:39:16,490 --> 00:39:19,150
Our job, we have a small team, we mine Bitcoin.

650
00:39:19,150 --> 00:39:20,730
Our operations are that.

651
00:39:20,730 --> 00:39:24,430
But if anybody else wants to come in and be introduced to the community to learn about

652
00:39:24,430 --> 00:39:27,770
Bitcoin and do something with Bitcoin in that community, teach them about it, we'd be happy

653
00:39:27,770 --> 00:39:28,770
to do so.

654
00:39:28,770 --> 00:39:32,870
And we've done that up in Kenya and a number of places.

655
00:39:32,870 --> 00:39:47,260
But it makes me think when you look at that Sauru community could you see a path to them maybe first of all paying for their electricity tokens with Lightning right And then if they using it for one thing could they use it for another

656
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679
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in the US. Speak to Anchor Watch for a quote and for more details about your security options and

687
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coverage. Visit anchorwatch.com today. That is anchorwatch.com. Well, this kind of gets back to

688
00:42:09,500 --> 00:42:14,340
what we saw in Kabira, because like, just for context, we went to Kabira, which is I think the

689
00:42:14,340 --> 00:42:19,160
largest slum in, yeah, yeah, but we went, but that's the largest slum in Nairobi, right?

690
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:20,160
Yes.

691
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:24,480
And so we went there with me, Mark, Mitch from Afrobit.

692
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:25,740
We looked at that community.

693
00:42:25,740 --> 00:42:29,420
They have maybe the best circular economy I've seen.

694
00:42:29,420 --> 00:42:31,920
I think there was something like 56 different merchants.

695
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:32,920
65.

696
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:35,860
65 merchants that were accepting Bitcoin.

697
00:42:35,860 --> 00:42:39,140
One of the cool things is like the problem with that I've seen with these like circular

698
00:42:39,140 --> 00:42:42,200
Bitcoin economies is how does the Bitcoin get there in the first place?

699
00:42:42,200 --> 00:42:46,120
And then we were speaking to the guy who owns the trash collection business and he's getting

700
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:50,820
paid in Bitcoin and then paying his 25 employees in Bitcoin. So it's like naturally getting into

701
00:42:50,820 --> 00:42:56,680
this like circular economy. And you were saying that when you went to set up the Starlink out

702
00:42:56,680 --> 00:43:00,960
there, you were also quite skeptical of this. And then you saw someone buying oranges in Bitcoin.

703
00:43:01,220 --> 00:43:04,700
Yeah, it wasn't a setup because sometimes you're walking with somebody who's showing

704
00:43:04,700 --> 00:43:10,280
you their community and they probably have told somebody over there, oh, could you stay there?

705
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:14,060
We're bringing someone to talk to you. And so while we're talking to somebody here,

706
00:43:14,060 --> 00:43:17,300
I'm looking at all these QR codes for Blink,

707
00:43:17,300 --> 00:43:19,940
and I'm seeing somebody actually scanning

708
00:43:19,940 --> 00:43:21,360
and another person scanning,

709
00:43:21,500 --> 00:43:22,560
taking a couple of oranges,

710
00:43:22,720 --> 00:43:24,880
and I'm like, wow, this is pretty cool.

711
00:43:25,240 --> 00:43:27,740
That it's the average person.

712
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:29,700
It's not like a tech savvy guy.

713
00:43:30,300 --> 00:43:33,300
It's the average mom buying oranges for her kids.

714
00:43:33,480 --> 00:43:36,280
And they're scanning a Bitcoin QR code.

715
00:43:36,460 --> 00:43:37,380
Yeah, because that was the question

716
00:43:37,380 --> 00:43:38,460
I kept asking, Mitch.

717
00:43:38,500 --> 00:43:40,060
I was like, is this just like you

718
00:43:40,060 --> 00:43:42,920
and your smaller Bitcoin community using this?

719
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:43,460
Or is it everyone?

720
00:43:43,460 --> 00:43:45,780
I was like, this guy on the street, is he going to be using Bitcoin?

721
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:46,420
Mitch was like, yeah.

722
00:43:47,020 --> 00:43:49,820
And the thing that, like, to get back to Saru,

723
00:43:49,900 --> 00:43:53,780
the thing that I think made me realize is people will find a way to pay for it.

724
00:43:53,820 --> 00:43:55,660
Like, if you're offering, you know, electricity,

725
00:43:55,840 --> 00:43:57,200
and the only option they have is paying sats,

726
00:43:57,260 --> 00:43:58,420
they're going to figure out how to do it.

727
00:43:58,460 --> 00:44:00,520
And then what's the benefit to them of doing that?

728
00:44:01,060 --> 00:44:03,260
And we're going to inject, I mean, this is the other thing.

729
00:44:03,340 --> 00:44:07,320
It's like, this is Bitcoin, this global, you know,

730
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:11,260
marketplace that's injecting capital into that community.

731
00:44:11,260 --> 00:44:11,560
Yeah.

732
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:14,580
Because we're going to use the Bitcoin we earn to pay the salaries.

733
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:16,560
We could pay those salaries in Bitcoin.

734
00:44:16,720 --> 00:44:20,980
So that's now injecting real capital into that community.

735
00:44:22,540 --> 00:44:27,940
And there is actually another dynamic I saw, which I actually saw a use case for Bitcoin.

736
00:44:28,540 --> 00:44:30,740
You saw they're drinking beer that's not from Kenya.

737
00:44:31,100 --> 00:44:31,300
Yeah.

738
00:44:31,460 --> 00:44:33,260
The beer is from Ethiopia.

739
00:44:33,600 --> 00:44:34,120
Because it's cheaper.

740
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:34,440
Yeah.

741
00:44:34,740 --> 00:44:35,180
Yeah.

742
00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:40,800
And even there's friction in currency between the Kenyan consumer and an Ethiopian

743
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:46,300
trader, the darker camels, they actually buy those from Ethiopia.

744
00:44:47,020 --> 00:44:51,660
And so if you think about the currency situation between Kenya and Ethiopia, there's friction

745
00:44:51,660 --> 00:44:51,980
there.

746
00:44:52,200 --> 00:45:00,260
And if you imagine that, in fact, is another way that Bitcoin could actually help in cross-border

747
00:45:00,260 --> 00:45:02,880
trading between Kenyans and Ethiopians.

748
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:03,240
Yeah.

749
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:09,500
Well, so one of the interesting things that, like, when I see this type of adoption happening,

750
00:45:09,500 --> 00:45:15,740
And if we think about how money worked historically, and when we think about how, you know, when

751
00:45:15,740 --> 00:45:19,920
people were adopting money naturally in private markets, it had certain properties that made

752
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:21,920
it good money.

753
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:26,060
And one of those properties is just like a wide acceptability.

754
00:45:26,060 --> 00:45:30,000
And that's something that's actually used today often is just like a criticism of Bitcoin.

755
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:35,560
It's like, oh, it's typically goods that were used in primitive societies, like cattle,

756
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:37,560
like salt.

757
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:41,500
And there were things that were naturally held by most people.

758
00:45:41,500 --> 00:45:43,240
Everybody wanted to have cattle naturally.

759
00:45:43,240 --> 00:45:46,980
And then it's natural that it could become a form of money because there's always a constant

760
00:45:46,980 --> 00:45:49,960
demand for it.

761
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:53,780
And when we think about that with Bitcoin, it's like, OK, so how are we going to naturally

762
00:45:53,780 --> 00:45:57,320
get Bitcoin into the hands of a bunch of people?

763
00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:01,500
And I think that when we think about how will these communities grow over time when they

764
00:46:01,500 --> 00:46:07,500
realize that the rest of the world is connected to the grid has some floor clearing price that

765
00:46:07,500 --> 00:46:12,740
they're always able to sell back onto the grid with. And now Bitcoin's just that, for the world

766
00:46:12,740 --> 00:46:19,080
that's not connected to the grid. And so that has major implications. And I think it could be

767
00:46:19,080 --> 00:46:23,640
something that becomes incredibly foundational to any sort of like off-grid form of energy investment.

768
00:46:24,700 --> 00:46:29,820
And when we think about that, it's like, okay, so if you're a community and this becomes just

769
00:46:29,820 --> 00:46:36,840
like a basic utility function for any sort of off-grid economy, then you're naturally going

770
00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:40,820
to start trying to economize around that. And I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see communities,

771
00:46:40,960 --> 00:46:44,200
you know, do something similar, do something natively, where they're actually getting more

772
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:48,960
interested in mining the Bitcoin themselves. Like, okay, well, you know, if we have our own capacity

773
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:53,280
and like, Eric, you're doing a great job. You got some space on the racks for me. Yeah, you got some

774
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:56,900
space on the racks for me. Exactly. And like, I wouldn't be surprised if you start to see that as

775
00:46:56,900 --> 00:47:00,360
they grow over time. And it's like, that's, that's actually a really interesting thing too. And then

776
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:04,640
maybe there's like little, you know, mini forms of exchange that are happening between communities

777
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:10,720
because of that. But that's something where I can see it's like if you want bottom-up Bitcoin

778
00:47:10,720 --> 00:47:15,280
adoption and you want to have a natural reason that makes it widely accepted for the monetary

779
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:20,400
use case, this is definitely the most natural incentive-aligned function I think I've really

780
00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:24,300
seen that would create that outcome for people. I think so too. I mean, there's something really

781
00:47:24,300 --> 00:47:31,520
interesting about energy is this base layer for human progress, right? The story of human progress

782
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:32,660
is the story of energy.

783
00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:38,000
And so you see that when you come into a really raw situation

784
00:47:38,000 --> 00:47:39,780
like what we've seen over the last week.

785
00:47:40,060 --> 00:47:42,420
So when you walk into a place that has nothing,

786
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:44,700
it's very different, very different.

787
00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:47,100
You drop in your energy,

788
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:49,000
but you're also having to drop in what?

789
00:47:49,420 --> 00:47:49,860
Distribution.

790
00:47:50,420 --> 00:47:51,720
Somebody has to drop in distribution.

791
00:47:52,680 --> 00:47:56,180
The interesting thing about being in that position of power,

792
00:47:56,260 --> 00:47:57,540
not energy power, but power,

793
00:47:57,880 --> 00:47:59,340
is that you can say,

794
00:47:59,540 --> 00:48:01,440
the way this is paid for is this.

795
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:04,980
use these meters that pay in this type of way.

796
00:48:05,140 --> 00:48:08,020
So Lightning, M-Pesa, something like that.

797
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:11,100
And we get our, and that can kickstart

798
00:48:11,100 --> 00:48:16,240
the acceptance of Bitcoin in the community.

799
00:48:16,240 --> 00:48:18,880
They don't actually have to care about all of the things

800
00:48:18,880 --> 00:48:20,800
that we think are interesting about Bitcoin.

801
00:48:21,020 --> 00:48:22,380
All they have to care about is,

802
00:48:22,700 --> 00:48:24,460
oh, this is how I get cheap electricity.

803
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:26,200
That's the only thing that matters.

804
00:48:26,620 --> 00:48:29,420
And from there, from that one seed that gets planted

805
00:48:29,420 --> 00:48:31,440
are a number of other routes.

806
00:48:31,660 --> 00:48:34,960
It can go towards the route of value aggregation.

807
00:48:35,200 --> 00:48:36,780
It can go towards the route of,

808
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:38,980
oh, I could use this for cross-border trade.

809
00:48:39,740 --> 00:48:42,380
Or there's a lot of ways it can grow from there.

810
00:48:42,500 --> 00:48:46,360
So having a base layer need met with a requirement

811
00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:48,720
of paying it with Bitcoin can be really interesting.

812
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:50,760
Yeah, but I actually like Eric's idea

813
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:54,000
because I don't know that I had necessarily thought about it,

814
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:58,260
which is, do we get the community to sell five camels?

815
00:48:58,260 --> 00:49:01,340
and buy, you know, 10 minors.

816
00:49:02,140 --> 00:49:05,460
And that money comes into a community fund.

817
00:49:05,700 --> 00:49:06,820
Right, because that's right.

818
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:08,420
Yeah, into the school bursary.

819
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:09,500
That's a perfect example.

820
00:49:09,720 --> 00:49:11,160
Or to fund the health clinic.

821
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:16,040
Because the thing is, like, we're at this huge advantage

822
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:19,020
that we have the economic justification

823
00:49:19,020 --> 00:49:20,320
to build this energy source.

824
00:49:20,320 --> 00:49:21,720
We have the economic justification

825
00:49:21,720 --> 00:49:24,140
to build the infrastructure around it.

826
00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:26,580
But it's then up to us to get creative

827
00:49:26,580 --> 00:49:28,040
about how we monetize it.

828
00:49:28,260 --> 00:49:37,660
And we can monetize it ourselves or we can sell them, you know, cheap inside the four walls energy for them to mine Bitcoin.

829
00:49:37,780 --> 00:49:39,040
And that could almost be like table money.

830
00:49:39,300 --> 00:49:40,100
Yeah, exactly.

831
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:45,320
And it's also, I saw a use case as well that is quite interesting.

832
00:49:45,640 --> 00:49:48,720
You have situations where there's long periods of drought.

833
00:49:49,020 --> 00:49:54,240
So I was with Andrew in the car and he was showing me skeletons of camels that died.

834
00:49:54,240 --> 00:50:00,800
and he said to me two years ago even camels couldn't survive and so imagine a situation

835
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:05,660
like that where you're like okay right now it's not the right time to keep this camel i'm gonna

836
00:50:05,660 --> 00:50:12,080
sell mine to ethiopia keep the money in bitcoin yeah and then when we have the conditions again

837
00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:18,060
and maybe that's the time for mining where you're like it's too it's too much solar for even camels

838
00:50:18,060 --> 00:50:23,400
but it's excellent for mining so if i have miners i actually could continue mining and when the

839
00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:27,600
conditions are better i have a lot more liquidity to actually purchase oh man that's a great idea

840
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:32,540
like transfer your camels transfer your camels into miners during droughts because they're going

841
00:50:32,540 --> 00:50:41,460
to die anyway and then extract them back outs but um so i so i mean we had a bunch of interesting

842
00:50:41,460 --> 00:50:46,620
experiences along the way but coming into saru with the piles of white bones yeah it was uh it

843
00:50:46,620 --> 00:50:51,800
was a bit unsettling and i finally asked andrew and and he's like yeah during this drought like

844
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:54,640
Some people came and said they would buy these bones from us.

845
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:59,060
So if we would bleach them in the sun, they would come buy the bones for us.

846
00:50:59,100 --> 00:51:02,400
And so I guess they went around and collected up a bunch of bones.

847
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:06,620
And then the guys, you know, reneged and didn't buy them.

848
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:08,800
But it did look a bit sketchy.

849
00:51:09,640 --> 00:51:13,140
But obviously, of all the places we saw, there's massive opportunity in,

850
00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:16,460
we probably saw 10 villages that could have had the same thing.

851
00:51:16,860 --> 00:51:18,760
Like, what's the big restraint from doing this?

852
00:51:18,780 --> 00:51:19,620
Is it just capital?

853
00:51:19,960 --> 00:51:21,060
It's now it's just capital, right?

854
00:51:21,060 --> 00:51:27,980
So before, so the massive expansion in solar and battery storage has already started, right?

855
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:37,160
And it's one of these things that if you just look at the data, you can see it clearly, globally, it's going like this, right?

856
00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:40,040
And Africa is no different.

857
00:51:40,040 --> 00:51:52,020
And what's happened, though, is that with the U.S. tariffs on China, the Chinese are looking to deploy them faster in other parts of the world, right?

858
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:52,700
Like Africa.

859
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:54,540
So the pricing is really good.

860
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:58,040
And, you know, the expansion can be massive.

861
00:51:58,040 --> 00:52:13,340
So like what we figured out is that for a million dollars, you can put up a megawatt of solar array, 5,000 megawatt hours of battery storage and five megawatt hours.

862
00:52:13,740 --> 00:52:14,040
Sorry.

863
00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:15,260
See, let me do this again.

864
00:52:16,180 --> 00:52:19,620
For a million dollars, you can put down one megawatt solar array.

865
00:52:19,620 --> 00:52:29,280
You can put five megawatt hours of battery storage, all the miners for 250 kilowatts and the containers for them for that one million dollars.

866
00:52:29,660 --> 00:52:32,960
Right. And that's a profitable deployment that's making money from day one.

867
00:52:33,460 --> 00:52:37,820
Right. So that's by itself without selling any energy to the community.

868
00:52:37,820 --> 00:52:44,580
So if that's true the new model for rapidly electrifying the continent is going to say oh

869
00:52:44,940 --> 00:52:46,940
Where can we drop in?

870
00:52:46,940 --> 00:52:51,680
1 megawatt to 10 megawatt size sites. It's just capital. We get good returns

871
00:52:52,060 --> 00:52:54,060
Phil, what was the IRR on that?

872
00:52:54,620 --> 00:52:58,700
It's like almost 30% so 30% IRR like it's

873
00:52:59,060 --> 00:53:00,860
And that's not a big money

874
00:53:00,860 --> 00:53:05,940
So that the crazy thing is that that's the baseline just doing Bitcoin money if you sell to the community

875
00:53:05,940 --> 00:53:10,160
it'll be even better. It's premium. Yeah. So there's always the, the, the problem with, with,

876
00:53:10,300 --> 00:53:15,180
okay, we've, we've, we've unlocked a new model is saying, okay, well, let's go get this started

877
00:53:15,180 --> 00:53:20,100
and tested. And then people get confidence that you can, okay, I can put my money here and I will

878
00:53:20,100 --> 00:53:24,500
get my money back out. Africa is always one of those places that has a risk premium attached to

879
00:53:24,500 --> 00:53:30,180
it for good reason in certain parts. And, and so you need to be able to go out there and prove and

880
00:53:30,180 --> 00:53:32,940
show this. So that's what we're doing now. It's like, Hey, let's go build one or two of these

881
00:53:32,940 --> 00:53:39,520
sites, quickly deploy it, quickly show that it can make money. And then let's turn the gas on this

882
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:45,180
thing, you know, and let's build, you know, 15 of these every year in multiple communities. Like,

883
00:53:45,180 --> 00:53:48,960
there's no stopping it. And open the model so that everybody else can do it too.

884
00:53:49,240 --> 00:53:52,380
Yeah, because that's one of the interesting things is like with the cut to USAID,

885
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:57,080
like all of these solar panels, like they're out there in these communities are basically NGO work.

886
00:53:57,080 --> 00:54:00,840
And so that if with that being cut, it now needs to be industries like you doing.

887
00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:05,280
Well, and I won't get into that too much besides saying, thank God USAID was deleted.

888
00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:09,020
Because they bastardized the whole economy.

889
00:54:09,700 --> 00:54:11,740
Because all these NGOs are propped up.

890
00:54:11,740 --> 00:54:13,200
So you didn't get a real market.

891
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:19,180
Somebody who's looking at this as a real market and saying, I'm going to come in there with a business and solve this problem.

892
00:54:19,400 --> 00:54:24,520
You got NGOs with concessionary financing coming in, building a site, 20 kilowatt site.

893
00:54:24,520 --> 00:54:29,300
the wind flips over the solar panels,

894
00:54:29,500 --> 00:54:32,260
and they don't flip them back over for three to six months.

895
00:54:32,540 --> 00:54:35,040
And then their battery storage that they put on them,

896
00:54:35,700 --> 00:54:37,260
it dies in the first year.

897
00:54:37,460 --> 00:54:38,820
They never fix or replace them.

898
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:40,760
We saw that in Saru.

899
00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:42,460
They had the solar right up front.

900
00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:43,120
They're just like, oh, yeah,

901
00:54:43,160 --> 00:54:44,700
it's this perfectly good set of solar panels,

902
00:54:44,700 --> 00:54:46,900
but there's just some sort of infrastructure

903
00:54:46,900 --> 00:54:48,760
that was off to the side of it that they needed

904
00:54:48,760 --> 00:54:49,640
that was broken.

905
00:54:50,240 --> 00:54:51,480
That was for the well.

906
00:54:51,620 --> 00:54:53,900
So there was three solar panels above a well.

907
00:54:53,900 --> 00:54:54,900
Yeah, right.

908
00:54:54,900 --> 00:54:57,060
The well had never worked because they never plumbed it in.

909
00:54:57,060 --> 00:54:58,060
So it's there.

910
00:54:58,060 --> 00:54:59,060
They never plumbed it in.

911
00:54:59,060 --> 00:55:00,060
That's what it was.

912
00:55:00,060 --> 00:55:02,060
All they needed was like three pipes and the thing worked.

913
00:55:02,060 --> 00:55:03,060
But it just never got finished.

914
00:55:03,060 --> 00:55:04,760
All this money invested in that.

915
00:55:04,760 --> 00:55:05,760
Three pipes are missing.

916
00:55:05,760 --> 00:55:10,860
This is like, this is so much, so many of the NGOs that work in Africa are, you know,

917
00:55:10,860 --> 00:55:13,340
they have about a 10% success rate, right?

918
00:55:13,340 --> 00:55:14,460
And they keep getting money.

919
00:55:14,460 --> 00:55:17,840
No business would keep getting money if you fail 90% of the time.

920
00:55:17,840 --> 00:55:18,840
Right.

921
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:25,900
Having a market-based approach to solving a basic necessity like energy profitably from day one

922
00:55:25,900 --> 00:55:27,600
means that it's good for everybody.

923
00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:30,920
So when I first went in and I ambushed those elders the first time,

924
00:55:31,380 --> 00:55:35,020
and I showed up at the school and I said, hey, I want to talk to people about electricity.

925
00:55:35,720 --> 00:55:37,000
And I sat down with them.

926
00:55:37,180 --> 00:55:38,660
We spent probably two hours together.

927
00:55:38,900 --> 00:55:40,420
And I said, I am not an NGO.

928
00:55:40,680 --> 00:55:42,100
I'm not going to give you anything for free.

929
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:47,240
I'm going to invest a bunch of money into building this energy,

930
00:55:47,240 --> 00:55:51,940
And we're gonna make that profitable you are gonna figure out how to do the distribution

931
00:55:51,940 --> 00:55:56,180
You need to put your own money into that you need to have your people who want to be members of this co-op

932
00:55:56,620 --> 00:55:58,020
sell camels

933
00:55:58,020 --> 00:56:01,140
so but how do they how do they receive that because

934
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:07,240
These towns out there everything they've ever had in terms of this is like NGO money that comes in and it is giving them for something for free

935
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:09,640
Even if it like distorts the economy it doesn't work

936
00:56:09,640 --> 00:56:12,240
You end up paying 75 cents for your and a kilowatt hour of your energy

937
00:56:12,240 --> 00:56:15,620
Like how do they receive that when you're saying you're gonna have to put a hundred?

938
00:56:15,620 --> 00:56:17,160
Well, they're also used to business, though.

939
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:22,120
These guys, you know, in the world of, again, we keep going back to camels, but it makes sense there.

940
00:56:22,560 --> 00:56:24,940
Like, everybody who's like, why do they keep talking about camels?

941
00:56:25,200 --> 00:56:26,140
Because camels are everything.

942
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:27,220
That is your wealth, right?

943
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:30,840
So, I mean, the business of camels is a business.

944
00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:32,100
They're used to business, too.

945
00:56:32,260 --> 00:56:36,420
The guy who runs a little dukkah over there, a little shop, is a business, right?

946
00:56:36,420 --> 00:56:40,120
The guy who sells diesel is, you know, out of jerry cans, is a business.

947
00:56:40,200 --> 00:56:41,160
So they know business.

948
00:56:41,560 --> 00:56:43,900
Now, they're used to white people coming in and giving them handouts.

949
00:56:43,900 --> 00:56:55,200
And, you know, so the reset that they need to have, which is I was very, very direct on the conversation was like, hey, we are not an NGO.

950
00:56:56,280 --> 00:56:57,780
Nobody's bringing charity money here.

951
00:56:58,020 --> 00:56:58,780
That's gone.

952
00:56:59,060 --> 00:56:59,760
That's not happening.

953
00:57:00,220 --> 00:57:00,320
Right.

954
00:57:00,340 --> 00:57:01,080
We are a business.

955
00:57:01,420 --> 00:57:02,400
We need to be profitable.

956
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:05,880
And you need to think about this as a way that helps your community.

957
00:57:06,020 --> 00:57:06,220
Yes.

958
00:57:06,380 --> 00:57:09,440
But also is run profitably by you if you're going to do a co-op.

959
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:10,160
Right.

960
00:57:10,360 --> 00:57:12,500
And they sat there for a while.

961
00:57:12,500 --> 00:57:16,200
We went back and forth, 30 minutes on this, asked me a bunch of questions.

962
00:57:16,340 --> 00:57:21,560
And I was like, and they're like, well, how much would we have to spend to buy a transformer?

963
00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:24,880
It's like, well, it costs you like $15,000, let's say.

964
00:57:25,180 --> 00:57:26,760
And I was like, okay, that's like 15 camels.

965
00:57:26,820 --> 00:57:27,140
Like, yeah.

966
00:57:27,820 --> 00:57:30,380
And how about for the poles and the cables?

967
00:57:30,540 --> 00:57:30,960
And I was like, okay.

968
00:57:31,300 --> 00:57:32,480
So they sat there for a while.

969
00:57:32,540 --> 00:57:33,300
They talked amongst themselves.

970
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:38,020
And they came back and said, what if we just started by putting the grid in the business area where we were sitting, right?

971
00:57:38,380 --> 00:57:41,100
And then the other people could get power later.

972
00:57:41,100 --> 00:57:42,360
I was like, that's up to you.

973
00:57:42,500 --> 00:57:46,940
right that's up to you but you need to make the decision on what that needs to be yeah and there's

974
00:57:46,940 --> 00:57:51,800
no reason why you couldn't have like a mobile swapping station for batteries where people who

975
00:57:51,800 --> 00:57:56,400
lived in these are mostly nomadic people yeah so people who live three four kilometers away could

976
00:57:56,400 --> 00:58:01,180
just bring a battery in and then take it back to the house and they're like we can do that i was

977
00:58:01,180 --> 00:58:04,700
like yeah so you can do this right this is the kind of thing and you need to charge for it

978
00:58:04,700 --> 00:58:12,200
and so we we finally we don't i think we we have crossed the chasm in the conversation about no

979
00:58:12,200 --> 00:58:13,040
this is not a charity.

980
00:58:13,680 --> 00:58:14,960
This is something that needs to work

981
00:58:14,960 --> 00:58:16,860
and it needs to work for you as well.

982
00:58:16,920 --> 00:58:18,200
And you need to have a stake in it.

983
00:58:19,040 --> 00:58:20,560
It's funny when, sorry, you got to.

984
00:58:20,600 --> 00:58:21,300
No, no, I was just going to say,

985
00:58:21,380 --> 00:58:22,580
this illustrates some of the things

986
00:58:22,580 --> 00:58:24,800
we were talking about yesterday

987
00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:26,540
with Mark and Femi, which is,

988
00:58:27,460 --> 00:58:28,960
and I think in this broader context,

989
00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:30,260
you know, what Eric's describing is,

990
00:58:30,700 --> 00:58:32,380
we're going to bring this electricity

991
00:58:32,380 --> 00:58:33,620
and you guys are going to figure out

992
00:58:33,620 --> 00:58:34,600
how to make money with it.

993
00:58:34,720 --> 00:58:35,680
Because it's your nature.

994
00:58:35,920 --> 00:58:37,380
Like you want to figure out

995
00:58:37,380 --> 00:58:38,960
how to use this new tool,

996
00:58:39,080 --> 00:58:41,180
this new technology for productivity.

997
00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:53,920
But when you talk to, you know, Eric and I went and met with, I won't say the name, but like some people that have been funding energy projects to limited success, if you will.

998
00:58:54,640 --> 00:58:59,500
You know, they're spending all their effort thinking about like, how do we create things that will use electricity?

999
00:58:59,500 --> 00:59:05,820
It's like they want to force the consumption of electricity with their little gadgets instead

1000
00:59:05,820 --> 00:59:11,900
of simply making the electricity available and seeing how do the communities ultimately

1001
00:59:11,900 --> 00:59:12,900
use that.

1002
00:59:12,900 --> 00:59:13,900
Yeah.

1003
00:59:13,900 --> 00:59:18,260
So, like, people, like, you know, like, we're used to the free market, right?

1004
00:59:18,260 --> 00:59:22,720
And we say the free market, like, people will figure out for themselves what businesses

1005
00:59:22,720 --> 00:59:38,290
they need to build how they make money right come from this perspective of we need to help you figure out how you can make money We need to tell you how you need to make money Yeah It was funny when we were like on the drive into Saru Eric was like giving us all the rundown of what he wanted people to do

1006
00:59:38,290 --> 00:59:42,530
Because Philip was going to go do a site survey. He was like, will you guys go and speak to the community?

1007
00:59:42,530 --> 00:59:46,490
I was like, yeah, cool. Interview them, see what they want to use energy for. Like, will they build businesses?

1008
00:59:46,890 --> 00:59:52,290
And he's like, maybe just start in the business district. You kind of sold that wrong. This was not a business district.

1009
00:59:52,290 --> 00:59:54,930
Yeah, okay.

1010
00:59:54,930 --> 01:00:01,350
When we show the videos or a picture of it, yeah, you'll be like, okay, maybe district

1011
01:00:01,350 --> 01:00:02,350
might be a strong word.

1012
01:00:03,350 --> 01:00:07,790
But the interesting thing was, the things that they wanted was, like, obviously, lights,

1013
01:00:08,030 --> 01:00:08,890
refrigeration.

1014
01:00:09,090 --> 01:00:10,290
They wanted to watch the Premier League.

1015
01:00:12,430 --> 01:00:14,150
Everywhere in Africa, Premier League.

1016
01:00:14,190 --> 01:00:15,610
TV is number three on the list.

1017
01:00:15,610 --> 01:00:19,470
So it's light, actually, it's probably phone, light, TV.

1018
01:00:19,710 --> 01:00:19,910
Yeah.

1019
01:00:20,170 --> 01:00:20,350
Yeah.

1020
01:00:20,350 --> 01:00:26,710
And we're already seeing, we already saw people actually using the little power that they have for business.

1021
01:00:26,950 --> 01:00:31,890
Because when I saw people with a smartphone, we were asking them, how do you charge your smartphone?

1022
01:00:32,170 --> 01:00:34,690
And they say, oh, there's a guy over there with a shop.

1023
01:00:34,990 --> 01:00:37,810
We actually pay him 20 shillings for one charge.

1024
01:00:38,050 --> 01:00:42,270
So already there's anecdotes of power being used for business.

1025
01:00:42,270 --> 01:00:45,350
And so if you actually expand that capacity,

1026
01:00:45,970 --> 01:00:49,150
then the question is how, in what different ways

1027
01:00:49,150 --> 01:00:51,250
will they monetize it for themselves?

1028
01:00:51,430 --> 01:00:52,730
And they'll figure it out themselves.

1029
01:00:53,010 --> 01:00:54,230
Yeah, and they're doing the same thing in the school.

1030
01:00:54,330 --> 01:00:55,830
I think they'd go to the school, charge their phone,

1031
01:00:55,870 --> 01:00:56,970
and pay 20 bob or whatever.

1032
01:00:57,790 --> 01:01:02,170
And the other missing piece in this is internet access

1033
01:01:02,170 --> 01:01:04,490
because they have cell signal there,

1034
01:01:04,910 --> 01:01:08,070
but they're using small bits of data.

1035
01:01:08,190 --> 01:01:10,070
Between using their phone, they're turning data on and off.

1036
01:01:10,070 --> 01:01:18,290
Like you could do basically what you're doing with Feddy at the moment, Mark, where you can put a Starlink up there, start charging sats for like unlimited Internet access.

1037
01:01:18,610 --> 01:01:25,690
Yes, that actually would be a very easy sell to actually set up a Starlink there if you have power and put connectivity there.

1038
01:01:25,850 --> 01:01:33,070
And it's actually another way that Bitcoin actually gets into the community because they would pay with sats, you know, and that'd be cool.

1039
01:01:33,070 --> 01:01:39,550
The other thing that Eric actually pushed on with the community, which was interesting, is institutional customers.

1040
01:01:39,550 --> 01:01:40,610
for the energy.

1041
01:01:41,170 --> 01:01:42,550
We already asked the school,

1042
01:01:42,710 --> 01:01:44,710
which only lit half of the dorms

1043
01:01:44,710 --> 01:01:47,810
because they have like a bunch of classrooms,

1044
01:01:47,970 --> 01:01:50,010
but they have solar that is enough to light

1045
01:01:50,010 --> 01:01:51,630
only for something like that.

1046
01:01:51,630 --> 01:01:52,470
I think there's only two rooms.

1047
01:01:52,490 --> 01:01:53,050
Only two.

1048
01:01:53,170 --> 01:01:54,850
Yeah, only two of them they could light.

1049
01:01:55,270 --> 01:01:57,090
And then Eric, you were asking,

1050
01:01:57,490 --> 01:01:58,470
if there was power,

1051
01:01:58,990 --> 01:02:00,950
would you light the entire school?

1052
01:02:01,010 --> 01:02:01,650
They say yes.

1053
01:02:01,910 --> 01:02:02,570
And then we're like,

1054
01:02:02,670 --> 01:02:03,910
yeah, but who would pay for it?

1055
01:02:03,910 --> 01:02:04,610
And he says,

1056
01:02:04,710 --> 01:02:06,050
I get a budget every quarter

1057
01:02:06,050 --> 01:02:08,070
and I determine how to spend that budget.

1058
01:02:08,270 --> 01:02:09,430
Budget from the government.

1059
01:02:09,550 --> 01:02:11,070
and the Ministry of Education.

1060
01:02:11,290 --> 01:02:12,830
And they're like, oh, we would be a customer

1061
01:02:12,830 --> 01:02:16,010
because I would actually choose to light

1062
01:02:16,010 --> 01:02:18,290
so that people can study and so on.

1063
01:02:18,290 --> 01:02:21,390
So I feel like even after Bitcoin mining,

1064
01:02:21,510 --> 01:02:22,270
which is profitable,

1065
01:02:22,910 --> 01:02:26,250
you already are seeing that's like a solid customer

1066
01:02:26,250 --> 01:02:29,210
who would consistently buy power.

1067
01:02:29,470 --> 01:02:31,950
And so, yeah, I mean, actually I'm very excited.

1068
01:02:32,090 --> 01:02:33,110
I hope we get to do this.

1069
01:02:33,690 --> 01:02:36,230
Okay, I got a question for you guys.

1070
01:02:36,470 --> 01:02:38,510
Okay, so you've been to Africa before.

1071
01:02:38,510 --> 01:02:42,390
or you'd been to Egypt, which is considered Africa

1072
01:02:42,390 --> 01:02:45,390
when it's like, you know, trying to go to the World Cup

1073
01:02:45,390 --> 01:02:48,550
for the Olympics, but the rest of the time it's not.

1074
01:02:48,550 --> 01:02:50,430
So what are your thoughts now?

1075
01:02:50,430 --> 01:02:55,590
Because you had already invested in Gridless

1076
01:02:55,590 --> 01:02:57,890
and you had never really seen kind of

1077
01:02:57,890 --> 01:02:59,190
what this situation looked like.

1078
01:02:59,190 --> 01:03:00,170
Yeah, yeah.

1079
01:03:00,170 --> 01:03:05,170
Okay, so I'm gonna tie this all into a broader point.

1080
01:03:08,510 --> 01:03:16,690
Gridless, what you guys are doing, I think my primary takeaway is that to build out this

1081
01:03:16,690 --> 01:03:22,810
thesis of stranded energy in Africa, like you guys are like the only people that can

1082
01:03:22,810 --> 01:03:23,810
do that.

1083
01:03:23,810 --> 01:03:26,630
Like that's the number one thing that I realized doing all of this.

1084
01:03:26,630 --> 01:03:33,690
And I think that the broader point, when I think about what's happening with Bitcoin

1085
01:03:33,690 --> 01:03:38,450
mining, we take a step back and it's like, okay, so we have we have hash rate growing.

1086
01:03:38,450 --> 01:03:40,570
exponential rate.

1087
01:03:40,570 --> 01:03:47,910
And with that trend happening, the question is, well, the break even cost of mining is

1088
01:03:47,910 --> 01:03:51,950
something that is, you know, the energy cost is lowering and lowering every year.

1089
01:03:51,950 --> 01:03:55,810
You have to get more and more efficient with the type of energy that you're using.

1090
01:03:55,810 --> 01:03:59,950
And at some point in the future, there's only certain types of energy that are even going

1091
01:03:59,950 --> 01:04:03,210
to be economically viable because Bitcoin mining is going to be so competitive.

1092
01:04:03,210 --> 01:04:06,190
So it's like, well, where does that energy exist?

1093
01:04:06,190 --> 01:04:11,190
And it's in these off-grid stranded areas where you get the most economically viable

1094
01:04:11,190 --> 01:04:12,430
energy in the world.

1095
01:04:12,430 --> 01:04:15,650
So when I think about the future of mining and I think about like, well, if we're trying

1096
01:04:15,650 --> 01:04:18,230
to skate to the puck, where is it going?

1097
01:04:18,230 --> 01:04:19,230
It's going to stranded market.

1098
01:04:19,230 --> 01:04:23,790
There's going to be a future where the only economic form of doing this is in these types

1099
01:04:23,790 --> 01:04:25,350
of markets.

1100
01:04:25,350 --> 01:04:30,450
And then the question is like, okay, so now let's think about that within a competitive

1101
01:04:30,450 --> 01:04:32,090
environment.

1102
01:04:32,090 --> 01:04:41,390
Within a competitive environment, we're going to see the economics approach the closest cost to what is the capital cost to deploy an energy project?

1103
01:04:42,090 --> 01:04:44,430
And what's my payback period on that?

1104
01:04:44,910 --> 01:04:55,710
And ultimately, even within the stranded market, I think the areas where you can maintain as much of a premium over that payback period on the capital cost to deploy energy,

1105
01:04:56,490 --> 01:05:00,410
those are going to be the markets that are most advantageous.

1106
01:05:00,410 --> 01:05:03,990
And those are also the markets that are the hardest to access.

1107
01:05:04,510 --> 01:05:05,710
And have the most need.

1108
01:05:05,890 --> 01:05:06,710
And have the most need.

1109
01:05:06,770 --> 01:05:08,830
Those are going to be the least competitive markets.

1110
01:05:09,370 --> 01:05:13,830
So when I think about Africa for energy assets, I think about it as a moat.

1111
01:05:14,010 --> 01:05:17,110
The question is, are you somebody who's behind the moat or not?

1112
01:05:17,350 --> 01:05:20,930
And that's what I think about Gridless is you guys are behind the moat.

1113
01:05:21,050 --> 01:05:22,490
You guys have grown up in this place.

1114
01:05:22,550 --> 01:05:24,210
You obviously know everything about it.

1115
01:05:24,630 --> 01:05:26,250
You know, we've slaughtered a goat together.

1116
01:05:27,250 --> 01:05:29,890
And it's like, okay, cool.

1117
01:05:29,890 --> 01:05:36,030
So like there's very, very, very few people in the world, I think, capable of attacking an opportunity like this.

1118
01:05:36,710 --> 01:05:42,390
And I think that like that's kind of my key takeaway from the trip is like, that was awesome.

1119
01:05:42,850 --> 01:05:44,210
You guys are absolute experts.

1120
01:05:44,510 --> 01:05:46,070
Nobody else in the world is doing this.

1121
01:05:46,190 --> 01:05:47,750
And there's a massive opportunity here.

1122
01:05:47,750 --> 01:05:56,130
And the way that it's going to be unlocking and enabling value and economics from Bitcoin, from energy, from other things, I view it as just like,

1123
01:05:56,130 --> 01:06:01,390
if you guys can build like a very large energy footprint in this market,

1124
01:06:01,390 --> 01:06:05,170
I think there's going to be a future in the next five to 10 years where

1125
01:06:05,170 --> 01:06:08,570
everyone's going to be like, okay, well, where are the best places to go mine energy?

1126
01:06:08,690 --> 01:06:09,810
Where are those assets existing?

1127
01:06:10,830 --> 01:06:12,130
Oh, shit, Gridless owns a lot of them.

1128
01:06:12,490 --> 01:06:12,630
Yeah.

1129
01:06:13,010 --> 01:06:15,410
And I think there's going to be a lot of value placed on that.

1130
01:06:15,510 --> 01:06:18,390
Yeah, there's no way anyone else is coming to this market and doing the things that you're doing.

1131
01:06:18,470 --> 01:06:21,390
Like me and Eric were joking the other day, like we'd have died on the first day of that trip.

1132
01:06:21,850 --> 01:06:22,270
Yeah, yeah.

1133
01:06:22,330 --> 01:06:24,790
If the first set of spikes across the road, it would have been tough.

1134
01:06:24,790 --> 01:06:29,750
But like for me, obviously I came to Africa a couple of years ago.

1135
01:06:29,750 --> 01:06:33,090
We went to Malawi and that was honestly one of the most pivotal things I've ever seen

1136
01:06:33,090 --> 01:06:34,090
in Bitcoin.

1137
01:06:34,090 --> 01:06:37,170
I've told this story a number of times on the podcast, but it was when we were at dinner

1138
01:06:37,170 --> 01:06:40,150
on like one of the last nights and we were in that field.

1139
01:06:40,150 --> 01:06:41,150
It was all lit by lanterns.

1140
01:06:41,150 --> 01:06:46,030
We're having like a nice meal, but everything was pitch black everywhere.

1141
01:06:46,030 --> 01:06:49,470
And I remember sitting at that meal, it must have been like 11 o'clock, looking around

1142
01:06:49,470 --> 01:06:53,550
and looking at Mount Melange and there were lights there.

1143
01:06:53,550 --> 01:06:55,990
The whole place was darkness, but there were lights there.

1144
01:06:55,990 --> 01:06:58,430
And I was like, holy shit, that's what Bitcoin did.

1145
01:06:58,790 --> 01:07:00,550
Like, that is what Bitcoin enables.

1146
01:07:01,170 --> 01:07:07,170
And like seeing this trip, Saru, obviously very, very different to Malawi in terms of like how the place looks.

1147
01:07:07,390 --> 01:07:07,870
The vegetation.

1148
01:07:07,990 --> 01:07:08,970
The vegetation, yeah.

1149
01:07:09,190 --> 01:07:09,650
Water.

1150
01:07:11,070 --> 01:07:17,870
But like thinking that the only way that this makes economic sense to go and build these sites there is because of Bitcoin.

1151
01:07:17,870 --> 01:07:23,090
And the downstream consequence of that is, you know, it is electrifying Africa.

1152
01:07:23,090 --> 01:07:29,470
Like it's an energy still blows my mind. Yeah, yeah, like that. Yeah, the downstream effect is just good things happen

1153
01:07:29,470 --> 01:07:35,190
Yeah, yeah, and it's like why why is this magic internet money doing this and it still trips me out to this day?

1154
01:07:35,190 --> 01:07:37,570
Yeah, so okay, so you know

1155
01:07:38,990 --> 01:07:42,190
Both have some good takeaways from this if

1156
01:07:43,090 --> 01:07:47,470
If you were to tell somebody else to come to Africa to do to see things

1157
01:07:47,930 --> 01:07:49,970
We covered a lot of things in four days

1158
01:07:49,970 --> 01:07:53,650
What do you think is the thing that you would say? Yeah, this is what you need to see now

1159
01:07:53,650 --> 01:07:57,970
We know is it not many people will get to sorrow. You know how hard that is, right? Yeah

1160
01:07:57,970 --> 01:08:03,730
But you know what what do you think it's interesting especially for big winners, right? Like I mean that's who listens to this podcast

1161
01:08:03,730 --> 01:08:08,170
Right, so yeah, if you're gonna come to Africa, you've been to a couple places. You've been a few places now

1162
01:08:08,170 --> 01:08:13,470
What do you think is interesting? What do you think actually matters? Is it is it after bit and Kibera the circular economy?

1163
01:08:14,610 --> 01:08:19,270
So I think both after bit the circular economy and Tando is

1164
01:08:19,970 --> 01:08:21,890
Makes Kenya maybe the best place in the world.

1165
01:08:21,890 --> 01:08:22,530
Explain Tando.

1166
01:08:22,810 --> 01:08:25,430
So Tando is like this very basic app.

1167
01:08:25,510 --> 01:08:28,230
It's not the prettiest app in the world, but it works insanely well.

1168
01:08:28,230 --> 01:08:33,350
So you can essentially pay for any good or service in Kenya with Bitcoin using Tando.

1169
01:08:33,570 --> 01:08:35,490
You have to explain why Kenya is unique.

1170
01:08:35,690 --> 01:08:40,390
Yeah, so the reason it works is because Kenya's economy basically runs on M-Pesa, which is mobile money.

1171
01:08:40,770 --> 01:08:43,330
And so they found a way of integrating Bitcoin into that.

1172
01:08:43,430 --> 01:08:47,730
So you pay an M-Pesa bill with a lightning invoice, and there's a swap in the background.

1173
01:08:47,730 --> 01:08:52,010
And you can you can live on Bitcoin in Kenya maybe better than anywhere in the world

1174
01:08:52,670 --> 01:08:55,130
In fact almost certainly I can't think of anywhere even close

1175
01:08:55,130 --> 01:09:02,410
Well, no because like it's essentially a hundred percent of the businesses in Kenya can take Bitcoin via Tanda

1176
01:09:02,410 --> 01:09:08,470
Yeah, and and the reason is you know M-Pesa is completely ubiquitous. I mean we never carry cash

1177
01:09:08,470 --> 01:09:10,470
we just all carry our phone and

1178
01:09:10,850 --> 01:09:17,570
You just send shillings like P2P you pay at the till you can send money to business

1179
01:09:17,730 --> 01:09:27,570
And the fact that Tando allows you to just basically take your sats and send it P2P, send it to the till, send it to the merchant.

1180
01:09:28,070 --> 01:09:28,690
It's absolutely incredible.

1181
01:09:28,710 --> 01:09:31,650
And then with Mimmo on the other side of that, so Tando is only an off ramp.

1182
01:09:31,770 --> 01:09:33,610
And then Mimmo is basically the opposite.

1183
01:09:33,790 --> 01:09:36,290
It's the reverse where you can turn and paste it into Bitcoin.

1184
01:09:36,810 --> 01:09:40,730
And so if you want to live 100% on Bitcoin, you should probably live in Nairobi.

1185
01:09:42,030 --> 01:09:45,770
Just for context for people, I was looking this up.

1186
01:09:45,770 --> 01:09:50,770
Last year, $300 billion was transacted on M-Pesa.

1187
01:09:51,530 --> 01:09:52,090
Holy shit.

1188
01:09:52,390 --> 01:09:52,650
Wow.

1189
01:09:53,090 --> 01:09:53,810
That's a big market.

1190
01:09:53,930 --> 01:09:56,710
Yeah, it's close to 70% of our GDP.

1191
01:09:57,130 --> 01:09:57,350
Yeah.

1192
01:09:57,490 --> 01:09:58,570
It's on the mobile money.

1193
01:09:59,010 --> 01:10:01,630
And I didn't even think about it until just this minute.

1194
01:10:01,730 --> 01:10:03,210
I actually bought the goat with Bitcoin.

1195
01:10:03,550 --> 01:10:03,770
Ha!

1196
01:10:04,290 --> 01:10:08,470
Because Eric's like, hey, can you send this guy the money for the goat?

1197
01:10:08,790 --> 01:10:14,550
And I literally just went on Tondo and I sent it to myself first before I P2P'd it to him.

1198
01:10:14,550 --> 01:10:16,990
But I mean, I effectively bought that goat with Bitcoin.

1199
01:10:17,110 --> 01:10:17,990
I didn't even think about it.

1200
01:10:17,990 --> 01:10:18,990
Like it was just...

1201
01:10:18,990 --> 01:10:20,190
In Saru, that's crazy.

1202
01:10:20,390 --> 01:10:23,350
I wonder if that's the first goat purchase in Bitcoin.

1203
01:10:23,350 --> 01:10:24,030
I don't know.

1204
01:10:24,030 --> 01:10:24,990
It can't be anymore.

1205
01:10:24,990 --> 01:10:27,190
The first live goat purchase.

1206
01:10:27,190 --> 01:10:27,830
Wow.

1207
01:10:27,830 --> 01:10:28,430
Maybe.

1208
01:10:29,390 --> 01:10:31,830
But like as Bitcoiners who live in Nairobi,

1209
01:10:32,430 --> 01:10:34,030
how much are you using Bitcoin?

1210
01:10:34,030 --> 01:10:36,830
Are you using it for like almost all transactions or...

1211
01:10:37,830 --> 01:10:39,550
It just kind of flows with like...

1212
01:10:40,750 --> 01:10:42,150
I do it with a lot of transactions.

1213
01:10:42,150 --> 01:10:43,310
I don't know how many that is,

1214
01:10:43,310 --> 01:10:45,530
but I know I'm one of the larger volume users of Tondo.

1215
01:10:45,870 --> 01:10:49,970
I've asked them, you know, so I use it quite a bit.

1216
01:10:50,950 --> 01:10:53,910
What's interesting about Nairobi in the Bitcoin community, too,

1217
01:10:54,010 --> 01:10:56,490
is that it's actually fairly active.

1218
01:10:57,230 --> 01:10:59,690
You know, we have a monthly meetup at Wait-a-Bit,

1219
01:10:59,730 --> 01:11:01,010
which is a little coffee shop, right?

1220
01:11:02,130 --> 01:11:03,310
It's a great coffee shop.

1221
01:11:03,590 --> 01:11:05,730
30 to 40 people there every time, right?

1222
01:11:05,930 --> 01:11:09,150
And amongst them, you're going to find, you know,

1223
01:11:09,210 --> 01:11:11,210
Bitcoin engineers, lightning engineers.

1224
01:11:11,210 --> 01:11:17,710
There's usually five or six different people who represent companies building tech there

1225
01:11:17,710 --> 01:11:22,250
on Bitcoin for Bitcoin.

1226
01:11:22,250 --> 01:11:25,490
And then other people who are like, there's three or four guys who are doing circular

1227
01:11:25,490 --> 01:11:27,990
economy things in and around Nairobi.

1228
01:11:27,990 --> 01:11:31,530
So it's actually a really active good community in Nairobi for Bitcoin.

1229
01:11:31,530 --> 01:11:36,070
Yeah, one of my other big takeaways, I think probably from the last year, but then especially

1230
01:11:36,070 --> 01:11:41,430
this trip is that the Bitcoin tools and services that people use in all these different countries

1231
01:11:41,430 --> 01:11:44,610
in Africa need to be built by people in those communities.

1232
01:11:44,610 --> 01:11:48,870
Because you can't just like port Phoenix Wallet, which I think is great and I use all the time,

1233
01:11:48,870 --> 01:11:52,270
but you can't just port that to Kibera for a number of reasons.

1234
01:11:52,270 --> 01:11:55,010
You have to fund lightning channels.

1235
01:11:55,010 --> 01:11:57,710
And then the big, yeah, that's the thing that I never knew until this trip.

1236
01:11:57,710 --> 01:12:03,210
Mark, you were telling me about this, is that if you have a Bitcoin app that's a couple

1237
01:12:03,210 --> 01:12:05,290
hundred megabytes, no one's downloading it there.

1238
01:12:05,290 --> 01:12:08,230
like a very hard ceiling on what people are willing to spend data on.

1239
01:12:08,990 --> 01:12:15,350
Even that's actually that's what I find in my UX research work. Think about it with all the

1240
01:12:15,350 --> 01:12:23,670
utility of M-Pesa. It's the most used tool but only 5% of people download the M-Pesa because it's

1241
01:12:23,670 --> 01:12:30,970
heavy. Crazy. Even with its huge advantages you cannot exist economically in Kenya without M-Pesa

1242
01:12:30,970 --> 01:12:33,250
and even that they don't download.

1243
01:12:33,570 --> 01:12:36,930
So how much worse is your app going to get

1244
01:12:36,930 --> 01:12:40,810
in terms of acceptance and downloads if it's big?

1245
01:12:40,850 --> 01:12:43,430
If it's beyond 16 MB, forget it.

1246
01:12:43,590 --> 01:12:44,450
60 megabytes?

1247
01:12:44,450 --> 01:12:44,790
16.

1248
01:12:44,950 --> 01:12:45,390
16.

1249
01:12:45,390 --> 01:12:45,670
16.

1250
01:12:46,070 --> 01:12:46,330
Yes.

1251
01:12:46,790 --> 01:12:47,050
Damn.

1252
01:12:47,250 --> 01:12:48,250
Actually, I would have said eight.

1253
01:12:48,330 --> 01:12:49,150
I would have said eight.

1254
01:12:50,390 --> 01:12:57,390
And it's even lower because while Africa has the highest growth

1255
01:12:57,390 --> 01:12:59,470
of smartphones getting here,

1256
01:12:59,470 --> 01:13:03,850
They are low capacity smartphones made in China with low capacity.

1257
01:13:04,290 --> 01:13:05,750
And so somebody has to make a decision.

1258
01:13:05,910 --> 01:13:11,630
Am I going to keep my family photos or my baby's photos or your app?

1259
01:13:11,990 --> 01:13:13,110
Guess who's going to lose?

1260
01:13:13,390 --> 01:13:13,550
Yeah.

1261
01:13:14,510 --> 01:13:17,470
And for Bitcoin, when you're talking about using Tando,

1262
01:13:18,270 --> 01:13:20,250
some of us who got into Bitcoin late,

1263
01:13:20,750 --> 01:13:23,410
we're actually trying to keep as much Bitcoin as possible.

1264
01:13:23,770 --> 01:13:25,650
So I'm actually using Minmoo more.

1265
01:13:25,650 --> 01:13:32,050
But so in Kibera, it seemed like everyone was just using Blink wallet.

1266
01:13:32,370 --> 01:13:34,830
Is that because of the size of the actual app?

1267
01:13:35,330 --> 01:13:38,450
So it speaks to what you're talking about.

1268
01:13:38,710 --> 01:13:44,090
And it speaks to the work I do, like human-centered design and UX with the communities.

1269
01:13:44,870 --> 01:13:46,250
Blink has done two things.

1270
01:13:46,450 --> 01:13:47,910
Number one, it's very easy.

1271
01:13:48,030 --> 01:13:49,090
The experience is simple.

1272
01:13:49,830 --> 01:13:51,330
The KYC is simple.

1273
01:13:52,070 --> 01:13:53,550
The onboarding is simple.

1274
01:13:53,810 --> 01:13:55,550
So all these things work for Blink.

1275
01:13:55,550 --> 01:14:01,230
and it's small. That's number one. And then Blink has made a point of having community engagement

1276
01:14:01,230 --> 01:14:06,910
days. So Blink has certain features that have been built into Blink purely because of the use

1277
01:14:06,910 --> 01:14:11,290
cases in Kibera. So they're responding to feedback and they're engaging with the community.

1278
01:14:11,850 --> 01:14:17,010
What other people are doing is building one wallet and they hope that it will work

1279
01:14:17,010 --> 01:14:21,830
homogeneously across different use cases. And the way money works in Kibera, as you saw,

1280
01:14:21,830 --> 01:14:24,730
is different from the typical use case in the US.

1281
01:14:24,730 --> 01:14:34,910
And so then there's a fundamental dissonance between use cases while it's a built full versus the realities of how money moves in Africa.

1282
01:14:35,270 --> 01:14:42,490
And I think that gap is why building specific use cases for Africa is important.

1283
01:14:43,350 --> 01:14:49,770
Yeah, and I think, yeah, that's super interesting because really these people aren't Bitcoiners necessarily.

1284
01:14:50,190 --> 01:14:50,350
No.

1285
01:14:50,350 --> 01:14:54,030
So they don't need to understand how to fund lightning channels and things like this.

1286
01:14:54,070 --> 01:14:56,090
It just needs to be a very simple app that works.

1287
01:14:56,610 --> 01:15:03,570
Yeah, and that's why I think a successful Bitcoin wallet for Bitcoin to succeed,

1288
01:15:04,350 --> 01:15:09,210
human experiences need to take a forefront and they take a backseat.

1289
01:15:09,590 --> 01:15:14,290
Today, the technology on chain, all this is what is at the forefront.

1290
01:15:14,550 --> 01:15:16,150
The human experience is hardly mentioned.

1291
01:15:16,710 --> 01:15:18,490
And I think it's time to flip a switch.

1292
01:15:18,490 --> 01:15:25,430
because people look at this as I'm only using it because it's an amazing tool that enables me to do what I need to do.

1293
01:15:25,430 --> 01:15:31,850
The fact that it's Blink or any other wallet is irrelevant. It really is.

1294
01:15:32,050 --> 01:15:37,050
But this is why I have a lot of faith that if you do this in Saru, people will just find a way of doing it.

1295
01:15:37,290 --> 01:15:39,890
If they have to pay in Bitcoin, they'll figure that out.

1296
01:15:40,370 --> 01:15:43,770
There's a quote by Clay Shirky, which is,

1297
01:15:43,770 --> 01:15:51,130
communications technology only becomes socially interesting when it becomes technologically

1298
01:15:51,130 --> 01:15:57,830
boring. And we think that Bitcoin mining needs to be this boring enabler for businesses.

1299
01:15:58,890 --> 01:16:03,850
We think that the Bitcoin wallets need to be boring things. Of course, you have it and you

1300
01:16:03,850 --> 01:16:07,590
use it, but you don't talk about it because it's boring. It's like email. Nobody talks about email,

1301
01:16:07,590 --> 01:16:12,550
but it's the thing that's probably used the most by everybody in the world for just day-to-day

1302
01:16:12,550 --> 01:16:17,030
kind of communications activity, right? So the same thing in Bitcoin, whether you're building

1303
01:16:17,030 --> 01:16:22,070
apps or services for people to use Bitcoin or whether you're doing things on the mining and

1304
01:16:22,070 --> 01:16:27,830
the Bitcoin network layer, like make it something that's useful and boring and you'll get a lot of

1305
01:16:27,830 --> 01:16:34,150
adoption. Make Bitcoin boring. We've done our best for the last hour.

1306
01:16:34,150 --> 01:16:39,150
So this is, we've got, we've got,

1307
01:16:39,150 --> 01:16:40,150
but it's fine. Everything's fine.

1308
01:16:40,150 --> 01:16:43,150
Everything's fine. That's been the quote of the trip.

1309
01:16:43,150 --> 01:16:45,150
Every time everything went wrong.

1310
01:16:45,150 --> 01:16:48,150
When you got like slapped in the face by another wave, it's fine.

1311
01:16:48,150 --> 01:16:49,150
Yeah. Everything's fine.

1312
01:16:49,150 --> 01:16:52,150
That's the title of the episode. Everything's fine. Everything's fine.

1313
01:16:52,150 --> 01:16:57,150
I really hope you put all these visual references when he talks about slap on the wave,

1314
01:16:57,150 --> 01:17:00,150
when he talks about fish almost caught, Eric has got video of this.

1315
01:17:00,150 --> 01:17:02,150
So I think the visuals on this would be amazing.

1316
01:17:02,150 --> 01:17:02,990
this would be amazing.

1317
01:17:03,050 --> 01:17:04,070
Ben who edits this video

1318
01:17:04,070 --> 01:17:04,630
is going to absolutely

1319
01:17:04,630 --> 01:17:05,250
hate this one,

1320
01:17:05,410 --> 01:17:06,270
but we'll make sure

1321
01:17:06,270 --> 01:17:06,910
it's all included.

1322
01:17:07,750 --> 01:17:08,990
But we, I mean,

1323
01:17:09,170 --> 01:17:09,910
our time's up.

1324
01:17:10,010 --> 01:17:10,930
We've got to go to the airport.

1325
01:17:11,110 --> 01:17:12,030
The Africa trip is over.

1326
01:17:12,930 --> 01:17:13,570
Thank you.

1327
01:17:14,190 --> 01:17:15,130
Huge, huge thank you.

1328
01:17:15,170 --> 01:17:15,910
This is something that,

1329
01:17:16,110 --> 01:17:17,510
there's no way on earth

1330
01:17:17,510 --> 01:17:18,230
I would ever have done

1331
01:17:18,230 --> 01:17:19,330
this trip in my lifetime

1332
01:17:19,330 --> 01:17:20,310
if you guys didn't

1333
01:17:20,310 --> 01:17:21,290
put this on for us.

1334
01:17:21,330 --> 01:17:22,530
So I appreciate it massively.

1335
01:17:23,130 --> 01:17:23,790
Where's the next adventure?

1336
01:17:23,790 --> 01:17:24,530
Thank you guys

1337
01:17:24,530 --> 01:17:25,370
for being good sports.

1338
01:17:25,790 --> 01:17:26,590
Yeah, thanks for putting up

1339
01:17:26,590 --> 01:17:27,810
with all the craziness of Africa

1340
01:17:27,810 --> 01:17:30,070
and the lack of timeliness

1341
01:17:30,070 --> 01:17:30,890
on things.

1342
01:17:30,890 --> 01:17:33,850
Yeah. So it happens. You guys rolled with it.

1343
01:17:33,850 --> 01:17:36,410
Before we did the trip, we got an email from Eric.

1344
01:17:36,410 --> 01:17:38,010
I'm not going to lie. It made me a little bit nervous.

1345
01:17:38,010 --> 01:17:41,210
It was like, because we got things going wrong in Africa.

1346
01:17:41,210 --> 01:17:41,530
Air drop insurance.

1347
01:17:41,530 --> 01:17:45,130
Yeah. We're going to have airy back insurance for you.

1348
01:17:45,130 --> 01:17:47,370
Yeah. Yeah. But everything was fine.

1349
01:17:47,370 --> 01:17:49,690
Yeah. Everything was fine. We're fine.

1350
01:17:49,690 --> 01:17:52,410
And the truth is we would never do that for ourselves.

1351
01:17:52,410 --> 01:17:53,930
It was just because you guys were coming.

1352
01:17:53,930 --> 01:17:55,850
We're like, all right, we should probably do the right thing.

1353
01:17:55,850 --> 01:17:57,210
Right. Right. Right.

1354
01:17:57,210 --> 01:17:59,930
And in Africa, you learned you got the watch, we got the time.

1355
01:17:59,930 --> 01:18:07,690
Yeah, exactly. That was one of my quotes of the trick. I love that. So when we come back in a couple of years time, what's the next thing?

1356
01:18:07,690 --> 01:18:15,230
My friend, there is more adventures across Africa that can be done and more adventures in energy, specifically in Africa.

1357
01:18:15,650 --> 01:18:24,930
And those energy adventures will always be led by Bitcoin. I was talking to one of these concessionary funders in Europe, and we didn't care about them because we'll never take money from them.

1358
01:18:24,930 --> 01:18:29,250
And I said, in five years time, you will not fund an energy project that doesn't have Bitcoin

1359
01:18:29,250 --> 01:18:31,550
mining attached to it because it won't make financial sense.

1360
01:18:32,530 --> 01:18:33,410
I love that.

1361
01:18:34,070 --> 01:18:35,650
I want you to plan the next trip.

1362
01:18:36,030 --> 01:18:37,610
Philip, Philip's too out there.

1363
01:18:38,690 --> 01:18:40,170
I'm scared of going on a trip.

1364
01:18:40,430 --> 01:18:41,570
He's like, let's go to Sudan.

1365
01:18:43,910 --> 01:18:45,710
With current genocide.

1366
01:18:46,050 --> 01:18:46,270
Yeah.

1367
01:18:47,570 --> 01:18:48,590
But this has been awesome.

1368
01:18:48,770 --> 01:18:49,370
Thank you, guys.

1369
01:18:49,470 --> 01:18:50,510
Thank you, guys, man.

1370
01:18:50,510 --> 01:18:52,430
It's been, it really was a fun trip.

1371
01:18:53,130 --> 01:18:53,890
Africa's done, man.

1372
01:18:53,990 --> 01:18:54,550
It was amazing.

1373
01:18:54,550 --> 01:18:55,550
We did it.

1374
01:18:55,550 --> 01:18:56,550
Off to Abu Dhabi.

1375
01:18:56,550 --> 01:18:57,550
Let's go.

1376
01:18:57,550 --> 01:18:58,550
All right.