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Bitcoin is often framed by critics as a waste of energy.

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But in Bondo, like in so many other places around the world,

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it becomes blazingly clear that if you aren't mining Bitcoin, you are wasting energy.

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What was once a pitfall is now an opportunity.

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Greetings and salutations, my fellow clubs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin Podcast.

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The Bitcoin Block Height is 827365 and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.

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Today's episode is Bitcoin Out Loud, where I rejuvenate Bitcoin or Bitcoin adjacent piece,

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Out Loud. Today, I'm reading Stranded, How Bitcoin is Saving Wasted Energy and Expanding

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Financial Freedom in Africa by Alex Gladstein. Just like with Lynn Alden's article that I read

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earlier this week, this is my first time reading through Gladstein's latest piece,

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so I figured I might as well read it out loud for you too, two birds with one stone and all that.

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For those that don't know, Alex Gladstein is the Chief Strategy Officer at the Human

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Rights Foundation and I highly recommend you check out the incredible work he does at HRF

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and his numerous other writings and you should also go read his book Hidden Repression.

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As always, if you are into watching other people read, you can watch the video version of this show

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on Rumble, YouTube, or X by going to adwalkeramerica. Or if you're like me and you just prefer to listen,

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check it out on fountain.fm or wherever you get your podcast by searching for the Bitcoin podcast.

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If you do listen to the Bitcoin podcast on fountain, consider giving the show a boost or

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creating a clip of something you found interesting. And if you haven't checked out fountain yet,

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I highly recommend it. It is now my go-to place to listen to podcasts. You can send Bitcoin to

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your favorite podcasters and earn Bitcoin just for listening to the show. And if you are a Bitcoin

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only company interested in sponsoring another fucking Bitcoin podcast, hit me up on social

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media or through the website, bitcoinpodcast.net. Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin

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out loud read.

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Stranded. How Bitcoin is saving wasted energy and expanding financial freedom in Africa.

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Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation reports on how Bitcoin is monetizing stranded

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energy, financing electrical infrastructure, and empowering millions. Published by Bitcoin Magazine.

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Hundreds of millions of Africans face two problems holding them back from progress.

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600 million lack electricity. While virtually all 1.4 billion people on the continent

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lack high quality currency. Compare this to the U.S., Northern Europe, or Japan, where nearly

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everyone has access to consistent affordable power and a widely accepted reserve currency like the

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dollar, euro, or yen. The longer that Africans suffer from power blackouts and high inflation,

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the harder it is for them to get a leg up despite their best efforts. Worse still, legacy energy

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and financial providers have no incentive to alleviate this issue, meaning currency debasement,

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debt traps, and grid shutdowns persist. Most might look at this scenario and conclude that the next

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African century will be very difficult. Despite being blessed by abundant energy sources like

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mighty rivers, blazing sun, strong winds, and geothermal heat, Africa remains largely unable

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to harness those natural resources for its economic growth. A river might run through it,

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but human development in the region has been painfully reliant on charity or expensive foreign

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borrowing. Until now. In the eyes of some of the continent's entrepreneurs, educators, and

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activists, something has emerged that has the potential to revolutionize access to reliable

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electricity and high quality currency, the building blocks of progress for Africa's swiftly rising

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population. Believe it or not, that thing is Bitcoin, one. Mining in the shadow of Mount

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Melange, a little over an hour southeast of the city of Blontier in southern Malawi along scenic

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dirt roads, towers Mount Melange, a stunning 3,000 meter massive, one of the highest peaks in southern

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Africa. Its complex of cliffs and valleys straddles the border with Mozambique. The jaw-dropping

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scenery rivals Yosemite, but given its remote location, there are many days of the year where

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local guides say there are no hikers at all. In any other country, Melange might be the site of a

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top five national park with world-class, soaring granite faces and the biggest vertical climbs in

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Africa. But most days, the area sits quiet. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the region was hit hard

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by European and Arab slavery. Portugal, Oman, Britain, and other empires extracted hundreds of

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thousands of slaves from Mozambique, Malawi, and the surrounding areas to ship off to be forced

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labor in the Americas and the Middle East through regional ports like Zanzibar. At best, one in five

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survived the journey. Slave routes passed right through Mount Melange, which was an easily identifiable

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marker along the way. Today, the mountains foothills are peppered with lush forests, encroaching tea

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plantations, and farmers growing pineapple, banana, and maize. The ecosystem is a world treasure,

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with endemic plants and animals, including prehistoric cycads, the endangered National

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Tree of Malawi, the Melange cedar, and some of the rarest insects and reptiles on earth. Sadly,

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the exploitation from long ago continues, just in different forms. Logging and mining threaten

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the local environment, and without industrial infrastructure, residents are isolated and left

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to fend for themselves. The population here may be gifted with many natural resources,

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but the mother of modern progress has eluded them. Only about 15% of Malawians, and only about 5%

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of people living in the country's rural areas, have access to electricity. In Bondo, a small village

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in the foothills of Mount Melange, some residents got their very first access to lights at night

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in 2016. Before then, according to the town's senior chief, there was only darkness. This lack

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of power creates several problems for a growing population. Instead of flipping on a stove,

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residents log the area around the mountain, cutting down trees and brush to make fires or to create

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charcoal for cooking. At night, children study under the light of dangerous paraffin lamps,

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or don't study at all. The logging devastates the forest, and the fires and lamps create

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noxious indoor air pollution. Foreign donors, including the Scottish government, paid for a

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small hydroelectric plant for Bondo in 2008. And after eight long years of construction,

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it began to provide power for some of the local population. During that time, Carl Brousseau,

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an avid hiker in the head of the Mount Melange Conservation Trust, helped start the Melange

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Electricity Generation Agency, MEGA, Malawi's first privately-owned microhydro-energy provider.

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MEGA is also a social enterprise, with the mission of providing the citizens of Bondo with electricity.

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The raw cost of power from a small hydroscheme like the one financed by the Scots on the banks of a

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river in Melange is extremely high, nearing 90 cents per kilowatt hour. For context, residential power

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in the U.S. or Europe ranges from 10 cents to 20 cents per kilowatt hour. Grid power in Africa

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typically ranges from 20 cents to 40 cents per kilowatt hour. For example, in Kenya,

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it's 27 cents. Carl, in his efforts to give back to the local community, heavily subsidized this

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cost for the residents of Bondo. Due to his generosity, they paid less than 20 cents per

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kilowatt hour to MEGA for electricity. Carl covered the difference, but such an operation was not

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sustainable. Over 2,000 households had so far been connected to the MEGA grid, but another

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3,000 were still waiting for hookups to their homes, and Carl was running out of money. The power

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stations were producing more than enough power for 5,000 homes, but much of the electricity was

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orphaned and unable to be sold, as MEGA did not have the capital to be able to purchase equipment

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to connect to new households. There was no capital either to consider expansion so that the hydropower

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would not dwindle in the late summer during the dry season. In some places, industrial operations

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might buy orphaned rural power, but in a place like Bondo, there simply aren't very many power

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hungry businesses. The excess electricity couldn't be sold, so the power stations built machines

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that existed solely to suck up the unused power. This was especially tragic when there was a lot

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of rain, or at times of low demand, like at night, when the stations were forced to dissipate the

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overwhelming majority of their precious electricity, a total waste. Two years ago, entrepreneurs

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Eric Hursman, Janet Mainji, and Philip Walton launched Gridless, a new company focusing on

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off-grid Bitcoin mining in Africa. The trio had backgrounds with companies like Usha Shidi,

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BRCK, and iHub, with expertise in building hardware, writing software, as well as scaling

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communications and internet infrastructure, giving them a fitting resume for the task.

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One of their first site visits was in Bondo, where they visited with Carl and inspected

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Bondo's power stations. In early 2023, a Gridless Bitcoin data center was installed and launched.

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And now Carl and Mega have a new source of capital. In December, I was able to travel to Bondo

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to figure out how it all works. Today, any and all excess power generated by Bondo's power stations

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gets sold in real time to the Bitcoin network by Gridless's miners, and Carl earns 30% of that

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revenue. It arrives directly to Mega's wallet in BTC. The new capital is enabling Mega to connect

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more customers to power, drive costs down, and expand their operations to eventually connect

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everyone in the Bondo region to electricity. Mega, the community, and Gridless all benefit,

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and the most profound part? No aid or government subsidy is required. Bitcoin is often framed by

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critics as a waste of energy. But in Bondo, like in so many other places around the world,

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it becomes blazingly clear that if you aren't mining Bitcoin, you are wasting energy.

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What was once a pitfall is now an opportunity. Bitcoin miners can be thought of as dung beetles,

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scraping up the waste energy that no one else wants and transforming it into something valuable.

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As Mega hooks up more and more customers, Gridless may unplug some of their mining machines and move

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elsewhere, or perhaps move to harness the output of new power generation stations,

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in the same area that are waiting to connect to their clients. If the Bitcoin network pays X,

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customers will need to pay X plus 1, so eventually miners will start to get priced out.

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But even in a situation where at 5pm, the local demand from Bondo eats close to the full capacity

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of what's available, mining can still be lucrative, because there's so little demand overnight,

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and the river never sleeps. Elsewhere in Malawi, the national grid is broken.

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As of December 2023, people who receive grid power suffer from 6-8 hours of load shedding

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per day, where huge swaths of the country's population are cut off from power by the electricity

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company. But in Bondo, there is no load shedding.

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The mini-grid is properly balanced by Bitcoin miners. If there's not enough water power, Gridless's

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automated software turns the ASICs off. If there's too much water power from, for example,

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one of the tropical cyclones that periodically hammers the region, Gridless's ASIC operation

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eats it up. It's a small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small,

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small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small, small,

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small, small, small, small, small, yes, badly, that's that,

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put that

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ahead to now.

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powerful site to see, and staggering to think that Bitcoin is helping to make it happen,

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as it converts wasted energy into human progress.

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The potential for this model to scale is mind-boggling.

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Consider, power generation in Africa is typically planned looking forward, for example, on a

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30-year window.

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So sites are built to provide future capacity, not the capacity of today.

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So when a site like the one in Bondo boots up, it takes a while before it can get from

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0% to even 20% capacity.

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At that point, before Bitcoin, the power company might have had to charge five times the price

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for the electricity it sold, just to make itself whole.

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This is catastrophic for customers, especially those like the ones in Bondo, who have some

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of the smallest disposable incomes on the continent.

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But with Bitcoin, the network now buys 100% of all the available excess electricity, bringing

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costs down even if only a small percentage of the power station's capacity is being

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purchased by residential or industrial customers.

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We are told to believe that progress is always happening and that pure human innovation is

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going to make things better and cheaper.

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But in Malawi, given the collapse of the local Quacha currency and the lack of incentives

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for infrastructure investment, the expansion of the electricity grid has not just been

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stalled, it has been made prohibitive.

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Bitcoin fixes this in two ways.

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By directly delivering a high-quality, peer-to-peer currency to the power generators, and by allowing

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them to use all of their capacity, all of the time, lowering prices for their consumers,

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and raising their profits, roughly 95% of all small power generation in rural Africa,

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according to Eric, is funded with concessional financing, where it could take five to seven

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years to raise the funds from charity.

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The process is dependent on altruism, and the subsidy is someone else doing the right

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thing.

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The micro-hydro stations in Bondo, for example, were paid for by foreign donors, who can be

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very helpful for getting a project off the ground, but who typically don't pick up the

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bill for ongoing operation costs or expansion.

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They also don't have very much skin in the game, and are okay with an eight-year time

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frame for getting people online.

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With Bitcoin, the incentives are different.

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Out with the donors, in with co-investors, who are very interested in getting the power

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up and running as soon as possible.

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Moving forward, there's much work to do in Bondo.

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Carl and Mega are currently determining how to leverage their new income stream from the

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Bitcoin network to connect up hundreds of new homes to electricity.

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They are also considering an expansion to a new, larger power station to address the

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issue of low power output in the two driest months of the year.

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It would, of course, be built in partnership with Gridless, so that it could start generating

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revenue immediately on day one, even if it takes time to connect new homes and businesses.

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The critical importance of electricity was underlined when we met Bondo's community

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leaders and members of the residents' electricity committee.

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They listed all of the new benefits that the town received.

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They used to have to walk 20 kilometers for things like corn mills or televisions or

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refrigeration or to charge phones or for their kids to study at night or for healthcare.

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And now, they don't.

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The ladies in our meeting even pointed out a funny thing.

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Before, the men of the village would go to town to watch football at night, leaving their

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families behind.

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But today, they don't leave.

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They just watch it at home and are there for their wives and children.

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LEDs replace kerosene lamps, reducing fire risk and deadly indoor pollution.

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The percentage of children that go on to higher levels of schooling has increased dramatically.

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The list of life upgrades goes on and on.

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By this point, you might be saying, fine, this sounds good, but why not do something

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else with the electricity generated by Bondo's rivers?

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Philip explains that no other business would run better in a place like this, blessed by

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cheap energy but isolated from infrastructure.

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The cost of AI farming, for example, is only in a small way dictated by electricity.

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A chip might cost $30,000 and use 1,200 watts.

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Contrast this to Bitcoin mining, where electricity makes up a huge portion of the cost, and a

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chip might cost $1,200 and use 3,500 watts.

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So it makes no economic sense to build an AI data center in Bondo, not to mention the

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connectivity, bandwidth, and latency issues.

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Moreover, AI processes cannot simply be turned on and off like Bitcoin mining, without causing

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some kind of harm to the service itself.

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So AI compute in its current form cannot be a grid balancer.

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But Bitcoin can.

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When the microgrid needs to deploy electricity elsewhere, miners can turn off easily.

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Finally, even if Mega tried to convince AI companies in Bondo, how would they get paid?

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It would be the same trap of foreign exchange problems, fees, and dealing with the collapsing

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local currency.

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With Bitcoin, they get paid in globally accepted 24-7 saleable satoshis.

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One more area of potential is the externality of Bitcoin mining, heat.

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When we put our hands over the air exhaust coming out of the back of the gridless facility

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in Bondo, we felt a searing blast.

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The more miners, the more heat.

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A miner is in essence a space heater, and a surprisingly efficient one at that.

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A new reason documentary helps explain this, focusing on a bathhouse in Brooklyn, where

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the owner is now paying less every month in electricity bills to heat his spa water with

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A6 than he did using more traditional heating equipment.

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Any heating operation that is not mining Bitcoin is probably wasting energy.

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1,000 miles to the north of Bondo, in the DR Congo's spectacular Varunga National Park.

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Rangers have been mining Bitcoin with stranded hydropower for the past three years, generating

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critical income for the bio-reserve, and the 5 million people who live nearby.

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This coming March, the heat from Varunga's miners will be harnessed to dry cocoa beans.

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Traditionally, this is done by laying out the beans to roast under the sun, where they

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are vulnerable to the weather, and to being eaten or stolen by animals.

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Drying the beans with the hot blast from the miners will dramatically expedite the process,

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and for minimal additional cost.

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Instead of spending $200,000 on an industrial drying operation, the park rangers simply

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bought $200,000 worth of A6 that can process cocoa and earn Bitcoin.

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Moving forward, if any of their competitors process cocoa and don't mine Bitcoin, they

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will be wasting energy, and they will be less competitive.

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According to environmentalist and Bitcoin advocate Troy Cross, in the last Bitcoin

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price cycle that crescendoed in late 2021, mining was driven by access to cheap capital,

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not cheap power.

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For example, Wall Street borrowing cheaply to buy shares in Bitcoin mining companies,

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but in the next cycle, he says, it will be driven by access to cheap power, and this

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could tilt in Africa's favor.

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There might even be places, he says, where the cost to mine, let's say in Blanter, exceeds

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the mining benefit, but the business savings from the excess heat, selling chocolate, makes

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the whole thing profitable.

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Really, he says, one should think in terms of profit from mining plus profit from heat,

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minus the cost of mining.

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Anywhere where one finds low-grade electrical heat, there are unrealized Bitcoin profits.

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In Bondo, Mega's original idea was to make dried pineapple snacks using the excess heat,

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but on our visit, a new idea was hatched.

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The mine itself is on a tea plantation.

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Tea, once picked, needs to be dried within a matter of hours, and it is done so with

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heaters, which suck up electricity.

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Why not use asics to dry the tea?

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The operators are now thinking about it.

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In a place where electricity is typically exceedingly scarce, it's a luxury to think

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about and consider what to do with extra power.

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But it's happening in Bondo now that there's a technology that allows people to harness

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value that was once just blown out the window.

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2.

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The Collapse of the Quacha

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One Wednesday morning in November 2023, the 20 million citizens of Malawi woke up to find

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their currency devalued by 44%.

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The government and IMF argued that the move would boost exports and stabilize the economy,

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but for the average person, all they felt was an immediate decrease in purchasing power.

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Many merchants simply closed for the day, as employees needed time to recreate the price

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labels used everywhere from gas stations to grocery stores.

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This was not, like in Argentina, something that most people could escape.

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In Argentina, there is a widely accessible and sophisticated black market for dollars.

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In Malawi, this doesn't exist.

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People are stuck in the Quacha.

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According to the country's Reserve Bank, 85% of Malawians are unbanked, meaning nearly

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everyone uses paper Quacha notes issued by the government as their main store of value

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and medium of exchange.

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Even here remains an effective way to steal from the population.

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If one were to design the perfect weapon, something that could hurt everyone in a country

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at the same time, it's hard to think of a better one than currency devaluation.

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Unlike a nuclear blast or bioweapon, it can hurt every single person simultaneously.

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In this case, the damage was an immediate 44% reduction in the purchasing power and

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standard of living for millions of people in Malawi, especially the poorer and middle

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classes who cannot easily access dollars.

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It is not as if the government held a referendum, asking the public to vote on whether they

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wanted their purchasing power to collapse the following week.

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Of course, no one would agree.

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Devaluation has to be planned and orchestrated mostly in secret, and it tends to be an overnight

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phenomena.

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So despite the status of Malawi as a partly free country, with relatively free and fair

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elections, the devaluation was entirely undemocratic.

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This is part of a larger global issue where financial repression is ignored, even though

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political repression is discussed and highlighted.

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Devaluations, for example, tend to be relegated to the back page of the newspaper, cast as

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a procedural matter, but they inflict grievous harm.

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It is a wonder why devaluation is not considered a crime, or even a crime against humanity.

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The people of Malawi did resist in a series of protests.

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These small uprisings were put down, often brutally, by police.

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And ultimately, the marchers were forced to give up and accept the theft.

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This wasn't the first time that the public was robbed of its labor and wages at scale,

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either.

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The Quacha has lost 95% of its value against the dollar, much of it in planned devaluations

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like this one.

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As we drove through the markets and farms near Blanter, it was clear that the hardworking

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people around us did not need such a devaluation.

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They were already some of the poorest in the world.

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Guarantees per capita income, according to the United Nations, hovers around $650 per

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year.

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That's $0.33 per hour, assuming a 9-5, 5-day work week.

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And that is, of course, the median rate.

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For people living in remote areas, it's probably much closer to $100 per year, or $0.05 per

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hour.

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And now, each hour of their effort only gets them 56% as much grain, fruit, meat, airtime,

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electricity, medicine, private schooling, or petrol as it did two months ago.

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This particular devaluation, like so many others, was a result of foreign pressure from

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the IMF and World Bank, who want client countries to pass through austerity before receiving

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any fresh new funds.

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Austerity is a euphemism for weakening the currency, ending subsidies on basic goods,

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shrinking welfare, raising taxes, crushing unions, harming small local businesses, and

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creating more favorable conditions for large multinational corporations and buyers of any

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locally harvested, excavated, or produced goods.

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After completing the late 2023 devaluation and pleasing its creditors, Malawi received

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the green light for $137 million World Bank loan, as well as a new loan of $175 million

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from the IMF.

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115 million of these loans have already been paid out as of early December, a Christmas

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bailout for the country's corrupt bureaucrats.

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The IMF projects that Malawi will need $1 billion in debt relief over the next three

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years, ensuring that a lot more currency devaluation is on the horizon.

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Word on the street is that another devaluation, perhaps another 25%, is coming.

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The macro impact on the country's economy has already been huge.

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Airtel, one of the country's largest mobile operators, posted a statement at the end of

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2023 that the company's profit is expected to be 100% less than the profit posted in

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2022.

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The adverse deviation, they write, has arisen from the impact of the foreign exchange loss,

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because the Malawi Quacha has lost 66% of its value to the United States dollar since

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June 2023 to date.

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Citizens might have stopped protesting in the streets against this disaster, but some

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are finding other, more quiet ways to wage a revolution.

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Grant Gombwa is a student living in the Blantier region, and is one of the country's first

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Bitcoin meetup organizers.

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He loves the idea of a currency that no government can devalue.

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Malawi's first official Bitcoin meetup will take place in February in the capital, the

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Longue.

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Grant will make the five-hour drive to unite with perhaps two dozen other Bitcoiners.

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It's a modest start, but given the economic conditions, it's likely a trickle in what

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will eventually become a flood of new Bitcoin users.

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Grant said that, personally, what inspires him is that before he was stuck, unable to

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pay for anything abroad with his native currency, but today he has an upgrade, and he can speak

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the same monetary language as someone in New York, Cairo, or Beijing.

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Grant estimated that among young people in Malawi between 18 and 30 years old, that nearly

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all of them owned a phone, and that around two-thirds own smartphones.

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Not all smartphone users can afford consistent data, of course, but that doesn't prevent

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them from using Bitcoin.

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As we'll learn more about later in this story, Africans in countries like Malawi can use

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a service called Machankura to send or receive Bitcoin from any feature phone or any smartphone

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with no data, no internet required.

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This means that an economic escape route is here.

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It will just take Grant and other local educators some time to show people the way.

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In one of our conversations, Grant explained a potentially promising idea.

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The Malawian government, he said, with incentives from foreign lenders, is installing electric

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vehicle charging stations across the country.

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He guesses that very few locals will actually be able to afford these types of cars, especially

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in the first few years.

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So these solar-powered electric generators will be for the most part sitting unused,

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wasting the sun's energy.

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Enter Bitcoin.

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Grant's idea is to bring a few ASICs to these likely idle charge points, hook them up, earn

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some satoshis, and pay a percentage to the owner of the property to make sure he doesn't

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get kicked out.

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We'll see if Grant's idea gets traction, but what's certain is that there will be

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many more ideas like it, springing out of places like Blontier and Bondo, now that wasted

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energy can be turned into capital.

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3.

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Turning Fire Into Digital Gold.

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The Great Rift Valley is one of the largest areas of seismic and volcanic activity on

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Earth.

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The geothermal energy potential in this part of Africa, stretching 7,000 kilometers south

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from the Red Sea to Mozambique, is vast and nearly entirely untapped.

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To get a sense of the potential that Bitcoin mining could have on the region, I visited

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a site a few hours outside of Nairobi, Kenya, on the shores of Lake Nivasha.

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The situation is representative of any number of industrial operations in rural Africa, or

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for that matter, in rural places anywhere in the world.

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A 1.4 megawatt geothermal plant, which funnels hot steam rising out of a 2,000 meter deep

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hole through a turbine to generate electricity, powers a water pump perhaps a kilometer away

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on the shores of the lake.

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The pump pushes the lake water up to a nearby complex of fields, where flowers are grown

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and exported to supermarkets in Europe.

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This is just one such flower farm in a country full of them.

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Kenya is the world's largest flower exporter, and all of those fields need irrigation, and

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all of that irrigation needs power.

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Here's the thing, these water pumps do not consume power in a consistent way, but geothermal

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power is always on, hinting at a tremendous amount of electricity waste just waiting for

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someone or something to come and buy it up.

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Geothermal is probably the single best existing power source in the world for mining Bitcoin.

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Geothermal is great, but during dry months it can slow down.

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Nuclear might be better in a vacuum, but it's impractical at the moment for small sites,

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and at least a decade away from a rollout across Africa.

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Geothermal is 100% clean and 100% consistent.

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A plant like the one here in Naivasha could run for 40 years with no interruptions and

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no change in power output.

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It's one of the many that make up a total of 1 gigawatts, i.e. 1000 megawatts, of power

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generation just in this region alone.

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The foreman in charge of the site tells us that the surrounding hills and valleys could

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actually support up to 10 gigawatts of geothermal electricity, but the rest remains untapped.

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Down at the pump, we see something that could be present at any industrial operation in

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the African countryside.

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A small shack with a starlink on top emitting a strong hum.

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Inside there are 144 What's Minor ASICs set up, neatly corded, and run by Gridless.

395
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Everything from the HUD itself to the software is custom made in Africa by Africans.

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It's a 500 kilowatt operation, which is about perfect according to Eric, for a situation

397
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like this.

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He shows me the actual electricity used by the ASICs on his cell phone, about 375 kilowatts

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on average every day.

400
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This is projectable into the future.

401
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:47,560
Gridless has done a five-year back study on Bitcoin mining revenue and can predict being

402
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:53,360
paid between 7 and 9 cents per kilowatt hour by the Bitcoin network.

403
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:59,800
If the BTC price goes up, the earnings get beaten back down by the new mining competition.

404
00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:06,600
If the BTC price goes down, it becomes easier to mine, the difficulty adjustment in action.

405
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:13,040
The upfront cost for a setup like the one on Lake Nyvashia runs in the low six figures,

406
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including the ASICs and other infrastructure.

407
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:21,280
Generally revenue for the Bitcoin mine will be a few hundred dollars.

408
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:26,080
Gridless pays out 30% of the revenue to the power company as a flat fee for the right

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to use the stranded electricity.

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00:37:29,120 --> 00:37:33,440
Depending on the consistency of the excess energy, Gridless generally recovers their

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00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:36,160
investment within a few years.

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One can quickly see how Bitcoin mining is going to be enormously profitable across Africa.

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If you know you are building a variable demand power station in the future, you will incorporate

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Bitcoin mining from the start, says Eric.

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Otherwise, you're wasting energy.

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Storing the energy in batteries and using it later sounds like a nice idea, but doesn't

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make economic or technological sense right now, he says.

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00:38:04,560 --> 00:38:10,960
Imagine a slightly larger two-megawatt operation similar to the one at Lake Nyvashia.

419
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:17,040
It could be $1 million in gross revenue per year, and not in quatcha or shillings, but

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in cold hard satoshis, payable directly to the site, no accounting office, or foreign

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exchange costs required.

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The scene by the lake is perfectly solar punk.

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The earth's heat is powering agriculture, and the Bitcoin mine is eliminating any electricity

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00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:40,640
waste and converting it instead into digital gold.

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It's sitting here in a place like this that you realize that not Bitcoin mining is such

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a staggering waste of energy.

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Later, as I talk with the Gridless team about the implications of the Lake Nyvashia site

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00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:59,160
at a restaurant in Nairobi, the power goes out during our meal.

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00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:05,720
Janet tells me that this is typical in Kenya, but that Bitcoin can help fix this as a demand

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response technology.

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During the day, there's a lot of demand, and we turn off our machines, she says.

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At night, when people go to sleep, we turn on our machines.

433
00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:24,040
Normally, if there's too much unplugging too fast, it can cause blackouts, but we can

434
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:27,280
balance the grid with more Bitcoin mining.

435
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:32,720
We can absorb sudden incoming power, and we can slow sudden collapses of power by turning

436
00:39:32,720 --> 00:39:33,720
off.

437
00:39:33,720 --> 00:39:39,560
Basics can be turned on and off at a moment's notice without harm to the operator.

438
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:46,000
Unlike manufacturing or other compute processes, making Bitcoin mining one of the best technologies

439
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,560
in the world for stabilizing grids.

440
00:39:49,560 --> 00:39:55,080
What Gridless is doing at small scale with off-grid energy could also help the national

441
00:39:55,080 --> 00:39:58,600
grids struggling all across the continent.

442
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:04,440
Micro, hydro, and geothermal aren't the only power sources that Gridless is tracking.

443
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:10,600
Solar, they say, only provides energy during one third of the day, and requires expensive

444
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:13,560
battery technology to be viable.

445
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:20,120
Such batteries could triple the cost of operating a power site, making it far less appealing.

446
00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:26,600
Gridless does have its eye on a few wind sites, but another option is biomass energy.

447
00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:32,880
In the past weeks, the company has brought two East African Bitcoin mining sites online,

448
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:34,840
powered by biomass.

449
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:41,080
One new mine adorns a sugar processing facility, and one complements a plan that refines sea

450
00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:46,040
salt, a tough fiber used for rugs, rope, and other textiles.

451
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:51,800
In both cases, the leftover plant material is burned, and the heat boils water to power

452
00:40:51,800 --> 00:40:55,280
a turbine, generating electricity.

453
00:40:55,280 --> 00:41:01,240
In both cases, as is the case for most African industrial operations, the site is too far

454
00:41:01,240 --> 00:41:06,640
from any residential communities to directly power homes or other businesses.

455
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:12,600
Often, the electricity is simply just run straight back into the ground.

456
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:16,000
Biomass is generally considered clean and renewable.

457
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:21,560
Sea salt and sugar plants suck carbon dioxide from the air into their constituent parts,

458
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:26,360
and then when they are burned, that carbon is released back into the sky.

459
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:31,280
Sea salt and sugar production is widespread in East and South Africa, and yet the excess

460
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:33,800
power typically goes to waste.

461
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:38,240
Philip explains that even in the case where a power generation piece is added to a sea

462
00:41:38,240 --> 00:41:43,880
salt or sugar refinery, the operators can't usually produce electricity unless about 70

463
00:41:43,880 --> 00:41:48,720
percent of the capacity is used, otherwise the boiler malfunctions.

464
00:41:48,720 --> 00:41:53,440
In the case of the sugar refinery, there was no one close enough to buy the power.

465
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:58,160
In the case of the sea salt farm, the power generation feature was simply never turned

466
00:41:58,160 --> 00:41:59,160
on.

467
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:02,240
Again, enter Bitcoin.

468
00:42:02,240 --> 00:42:08,920
With gridless technology, these power stations are now running at close to full capacity and

469
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:13,840
saving the previously orphaned electricity, turning it into capital.

470
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:20,000
ASICs will become an integrated component of any energy site, says Philip, a turbine,

471
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:23,000
a transformer, and a mining container.

472
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:24,920
This is just what you will do.

473
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:27,680
If you don't, you won't be competitive.

474
00:42:27,680 --> 00:42:30,840
You'll be wasting energy.

475
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:32,920
4.

476
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:39,480
Bitcoin without Internet As of 2023, some 600 million Africans lacked

477
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:41,560
Internet access.

478
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:45,360
More than half the continent is still offline.

479
00:42:45,360 --> 00:42:51,640
Starlink makes what gridless does possible, and innovative companies like BRCK continue

480
00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:55,760
to expand Internet access in rural places.

481
00:42:55,760 --> 00:43:01,400
But what good can Bitcoin do for the average citizen of a country like Malawi, where only

482
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:04,400
a fraction of the population is online?

483
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:11,400
Ten years ago, Bitcoin educator Andreas Antonopoulos wondered, what if Africa could leap

484
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:16,480
frog banks, just like an elite frog landline telephones?

485
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:21,920
What if people just used their phones to access Bitcoin-powered financial services?

486
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:27,000
He even wondered, could this be possible without Internet access?

487
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:34,000
As fate would have it, an entrepreneur named Kolatso Nugaku, born in Mamalodi, a township

488
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:39,840
outside of Pretoria, originally built by the apartheid government of South Africa, would

489
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:41,880
come up with a solution.

490
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:49,120
Nguco, or KG as he is commonly known, was working as a computer scientist at the Council of

491
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:55,240
For Science and Industrial Research in Pretoria about eight years ago when his boss gave him

492
00:43:55,240 --> 00:43:58,720
a new assignment, Research Bitcoin.

493
00:43:58,720 --> 00:44:09,200
KG was once offered a $1,000 payment in Bitcoin in 2016 for a remote gig, 1.3 BTC then, worth

494
00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:15,160
more than $50,000 today, but took the payment in PayPal instead.

495
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:16,360
Why?

496
00:44:16,360 --> 00:44:19,400
He couldn't use Bitcoin for anything.

497
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:26,080
The CSIR study he worked on rekindled his interest, but ultimately the researchers concluded

498
00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:31,720
that blockchain technology was the thing that had merit, not Bitcoin.

499
00:44:31,720 --> 00:44:39,960
In 2017, Bitcoin's price shot up, and KG, like many others, finally took a harder look.

500
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:45,200
But what initially attracted his interest was the galaxy of crypto tokens that sprouted

501
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:47,320
up around Bitcoin.

502
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:53,320
By early 2018, when the next bear market began to hit, he was trading a dizzying array of

503
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:55,720
tokens on Binance.

504
00:44:55,720 --> 00:45:00,360
He had a bunch of altcoins that had lost so much value they couldn't even be traded on

505
00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:01,640
the engine.

506
00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:08,280
So KG visited a dust page to convert them into Binance's native BNB token, and from

507
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:11,480
there he converted to BTC.

508
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:15,360
He eventually did enough reading and research and had seen enough.

509
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:22,400
He wanted to start saving in and working in Bitcoin, not other digital currencies.

510
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:25,000
Warren Buffett in particular had inspired him.

511
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:32,280
What will gain value over 30 years, thought KG, Bitcoin, he thought, and maybe not so

512
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:34,200
much the other tokens.

513
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:41,400
The first Bitcoin project KG created was Exonumia, named after an old word for the study of currencies

514
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:43,400
and numismatics.

515
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:49,400
In 2018, he wasn't ready to contribute to Bitcoin with code, but at least he thought

516
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:52,800
he could introduce the idea to more people.

517
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:59,560
Exonumia is an African-wide translation platform still in operation today that puts Bitcoin

518
00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:08,080
educational materials into dozens of African languages, from Berber to Malagasy to Shona.

519
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:13,040
The key, KG said, was the architecture of the translation itself.

520
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:18,840
Most people would try to automate translations using software, but that wasn't the full point

521
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:20,680
of the mission.

522
00:46:20,680 --> 00:46:27,720
Using a human network was the real goal, so KG did it the slow way and would recruit people

523
00:46:27,720 --> 00:46:32,120
from various countries in Africa and pay them to do the work.

524
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:37,920
Over time, he got to know bit coiners in dozens of places across the continent.

525
00:46:37,920 --> 00:46:44,960
In 2019, he expanded this network by hosting regular spaces on Twitter and inviting anyone

526
00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:48,640
in Africa with an interest in Bitcoin.

527
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:53,400
People would message him out of the blue on the Exonumia account, with new ideas from

528
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:57,280
new countries and new projects were born.

529
00:46:57,280 --> 00:47:04,600
After his CSIR job, KG took a role at AWS, but ultimately, the work there felt like it

530
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:08,680
was taking him further away from the things he found interesting.

531
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:14,720
It was, as he says, completely disconnected from the realities of life back in the South

532
00:47:14,720 --> 00:47:17,880
African townships where he grew up.

533
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:21,240
Exonumia seemed so much more important.

534
00:47:21,240 --> 00:47:27,360
At the end of 2020, he decided to quit the corporate world and work full time on freedom

535
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:28,960
technology.

536
00:47:28,960 --> 00:47:35,520
The first software project he spun up was a VPN called contentconnect.net.

537
00:47:35,520 --> 00:47:38,440
Privacy is hugely important to KG.

538
00:47:38,440 --> 00:47:44,120
Not that long ago, he says, South Africans lived under a dictatorial state of surveillance

539
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:45,920
and control.

540
00:47:45,920 --> 00:47:51,600
He pointed out that Steve Bico published his famous, I write what I like essays under a

541
00:47:51,600 --> 00:47:53,100
pseudonym.

542
00:47:53,100 --> 00:47:58,720
Once the authorities found out he was the author, they put him on trial and killed him.

543
00:47:58,720 --> 00:48:04,880
Everyone can be a hero, KG says, but if they feel like it's too risky, they won't take

544
00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:06,720
the biggest steps.

545
00:48:06,720 --> 00:48:11,800
So creating a privacy boosting VPN accessible to Africans was a worthy goal.

546
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:16,960
KG's next project was a software solution to what he saw as one of the biggest barriers

547
00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:22,440
to Bitcoin adoption in Africa, the lack of internet access.

548
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:28,320
Ten years ago, he was part of an MIT global startup labs effort working on mobile money

549
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:30,000
in South Africa.

550
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:35,640
The problem was that the mobile money system was fragmented and they wanted to try to bridge

551
00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:40,040
the different types of credits that people used across the country.

552
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:47,360
This is where he started tinkering with USSD, a protocol for communication over text messaging.

553
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:49,480
No internet required.

554
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:56,080
In May of 2022, a Namibian Bitcoiner wrote, There has got to be a way to get a Bitcoin

555
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:59,640
wallet onto a non smartphone mobile phone.

556
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:02,760
Someone out there is definitely smart enough to figure this out.

557
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:04,280
I believe in you.

558
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:08,360
KG quickly responded, Give me two weeks.

559
00:49:08,360 --> 00:49:09,520
He was ready.

560
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:16,200
He had taken a pay cut known as a sole dividend when he left Amazon to work on his VPN, but

561
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:19,760
he was more energized than ever to work on Bitcoin.

562
00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:24,960
A few days after his famous tweet with the experience from the MIT challenge a decade

563
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:32,440
ago in mind, he launched Manchankura, referring to the South African slang term for money.

564
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:39,280
The new service would allow feature phone users or smartphone users with no data to send,

565
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:42,200
receive, and save Bitcoin.

566
00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:47,320
Some of the biggest challenges that Manchankura overcomes are in the UX area.

567
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:53,600
Traditionally, to use Bitcoin, people need to copy and paste an address or read a QR

568
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:54,600
code.

569
00:49:54,600 --> 00:49:58,360
But feature phones in general do not have these capabilities.

570
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:04,160
KG's tool would also need to use lightning to overcome the increasingly high on chain

571
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:05,400
fees.

572
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:13,200
But USSD has a 182 character limit, so lengthy lightning invoices were not going to fit.

573
00:50:13,200 --> 00:50:19,000
The solution was to adopt the lightning address, a mechanism invented by the Brazilian software

574
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:26,200
engineers Andre Neves and Fiat Jaff, which gives Manchankura users an email based human

575
00:50:26,200 --> 00:50:28,200
readable identity.

576
00:50:28,200 --> 00:50:33,680
For example, your phone number at 8333.mobi.

577
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:39,400
Today, Manchankura users can send Bitcoin to each other using phone numbers or lightning

578
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:41,840
address usernames.

579
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:47,400
They can also use on-chain addresses or lightning invoices, assuming their phones have copy

580
00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:49,280
paste functionality.

581
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:51,760
But the former two options are dominant.

582
00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:57,640
To fire up the service, a user dials a number from their phone, generating a text response

583
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:01,880
with various options, a decision tree of sorts.

584
00:51:01,880 --> 00:51:04,720
To send, press 1, etc.

585
00:51:04,720 --> 00:51:11,080
From here, a user can do a variety of things with Bitcoin with no internet.

586
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:16,760
One powerful functionality is the overlap with Azteco, a voucher service.

587
00:51:16,760 --> 00:51:22,880
So for example, KG might go into a convenience store in South Africa, and with cash buy a

588
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:25,880
voucher called OneVoucher.

589
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:30,680
In Kenya, someone might buy a similar voucher using M-Pesa.

590
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:36,040
It's a 16 digit code with a certain amount of value on it, and this code can be entered

591
00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:38,560
into the Manchankura menu.

592
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:44,520
On the back end, what KG and the team are doing is buying an Azteco voucher with a 16

593
00:51:44,520 --> 00:51:49,200
digit code, and crediting the account of the Manchankura user.

594
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:56,120
This allows Manchankura users to easily top up their Bitcoin account using cash or M-Pesa

595
00:51:56,120 --> 00:51:57,120
credits.

596
00:51:57,120 --> 00:52:04,240
Manchankura also has an API to BitRefill, so any product available on BitRefill can

597
00:52:04,240 --> 00:52:07,840
be sold on the app's user interface.

598
00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:13,000
Availability ranges by country, but when they go to option 4 inside the app, they can barter

599
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:19,040
for goods and services, for example, airtime or grocery vouchers.

600
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:26,640
What this means is today, as we begin the year 2024, Manchankura's user base of 12,000

601
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:32,920
Africans are able to send and receive value globally, buy mobile minutes, buy vouchers

602
00:52:32,920 --> 00:52:40,300
for gas or petrol, purchase electricity through prepaid vouchers, or trade into cash, all using

603
00:52:40,300 --> 00:52:42,960
Bitcoin with no internet.

604
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:47,180
KG's dream is starting to be realized.

605
00:52:47,180 --> 00:52:49,960
Of course, big challenges remain.

606
00:52:49,960 --> 00:52:53,800
One is scaling across the entire African continent.

607
00:52:53,800 --> 00:53:00,480
Right now, KG works with services like Africa's Talking to access different telecom networks.

608
00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:06,240
In that model, Manchankura pays a monthly fee to Africa's Talking for airtime instead

609
00:53:06,240 --> 00:53:10,960
of the users paying for the telecom directly.

610
00:53:10,960 --> 00:53:18,680
The scaling is a slow but steady process, but it is happening, even in places like Malawi.

611
00:53:18,680 --> 00:53:21,560
A second challenge is custody.

612
00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:29,400
At the moment, Manchankura is a custodial service, meaning they hold your Bitcoin, not your keys,

613
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:31,080
not your coins.

614
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:36,320
So even though it's a very useful tool, it's not actually giving property rights to its

615
00:53:36,320 --> 00:53:37,320
users.

616
00:53:37,320 --> 00:53:44,160
But, in the coming month, Manchankura is planning to release a proof of concept that allows

617
00:53:44,160 --> 00:53:46,800
users to self-custody.

618
00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:52,440
If it works smoothly, it will be one of the biggest innovations in Bitcoin's history,

619
00:53:52,440 --> 00:53:57,760
allowing people without the internet to actually be their own bank.

620
00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:05,920
Speaking of taking self-custody, head to bitbox.swiss.walker and use the promo code walker for 5% off the

621
00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:09,560
Bitcoin-only Bitbox O2 hardware wallet.

622
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:14,800
It is fully open source, again, Bitcoin-only, and you can head to their GitHub to verify

623
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:19,200
that open source code for yourself if you want.

624
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:25,600
When you go to bitbox.swiss.walker and use promo code walker, not only do you get 5%

625
00:54:25,600 --> 00:54:30,080
off, but you also help support another fucking Bitcoin podcast.

626
00:54:30,080 --> 00:54:31,080
This one.

627
00:54:31,080 --> 00:54:32,080
So, thank you.

628
00:54:32,080 --> 00:54:38,320
The trick, KG says, is that a SIM card is a computational platform that can store things.

629
00:54:38,320 --> 00:54:44,240
It can, for example, sign Bitcoin transactions or interface with the Lightning network.

630
00:54:44,240 --> 00:54:49,680
He is incentivized to push much on Quora in this direction for the mission of human freedom,

631
00:54:49,680 --> 00:54:52,440
but also for business reasons.

632
00:54:52,440 --> 00:54:57,960
They don't want to grow as big as M-Pesa and be liable for all user funds and to carry

633
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:00,560
so much counterparty risk.

634
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:06,000
This way, when KG goes to Vodafone to pitch a partnership for tens of millions of new

635
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:12,440
users, he can say, how would you like to introduce your users to Bitcoin with no counterparty

636
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:13,440
risk?

637
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:19,120
It's a much easier yes than if you were to say, let's introduce your users to Bitcoin,

638
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:24,760
but you have to hold all the funds and deal with those regulations and laws and responsibilities.

639
00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:30,480
In the West, Bitcoin adoption might mean the centralizing forces of large on-grid mining

640
00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:33,440
operations and ETFs.

641
00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:40,080
But the amazing irony is that in Africa, Bitcoin's technology arc is making the currency more

642
00:55:40,080 --> 00:55:42,880
and more decentralized.

643
00:55:42,880 --> 00:55:48,560
As the network eats more and more off-grid cheap electricity at dozens of completely

644
00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:53,200
separated sites, it becomes harder and harder to shut down.

645
00:55:53,200 --> 00:55:59,320
And as the network adds more and more self-custodial users on potentially millions and millions

646
00:55:59,320 --> 00:56:04,120
of SIM cards, it becomes more and more unstoppable.

647
00:56:04,120 --> 00:56:10,760
As Lynn Alden describes in her book, Broken Money, up to this point modern monetary technology

648
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:17,400
was inexorably centralizing as it became more digital and more advanced.

649
00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:23,120
Bitcoin breaks this trend and Africa helps Bitcoin break it.

650
00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:28,280
And as Africa helps Bitcoin, Bitcoin helps Africans.

651
00:56:28,280 --> 00:56:33,440
KG says that some Machankura users started with feature phones and then, after getting

652
00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:38,040
involved in the Bitcoin economy, bought themselves a smartphone.

653
00:56:38,040 --> 00:56:42,760
They are pulling themselves into the internet using Bitcoin.

654
00:56:42,760 --> 00:56:48,040
And others through Gridless are pulling themselves into electricity using Bitcoin.

655
00:56:48,040 --> 00:56:52,600
Together, they are moving into the future.

656
00:56:52,600 --> 00:56:53,600
5.

657
00:56:53,600 --> 00:56:55,240
Bridging the gender gap.

658
00:56:55,240 --> 00:56:58,680
There are 700 million African women.

659
00:56:58,680 --> 00:57:04,240
All of them, according to Marcel Lorraine, could one day be Bitcoin users.

660
00:57:04,240 --> 00:57:11,080
Marcel, a Kenyan entrepreneur and social activist, has made it her life mission to onboard the

661
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:17,840
women of Africa into a new currency system that they, not their husbands, can control

662
00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:21,280
and that can meaningfully improve their own freedom.

663
00:57:21,280 --> 00:57:28,880
Her journey began in 2018 when she was doing a gig in Nairobi and struggling with her finances.

664
00:57:28,880 --> 00:57:34,560
She was running Lloris, her company that consults for corporate and social events.

665
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:39,800
She would save her earnings, she says, but the end of the year have less and less to

666
00:57:39,800 --> 00:57:41,240
show for it.

667
00:57:41,240 --> 00:57:47,440
The government, she says, kept raising taxes, and her only option was to save in a shilling

668
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:51,520
bank account which kept depreciating rapidly.

669
00:57:51,520 --> 00:57:58,600
For context, while not as weak as the Quacha, the Kenyan shilling depreciated 21% against

670
00:57:58,600 --> 00:58:05,480
the dollar in 2023, which itself also depreciated against goods and services.

671
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:13,280
In the end, Kenyans are getting at least 25% less stuff for their wages than one year ago.

672
00:58:13,280 --> 00:58:18,480
At the gig, Marcel heard about cryptocurrency and decentralized finance.

673
00:58:18,480 --> 00:58:20,840
Can I be paid in that?

674
00:58:20,840 --> 00:58:21,840
She asked herself.

675
00:58:21,840 --> 00:58:26,080
To save me from the hassle of fees and inflation?

676
00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:32,080
At that time, she said, there was a ridiculous amount of hype around blockchain in Kenya.

677
00:58:32,080 --> 00:58:38,120
There were tons of scams and tons of promoted events around different tokens.

678
00:58:38,120 --> 00:58:42,320
During that time, there were no educational hubs or groups.

679
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:46,640
You'd show up at an event and hope it wasn't pitching a scam.

680
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:51,640
I invested in a variety of tokens, she says, including Bitcoin.

681
00:58:51,640 --> 00:58:52,640
I made money.

682
00:58:52,640 --> 00:58:54,080
I lost money.

683
00:58:54,080 --> 00:58:55,800
It was frustrating.

684
00:58:55,800 --> 00:59:00,240
During the COVID pandemic, she couldn't do event production, so she was day trading

685
00:59:00,240 --> 00:59:02,160
shillings and dollars.

686
00:59:02,160 --> 00:59:06,680
She decided to focus on Bitcoin because she didn't have time to study more than one type

687
00:59:06,680 --> 00:59:08,000
of investment.

688
00:59:08,000 --> 00:59:12,960
And besides, as she says, it is the mother of digital currencies.

689
00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:19,920
In 2022, Marcel helped organize the first post-pandemic Bitcoin event in Kenya in April

690
00:59:19,920 --> 00:59:24,760
at an Nairobi hotel at a conference room full of Bitcoiners.

691
00:59:24,760 --> 00:59:32,120
These included local educators Rufas Kamu and Master Guantai, and even Pakodela India,

692
00:59:32,120 --> 00:59:36,880
who was passing through on his journey to travel the world using only Bitcoin.

693
00:59:36,880 --> 00:59:40,200
At that event, Marcel noticed a problem.

694
00:59:40,200 --> 00:59:46,200
There were a lot of men, but only two women, and she was one of the two.

695
00:59:46,200 --> 00:59:52,240
She had noticed that crypto and blockchain events had a gender gap, perhaps only 30%

696
00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:56,440
women, but 98 to 2 for Bitcoin?

697
00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:59,040
We could do better, she said.

698
00:59:59,040 --> 01:00:03,480
So she reached out to a few female friends, who told her that they were afraid to go

699
01:00:03,480 --> 01:00:07,200
to Bitcoin events because the environment felt male-dominated.

700
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:09,480
Okay, fine, she thought.

701
01:00:09,480 --> 01:00:13,200
There's a problem, and I can make a solution.

702
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:19,400
Marcel created Bitcoin Dada in 2022 as a safe space for girls and women to learn about

703
01:00:19,400 --> 01:00:21,240
financial freedom.

704
01:00:21,240 --> 01:00:27,280
The first cohort was held in May, with 20 people, just her circle of friends.

705
01:00:27,280 --> 01:00:33,160
Ever since, she has run online classes every Tuesday and Thursday at 9pm.

706
01:00:33,160 --> 01:00:36,480
At first, it was just Kenyan females.

707
01:00:36,480 --> 01:00:39,880
In the second cohort, they had 40 students.

708
01:00:39,880 --> 01:00:42,680
Each cohort is 6 weeks long.

709
01:00:42,680 --> 01:00:48,200
Now she says, they have held 5 cohorts, and more than 300 women have gone through the

710
01:00:48,200 --> 01:00:52,600
course, with a total of 130 graduates.

711
01:00:52,600 --> 01:00:55,840
All of them now have a solid understanding of Bitcoin.

712
01:00:55,840 --> 01:01:02,040
They know how to self-custody, and buy Bitcoin with no KYC via cash trades.

713
01:01:02,040 --> 01:01:07,880
On our way through Nairobi, I watch as Marcel effortlessly uses BitNob and Machankura to

714
01:01:07,880 --> 01:01:14,080
buy Bitcoin with M-Pesa, and then send Bitcoin without using any data.

715
01:01:14,080 --> 01:01:19,480
I think of how many people on Wall Street or Silicon Valley would be blown away by this

716
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:22,960
feat, which she makes look so simple.

717
01:01:22,960 --> 01:01:28,320
Marcel normally suggests a range of wallets in her course, including the self-custodial

718
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:34,800
Moon and Phoenix, and the custodial wallet of Satoshi for small transactions.

719
01:01:34,800 --> 01:01:40,560
For on-ramps, Marcel typically recommends the Nigerian-founded BitNob app.

720
01:01:40,560 --> 01:01:46,880
M-Pesa, like everyone in Kenya, have M-Pesa, and use BitNob to swap that for Bitcoin,

721
01:01:46,880 --> 01:01:50,760
and then withdraw to, for example, a Moon wallet.

722
01:01:50,760 --> 01:01:55,320
Kenya is much more developed than Malawi, but many smartphone users still don't have

723
01:01:55,320 --> 01:02:00,040
consistent data, rendering Machankura a key tool.

724
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:08,040
For the main curriculum, Marcel uses the MePremiere Bitcoin book, originally created in El Salvador,

725
01:02:08,040 --> 01:02:12,880
and then she walks students through practical examples of why it's important for African

726
01:02:12,880 --> 01:02:15,680
females to become Bitcoiners.

727
01:02:15,680 --> 01:02:21,480
Back in 2022, Marcel first heard about the Africa Bitcoin Conference.

728
01:02:21,480 --> 01:02:27,040
The Austrian educator Anita Posh approached Marcel and asked if she was going.

729
01:02:27,040 --> 01:02:30,840
No, Marcel said, it was too expensive.

730
01:02:30,840 --> 01:02:36,400
But Anita insisted and helped organize a fundraiser and contributed half while the community covered

731
01:02:36,400 --> 01:02:38,160
the rest.

732
01:02:38,160 --> 01:02:45,000
On her visit to Accra in December 2022, Marcel was inspired by what the conference organizer

733
01:02:45,000 --> 01:02:49,920
and Toghly's human rights activist, Farida Nabaremah, had created.

734
01:02:49,920 --> 01:02:56,480
In 2023, Marcel came back to the second edition of the conference with four ladies, and Bitcoin

735
01:02:56,480 --> 01:03:01,840
data helped two female-led teams enter the event's hackathon.

736
01:03:01,840 --> 01:03:07,120
Marcel now offers a mentorship program, which helps the ladies speak in their own capacities,

737
01:03:07,120 --> 01:03:13,280
whether on social media or at events like ABC, to help them tell their own stories.

738
01:03:13,280 --> 01:03:19,600
On the ground, Marcel visits universities and runs trainings for women and men together.

739
01:03:19,600 --> 01:03:23,280
Students are vulnerable because they are often targeted by scams.

740
01:03:23,280 --> 01:03:29,280
She describes the obscene links that Worldcoin went to to try and sucker students into buying

741
01:03:29,280 --> 01:03:32,080
and trading their token in Kenya.

742
01:03:32,080 --> 01:03:36,600
Bitcoin, she points out, has no similar marketing budget.

743
01:03:36,600 --> 01:03:43,320
Teaching and training the youth, she says, is underfunded and vitally important.

744
01:03:43,320 --> 01:03:48,120
Every single person that attended one of her events at a university recently had been targeted

745
01:03:48,120 --> 01:03:52,080
by Worldcoin, a brutal reality.

746
01:03:52,080 --> 01:03:57,360
Marcel's goals are to streamline data's mentorship program so that they can match talent

747
01:03:57,360 --> 01:04:03,440
and skill for Bitcoin companies, to help get women hired in the space, and also to expand

748
01:04:03,440 --> 01:04:05,560
to different countries.

749
01:04:05,560 --> 01:04:10,800
Several of her mentees have already earned jobs or fellowships in the Bitcoin ecosystem,

750
01:04:10,800 --> 01:04:14,640
at organizations like BTrust or ABC.

751
01:04:14,640 --> 01:04:21,640
She says they now have 30 active alumni in Uganda now, and more in Nigeria, South Africa,

752
01:04:21,640 --> 01:04:22,640
and Tanzania.

753
01:04:22,640 --> 01:04:28,760
For me, Marcel says, Bitcoin gives us back our voices.

754
01:04:28,760 --> 01:04:33,240
It's hard being African, and harder being an African female.

755
01:04:33,240 --> 01:04:39,000
This gives us financial independence, and an opportunity to work on ourselves.

756
01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:45,600
Marcel has long supported one particular school in Nairobi's Kibera, the largest urban slum

757
01:04:45,600 --> 01:04:47,880
in Africa.

758
01:04:47,880 --> 01:04:51,380
She has personally seen Bitcoin help people escape.

759
01:04:51,380 --> 01:04:57,720
She knows it can help get many, many more, but the hard work needs to be done.

760
01:04:57,720 --> 01:05:03,640
Her mission seems a tall order, going from what is now probably just a few thousand African

761
01:05:03,640 --> 01:05:10,680
female bit coiners, to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, and eventually

762
01:05:10,680 --> 01:05:11,920
hundreds of millions.

763
01:05:11,920 --> 01:05:18,680
If I don't do this, says Marcel, then I would have failed my sisters.

764
01:05:18,680 --> 01:05:23,040
This is thought to be a man's thing, so women can get financially abused.

765
01:05:23,040 --> 01:05:26,240
I don't want to leave the women behind.

766
01:05:26,240 --> 01:05:32,840
Bitcoin, she says, gives away out of macro problems like currency devaluation, and micro

767
01:05:32,840 --> 01:05:36,200
problems like repression inside the home.

768
01:05:36,200 --> 01:05:41,200
A lot of foreign aid, she says, doesn't make it to the slums.

769
01:05:41,200 --> 01:05:47,200
Bitcoin helps, because it makes sure the money gets directly where it needs to be.

770
01:05:47,200 --> 01:05:50,240
We eliminate the waste and corruption.

771
01:05:50,240 --> 01:05:55,760
On my last night in Nairobi, I meet Felix, a local Bitcoin entrepreneur.

772
01:05:55,760 --> 01:06:01,640
Like many others I met, he's now running a Bitcoin business, in his case selling merchandise,

773
01:06:01,640 --> 01:06:04,180
and is earning in Satoshi's.

774
01:06:04,180 --> 01:06:09,080
He explains how the lightning integration at Binance has been huge for Kenyans, and

775
01:06:09,080 --> 01:06:15,400
now they can interface with Wallet of Satoshi, Phoenix, Machankura, and other apps instantly

776
01:06:15,400 --> 01:06:17,680
with very low fees.

777
01:06:17,680 --> 01:06:25,000
He says how Binance P2P is also being used widely to trade from M-Pesa to Bitcoin.

778
01:06:25,000 --> 01:06:29,320
I asked him about Marcel, and he raves about her work.

779
01:06:29,320 --> 01:06:33,960
He says that it's essential to get women involved in Bitcoin adoption, and that Marcel

780
01:06:33,960 --> 01:06:36,960
is doing God's work in this area.

781
01:06:36,960 --> 01:06:40,760
She is, he said, bridging the gap.

782
01:06:40,760 --> 01:06:42,640
6.

783
01:06:42,640 --> 01:06:47,120
Women Producers, Not Consumers

784
01:06:47,120 --> 01:06:52,280
Bitcoin mining might help provide electricity to millions of Africans, but if the proceeds

785
01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:57,880
aren't spendable in the local economy, and usable by all citizens, then it's just a

786
01:06:57,880 --> 01:07:00,400
partial revolution.

787
01:07:00,400 --> 01:07:05,520
If one challenge for popular Bitcoin adoption in Africa is the lack of internet, and another

788
01:07:05,520 --> 01:07:12,400
is low use among women, then another, according to Femi Longue, is breaking the cycle of dependence

789
01:07:12,400 --> 01:07:13,760
on the West.

790
01:07:13,760 --> 01:07:20,560
Femi is a Nigerian social entrepreneur, with 20 years of experience mentoring African technologists

791
01:07:20,560 --> 01:07:25,800
and startup founders, and played a key role in creating and running the two most important

792
01:07:25,800 --> 01:07:29,520
tech hubs in Nigeria and Kenya.

793
01:07:29,520 --> 01:07:37,920
In 2022, he was hired to lead Kala Fellows, an initiative from Tim Akinbo, Carla Kirk-Cohen,

794
01:07:37,920 --> 01:07:45,440
Bernard Para, and Abukar Nur-Kalil, to accelerate the process of moving African computer engineers

795
01:07:45,440 --> 01:07:49,320
into contributing to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

796
01:07:49,320 --> 01:07:56,240
Last year, Kala was acquired by B-Trust, the charity founded by Jack Dorsey and Jay Z to

797
01:07:56,240 --> 01:08:03,080
support Bitcoin infrastructure in Africa and the global South, and renamed B-Trust Builders,

798
01:08:03,080 --> 01:08:05,480
where Femi now sits as director.

799
01:08:05,480 --> 01:08:10,280
He is focused on helping Africans move up the value chain in Bitcoin, rather than just

800
01:08:10,280 --> 01:08:16,440
being consumers, like Africans are in so many ways in the existing global financial system.

801
01:08:16,440 --> 01:08:20,800
He wants them to be producers in the new Bitcoin economy.

802
01:08:20,800 --> 01:08:23,480
Femi says there are two legs to this journey.

803
01:08:23,480 --> 01:08:29,320
First, getting Africans more involved in protocol and infrastructure discussions.

804
01:08:29,320 --> 01:08:34,720
As Jack Dorsey says, if Bitcoin is going to be money for the world, it has to be made

805
01:08:34,720 --> 01:08:36,760
around the world.

806
01:08:36,760 --> 01:08:42,760
Femi says that African views will be needed to help evolve Bitcoin to its true potential.

807
01:08:42,760 --> 01:08:49,000
We can already see evidence of that in Machankura's product roadmap, which could help decentralize

808
01:08:49,000 --> 01:08:55,600
and strengthen Bitcoin by creating potentially millions of more self-custodial users, and

809
01:08:55,600 --> 01:09:01,440
gridless work, which makes mining more censorship-resistant and robust.

810
01:09:01,440 --> 01:09:07,440
The second leg to the journey, Femi says, is creating Bitcoin tools and applications

811
01:09:07,440 --> 01:09:13,480
that help Africans improve their quality of life in the context of their own community,

812
01:09:13,480 --> 01:09:15,400
city, and country.

813
01:09:15,400 --> 01:09:18,520
Femi says that these are early days.

814
01:09:18,520 --> 01:09:24,760
In 2022, when Kuala participated in the hackathon around the first Africa Bitcoin conference,

815
01:09:24,760 --> 01:09:27,200
they struggled to attract participants.

816
01:09:27,200 --> 01:09:33,920
People were just dipping their feet in, said Femi, but in 2023, he said the influx of talent

817
01:09:33,920 --> 01:09:35,880
was impressive.

818
01:09:35,880 --> 01:09:42,680
One winner was BitPension, a startup aiming to allow anyone in Africa to set up a BTC-denominated

819
01:09:42,680 --> 01:09:49,120
pension where anyone can buy satoshis in small amounts every day, which go into a time lock

820
01:09:49,120 --> 01:09:52,560
self-custody so that you can't betray yourself.

821
01:09:52,560 --> 01:09:58,440
Today's pensions, Femi says, could easily rug you, or they could be investing in oil

822
01:09:58,440 --> 01:10:00,640
or weapons companies.

823
01:10:00,640 --> 01:10:04,680
BitPension, or a similar idea, could be game-changing.

824
01:10:04,680 --> 01:10:11,600
The company won $5,000 of BTC and is currently building a minimum viable product.

825
01:10:11,600 --> 01:10:17,720
Femi also pointed out Splice, another hackathon entrant, which is leveraging local communities

826
01:10:17,720 --> 01:10:25,400
of mobile money agents to facilitate dollar-stabilized trades over lightning using taproot assets.

827
01:10:25,400 --> 01:10:31,480
Femi says that the Western mentality around Bitcoin is too focused on the savings aspect

828
01:10:31,480 --> 01:10:35,000
and not enough on the medium-of-exchange part.

829
01:10:35,000 --> 01:10:42,640
In his view, this overemphasis on savings slows down the adoption and cements fiat currency

830
01:10:42,640 --> 01:10:45,480
as the on-ramp to Bitcoin.

831
01:10:45,480 --> 01:10:51,240
A lot of the work that needs to be done is not just teaching people how to save, but

832
01:10:51,240 --> 01:10:56,400
also sitting down with local ride-share apps, for example, and showing them how they can

833
01:10:56,400 --> 01:10:59,240
add native Bitcoin payments.

834
01:10:59,240 --> 01:11:04,280
The only way we can get out of the broken currency system is to build a new one, he

835
01:11:04,280 --> 01:11:08,840
says, to leave the old one entirely behind.

836
01:11:08,840 --> 01:11:14,600
Consider the average person's day, says Femi, and ask, what are all the touchpoints where

837
01:11:14,600 --> 01:11:17,000
they are going to interact with money?

838
01:11:17,000 --> 01:11:21,040
Now, how do we put Bitcoin at any one of them?

839
01:11:21,040 --> 01:11:25,920
How do we help create options for them to spend the Bitcoin that they earn?

840
01:11:25,920 --> 01:11:31,400
If they don't have those options, Femi says, they remain part of the exploitative fiat

841
01:11:31,400 --> 01:11:32,400
system.

842
01:11:32,400 --> 01:11:39,120
The more merchant services we have, he believes, the more goods we can buy and the less interest

843
01:11:39,120 --> 01:11:43,520
there will be in the conversion to USD aspect.

844
01:11:43,520 --> 01:11:49,400
If we don't get merchant adoption, he says, we are stuck in the past.

845
01:11:49,400 --> 01:11:56,200
Another insight Femi has is that wallets will be in the future features, not core products.

846
01:11:56,200 --> 01:11:58,480
Where you keep your coins is important.

847
01:11:58,480 --> 01:12:02,120
More important is what you can do with them, he says.

848
01:12:02,120 --> 01:12:08,160
There will be, he says, pension solutions, international trade settlement solutions, payroll solutions.

849
01:12:08,160 --> 01:12:12,080
Currently, a lot of these services are disconnected from wallets.

850
01:12:12,080 --> 01:12:14,840
Eventually, those will be built in.

851
01:12:14,840 --> 01:12:19,840
Something else Femi is focused on is helping Africans build strong narratives.

852
01:12:19,840 --> 01:12:25,080
He points to the fact that there are no Bitcoin books written by Africans.

853
01:12:25,080 --> 01:12:30,820
We need to tell our stories and document our experiences, he says.

854
01:12:30,820 --> 01:12:36,600
There is a strong narrative about what Bitcoin is and who it is for, he says.

855
01:12:36,600 --> 01:12:41,640
A lot of people who are using Bitcoin in their daily life beyond savings do not know how

856
01:12:41,640 --> 01:12:48,280
to or aren't very good at explaining this to others, or they may not want to alert the

857
01:12:48,280 --> 01:12:49,920
authorities.

858
01:12:49,920 --> 01:12:55,200
For example, he points to Nigerian importers who don't want the state to know they are

859
01:12:55,200 --> 01:12:57,040
paying in Bitcoin.

860
01:12:57,040 --> 01:13:02,120
The government, for its part, has instructed any bank to freeze accounts that are involved

861
01:13:02,120 --> 01:13:05,180
with Bitcoin or cryptocurrency.

862
01:13:05,180 --> 01:13:10,400
When people see Nigeria as a top 10 country for Bitcoin adoption, they say, there are

863
01:13:10,400 --> 01:13:12,640
so many hodlers in Nigeria.

864
01:13:12,640 --> 01:13:14,800
No, Femi says.

865
01:13:14,800 --> 01:13:17,480
A lot of these folks don't even have a wallet.

866
01:13:17,480 --> 01:13:20,080
They just need to get funds to China tomorrow.

867
01:13:20,080 --> 01:13:24,240
They send Naira to some guy who does the transfer.

868
01:13:24,240 --> 01:13:29,760
Bitcoin is beginning to change the fabric of international commerce, but nobody knows.

869
01:13:29,760 --> 01:13:34,840
Partly, it's because people don't want others to know about the details.

870
01:13:34,840 --> 01:13:40,120
But partly again, it's because there is no investment into a platform to help people

871
01:13:40,120 --> 01:13:41,840
tell their story.

872
01:13:41,840 --> 01:13:46,840
The Bitcoin ecosystem, he says, isn't doing the work to counter what the IMF might be

873
01:13:46,840 --> 01:13:48,160
saying.

874
01:13:48,160 --> 01:13:53,160
There is very little empirical data on adoption, which according to Femi could really help with

875
01:13:53,160 --> 01:13:55,200
policymakers.

876
01:13:55,200 --> 01:14:00,200
One contact of his in the Nigerian government told him, I need something to convince me

877
01:14:00,200 --> 01:14:04,360
that this makes sense, that it's not just handing power from one group of white guys

878
01:14:04,360 --> 01:14:06,000
to another.

879
01:14:06,000 --> 01:14:11,200
There isn't enough work being done either, Femi says, to help people avoid scams and

880
01:14:11,200 --> 01:14:13,160
token schemes.

881
01:14:13,160 --> 01:14:18,440
This hurts the individual, and it hurts any government looking to innovate.

882
01:14:18,440 --> 01:14:24,160
Looking at Central African Republic, he says, they tried to follow El Salvador, but a bunch

883
01:14:24,160 --> 01:14:28,040
of scammers with Sango Coin got to them first.

884
01:14:28,040 --> 01:14:32,680
To move forward, I think we need to write books, Femi says.

885
01:14:32,680 --> 01:14:36,080
That's scary for a lot of us because we haven't done it before.

886
01:14:36,080 --> 01:14:39,000
We don't know what the process is.

887
01:14:39,000 --> 01:14:45,040
He says that 16 or 17 years ago, he wanted to read a nonfiction book about Africa written

888
01:14:45,040 --> 01:14:49,760
by an African, and it was very hard to find one.

889
01:14:49,760 --> 01:14:56,200
Africa Unchained by the Ghanaian economist George Aite was one of the first he saw, but

890
01:14:56,200 --> 01:14:58,680
there were not many others like it.

891
01:14:58,680 --> 01:15:04,040
The problem is now, according to Femi, spilling over into the Bitcoin space.

892
01:15:04,040 --> 01:15:08,760
What his fellow B-Trust leader Abubakar Nur Khalil is doing with his Forbes columns is

893
01:15:08,760 --> 01:15:14,360
great, he says, but we need books and mentorship about how to get there.

894
01:15:14,360 --> 01:15:16,720
Femi thinks a lot could go wrong.

895
01:15:16,720 --> 01:15:22,280
He is wary of the power of Bitcoin billionaires as the currency continues to grow at scale.

896
01:15:22,280 --> 01:15:27,000
As an African, he says, we have seen that Bill Gates might have good intentions, but

897
01:15:27,000 --> 01:15:32,840
his foundation has massive influence on health care policy on the continent at the moment.

898
01:15:32,840 --> 01:15:37,800
Zuck may be great, but again, his corporation has huge influence here.

899
01:15:37,800 --> 01:15:41,960
So there's part of me that's afraid that even if the system is decentralizing, in

900
01:15:41,960 --> 01:15:46,800
a hyper-Bitcoinized world, there will still be people with outsized power.

901
01:15:46,800 --> 01:15:51,200
The real promise of Bitcoin is that everyone should have a fair shot.

902
01:15:51,200 --> 01:15:53,160
The world we live in is broken.

903
01:15:53,160 --> 01:15:57,680
The gap between the richest and poorest in every country has never been wider.

904
01:15:57,680 --> 01:16:02,440
Replicating these same imbalances in the Bitcoin world would be a failure.

905
01:16:02,440 --> 01:16:08,040
Despite this concern, Femi says that Africans cannot afford to stay on the sidelines.

906
01:16:08,040 --> 01:16:13,040
Bitcoin, he says, is inevitable and is already happening around us.

907
01:16:13,040 --> 01:16:17,200
He thinks it could change the existing global monetary system.

908
01:16:17,200 --> 01:16:22,400
What happens in Africa, he says, affects the way black people are treated everywhere in

909
01:16:22,400 --> 01:16:23,400
the world.

910
01:16:23,400 --> 01:16:28,640
Bitcoin is an opportunity to redefine the power system and power structure.

911
01:16:28,640 --> 01:16:34,080
His hope is that when Bitcoin achieves its full potential, Africa's place in the world

912
01:16:34,080 --> 01:16:38,120
will be different, independent and not dependent.

913
01:16:38,120 --> 01:16:44,120
I hate being from the continent that everyone just wants to help, he says.

914
01:16:44,120 --> 01:16:50,100
But the only way Africa truly benefits from the Bitcoin revolution, he says, is if Africans

915
01:16:50,100 --> 01:16:51,960
lead the way.

916
01:16:51,960 --> 01:16:56,300
The hope I have, he says, is not inevitable.

917
01:16:56,300 --> 01:16:58,480
We have to make it happen.

918
01:16:58,480 --> 01:16:59,480
7.

919
01:16:59,480 --> 01:17:02,480
A Glitch in the Matrix

920
01:17:02,480 --> 01:17:07,520
In Kenya, I got the chance to hear the origin story of Gridless from Philip.

921
01:17:07,520 --> 01:17:13,320
Ten years ago, he and Eric were discussing the Turkana Wind Farm, a huge 400 megawatt

922
01:17:13,320 --> 01:17:17,600
project built in Kenya that had no customers for years.

923
01:17:17,600 --> 01:17:22,240
The government had to pay 9 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour for nothing.

924
01:17:22,240 --> 01:17:26,840
This was because the architects wouldn't build the site without a guaranteed income

925
01:17:26,840 --> 01:17:29,800
flow from a government or anchor client.

926
01:17:29,800 --> 01:17:34,920
The situation is common, a take or pay contract.

927
01:17:34,920 --> 01:17:41,480
The worst part, Kenya has a lot of cheap geothermal power, but oftentimes it is actually kept offline

928
01:17:41,480 --> 01:17:46,960
because the government is already on the hook to pay for the expensive wind power.

929
01:17:46,960 --> 01:17:51,360
Eric and Philip watched this unfold and thought, what a disaster.

930
01:17:51,360 --> 01:17:54,880
They also thought, how could we address this?

931
01:17:54,880 --> 01:17:58,200
What's a power user that doesn't need a lot of connectivity?

932
01:17:58,200 --> 01:17:59,840
That's location agnostic.

933
01:17:59,840 --> 01:18:06,040
Initially, they thought about bringing an aluminum processing plant up to Turkana, but the logistics

934
01:18:06,040 --> 01:18:08,480
challenges were overwhelming.

935
01:18:08,480 --> 01:18:10,560
Then they thought about a data center.

936
01:18:10,560 --> 01:18:14,280
Better, but the internet wouldn't be good enough, they thought.

937
01:18:14,280 --> 01:18:17,080
Finally, the Eureka moment.

938
01:18:17,080 --> 01:18:19,240
Bitcoin could fix this.

939
01:18:19,240 --> 01:18:24,040
They laugh at how well they might have done if they had taken that risk a decade ago.

940
01:18:24,040 --> 01:18:27,080
Of course, it was early days back then.

941
01:18:27,080 --> 01:18:33,600
And mining at Turkana was an idea just a bit too crazy to leave their existing jobs for.

942
01:18:33,600 --> 01:18:40,000
It wasn't until 2022 that they finally got everything in place to make gridless happen.

943
01:18:40,000 --> 01:18:46,960
For many Africans, Bitcoin is a dual revolution, allowing communities to utilize stranded energy

944
01:18:46,960 --> 01:18:54,080
and at the same time, giving them access to a parallel global economy based on property

945
01:18:54,080 --> 01:18:58,840
rights, not borrowing from abroad with strict conditions.

946
01:18:58,840 --> 01:19:04,640
In the modern financial system, countries like Kenya, Malawi, and the DRC must obtain

947
01:19:04,640 --> 01:19:10,880
dollars or euros to buy planes, industrial equipment, fertilizer, oil, or even to pay

948
01:19:10,880 --> 01:19:12,200
back debt.

949
01:19:12,200 --> 01:19:15,560
Bombardier is not going to accept Quacha for payment.

950
01:19:15,560 --> 01:19:18,680
And printing Quacha to buy dollars is not an option.

951
01:19:18,680 --> 01:19:20,960
It crashes the local currency.

952
01:19:20,960 --> 01:19:26,360
So policymakers must focus on making stuff that the US or Europe or China wants instead

953
01:19:26,360 --> 01:19:28,800
of what the country needs.

954
01:19:28,800 --> 01:19:33,120
Only then can they earn dollars to be able to advance as a nation.

955
01:19:33,120 --> 01:19:35,880
It doesn't always have to be this way.

956
01:19:35,880 --> 01:19:40,560
If Bitcoin becomes a bigger and bigger piece of the global economy, African nations will

957
01:19:40,560 --> 01:19:46,840
be able to transform their energy into a global reserve currency without asking permission

958
01:19:46,840 --> 01:19:52,720
from or doing business with any empire or far away power.

959
01:19:52,720 --> 01:19:58,200
The relative amount of Bitcoin might not be huge, all things considered, but economics

960
01:19:58,200 --> 01:20:02,640
is all about the margins, where it could make a big difference.

961
01:20:02,640 --> 01:20:06,640
Today, Africa has 45 currencies.

962
01:20:06,640 --> 01:20:11,960
Intercontinental business is plagued by delays, bureaucracy, and rent seeking, especially

963
01:20:11,960 --> 01:20:13,680
from abroad.

964
01:20:13,680 --> 01:20:20,480
As of late 2022, 80% of all inter-African payments were processed by a European or American

965
01:20:20,480 --> 01:20:22,160
company.

966
01:20:22,160 --> 01:20:27,680
But in a Bitcoin world, Africans could trade with each other without paying what is essentially

967
01:20:27,680 --> 01:20:32,000
a tribute tax to former colonial powers.

968
01:20:32,000 --> 01:20:39,240
There would be no global rent seeking as someone in the DRC trades with someone in Kenya.

969
01:20:39,240 --> 01:20:43,600
It could be a truly peer-to-peer transaction.

970
01:20:43,600 --> 01:20:48,800
It's hard to say, of course, if things will transpire in this way, but all revolutions

971
01:20:48,800 --> 01:20:51,240
start small and grow.

972
01:20:51,240 --> 01:20:57,240
Today, individuals in Eastern Africa can already easily connect with their peers elsewhere

973
01:20:57,240 --> 01:21:03,760
on the continent in minutes or seconds, in a way that does not unduly benefit the West.

974
01:21:03,760 --> 01:21:09,960
Fundamental technologies like the plow, metallurgy, the steam engine, airplane, and the Internet

975
01:21:09,960 --> 01:21:15,640
have advanced civilization beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors.

976
01:21:15,640 --> 01:21:22,440
People today without question live longer and healthier lives than we did 1,000 or 5,000

977
01:21:22,440 --> 01:21:23,440
years ago.

978
01:21:23,440 --> 01:21:27,000
That's not to say it's always been positive.

979
01:21:27,000 --> 01:21:35,720
Colonialism, tyranny, slavery, the subjugation of women, and war remain scourges on the planet.

980
01:21:35,720 --> 01:21:41,320
One wonders what might come of a monetary revolution on par with the biggest inventions

981
01:21:41,320 --> 01:21:43,240
in human history.

982
01:21:43,240 --> 01:21:50,240
Morally speaking, it is hard to argue for today's system where approximately one billion people

983
01:21:50,240 --> 01:21:57,640
enjoy a globally accepted, freely tradable reserve currency, and seven billion earn wages in strictly

984
01:21:57,640 --> 01:22:01,240
inferior monetary technologies.

985
01:22:01,240 --> 01:22:06,880
The dominant currency is rescued at times by tactics like aggressive interest rate hikes

986
01:22:06,880 --> 01:22:14,680
that crush more than 150 other weaker currencies, depleting the wages of billions of people.

987
01:22:14,680 --> 01:22:19,120
Politics and markets have both played a role in creating this currency-cast system, and

988
01:22:19,120 --> 01:22:24,680
left alone, it seems it might only get more and more brutal, with peripheral currencies

989
01:22:24,680 --> 01:22:30,760
getting weaker and weaker, and dominant ones becoming more and more widespread.

990
01:22:30,760 --> 01:22:37,280
When the West suffers a financial collapse, ironically, people flock to the dollar.

991
01:22:37,280 --> 01:22:43,400
Where you are born should not determine the quality of your wages, and yet it does.

992
01:22:43,400 --> 01:22:52,800
Until now, Bitcoin is, without exaggeration, something like a glitch in the matrix, something

993
01:22:52,800 --> 01:22:57,800
that the current system did not expect and cannot process.

994
01:22:57,800 --> 01:23:03,240
If it continues to grow and expand, it will eventually take away the currency devaluation

995
01:23:03,240 --> 01:23:09,840
option that governments in Malawi and so many other places exercise to keep their corrupt

996
01:23:09,840 --> 01:23:12,040
operations afloat.

997
01:23:12,040 --> 01:23:18,320
They will have to resort to other options, higher taxes, or reduced government spending,

998
01:23:18,320 --> 01:23:24,680
but they will no longer be able to perpetrate mass theft at the press of a button.

999
01:23:24,680 --> 01:23:29,640
Three years ago, inspired initially by the 2020 Stone Ridge Shareholder Letter written

1000
01:23:29,640 --> 01:23:35,480
by Ross Stevens and confirmed by interviews with various Bitcoin miners, I wrote about

1001
01:23:35,480 --> 01:23:40,880
how Bitcoin would help bring a lot of new renewable power online in Africa, but I had

1002
01:23:40,880 --> 01:23:47,360
no idea at what scale, until I started to visit some of the gridless sites, and I had

1003
01:23:47,360 --> 01:23:52,880
time to think carefully about the implications, which are truly staggering.

1004
01:23:52,880 --> 01:23:58,200
For example, instead of a government trying to build power infrastructure by reckless borrowing,

1005
01:23:58,200 --> 01:24:03,640
selling off equity to foreigners, cutting fiscal expenditures, or raising taxes, why

1006
01:24:03,640 --> 01:24:07,520
not just design a strategy around mining Bitcoin?

1007
01:24:07,520 --> 01:24:13,360
Then you could send a team of researchers to map all the states, like Lake Navacha,

1008
01:24:13,360 --> 01:24:17,960
figure out the total wasted electricity at existing power generation sites, figure out

1009
01:24:17,960 --> 01:24:24,120
how many ASICs they could integrate, plot the income, and then take one last fiat loan

1010
01:24:24,120 --> 01:24:28,000
from the IMF or an international creditor.

1011
01:24:28,000 --> 01:24:34,160
As the years go by, the fiat payments to the IMF would get overshadowed by the appreciating

1012
01:24:34,160 --> 01:24:37,720
capital from the Bitcoin mining operations.

1013
01:24:37,720 --> 01:24:40,920
Eventually, they could be debt-free.

1014
01:24:40,920 --> 01:24:46,880
One also can't help but wonder about the fleets of older ASICs, no longer very profitable

1015
01:24:46,880 --> 01:24:51,680
with expensive Western electricity rates, but perfectly functional with the cheap or

1016
01:24:51,680 --> 01:24:55,540
free power being unlocked in Africa and the global south.

1017
01:24:55,540 --> 01:25:02,320
They could, and likely will, be a boon for off-grid miners in countries like Malawi.

1018
01:25:02,320 --> 01:25:03,960
Here's another thing.

1019
01:25:03,960 --> 01:25:10,920
Other events, trade wars, and financial crises might make energy very expensive in the West,

1020
01:25:10,920 --> 01:25:15,080
where miners might have to shut down in America or Europe.

1021
01:25:15,080 --> 01:25:22,160
But off-grid in Africa, this drama is irrelevant, and can mean even more Bitcoin for the local

1022
01:25:22,160 --> 01:25:23,160
miners.

1023
01:25:23,160 --> 01:25:27,000
It's not just what Bitcoin can do for Africa.

1024
01:25:27,000 --> 01:25:30,120
It's what Africa can do for Bitcoin.

1025
01:25:30,120 --> 01:25:36,800
If companies, and one day soon, nation-states and corporations, start converting the continent's

1026
01:25:36,800 --> 01:25:43,960
thousands of gigawatts of wasted and untapped hydro and geothermal and biomass energy into

1027
01:25:43,960 --> 01:25:50,360
capital, feeding all of that electricity into the Bitcoin network across a decentralized

1028
01:25:50,360 --> 01:25:56,800
and disconnected grid system, then we have a much more unstoppable global currency.

1029
01:25:56,800 --> 01:26:02,920
The kind of off-grid mining that makes economic sense to scale out across Africa can decentralize

1030
01:26:02,920 --> 01:26:05,720
Bitcoin and make it stronger.

1031
01:26:05,720 --> 01:26:11,200
Similarly, if the hundreds of millions of mobile money users of today never actually

1032
01:26:11,200 --> 01:26:16,640
get a bank account, but just move from M-Pesa to Bitcoin using their SIM cards through a

1033
01:26:16,640 --> 01:26:21,480
service like Machankura, the network becomes much more resilient.

1034
01:26:21,480 --> 01:26:26,720
I asked Eric and Philip about the time it would take for Bitcoin to start to truly transform

1035
01:26:26,720 --> 01:26:28,600
the continent.

1036
01:26:28,600 --> 01:26:34,200
Eric said that within 30 years, mining will help increase electricity access in Malawi

1037
01:26:34,200 --> 01:26:39,200
from 15% to close to 100%.

1038
01:26:39,200 --> 01:26:44,400
Philip said that Africa could, with Bitcoin's help, reach Northern Europe's per capita

1039
01:26:44,400 --> 01:26:48,600
electricity consumption by the end of the century.

1040
01:26:48,600 --> 01:26:56,240
But both agreed, Bitcoin adoption as a medium of exchange might happen much, much faster.

1041
01:26:56,240 --> 01:27:02,040
For hundreds of millions of people, it may not in the end be the United States or Bill

1042
01:27:02,040 --> 01:27:09,120
and Melinda Gates or the World Bank that bring them into the 21st century, but an open source

1043
01:27:09,120 --> 01:27:16,560
software network with no known inventor and controlled by no company or government.

1044
01:27:16,560 --> 01:27:23,400
For dozens of brilliant African entrepreneurs, this is the vision, and in a time where so

1045
01:27:23,400 --> 01:27:28,040
many are jaded about the world around them, it's a refreshing one.

1046
01:27:28,040 --> 01:27:33,400
The big problem that keeps us going every day, says Eric, is the number of people who

1047
01:27:33,400 --> 01:27:35,920
lack electricity on this continent.

1048
01:27:35,920 --> 01:27:38,120
It's impossible to comprehend.

1049
01:27:38,120 --> 01:27:42,560
Picture 1,000 people without power, he says.

1050
01:27:42,560 --> 01:27:43,960
Now 10,000.

1051
01:27:43,960 --> 01:27:45,320
Now 1 million.

1052
01:27:45,320 --> 01:27:47,560
Now 600 million.

1053
01:27:47,560 --> 01:27:48,560
You can't.

1054
01:27:48,560 --> 01:27:52,280
It's so egregious and unfathomable.

1055
01:27:52,280 --> 01:27:55,720
And without power, there is no freedom.

1056
01:27:55,720 --> 01:28:14,560
But now we can fix this problem and make money all at the same time.

1057
01:28:14,560 --> 01:28:20,120
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Out Loud episode of the Bitcoin Podcast.

1058
01:28:20,120 --> 01:28:25,520
If you are a Bitcoin-only company interested in sponsoring another fucking Bitcoin podcast,

1059
01:28:25,520 --> 01:28:27,680
head to bitcoinpodcast.net.

1060
01:28:27,680 --> 01:28:32,400
You can find me on Noster by going to primal.net slash walker.

1061
01:28:32,400 --> 01:28:37,680
And if you want to follow the Bitcoin Podcast on Twitter, go to At Walker America or at

1062
01:28:37,680 --> 01:28:39,480
TITCoin Podcast.

1063
01:28:39,480 --> 01:28:44,880
You can also find the video version of this podcast at youtube.com slash atwalkeramerica

1064
01:28:44,880 --> 01:28:47,760
or at Walker America on Rumble.

1065
01:28:47,760 --> 01:28:49,440
Bitcoin is scarce.

1066
01:28:49,440 --> 01:28:52,320
There will only ever be 21 million.

1067
01:28:52,320 --> 01:28:55,120
But Bitcoin podcasts are abundant.

1068
01:28:55,120 --> 01:29:01,840
So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast.

1069
01:29:01,840 --> 01:29:21,400
Until next time, stay free.