So I do feel like we need to have more voices like Bukele, you know, calling out the US Fed.
We need more voices. We need more leaders standing up to US government overreach because it is,
it is only to protect the war machine. It is only to protect their own interests. I mean,
we know this, right? It is only to protect the printing, endless money printing and to protect
the power and control that they have in the rest of the world. And it's so entrenched in all of our
lives. Think of one thing that you don't need to ask the government for permission for at this
point, right? There is so much. So I feel like we need to fight against that. And I feel like we
need to have more leaders that fight against that. And I think, I think it's Max that always says
this, like the dominoes are going to fall. I think it's time that we actually tip them the fuck over
and make them fall.
Suriname presidential candidate Maya Padabu. Maya first came on the Bitcoin podcast back in May.
And with the Suriname presidential elections only six months away, it felt like the right time to
get her back on the show. As you'll hear today, Maya is a bit coiner and an entrepreneur first,
and a politician second. We dig into a lot in this talk, including her plans to make Bitcoin
legal tender on day one, her vision for the future of her country, political corruption,
government control, radical transparency, grassroots Bitcoin adoption, why it is her goal
to make herself as the president irrelevant, and a whole lot more. It is truly inspiring to see young,
smart and optimistic people like Maya running for political office around the world. And I highly
recommend you follow her and support her however you can. You can donate to Maya's campaign via the
Geyser link in the show notes or by going directly to geyser.fund.com. Before we dive
into me a favor and subscribe to the Bitcoin podcast, wherever you're watching or listening,
give the show a boost on Fountain if you find it valuable. And if you're not using Fountain.fm for
your podcast, what the heck are you doing? You could be earning Bitcoin just for listening to
the show. Check out Bitcoinpodcast.net for additional resources and episodes. Head to the
show notes to grab discount links for my sponsor, Bitbox and other partners, or go directly to
bitbox.swiss slash Walker and use the promo code Walker for 5% off and send an email to
hello at Bitcoinpodcast.net. If you have any feedback or if you're interested in sponsoring
the Bitcoin podcast, without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk with Maya Paribu.
When did we talk last? Maya, was it beginning of this year? It feels like it's been a while
and a lot's happened, but it's good to see you again.
Yeah, it has been a while. I do think it's early this year, yeah. I honestly don't remember. Time
has been going so fast. It's like a roller coaster ride. Yeah, well, you've been both in
Surinam, but then also you were just at Bitcoin Amsterdam, right? The panel there with Frank
was awesome. I really enjoyed that, but that looks like it was quite a great event. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. So I decided after volunteering at most of the conferences last year, I just wanted
to do whatever I could for adoption or just to volunteer and contribute to the community.
It kind of a bit, I think, drained and exhausted at the end of it. So I decided this year to only
do a few and they had asked me pretty early on. So I didn't really know what to expect,
but I felt like Amsterdam, it makes sense because we have a large Surinamese community there, almost
the same as our population in Surinam is in the Netherlands. So it seemed like the right place.
And then I also get to visit my family who I haven't seen in a year as well. So
it gives me the opportunity to see them too. So I picked that one and I picked Adopted Bitcoin
just because I'll solve it in our Bitcoin country. So those two for this year. And yeah,
it was crazy. I didn't expect it to be like that, to be honest. I didn't know that the room would
be packed. It was the first conference where my mom came and my dad, stepdad. That's awesome.
And yeah, until now, for her, it's been like, oh, okay, she's talking about her imaginary friends,
the Bitcoin community, these people she always talks about. She has no idea who's who or what's
really happening. And for her, it was this realization, like, huh, this thing is real.
And I think we were sitting in the last row and you could kind of hear when the, I think the panel
was at 3.30pm. And then like a minute or a few minutes before you could actually like hear a
stampede kind of noise of people like walking up the stairs and then filling the room and then
surrounding the seats and the balcony upstairs. And I was already heading up to the podium to get
on stage. And like my jury, one of our team members in Dallas, he was sitting with my mom and my
mom goes like, why are all these people here? And then jury goes like, yeah, they're here for Maya.
And my mom's like, it couldn't process. So she started crying. And apparently she was like,
you know, they confused as to why people were like cheering. And she was super proud. But
I think it was, it was a real shock to them to kind of, because yeah, for them, it's, it's,
you know, intangible. They don't really follow much of what I do up until like this first time
where they were actually there. So that was funny. I mean, I can imagine she's a pretty proud mama.
But you know, I mean, I was obviously not there, but watching the stream and you definitely had a
packed house there. And I think people like you could just sense kind of the excitement in the
room too. And I think it was, you know, kind of similar to when Bukele was talking about
the things you, you know, the fact that El Salvador was going to be adopting Bitcoin when he was at
the conference, what, two or three years ago now. And I think people get really excited even when
it's not their own, you know, not their own country where this is happening. But because
they view it as, okay, this is like another domino that's starting to fall. This is another,
another, you know, potential leader, another, you know, presidential candidate who's saying,
I believe in Bitcoin and I believe that Bitcoin is going to do great things for my country. And
by the way, my country needs some change, like some drastic change. And I mean, same in El Salvador,
and I think very much the same in Suriname. Like there's from everything you've told me, and just
from my own research, and there is a lot of corruption there. And that seems to be, I mean,
that's, you know, there's corruption everywhere. But I think oftentimes it's maybe more blatant,
it's less hidden in some of these, you know, smaller countries, because they're, you know,
the people in power have been in power for a while, they know they can get away with it,
and they don't even maybe try to hide it too well anymore. I don't know.
No, this, this government is worse than the last, and it's been getting, it's been getting
like, significantly worse every five years, so every elections for the, like for the past 15 years,
it's been getting significantly worse every, every cycle. And this, this government is next level.
They really do not care. Like healthcare right now is, is, is completely gone to shit. And
like the Red Cross, for example, they, they put out a notice in the newspapers today that they
don't have all the equipment or materials that they need to process blood. So they won't be able
to do transfusions or blood, anything, basically no testing, no transfusions, anything at any of
the hospitals in the country. So, and while that's going on, our president is traveling from
Kurosawa to Aruba to Miami and heading to Columbia. Like, and that's one of the things that he actually
won the election on. He was, he said, he's not going to travel as much, like, and they're traveling
more and they're traveling more while everything is collapsing here. So it's, you know, it's like,
they have no, no conscious whatsoever. Like the, and the minister of, of, of health, like, I, I
really wonder how that man sleeps at night, just knowing how many people die and the situation
that he's in charge of and why he's even a minister is still like, nobody gets it. And the guy is just
so arrogant, like he doesn't care at all. And it has been getting worse and worse and worse. And
everybody's just tired. We really do need drastic change, similar to El Salvador.
And I have, I have a lot of things I want to get into with you today, but maybe for,
for folks who, you were on the show before, that I'm still one of my favorite episodes that I've
done in it. I know what people really liked getting to know you a bit. And so, but I want it for
people maybe who have not yet watched that show. Can you just give maybe a little bit of a background
on who you are and, but also why you decided to throw your hat in the ring to run for president
in Suriname. I mean, running for president is no, you know, small task. It opens you up to a ton of
potential public scrutiny and attacks and all sorts of things. Like it's not a decision anyone
ever takes lightly. How did you get to this point where you said, I need to run for president?
Well, yeah, so I've been in an entrepreneur since I was about 15 years old. I have a,
my family has a pretty long legacy in the country. And my dad was a well known entrepreneur. We were
the wealthiest family in the country. And then my dad was murdered and we lost everything. And then
when I was 15, I kind of out of necessity started working and then, you know, wanted a house, wanted
a home for me and mom. So started working at 15 and basically just out of something that I myself
wanted, I wanted to order, you know, stuff, be able to order stuff on, on Amazon developed an
an import company, you know, that where you could order stuff online and people by my friends and
then other clients customers, they could order stuff through me and I'd get it all the way here.
And then about a decade ago, I started another company with my CTO, who's a civil engineer.
So diversified into a completely different industry, aside from logistics into infrastructure. So
we started building roads, dams, dykes. We've built several ports done work engineering work on
ports we've done engineering work for F1 track in Dubai. So that, that would, you know, as an
exciting business and it was bootstrapped. So we started with zero investment and just, you know,
grit, basically, and we scaled that to about 5.8 million. And that allowed us to invest into
something else. And I, like, I grew up with tech. My dad was always obsessed with the newest
innovations we had, you know, before the computers came out, they already had like he had the
telegram, all the stenograph, all the, all the basically everything for that predated even,
you know, my time. He had all the latest innovations. And, you know, I grew up with
computers pulling them apart, putting them back together. I'm the DOS generation. So I grew up
playing games on DOS. And then basically, I had this love for tech and math, like math was the only
class I still attended my graduation year of high school. Because I felt like that was the only one
that was interesting. And I graduated and then I started selected econometrics, which is also a
study that's 99% math calculus, algebra, matrix algebra, computational modeling, MATLAB, it's
all the, you know, software coding and math. So out of that, basically, that all the passion for
for for that, I fell in love with Bitcoin when I read the white paper, a friend shared it, Ed,
Ed shared the white paper with me. And when I read it, I fell in love with the algorithm.
And, you know, the story behind it, knowing, you know, growing up, being a fan of anonymous,
being a fan of anti establishment, anti government, and seeing the 2008 crisis and that cycle that
keeps happening, you know, the dot com 2008, every 10 years, you have this orchestrated cycle to,
you know, reboot the market, basically. I fell in love with the white paper, but it was still
early days. And, you know, I was, I was pretty broke at the time, just survival mode, trying to
pay pay the mortgage here at 19% interest. So I just kind of followed it, kept an eye on it. I
also thought, thought, you know, it's too early, what if a government is able to, you know, screw
the whole thing up in some way. And then when WikiLeaks happened, that's when I knew this is
this is unstoppable, right? Because every government would want to stop that, but they couldn't,
they couldn't prevent donations from being sent. So that's when I kind of knew like, okay, this is,
this is going to last, it's going to be forever. And I decided for myself, like, I want to
spend the rest of my life working on this. So we had funds to invest. And I looked at, you know,
it was developed after the 2008 crisis because of that centralized system, not just
reserve, like fractionalized reserve banking, but the whole system, you know, like,
intercontinental exchange, fortress, intercontinental exchange owns all the exchanges almost
in internationally. So they control all the capital markets globally. And these financial
institutions basically control the world's economies. So you look at that system, and then
I looked at Suriname, and we have no capital market. We have no developed financial infrastructure
whatsoever. I mean, if you look at everything that was developed since PayPal, we have none of
that here, right? Like we barely have websites. We know online payments, no payment processors,
our POS infrastructure is very outdated. So we had none of that at the time. And just based off of
my own history, like paying 19% interest in a mortgage, that is also a causality of, you know,
an undeveloped capital market in my own companies needing to scale from zero bootstrap to 5.8
million, you need funding to finance purchase orders. And we were fortunate enough to get credit
from our suppliers, you know, to do the whole Dunn and Bradstreet process, do diligence, and
you get approved, and then you're able to fulfill orders. And we grew that relationship and that
credit line over time. But most companies can't do that here. And the interest rates you have to
pay at the bank make you immediately not competitive, you know, you're like, completely blown out of
the market. So facing all those problems, I thought, okay, this is really limiting the growth of our
economy and the wealth of our people, right? Because people can't really diversify into any
other assets. And pension funds also can't really diversify into other assets. So everything is
stuck in SRD and SG's inflating massively every year. So everybody's losing a lot of value,
and they don't have anywhere to put it into. And it's just this, even in a free and open market
where it's not like that centralized, manipulated and controlled, as you as you could see, you know,
with the GameStop saga, prove that that market is very manipulated. Even in a free market,
how it should work is that your best performers, you know, you can invest into them, and then you
get a return for that. Because not everybody's going to be an entrepreneur, not everybody's going to
be successful, not anybody can create that return. So we still need that dynamic here. And that's
when I tried to, you know, that's where I basically started to figure out, how are we going to do this?
And how can I make Bitcoin the core of it? Like, how can you build this new system
that was supposed to be developed, you know, ever since Satoshi launched this thing? How can you build
it without replicating that old system, right? And we have the opportunity here to do it from
scratch because we don't have that infrastructure whatsoever. So it's a unique situation. And
back in the day, like 2018, when we launched the exchange, we had no idea how to peg it to Bitcoin.
The technology wasn't really there yet. You know, you could, and there's no way to
to account for the fluctuation, right? If you tie a stock or peg a stock to Bitcoin,
that stock wouldn't massively fluctuate and a company could not manage its liquidity properly. So
that was a bit of a risk. So we just decided, okay, we're going to peg it somehow to, you know,
just you as all are stable. And started working on that, started working with the central bank.
And that's kind of how I ended up all the way here with a lot of struggles in corruption,
basically losing, I think about 700K, all of our savings on that, because the governor was locked
up. And then afterward, we were working with the minister of finance and then his son killed his,
son in law killed his grandson. And that put it kind of a stop in that, you know, because it's a
national stock exchange of a country. So you do have to work with, you know, existing government.
And at a certain point, I got tired of waiting constantly. So I decided to focus on just using
my talent and my skills to develop something outside of Suriname that I could, you know,
when I have enough network, when I've grown my network, when I have enough resources,
could come back and then, you know, implement change here. And then I couldn't let go, of course,
even I was, I was going back and forth between Suriname and Switzerland, I couldn't let go.
And that's how Daedalus Lab came to be. And I went to Bitcoin Miami last year. And that's
where I met Samson. And then I started asking, like, okay, how, how do I get the Bitcoin bonds
in Suriname? How do I get corporate bonds in Suriname? And at Lugano last year, actually,
they told me I need to speak to Samson, spoke to Samson at Bitcoin Miami, lobbied for Suriname
again, and then started working with Gen three, connecting them to our current government. And
then we've, we've, we've had meetings for about a year, or sorry, a couple of months, about started
about a year ago, or now started in May last year. So okay, a lot longer than a year ago.
And then after all of those meetings, connected him to the central bank, the banking commission,
the largest financial institutions here, basically every key player in the industry.
He came over in November last year with this team. And they had several meetings here, met the
president, coordinated or organized, orchestrated all of that for them. And, you know, the president
was very adamant about making Bitcoin legal tender and being a leader, a global leader,
similar to Bukele, and following in that example. And then he didn't follow through.
And I found out why he didn't follow through, you know, I mean, of course, there's some pressure
from from IMF and World Bank. But there's there's also an advisor of his that's been mining Bitcoin
since 2021, that told me he doesn't want too much attention on, you know, his mining operation.
So he did he wanted it all to stay on a download and making Bitcoin legal tender would, you know,
attract too much attention to the country. So when I heard that, that was, you know,
what broke the camel's back for me. Samson had already like kind of nudge meets. So I keep blaming
him. But he's a he's the one that actually said like, you should just run. So it was kind of
already in my head. And when this happened, I was just so tired of all the corruption. And you kind
of know that these next elections are going to be crucial for our country's development. Like,
this is the last chance we have. If we don't do something differently in these next elections,
they're going to steal the oil royalties that we're going to get starting 2028. And
then they're never going to lose grip of this country. And it's going to be Venezuela after
that, right? Because it's going to be a corrupt government that has too much capital and just
stays in place because they have too much capital. So we know this is our last shot. And that's when
I just it took me a couple of months because, you know, it's not a decision that you make lightly.
I put my family's life in danger. I put my own life in danger. You know, I already have a bit
of a legacy here. So I already have received threats. And they already, you know, after the
interview came out of revealing corruption, they already told me like it would be just easier to
to liquidate me or to clean me up. So it wasn't a decision that I took lightly. You also lose your
privacy, right? Your entire life is basically just that. So after a couple of months of back
and forth, I decided that the whole end also talking to, you know, politicians here talking to
people that would have to support people in the private sector, keep people in this in this country
and just general population, you know, talking to just normal people. I felt that the support was
there or is there. So and they really do want change and they don't have an alternative right now.
There's no leader that has a vision on how to actually develop this nation, fix problems that
are currently here and diversify the economy, you know, without just like taking money and
trying to just throw money at the problem and stealing half of it. Anyway, that's what most of
them are. They're just career politicians and all of them are mostly old and have a history of
corruption. So with all of that, I kind of decided like, okay, you know, it's worth it to do this
and to try and to give it my best shot. I mean, it's not just your name to write. It's a chance to
have Bitcoin be the unit of account. It's a chance to actually separate money from state.
And though I have a lot of respect for for book, and what he was able to do, you know,
changing his country from the murder capital of the world to what it is today and everything
that he's done there. I don't feel like I'm like like him. And I don't feel like I want to do the
same things in the country. I approach a lot of things differently. I feel like we should prioritize
open source software, open source development a lot more. I feel like, you know, they have US dollar
as as their main currency, we have the SRT Bitcoin should be our de facto currency, separating money
from state completely and requiring us to build our economy on a Bitcoin standard and being fully
transparent. And I actually don't want to be the face, you know, I don't want to be on on stages
for the rest of my life for four for a decade. I want to make sure that I don't have to be in charge
as soon as possible. Right. If we do this, right, if we build it out, even if it takes five years
or six years, or or a decade, hopefully, we can actually achieve sooner rather than later, that
I don't need to be president, that we don't need a president even, right, just imagine, like the
monarchs died off in the, you know, didn't die off. But I mean, they were replaced in the 20th
century, right. So I feel like it's time for politicians to disappear. I feel like it's time
for sovereign nations for centralized authority to to to disappear. Bitcoin has been in existence for
15 years, right? It's time. And I feel like when I talk to a lot of people, they're like, oh, yeah,
but unit of account is the last cycle in the evolution. And, you know, it's going to take
decades before that happens. But why? Like, why, why is it taking so long? Why is why are we 15 years
ahead? And, you know, most of the resources have gone to Ethereum and Solana and blockchain projects.
And most of the, like, most of the Bitcoin companies don't have capital. There's not enough
resources for open source development or open source project. You know, if Jack Dorsey didn't
put money in and things like open sats didn't exist, a lot of these companies wouldn't have funding.
Most of them are struggling. A lot is centralized. There's and there's a lot of unnecessary
competition and ego and a lot of fiat mentality, I feel in in this in, you know, even in the Bitcoin,
like maxi space, like, even if you don't like me, you're not supposed to care, right? We're supposed
to be working towards the same goal. And the goal is fighting the existing system, changing the status
quo. And I feel like you have everybody's fighting to make a wallet, everybody's fighting to make,
make, you know, the next cool thing or the next layer to or the next this or the next that.
What about if we just collectively focus on actually changing the status quo, right? This is
something that it takes six months. The elections are in six months. It doesn't cost a billion plus
dollars like it does in the US. And you don't have the fight with the Fed. Because let's be honest,
you know, he might be pro Bitcoin, he might he's going to incorporate like a crypto law, it's not
going to be a Bitcoin only law, right? It's going to be a crypto law. And it's not like the system
isn't going to change. He's not going to decentralize the New York stock exchange and suddenly change
the dynamics or inequality. And the like the top 1% isn't suddenly going to give give their power
away, right? FATF is going to just be just as much of a, sorry, just as much of a problem globally as
it is right now. I feel like we need to fight that. I feel like we need to fight that centralization.
And we have a unique chance here to do it. And I feel like we should be putting all of our weight
into it. I've been ranting. I'm sorry. No, I told you this is always a safe space for rants. And
there's there's a lot to unpack there. But one of the things that stuck out to me the most the
first time you came on the show, and you just brought it up again was this idea that you want to
make yourself like if you become president, your goal is to make yourself redundant, make yourself
irrelevant, basically, remove the need for you to be there. You don't want to have to be the one
who's there steering the ship in order for the ship to sail successfully. You want to be able to,
you know, give that ship an autonomous navigation system and let it go basically. And I love that
because that is never something you hear from politicians these days. And I think it's because
you're, you know, you're a Bitcoiner first and a politician, you know, because you felt that you
kind of had to, right? But I think that that's really important, this idea that you don't want
to stick around forever. You don't want to have to be the one who is always needing to be there or
everything is going to fall apart and go to hell. You want to put systems in place that are going
to allow the country and the people to be prosperous and to be successful and to remove the ability
to have such widespread corruption. I think something else you've touched on a lot is just
transparency. And I want to get into a couple points here, but maybe the first place to start is
I think a lot of people think, you know, they hear a lot of different talk about Bitcoin legal
tender laws and things like that. You're talking about not just making Bitcoin legal tender,
but actually making Bitcoin the de facto money of choice, like getting rid of the
certainties dollar, not dollarizing the way many other countries do. How quickly can you
put something like that into effect? Like when, I should say no, not if when you are elected
president, excuse me. How quickly like, what do you view as the timeline for being able to make
something like that happen? Are there any, do you anticipate any roadblocks being put up by,
say, the IMF? Because we know they're not the biggest Bitcoin fans. The reason the IMF hates
Bitcoin is because they know it gives individuals and nation states the power to give the IMF
the middle finger. And if you want to be able to give the middle finger to monetary cloning lists
at the IMF and greedy central bankers alike, go to bitbox.swiss slash Walker and use the promo code
Walker for 5% off the fully open source Bitcoin only Bitbox 02 hardware wallet, then get your
Bitcoin off the exchange and into your own self custody. The Bitbox team is great and they build
easy to use secure open source solutions to keep your Bitcoin safe. And maybe you don't think your
Bitcoin is worth a lot now. So you're leaving it on an exchange, but things can change very quickly.
And you don't want to be caught with your pants. Plus, and I cannot emphasize this enough, but the
Bitbox 02 is really just easy as hell to use. Whether you are brand new to Bitcoin, and it's
your first time setting up a hardware wallet. So you're a little bit nervous, or you're a well
seasoned psychopath, and you can set up a hardware wallet in your sleep. Again, the Bitbox 02 is
fully open source, you can head to their GitHub and you can verify that for yourself. Don't trust
me or Bitbox. And remember, when you go to bitbox.swiss slash Walker and use the promo code Walker,
not only do you get 5% off a great piece of open source hardware or anything else in their store,
but you also help support this podcast. So seriously, thank you.
Well, you know, it depends a lot on particularly how much, how much capital we can, for example,
raise with a bond, right? And we do have something on our side that El Salvador didn't, we have oil
royalties flowing in starting 2028. So you have 2.8 billion, about a billion, depending on how much
they subtract for, you know, exploration costs. But we have capital that's going to be flowing
in starting 2028, where you can do a derivative, basically, of future receivables. And you can
start receiving that capital now, right? Or, and, you know, at a discount, of course, for investors,
but make it available for development of the country. And our IMF loan, our debt is not that
big, to be honest. And our, our Oppenheimer bond is controlled by us, like a handful of people
in this country that stole money from the country. So their corrupt funds are even, you know,
like, you know, it's a, it's this orchestrated bond that is capturing most of the royalties that come
from natural resources in this country. So we have natural resources about, we have gold in the
ground, you know, there's a gold mine that has not been developed yet, that has more than a million
troy ounce in gold deposits. So we have the resources to be able to get rid of IMF, to not
need to be dependent on IMF. And that they're definitely going to have a problem with, you know,
and all of this, you know, just making Bitcoin legal tender, that's something that can be done in
a day. It just needs, it's executive order that's, you know, like, we're elected in May,
inaugurate after inauguration, it's the first thing you can do. It's just like, it's a one-day
thing. It's an executive order by the Foreign Exchange Commission. It's a one-pager that just
needs to be issued. You don't need to go through Parliament for it. You don't need to change any
laws. So legal tender we can do immediately. But making it the unit of account for that,
we will need to have a structured process to it. So for that, we've created a transformation commission
and we're rounding up Austrian economists right now. Philip Bagas is leading that team. And my
program manager, Stefan Andronis, he is leading the whole program so that once elected, all this
can actually be rolled out. And how quickly we can roll it out depends on, you know, whether we're
able to issue that bond to, for example, pay off IMF sooner or strategically come up with a solution
for that. And how we transition from the SRD to Bitcoin as a unit of account, what laws need to
be changed. How quickly we implement that. I think it can be done in a year, to be honest. You know,
similar to Bukele being able to massively change the country within a year. I do think that we're
small, we're agile. Our economy is not that big, right? It's a pretty small economy. It's a pretty
small sized population. So you can actually transition into it faster. And the reason why I
say that is because it's not the first time that a currency has been replaced. It's happened a couple
of times a year before. And basically, we also have a dollar and a euro, you know, as legal tender
insert. So people do also use euro and dollar. So if they want to hedge, you know, or diversify risk
away from from Bitcoin, they can also, you know, just use dollar and euro like they're used to.
I wouldn't be, I don't feel like we should also force people, you know, to only use Bitcoin.
I feel like they should still have some freedom of choice. Even if the, you know, the fiat world
will be collapsing. Eventually, they will see that it is worthless over time, you know, in comparison
to Bitcoin. But I think we have a unique chance to actually separate money from state. And like
you said, right, it's, there's not many people in the world that would give up power. Most people
want power. And like, I don't want power. I don't want the spotlight. I don't want to be like, I
hate doing this to be honest. I hate podcasts. I hate talking and I hate like hearing myself
afterwards. So I don't know what ever watched them. So preferably I'd not, I wouldn't have to do this.
Preferably I would not have to go on stage preferably I would not have to fly to a conference
and do all of that and do all these interviews and do all this to be honest. Preferably I would just,
you know, I'm pretty much an introvert. I would just like to live my own life and in my little bubble.
So I do think we have a unique chance to change things and to show the rest of the world that it
can be done and how it can be done, similar to, you know, where El Salvador let in the charge. I think
we can make, make an example of what a country can actually be like if you don't have centralized
leadership. I mean, just look at Switzerland, right? You don't, I don't know who leads Switzerland.
If you show me a face, I wouldn't recognize them to be honest. I think I recognize the
mayor of Lugano before I know who's, oh, you know, on the federal team to be honest. Right. So
I feel like it could be here and I feel like technology is there. Right. We're in the,
we're in 2024. Technology is already far enough for us to be able to do this. So why wouldn't we do
it? Why wouldn't we want a country where, you know, you wouldn't lock up Samurai, right? Where
you wouldn't lock up Julian Assange, where freedom is just embedded into the law
and human rights are actually protected and open source development is actually stimulated
versus a Google or a Facebook or Instagram, right? Where you actually focus on supporting
innovative open source solutions that empower the new internet, that, that empower, you know, protocols
like Bitcoin and Oster. So the technology is, the tech is already there. The tech is already there
for like who's going to build the roads? We can build a platform that decides who builds the roads
transparently, right? That isn't vulnerable to corruption. The technology is already there.
Like why aren't we doing it? Why is the world still this shit? Why is there so much poverty?
Why is there so much war? It's that same centralized system. And we say Bitcoin fixes this,
but if we don't fucking do anything, when is it going to fix it? Right? Are we going to have
World War three before Bitcoin actually fixes it? Or is this an actual opportunity for us to
actually fix it? So I feel like we should all be like fighting for this. And we're working towards
the same common goal. And instead of like, you know, having egos play, I need to build a
build multi billion that like who the fuck cares about the fiat value anyway, I'm sorry.
Who cares about the fiat value? Alright, who cares about it anyway? It's not going to matter.
Like if, if, if we all get nuked, like probably we won't work South America, nobody cares. But
if, if, if Europe goes back into war, if the Middle East escalates, if the US gets attacked or
China escalates, if any of this escalates, and it actually happens. And if we keep going the way
we're going and then 80% of the world, you know, poverty increases, the wealth gap increases,
like where are we even heading? And why are we not like making a like a decision
to change it now when we actually have the chance, right? And I don't know, I like, I, I
see for example, like Madera getting so much support. But Madera is European, right? It's EU.
Do you really think the ECB is not going to fight for CBDCs? Do you really think that the US is not
going to fight for Fed now? Do you really think that these large powers aren't going to fight for
more control? And if it's not them, don't you think that that Sam Elman like broke, you know,
broke with the name of the thing again, World Coin? Yeah. Yeah. Don't you think that centralized
powers like that aren't going to, you know, enforce their will? Like everything, everyone's,
it looks like is, is placing their bets on these countries that are in these jurisdictions where
you are fighting against the ECB. And then eventually after a while, nothing really comes out of it.
Like nothing really changes, nothing really substantial happens, right? And then you can
tell me, okay, low time preference. Sure. Great. But I have six months here. How about we
try it here and try it a little bit differently this time.
Amen. And I think that what you said is so important about this, the technology exists
right now. We have the ability to make substantive change. But so much effort is perhaps more focused
on just the NGU component rather than the freedom go up component. People forget that it's, yeah,
it's really nice, you know, Bitcoin's this incredible technology, but it doesn't really
mean much unless you actually use it for what it is, which is a way to separate money and state.
And I think at least in America, the narrative seems to have very much shifted. And I won't cast a
blanket on everybody, but a lot of what I've seen has been more so. Well, you know, this is actually
going to be something that very much strengthens the US dollar and, you know, the institutions are
already here. And that's, that's actually a good thing. And like, yeah, you know, Bitcoin's for
anyone who wants it. Of course, the institutions we're going to show up. Of course, if the United
States has smart politicians, they are going to try and print dollars and buy Bitcoin, it would be
stupid of them not to, right? But at the same time, I think what you just said about remembering
that the point of this is actually the separation of money and state. And thankfully, as long as
Bitcoin remains decentralized and secure, any government is free to print dollars or euros
into buy Bitcoin, that doesn't mean that they control Bitcoin. And it's still not in their
interest to try and subvert the network because then, you know, their investment becomes worthless.
And, you know, we fork off and things get dark for a while, but then the strongest chain still
emerges. But I'm curious kind of, you know, you have such a great focus on actually using technology,
using technology for the betterment of people. And for again, making yourself eventually redundant.
And you've talked about transparency a lot as well. One of the things that you've, you've talked
about in the last time we talked, but then also at your talk in Amsterdam, was this idea of like a
sovereign wealth fund or universal basic income, but not in the typical way that people think about
it. You've talked about actually using the liquid network to distribute this to make it all completely
transparent and traceable. And at the same time, being able to get rid of income taxes entirely,
because CERNM is such a resource rich country, as long as the resources aren't being stolen by
corrupt officials, right? And the money from that. So can you talk about that a little bit more in
kind of your vision for how, what kind of changes do people end up seeing if, if and when you get
into power and you're able to say, okay, we're getting rid of this corruption because we're
making things transparent. Do you still plan to, you know, get rid of income taxes to, to try and
have a new form of UBI as well based on, based on resources? Yeah, I mean, right now, and you know,
the point is getting, making myself redundant, making government redundant, right? Making everything
just surfaces based, focus on the people, because that's what government's supposed to be. It's
supposed to serve the people, right? But there's also a lot of power that goes to government because
they have these resources and they have the power over these natural resources and any of the power
over these royalties, right? If you decentralize the, the, the flow of royalties and the flow of
income, for example, from that sovereign wealth fund and flow that directly to the people, then
there's no longer government control over those natural resources and the majority of the wealth
and wealth, wealth goes directly to the people. And I, I think that that transparency, then that
level of, you know, just basically funds going directly to where they're supposed to be instead
of having these intermediaries, I think that's going to have a massive effect of like impact on
just the economy, right? Because that's going to create this, this flywheel where, where people
can actually just decide for themselves what they want to do with their own money. Like if you
look at, for example, in Europe, the majority of my family lives in the Netherlands and, you know,
they're complaining about government overreach, about the increase in taxes, the exit tax that's
coming, you know, it's, it's constant basically government taking, and I've seen it, you know, evolve
over the last 35 years as I go back and forth between Europe and here, government keeps going
deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into their pockets, right? And controlling almost
every aspect of their life. Like when I'm in Europe, I feel so claustrophobic almost, right?
Like everything is controlled. You're not, like you're not free. So after like three, three weeks
to three and a half weeks, I really feel the need to come back here. So you want to prevent that from
happening here. But you also want to, you know, when we, when we change how the economy, if you
change the mechanics of how an economy works, if you're building this system that Satoshi intended
that we built, that it's not centralized where you have, you know, not inequality, but actually funds
flowing directly to the people you don't have the fractional reserve, banking system, you don't have
the central bank controlling, you know, the reserve requirement, for example, a percentage of the
people's money, you don't have this centralization of capital, but you have full transparency over
that economy. I think you can, you know, like Elon right now is focusing on efficiency in government,
right? Just imagine a small population, 600,000. It's 7% of the country that is populated. It's
very small in terms of area. It's like a little town, you know, it's like a little U.S. town,
if you want to imagine what it looks like. It's old colonial buildings in the city. There's no
towers. There's no skyscrapers. It's not, you know, what you're used to in any city. Just imagine
how you can kind of like, I can like see it in front of me if I get this image of, I was at
MIT Media Lab and they had this Lego structure for how they rebuilt cities and are making like green
cities in Spain and in France. And I'm looking at it and I think we can just do the same thing with
our city, but do the same thing with the economy. Just pick the pieces, rearrange them. And since
it's right now, resources basically flowing to salaries anyway, you know, like half of our working
population works for government. So it's basically already, you know, going to the people, but now
it's going in a way where it's government in between and it's inefficient and, you know,
we have inflation and inflation is like, what, 50, 60%? So it's taking a lot of their wealth anyway.
So if you have these resources going directly to the people, you have Bitcoin as a unit of account.
So everybody's earning their salary in Bitcoin, right? You transition just one day similar to
what they did with the other currency, just one day where everybody exchanges or has to exchange
their current currency for new currency. You finance that, the transition of that basically.
Then you have this entire transparent system where everybody's just free to transact globally,
right? Without limitations because I'm not going to create a cheaper wallet.
Like people have a wallet of choice, like they can do, you know, if they want to do a strike,
they can do a strike. If they want to do blink, they can do blink. I really do not care. I feel
feel very strongly about being a free and open market and people having choice, right? And
if it being open source. So we don't want centralization. We don't want control of people's
transactions and wallets. So I think that will create an economy of abundance for everyone
immediately. And I think it'll just like rapidly change this country within a very short time frame.
I think two, three years this country could be maybe one of the most developed in the world.
And develop does not have to look like, you know, skyscrapers. It doesn't have to look like,
you know, concrete jungle. It could just be paradise. And it can just be paradise with,
you know, a lot of green, but just happy people living instead of in this mill, you know, this,
this another brick wall factory, just living life. Like, I think we had this conversation in Prague
about family, you know, and going back to family values and just like making family a priority
and making just life a priority. And I feel like Bitcoiners have that because you, I don't know,
if you're if you're deep enough down the rabbit hole, you start reprioritizing your life, right?
And your time. And I feel like if you have an entire country where everybody just does that.
And I think a prime example is, I think it was a gridless commercial or a FETI commercial,
one of the two. And they were, they were, they had the guy had this machine that was making his,
like his production skills better from this village, right? But at the end of the commercial,
they asked him, like, what does he really want? And then at the end of the video, he says he wants
to make more kids. So, you know, beautiful. Yeah, at the end of the video, all he wants, like,
he doesn't care about being more productive or making more money, or he just cared about, you
know, increasing the size of his family and making more kids. So I think, I think we can make a real
shift here, you know, to what we really focus on. I mean, we can focus on, on, you know,
certain industries, like I would love to have a large Hadron collider here. I would love to have
nuclear mini reactors here. Like I would love to have that be our main source of energy. I,
I'd love to have a launch base here, you know, Elon needs needs to decrease the price of his
payloads. And we're five degrees from the equator. So it would make it more efficient and cheaper to,
to launch rockets from here similar to next door in French Guyana. You know, less rocket fuel,
more payload, basically, so more profit. So I'd love to have something like that here, for example,
and, you know, things that don't need to destroy the, you know, the entire Amazon rainforest,
because I feel like we have beautiful, pristine nature here. And it really like, once you go into
it, it refreshes your soul. Like you feel like a completely new and different human being. And
you're so grounded. And it's, it's, it's different than anywhere else that I've, I've seen like in
Bali or beaches anywhere else in the world. It's, it's just a different feeling, because it's like
you go back in time, I don't know what 1000 years or something, and you go out into nature. So I feel
like we need to preserve that. And I think we have a unique opportunity to change how people live,
and, you know, it just, just like with the campaign alone, for example, right, with the Geyser fund,
where raising funds transparently, like everybody can see. And all the funds we raise,
it's all going on an Excel sheet, like similar, similar to start small, but, you know, we're
taking a step further where you can actually see how the money is being spent. It's not being spent
on a campaign trail where I'm doing photo ops and, and, you know, all that bullshit. It's
actually being spent on social impact. You know, we want to do a, a food kitchen. So right now I'm
getting supplies for a food art. We're making a list of supplies for the food kitchen. And then
we're going to feed underserved communities, you know, orphanages, old people's homes, things that
places that are really suffering right now because of the economy and the situation. And we're looking
for a location for a community center in Eframsiechen, which is one of the most impoverished neighborhoods
in, in the country. You know, they don't have toilets. They don't have, like it's, it's, it's
really, really, really bad. People don't have any hope for a future. So we want to build a community
center there where we build, you know, a playground where they can learn about tech and they can learn
tech skills. Like it doesn't take that long to learn HTML, Java, CSS, right? It takes a couple of days,
a couple of weeks max, if you know, if you're not very fast, but learning how to develop
enlightening after that, learning how to react or rust and be able to, to earn income from
anywhere in the world, I think that will change their life significantly. So we really want to
change the way that people, like politicians campaign, right? And I feel like if you have this
one example of someone doing it somewhere in the world that shows like, hey, the money isn't being
given in backdoor deals and you don't have just billions of dollars flowing in or hundreds of
millions of dollars or $30 million flowing in and it just going into an election and you have no idea
how it was spent, you can actually see how it was spent. So I think that's going to change the
dynamics of how people are voted into office and it's going to make it, you know, transparency
will create more efficiency, right? Because people are going to have to compete based off of like
actual results. Like they're going to have to work for results and visible, tangible results,
because everybody can see what they're spending money on. And if you're spending, you know,
maybe not this election, but people can see how much is spent in the last election and they can see,
hey, that guy spent like $250 million or $500 million on advertising, right? And she spent $500
million on communities and changing these communities. So that's going to, I think,
change the way people even get into office. So we're changing the way people get nominated and
like get elected. But I think also like, Stefana and I have brainstormed further about this as well,
like if you just, if we, we take everything that we're doing right now and we share that with
the rest of the world, right? The whole program, how you roll it out, everything just open source,
everybody can copy it, then they have no choice than to have to copy it, right? Because if the 99%
if the rest of us see like, hey, this is possible there. Oh, and this is exactly how they did it and
how they do it and how you can do it and how we can do it, then they can force their politicians
to do that because only then the, like only the politicians that are doing that same approach
will be able to win, right? Like, I really believe that this will give power back to the people and
then change like the way we, we, we, we vote people into office or like maybe even never need people
in office anymore after this whole transition. And I mean, what you're, what you're describing
in this, you retweeted a Jack Dorsey post from, I think he posted earlier in November, maybe,
but it was a David Clark saying, you know, where, where is there, you know, it's, we reject Kings
presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code. And that's, you know,
essentially what you're suggesting. It's this, you know, rules without rulers. It's the idea of
anarchy, not the Mad Max kind of anarchy that people think of, but like actual anarchy, which
is peaceful cooperation, a set of rules and no rulers that are going to always become corrupt.
And I'm curious if you've thought at all just about the actual voting process.
I'm not sure how much, I mean, given that there's all the corruption you've talked about and the,
the violence that your family has, has personally experienced for trying to call out this corruption.
Is there, is the voting process equally corrupt? Have you thought at all about implementing
something like a simple proof like they did in Guatemala? Any sort of those, you know,
time chain based, you know, publicly auditable type systems for voting, because it is a smaller
voter base. And maybe that's something that would at least, you know, make sure that the
election is, is going to be fair. And the votes that you get are going to really be counted.
Yeah. So that is, that is one thing where that hasn't been able to be manipulated here yet.
Because it is, it is very transparent. So all political parties have a presence at all voting
offices and it's all open. So everybody can see, and you have people from, it's not like
Venezuela where, you know, they don't allow OAS to come in or outside authorities to come in and
kind of like observe and see if things are actually happening transparently. Things, voting, voting,
that's the one thing here. I think that they find really hard to manipulate. They tried in 2020 to,
to burn some, but then citizens, like just civilians went to where the votes were being
stored and then they just slept there. Like, you know, like, I know the activists that actually
went there, put up a hammock and with a bunch of others, like a bunch of friends of ours,
they all went there and they all stayed there all night and just watched, just watched and made sure
that they, they couldn't come in and steal anything or, you know, manipulate anything.
So it is pretty transparent here. It's really hard to manipulate and I mean, we will suggest it.
We will, you know, we'll lobby for it because it's, you know, it doesn't hurt to have that in place,
but the odds of them being able to manipulate votes, that's very, very small. Like, it's not as big
as the, you know, as the US, for example, where you have million votes and things like that. This is
very, like, it's very small. Like, it's, you know, I have to go to, like, a local school and my entire,
like, my entire community is there and everybody's watching. Everybody can see you go in and out
and everybody can see the boxes going in and out. So everybody, and every political party as well,
you know, it's a multi-party system. It's not a two-party system. So every political party has
a presence there as well and they're all monitoring it. So the odds of that happening are very small.
I mean, that's good to know at least because obviously that was a concern I had was, you know,
you're suggesting some pretty radical, but I think realistic and necessary change, but the powers
that are entrenched often don't like that kind of realism and optimism and desire for radical
change. And so I'm glad to hear that at least you have a less of a shit show of a system than we
have in the United States, which is always just like, it's genuinely kind of like, I think it
should be a national embarrassment in the U.S. that we have, we're the richest country in the world
and we can't seem to figure out voting. Like, the thing that everybody claims is so important.
It's not just voting, like your healthcare system, your tax system, education, like,
yeah, pharmaceutical industry. Yeah, there's a lot that's a little bit iffy over there.
There's this episode of, I think it was the newsroom where he goes on a rant, why America is no
longer the greatest country in the world anymore. And I think one of the points that he mentioned
was, you know, your defense spending is more than the next 40 countries combined, and they're all
allies. So that disproportion is also insane, and it's been increasing more and more. So, yeah,
I'm very sorry about that. Yeah, you know, it's, I have, I do have hope for America.
Yeah. And I am very, I'm proud to be American. I love America in the sense of the American idea
and the American people. I very obviously don't love the American government. I don't think you
should, I don't think you should love your government. I think that if you say like, oh,
I love whoever's in charge, like, then you're probably not thinking very critically right now,
you know, like, at least in America, but enough about America for now, because we could spend
far too much time talking about the problems that we have here. But this is why I love,
I think that Suriname is a really, a really fascinating country. And your plans for Suriname
are really fascinating because it is a country that because it is small, you have the ability to
make really drastic and important changes that genuinely affect every single citizen's life.
It's not, it doesn't have to be big and slow moving like the US is. It doesn't have the same sort of,
you know, it has different entrenched power structures, but at a different scale. And so
it gives me a lot of hope that, especially seeing the passion that you have for your country and
for the people of Suriname, that you will actually be able to make substantive changes in a short
amount of time with, you know, similar to how Bukele has done, but as you've said with, I think
you have a different approach than he does. And I'm kind of curious as well for people who may
listen to this and say, wow, all of these things that Maya's suggesting sound pretty darn good.
Maybe I want to come out and maybe I'm in the EU, maybe I'm wherever. Maybe I want to come check
out Suriname. Do you envision Suriname being a place that will be friendly to ex-patriots from
other countries? Will you try to attract digital nomads, you know, bitcoiners generally, foreign
investment from, you know, companies? Do you want companies to move there? How do you kind of view
that angle of things? Because we've talked a lot about the things you can do for the people of
the country, but do you want that population to expand with immigration as well? Yeah, I mean,
we do want to attract talent, right? And attract, we do need a bit more people. It is, it is very,
very small. But you want to avoid gentrification. So I think if you have bitcoin as a unit of account,
by default, the fact, though, everybody else's, else's currency will be, you know, worthless,
faster. So you'll have to come sooner rather than later. So I think that way we can prevent a lot of
gentrification. I do think it is important not to have too much industrialization. So,
and I don't, for example, want to Google head office here, like we don't want to encourage more
centralized big tech companies, to be honest. So I, you know, if, if, if, if Nostra companies want
to have an office here, sure, we can build a Nostra Center or something like that. I think, I think
we need to focus on where we want the world to be heading in 2050, 2070, and where we want the
continent to be heading, right? Because it's like my vision isn't just sir, now, it's how do we connect
the entirety of the, of the continent? Like how do I do more trade with El Salvador? How do we get
that train that was also talking about to get that from from El Salvador all the way to sir,
and all the way to Brazil? How do we develop, you know, and look forward? So I think it's very
important to, you know, have the doors open for people, have a digital nomad program and then
attract foreign talent and attract more people to come here. But we do need to aware that we don't
want pollution, we don't want over tourism, we don't want gentrification, we don't want to, to put
our own people, you know, outside of, you know, like what's happening in some, in some other Latin
American countries where they can't even afford a home because that the whole neighborhood is,
is, is outpriced and they have to move to, to somewhere else. So you don't want to create
situations like that. But there are ways to prevent gentrification from happening. There are ways to,
to build sustainably and, and, you know, develop the country sustainably, attract foreign direct
investment by, and making it, making sure that foreign direct investment, for example,
does incorporate enough local content for people to, to grow, you know, in terms of skills, but,
and, and not just in terms of wealth, but also in terms of skills locally as well. So, and I think
we can, instead of having these huge behemoths like Microsoft, like Google, I feel like we should
be building more solutions that can scale to other jurisdictions without being the main funnel,
you know, subtracting wealth from the rest of the world. I feel like we can be a start for
something that spreads. It lays a foundation for wealth that spreads and a future of abundance
that spreads. And just speaking of laying foundations, in addition to being very busy
campaigning for president, you've also been doing a lot of just grassroots Bitcoin adoption work,
education, onboarding merchants. Like, I don't know how you have the time, but I've seen there
seems to have been a lot of, of growth in that recently. So you're approaching this both from
the top down and the bottom up, it seems at the same time. Maybe the goal is to meet somewhere in
the middle, but can you talk a little bit just about kind of some of the grassroots community
work you're doing around Bitcoin adoption, education and anything else? Well, to be completely
honest, the grassroots adoption took a lot of preparation and a lot of dreaming and a lot of
preparing. And we didn't have much funding. You know, last year I was complaining a lot about
funding being an issue. And it's only recently that we got a grant from Bitcoin Beach and we got
funding. So it's only recently that I was able to expand the team. And it, in all honestly,
all I do is tell them, you know, how to approach things and how like, for example, it's being done
in Uvita and how it's being done in Brazil and how it's being done in El Salvador. And I just tell
like, I knew, for example, the first time, two times, I think they went out to do merchant
on boarding. It wasn't really successful. I think they also didn't have the courage and,
or didn't feel like they could, because I literally took, you know, like our cleaning lady and told
her like, you shouldn't be cleaning houses for the rest of your life. Here's something that you
could be doing and it can grow into more and you can start teaching and learning more and learning
about money and learning about tech and, you know, you can grow into this. So I went out with them.
I think it was a second or third time. And then I started doing the merchant on boarding in front
of them. And then once they saw, you know, how easy it was by me just doing it, that's when they
replicated it. And, you know, the meet be AmeriCorpses, all that, I just kind of helped the setup.
But all of the work, like most of it is the team right now. Like it's completely taken on a life
of its own. They are on their own creating content, coming up with new ideas, coming up with new
ideas, where to go, how to go about it. Terrence, who's amazing, he's grown up like so much in this
space. And he's in in in prior in Jerry Cocoa right now with Fernando and Fernando is training him.
And then Terrence is going to come back and have another big impact on grassroots adoption.
And there's some other projects that like we've been working on for about a year in the rural
villages to create like an actual Bitcoin standard grassroots, like having energy converted
through mining into Bitcoin and that being the source of income for that village. And then,
you know, they don't need they can't really use SRD because it's the value is it doesn't translate
if they need to, you know, travel to the city, the cost is too much. So for them, it would be
actually be better if they can just only transact in Bitcoin. So that would solve a massive problem
for those villages. So we've been working on that for about a year. And then I really at this point
am just trying to find a an investor for the for the solar grid for the mining, and then basically
just connecting the village with Amazon Conservation Team and with the solar company. And then
after that, you know, I don't have to do anything more basically. So it's a lot of planning and
just preparing and it takes like a year of that and or six months of that. And then the whole
thing just leads a life of its own. So I'm not very like, I'm not running around all day. I am
busy all day, but it's not like, I know how to manage teams very pretty well. So I can manage
multiple teams at the same time. And that helps a lot with this. Otherwise, I would have been dead
by now. And I am excruciatingly tired. But, you know, it's fine. I was crying this morning, I was
crying last night. It's not easy. But you kind of push through it. And I think the team right now
that we have, you know, once the, because I'm going to be involved in setting up the soup
kitchen and setting up the community center. So that's that's an important piece. But once that's
set up as well, then I'm hands off again. And the campaign itself, we're joining one of I don't
want to reveal yet. We're going to reveal it next month. I'm going to be joining one of the largest
parties in the country. So they already have a chance at majority seats. And we're just going to add
on on onto that and make sure that together, you know, because you have to form a coalition
to multi-party system, you have to work with other parties. And we're going to
by happenstance work with the party that I always voted for. So and they already have guaranteed
seats, right, based off of previous elections, you can kind of see how many seats they'd get
in next year with one man on vote. So we already know, like, how many seats we can get at a minimum
and how much effort we can put in to try and get more votes and get more seats. So we can actually
have more decision making in who the president will actually be. So that's going to be also team
efforts. It's not just me working. Like it's not a one man show. It's a lot of moving parts.
We have in like, I have a team internationally that's helping like Stefan is very, you know,
it's X, E, Y, very, very, very independent can do his like his own thing. I don't need to micromanage.
So a lot of it is also just people contributing what they're good at. And that's in like,
in international community and the local community as well. So I'll survive.
You know, you mentioned looking for like a potential investor to to kind of partner with this
this grassroots initiative, I imagine, are you looking for something kind of similar to the
situation in Bitcoin Beach, where you're able to have somebody who wants really wants to come in
and help to develop this these local circular economies? Is that kind of the goal?
That would be great. Yeah, if we have something similar to Bitcoin Beach, and, you know, more
people like, if I can be replaced, I'd be one of the happiest people on the planet.
If someone else can take this over. And, you know, the grassroots adoption in the rural villages,
what I'm talking about, that's more kind of like gridless. So it's more micro grids, small scale
mining, and small villages and making sure because a lot of them, like one of the villages,
we just got a quote for it's 26,000 to repair their solar grid, it's a battery system. So you
can mine Bitcoin when they're not using electricity. And you like the villages, for example, the chief,
he's open to increasing the capacity, increasing the size of that grid so that we can add more mining
to it, so that it becomes more feasible. But basically, it's it'll have to be a joint venture
between the mining company, or, you know, the Surinamese grid list or whatever you want to call
it. And I'm not going to run that. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to connect you. I'm going to
make sure you can do it. I did all the groundwork for you. You can come and come and do it. But I'm
not going to do it. I don't want to be a shareholder. I don't need to do anything. I don't want to earn
money off of it. You can you can do it yourself. And then it's going to have to be a joint venture
between the company and the village itself, so that they also, you know, earn something from it.
So if you're somebody who wants to likes this message and wants to get involved and you're
listening to this, reach out to Maya so that you can get your hands out of it.
Yeah, exactly. So like take some of the load off my shoulders. I need some help.
Yeah, no, it sounds like well, and I mean, speaking of that, so this, this Geyser campaign that you've
done has been really successful. And I hope for anybody who's either watching this in the live
stream or who listens to this or watches it later, I'll link it in the show notes. You can go down
to it. You can donate yourself. I highly recommend people do so if they like what you've been saying.
You know, I'm curious beyond that, you know, monetary donations, which are obviously probably
the most helpful, but is there are there other ways that people, maybe if there are Bitcoiners
listening to this who are not from Surinam, but who say, boy, I really love this. I want to support
this Bitcoin adoption. I want to support Maya. Are there ways for them to get involved and
take a gap here, which are fiat job and come down. There we go. Yeah.
I mean, that's pretty easy. Yeah, it's I mean, it's six months until the elections. And the
grassroots adoption is not, you know, that has nothing to do with the kind of thing that's
adoption is not, you know, that has nothing to do with the campaign. It doesn't matter whether
I'm elected or not. The party's going to get seats anyway. I'm going to push these policies
anyway. So you might as well just come down, quit the fiat job, you know, just imagine being in El
Salvador early days and just come down and help like we already have a couple of Bitcoiners that
have moved. We have a couple that want to move. And I think a lot are waiting to I've seen a couple
say that they're waiting for me to be elected until they come. You'll have a lot more freedom here
than you do in the US or in Europe anyway. So you're already winning if you're coming here and
your money is worth a lot more here, you know, either way. So if you work remote, it's a great
place to come out and help and start and then be a part of what's happening here and contribute.
And, you know, whether I win or not, like six months a year here, trust me, it'll change your
life. I don't think you'll ever move back. That's a compelling offer, I've got to say.
I'm curious, you know, as so as you look to the future, you've talked about wanting to make
yourself ultimately redundant in terms of when you are elected. What do you view as kind of like
that long term vision for Suriname? Because it's obviously it's a country that has had plenty of
problems because it's been plagued with corruption. It's been preyed on by the by the IMF. It's a small
country and maybe people tend to, you know, overlook it. But you've got some pretty big
plans. How do you, you know, do you view Suriname taking on a larger role in the world stage becoming
sort of one of those smaller tech hubs becoming a place that is known for, you know, being
future forward? Like, do you think that this can be a model for other countries as well?
Yeah, I was invited to MIT to interview. And then I lobbied, of course, because I can't let go for
the same thing for Suriname, the innovation hub. And, you know, it's MIT. So the number one
innovation university in the world and I enrolled Suriname, had the honor to enroll Suriname into
their MIT REAP program, which is actually the program for the past decades that has developed
these innovation hubs all over the world. So we're already enrolled in that program. And we can,
with the program, also create a development plan for, you know, 2030, 2050, and keep reiterating on
that, you know, every decade, or every 20 years, for example, and keep improving on it. And ultimately,
like on my own career map, I put after this, fixing the UN, because I believe it's like it's the most
inefficient, hypocritical, bureaucratic institution in the world. So either replacing it or making it
more efficient. So I think once I'm like 45, 50, you know, being able to tackle that challenge.
But I do have a focus on making Suriname like an innovation hub and an example. But focusing on
regional development, because we're like, I think I said this in the interview before too, like,
we're like little islands that trade with our former colonizers with the US, but we don't
really trade with each other. So trading with Argentina, trading with El Salvador, trading
with Colombia, trading with our neighbors, trading with Brazil, you know, and building
infrastructure in between our nations, because that's missing. We don't have roads that connect us.
We don't have trains that connect us. So that could be improved upon. Being more of the lungs for
the planet, being a food provider for each other and for ourselves. And yeah, fixing the UN, to be
honest, because that is so broken. It really is. And I'm curious too, because somebody just mentioned,
you want this to be an innovation hub, you want this to be a tech hub. You've mentioned earlier
that you want this to be an open source hub as well. Do you, someone just asked in the chat, if we
know, do you plan to try and get rid of the extradition treaty with the US just to be able to
really, to be able to protect open source developers who may be building freedom tools, but that the
government doesn't, you know, the US government, I should say, doesn't really like. Is that something
that can be done? Is it easy to get out from under the boot of the US extradition treaty in that regard?
We don't have a treaty. There is none right now. No, no, no. Like, no, I don't want to see
this. Otherwise, some of our like politicians would be locked up already. Well, that's a good point.
Yeah, the sun, for example, of like, they have to be in, in, or international waters, I think,
or US waters. Like, I remember it was, I think it was a little over a decade ago, they actually had
people, two people that they locked up that were on a cruise ship, and they diverted the cruise ship
into US waters to be able to get them with a helicopter. So I'd have to, to, like, I don't
know everything, to be honest. So I'm not sure. But I think it's not in place, because otherwise,
I do think that some of our politicians, they're on the Interpol list, so they would already be
locked up. Okay, okay, but yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm free Ross, right? I was, I was very much against,
you know, Julian Assange being held as a political prisoner for that long. So yes, we protect
freedom of speech. We welcome Edward Snowden, we would protect, you know, the integrity of, of
freedoms. And we wouldn't bow down to the US, like this is not going to help me in the elections,
but no, we would not bow down to the US or the EU, to be honest. And I feel like that's an important
thing to do. I feel like it's very important to stand up to FATF, you know, these, this money
laundering overreach that is going into every country in the world where, and they use terrorism,
like they've been using 9-11, 2001, no offense, I mean, it's a horrible thing that happened,
but they've been using 9-11 to, you know, to, to, to, to be, it created so such, such a monster
internationally, right? They're enforcing so much government overreach, like the US is overreaching
in every country in the world. Like you have this crazy travel rule, you have AML, KYC requirements
that are in insane, right? And restricting people's freedoms. And I feel like we should be fighting that.
And we should be going to, to, to WEF and calling them out on this. Like I went to WEF, I think
I was living in Davos for a year back and forth. And I went to, to Undavos, like the conference
surrounding WEF or plan B was, and I thought I was going to orange pill WEF to be honest. I thought
I was going to, you know, convince everybody that Bitcoin was the future and that they needed to do that.
So I do feel like we need to, to, to have more voices, like Bukele, you know, calling out the US Fed.
And we have more, we need more voices, we need more leaders standing up to US government overreach,
because it is, it is only to protect the war machine. It is only to protect their own interests.
I mean, we know this, right? It is only to protect the printing, endless money printing, and to,
to protect the power and control that they have in the rest of the world. And it, it's, it's so
entrenched in all of our lives that you, like, think of one thing that you don't need to ask the
government for permission for at this point, right? There is so much. So I feel like we need to fight
against that. And I feel like we need to have more leaders that fight against that. And I think,
I think it's Max that always says this, like the dominoes are going to fall. I think it's time
that we actually tip them the fuck over and make them fall. And that we actually fight against this
shit, that we fight against KYC, AML overreach, that we fight against FATF, that we fight against
the IMF and World Bank and actually put a stop to this, because we can, if we have enough, right?
If, if the masses, if we all collaborate, if we all decide, and if, if in every country,
someone like me stands up and decides to go for office or decides to convince their politicians,
like, hey, this is happening in Suriname. We can do it here. Like, this is how they did it.
This is the policy, Bitcoin policy website. Like, you can use that. You can use what they did in
Suriname and more and more countries over, like, will turn over the next five years, right? I see
it happening in five years with AI, with technology advancing as it is, it has to happen rapidly,
and it's going to happen rapidly. So I think we should just do it. Let's just go.
I love it. And I think that's, that's a pretty great note to, to wrap up on Maya.
I appreciate you sharing so much of your time with me. I know you have a lot of stuff going on
right now, and I really appreciate it. And I hope people will listen to this and take a lot of value
from it. Is there anything else you want to leave people with anywhere you want to send people?
I'll make sure to link the Geyser page, your Noster and an X in the show notes as well, but
anywhere else you want to send people or anything else you want to leave them with?
Well, I'd say the Bitcoin Suriname page as well. And we'll, you know, we'll be adding more social
impact because there's, there's quite some things wrong here. There's, you know, like,
kids that need transplants and they don't have the funding to be able to afford the surgery.
So we'll be posting more things like that on Geyser and just keep an eye out and contribute,
contribute whatever way you can. Like, you know, even if it's a few sets, even if it's a few cents,
like it adds up, you know, if it's, if it's a lot of people doing it. So whatever you can miss,
just, just try and support and try and help out because we really, like it's a small,
small economy. And we're like, we're really struggling here too. It's not just, you know,
in Africa, it's not just in, in, in, in, in some Middle Eastern countries, we're also like,
we also have a collapse, collapsing economy and collapsing healthcare. So
whatever you can do to support, just please help.
Yeah. And if you can spare a few sets, which I know many of you listening can send them over,
because this is a, this is a damn good cause. And I want to thank you again for sharing your time
with me. This was really a treat. And I look forward to talking to you again. You know,
hopefully the, you know, the next time we come on here, maybe I'll be interviewing the president
of Suriname. That's, I'm feeling pretty good about your chances. And I think that you bring a really
amazing message of hope and optimism for, for people and not just people in Suriname, but people
all over who are sick and tired of their governments and who are ready for a fresh voice and a fresh
face and a fresh set of ideas. So thank you for doing what you're doing.
Yeah. Thank you for having me and letting me spread the message. I appreciate it.
Anytime. Thanks.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast.
If you are a Bitcoin only company interested in sponsoring The Bitcoin Podcast,
head to BitcoinPodcast.net slash sponsor or send an email to hello at BitcoinPodcast.net.
If you are enjoying The Bitcoin Podcast and find it valuable, give it a boost on Fountain,
a five star review wherever you're listening, or better yet, share this show with your network
so more people can learn about Bitcoin or don't Bitcoin doesn't care, but I sure do appreciate
it. You can grab links in the show notes to watch or list this show wherever you get your podcasts
or go to BitcoinPodcast.net slash podcast. And you'll also find the links to follow me and the
show on Noster and on X. Bitcoin is scarce. There will only ever be 21 million, but Bitcoin podcasts
are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to the Bitcoin podcast.
Until next time, stay free.