okay not only is this just going to help me with a circular economy this is a general a
new way for us to bring money into the country bring it out of the country and also use it
digitally between the entire country not just in a small beach town and that's when i realized okay
this is the real value that bitcoin brings it brings 21st century finance to everywhere in
the world that traditional banks can't reach and everybody in the world they can't access a
traditional bank via the traditional means. What's going on, everybody? Frank here. Just
wanted to take a second to provide a little context for this episode. For those who don't know,
Jamaica was hit by a Category 5 hurricane in November of last year, and it left the west side
of the island in a state of disrepair. Much of the banking infrastructure went down in the wake
of the storm, making it very difficult to transfer emergency funds to those in need.
But Bitcoin, especially Bitcoin via Flash app, still worked. And our guest today is the creator
of that app, Flash. After listening to the episode, if you'd like to learn more about what
happened in Jamaica, more about Flash app, or more about how you can help with the relief effort,
please check out the article I wrote on this topic for Forbes entitled,
Jamaica's First Native Bitcoin App is Helping with Hurricane Relief.
Also, I just wanted to say thank you again to everyone who's been tuning in.
We sincerely appreciate your attention.
If by chance you could take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on whatever platform on
which you're listening, we'd greatly appreciate it.
And thank you to Dave who sent us a hearty zap via Fountain for the last episode.
We sincerely appreciate your support.
You are the man.
Finally, if you have any cool leads regarding Bitcoin adoption around the world, or if you'd
just like to reach out to say hello, please feel free to contact me at newrentcap at gmail.com.
That's N-E-W-R-E-N-C-A-P at gmail.com. All right, that's that. Let's get to the interview.
Here's my conversation with Dred, founder of Jamaica's Flash app.
What is going on, everybody? Frank here, back with an amazing guest, someone I'm really excited
to have on the podcast because I fear that he has done far too few podcasts in the Bitcoin space or
far too few podcasts in general because he has such an incredible story, such an interesting
guy, such a kind-hearted individual who does really, really important work with Bitcoin in
the Caribbean in his home country, Jamaica. Dredd is our guest today. Super excited to talk with him.
Mike, I had the pleasure of seeing him later last year.
And I know he's been quite busy helping with the relief effort in Jamaica.
So we're all going to get into that.
We're going to dive right in there.
But first, Dred, if you want to just give a bit of an introduction about yourself, that would be great.
Yeah, Frank, thank you for having me on the podcast.
And for those who don't know me, I am Dred Am, the Jamaican Bitcoiner.
I say that now. There's other Jamaican Bitcoiners.
But I've been around for a while, so I like to call myself that.
I've also been just a classical developer for a while.
So that's kind of my reason for having passion around Bitcoin.
And then from there, you know, I've just been building out Bitcoin for my country and for my region.
There's a lot to go into there, but I won't really unpack it in my intro.
I'll just let you know that if you're looking for a Jamaican person to tell you about Bitcoin, that's who I am.
Yeah. And he's also developed a very cool app that we'll get into, Flash.
We'll talk about that and also the role that it has played in the relief effort.
But let's dive right in.
You've had your head down doing incredibly important work, working with teams on the ground in Jamaica, helping to deliver relief to people on the ground who were impacted by the hurricane, which has happened months ago at this point.
But these relief efforts take a long time.
This was briefly touched upon in the news cycle.
But since then, we've seen all sorts of stuff happening in Iran, in Venezuela.
We were talking a little bit off camera.
You've actually talked about how some of what's happening in Venezuela has actually impacted the relief effort in Jamaica.
But let's start high level.
What happened in Jamaica? What role did you end up playing? And how did Flash help out with all this?
For those who don't know, the hurricane that hit the Caribbean and Jamaica first was quite literally a Category 6 hurricane.
Now, granted, there is no such thing as a Category 6 hurricane, but it was the highest Category 5 hurricane on record in the region and in this century.
And not only did it hit Jamaica, but it did something weird.
It didn't just hit Jamaica from the east, it hit Jamaica from the west, which almost never happens with hurricanes.
It almost did a loop and hit Jamaica from the west.
So the west has never really had that kind of strength make landfall.
It made a disaster zone of the west of the island.
So from that point, we kind of jumped into gear and reached out to the Bitcoin community asking for contributions for the relief effort.
And within days, we got over $10,000.
We ended up getting over $15,000 total from 164 different people from the Bitcoin community.
So thank you all.
And we were able to immediately put those funds to use, creating care packages, whether it was actual food or medical supplies or underwear, feminine products, whatever the people needed.
We were able to create these products for them so they could get food and health and safety immediately.
And how do we do it?
Well, there are merchants in Jamaica that use Flash, which we'll talk about.
and they were able to accept Bitcoin and provide food.
This was able to skip the banks because the banks were working.
This was able to skip Western Union because Western Union was closed
or completely destroyed, the building was destroyed.
But people were still able to get their food through Bitcoin.
So that was an amazing quick win.
And then the long-term win was because we got so much money,
we were able to start purchasing bigger things like solar panels
and solar generators and batteries that we could ship down to Jamaica
So people not only could get that food and supplies, but now in the community centers where they didn't have internet, they didn't have power, they were able to have a generator now and a Starlink.
But the issue with that, which we'll get into, is that it took a long time to ship those things to Jamaica because, as you guys know, in the Caribbean, there's a lot of things happening right now that might delay boats.
Let's actually, yeah, let's dive in there. I couldn't believe this when you said it to me. You know, I was facetiously saying like so much has happened since, well, it seriously has happened, but I was facetiously saying like the news cycle has sort of forgotten about what happened in Jamaica. And you actually said that some of what happened in Venezuela, one of the stories that's obviously sort of happened since, ended up having an impact on the ability to get supplies there. So could you get into some of those details?
Yeah. So as you know, with the intervention that happened in Venezuela, the entire Caribbean region had a lot of American military presence in the marine areas. So a lot of warships, a lot of airspace being blocked off. And the usual, you know, traditional logistics that would happen across the region was completely slowed down by these military actions.
So what happens?
Ships that need to get in with a lot of resources for Jamaican relief efforts got delayed by months.
We had, you know, generators that needed to come in and they were supposed to land in January.
It's March and they're just getting here.
Mainly because of, like I said, you know, a lot of the delays happening from those military actions.
Now, I don't think there's anything that's happened in terms of, you know, things getting canceled or things getting broken or destroyed.
but a lot of people that are waiting for relief now are waiting additional months
because all of these stories are crossing together.
The capture of Maduro and the actual intervention happening in Venezuela
is affecting not just Jamaica, but a lot of other countries in the region
that are trying to get supplies as well.
So we're getting them. They're happening, but they're just happening a lot slower.
Okay. And in terms of that initial few weeks,
What was it like just from your shoes? What was it like? What were you hearing from people on the ground? What was the reality post the hurricane? I'm sure people can kind of imagine it, but I'm also sure there are certain things that you had to experience and help people with that people probably couldn't even imagine.
I think the hardest thing for me, it was to see people that usually would be living a middle class to even upper class life in Jamaica, right?
They have their two children and their dog and their white picket fence in like a nice area like Mandeville, Jamaica.
And then after the hurricane, those are people that were immediately homeless.
and not only homeless, but because Jamaica didn't have the type of resources a first world country
would have, like, you know, the immediate Red Cross or, you know, tents and stuff, the people
would be sleeping on the floor waiting for help. So a lot of community members were the ones that
stepped up immediately and took stuff out of their homes to bring to them. And that is what really
touched me. It was like, I saw the people of Jamaica step out and help their neighbor and
help their countrymen before the actual government or the actual relief effort organizations,
even foreign ones, could get to the country in time to provide that help.
So that was touching.
The other part was a little bit darker, which was the desperation of people.
When you are homeless and you have no food and you don't know where it's going to come
from, and the nearest city with resources is miles and miles away, violence tends to
occur.
So there was a little bit of violence happening on the road when people would try to bring
relief supplies to the parts that were affected, they would get stopped and robbed along the way.
And, you know, I mean, you might expect some of that to happen, but it was happening at an alarming
rate to the point where, you know, the police actually stepped in and started making checkpoints
along the way and putting up, you know, military posts to make sure that the community centers that
were providing relief to people were protected. And those kind of things kind of gave you a stark
reality check to say, this is not just a disaster zone. This is also a danger zone now, you know,
because people don't have the protection they're used to, and they're not used to just living on
the street So those are the two main things that that kind of shook me you know to make me realize this is real life And it made me take things a lot seriously and try to move as fast as I can because I knew that every day that we had a
delay was another day that someone would be probably going home without food or going home
without clean clothes or going home to an unsafe environment. That's a lot to take on. And for
context here, how big of a team were you working with and how quickly were you able to mobilize
this team? Is it part of your normal team that works on Flash and maybe Flash adoption in Jamaica,
or was it a broader network of people that you tapped into?
Both. So a portion of my team from Flash just immediately jumped into action and we were
helping. But then it was a really beautiful decentralized way that it worked where many
different smaller communities and organizations banded together. So there is DJ Amber, who works
for IREFM. She has her own organization. There was Buds and Brushes. Mel, who runs an entire
organization that already does food for the poor and it does women's shelters that she's
been running for a long time. A lot of these organizations came together to form almost a
convoy that would go with buses and food every week over to the disaster area and help out.
So I was lucky enough not to have to create the whole team myself. I just volunteered me and my
a few people to that larger group. And then that larger group was able to organize it. I mean,
it was a beautiful moment of, you know, organic coming together without needing a top-down,
you know, institution to help it happen. And to this day, it's still happening. Like, I think we
have next weekend, another bus going out there with supplies that, and I think one of our
shipments just cleared. So we'll have new supplies coming from Flash, from the donations that will be
getting there this weekend too. Amazing. In terms of expediency, so banks were impacted by this. So
I think some of it was literally just infrastructure was impacted in a way where not only could
government not react as much, but literally the financial infrastructure that you might normally
use to move funds around and to get aid to people wasn't functioning because of the damage from the
hurricane. So Bitcoin becomes this thing that you can use through Flash to more quickly, again,
move funds to wherever they need to be to purchase whatever you need to purchase.
And also with Flash, because it also has an on and an off ramp feature there, it has a
connection to the traditional system.
I think that that was part of the equation in terms of because it's not like everyone
overnight is going to become Bitcoiners just because they're in a disaster zone and they're
going to understand how to use it and all that.
So there was a lot that had to happen very quickly.
But luckily, because of the nature of what Bitcoin is and the fact that, you know, its
infrastructure wasn't necessarily drastically impacted by what happened in Jamaica. It was
something that was very usable for people. Can you talk a little bit about some of the particulars
and what it was like to sort of kick flash into action and maybe even get some people using it
that might not be familiar with this technology? Yeah, that happened almost instantly because,
like you said, you know, the banks were just not working. And you'd think, OK, well,
why wouldn't the banks work if, you know, there are probably banks in the safe part of the country
the east side that still had their servers up and running and branches were open. Well, the problem
is that, you know, even though those branches were open, for some reason, the network, the bank
network, the Visa network, the MasterCard rails just wouldn't work. So even if you happen to have
internet access or power in a place that was affected, the Visa card just wouldn't swipe,
right? It wouldn't work at all for the client. So the merchant was either saying,
give me cash, right? Or I can't sell you anything, unfortunately, because they wouldn't do IOUs or
credit. And that's kind of where we went into some merchants and were able to tell them, okay, well,
this is your first time using Flash. So maybe we can sign you up, you know, you can collect it,
we can show you how it works. Some merchants did that. Others didn't. Others had to get the cash
directly. And then we would do peer-to-peer. And Jamaica has a decent Bitcoin community happening
where we were able to do a peer-to-peer
and give the person Bitcoin, get the cash,
give it to the merchant, and get the food immediately.
So both of those worked.
But from the bank side,
we realized that people who were not able
to use their banking services
and didn't have Flash set up yet,
some of them already were accepting Bitcoin.
And we didn't know this.
If you go to btcmap.org,
there's a lot more merchants in Jamaica and in the Caribbean
than even Flash has been setting up.
So we've realized now that we've been building upon this collaborative network,
not competitive network, where even though we build up our own Flash merchants,
there are other merchants out there collecting Bitcoin,
collecting stablecoins, collecting Lightning,
that you can go and pay with Flash.
And that just expanded the network for us quickly,
without us even knowing, because it was a necessity to find out
if they would accept the Bitcoin or not.
So I guess a silver lining in a dark area, in a dark moment.
But from that point, we realized that every merchant that we spoke to, they were open to accepting something different because they realized for themselves that anything can happen to stop them from being able to collect their rent or collect their revenue going forward.
And they wanted to know how they can make a more resilient method of payment that was available to them.
And we've actually now created an initiative to continue creating this resilient flow of payments.
So it's not just about Bitcoin. It's about Bitcoin in a place that can have uncensorable communications, you know, renewable sources of energy, whether it's solar generators, et cetera, mesh networking, where people can have even the basic Internet available to them for, you know, emergency services and payments.
And we're going to keep on building that out in Jamaica as we go forward.
That's amazing. So I just as you said this, I was reminded people were using things like BitChat, right? You spoke about a mesh network. So BitChat.
Yeah, that works over Bluetooth. You don't necessarily need internet connection. So actually, I'm going to ask two questions there at the same time. You talked about these financial networks being impacted, but did the mobile networks and did internet, did these networks, I mean, I'm imagining they had to have been severely impacted as well. So did mesh networks become even more of a thing in that moment?
so i'll send you a picture after the podcast so you can see exactly how bad it was it's a bird's
eye view the place was flattened so what that mean is light poles are gone towers are gone
cell towers are gone if you're not using satellite connection you're not getting internet and you
don't have power you don't have cell phone service so everything was gone like you you're
if you've even even if you had a cell phone with full battery you couldn't connect to any tower so
it wouldn't work for you at all. And BitChat ended up being the number two downloaded app
in the country, in the region, right after the hurricane. And people were using it for a long
time until, you know, power started getting restored and until cell phone service was back up.
I would say that the cell phone companies, Digicel and Flow, within maybe two weeks,
had some emergency towers back up. But during those two weeks, BitChat was the most used app,
for sure. Wow. So the average person, the super, you know, just the average person,
how did this news spread so quickly? I mean, BitChat, it's okay. It's a thing amongst sort
of Bitcoiners and stuff, but how did the average person end up hearing about this?
I have no idea. I'm not going to lie. I have no clue. Like they, somebody downloaded it and
shared with friends. If you went into the, you know, the regional chats where you could see
people talking, they were all just testing it out. And I could see the Jamaican patois like,
does this thing work? Oh, this, you know, and they're just like figuring it out together.
No Bitcoiners were involved that I saw talking. But as soon as it spiked, it went right back down
again. It was a very quick moment of emergency. And then once people used it and got what they
needed, they were back off. So it's a very ephemeral usage of the tool. But I think that's
exactly what it's made for. I think BitChad is made for those moments when you need it.
And then you go back to normal right afterwards.
Yeah.
It's like emergency tech almost,
like a new sort of tech,
new name for the sort of technology we're building here.
Generally speaking...
Like it, emergency tech.
Yeah.
Generally speaking now, how are things there?
How much has the island recovered?
You were telling me a little bit off camera.
You had a lot of people move from this western part of the island.
They're living in a different part of the island now.
What sorts of shifts or changes does that occur?
long term? What does that look like long term? Just generally speaking, what's the state of
things at this point in time? I would probably refer to it as displacement versus moving because,
you know, they weren't willing to, they didn't want to move. But because of that, there's probably
been a little bit of strain on the city of Kingston and other western, other eastern cities.
But, you know, Jamaicans are very, very friendly, very neighborly people. You know, we are all about
one love and out of many one people is our motto for the country. So when you see somebody in need,
even though we might come off as rough sometimes, when we see somebody in need,
they're always going to get help. So, you know, that happened. And along with, you know, we were
bountiful in terms of fruit and food there. So even though it's rough going, you know, we're a poor
country. I think once people were able to make their way over to the east of the island, it was
a little bit better. I'm not going to sugarcoat it and say it's sunshine and rainbows. You know,
we still have our problems. But, you know, a lot of that migration happened and people were taken
care of. However, not everyone can migrate. So there's still a lot of people in the west of the
island that are still suffering to this day. There's still a lot of aid that is coming down
that hasn't been efficiently deployed. And they're still working on making that happen to this day.
And then there's still a lot of, you know, shipments that are stuck, that are still waiting
to be cleared to this day. So it's still a long process. I think that we're out of the danger zone
in terms of worrying about mass casualties
or anybody really dying from this anymore.
But there a lot of work to do I would assume it would take another two to three years before we look at a full recovery of the island and hopefully an improvement in terms of disaster preparedness
Okay. And also maybe potentially infrastructure as well. But there's something else that kind of
comes to mind as you're saying all this. We spoke a little bit as this was going on. I interviewed
you for a piece I wrote on the work that you were doing. And you also said, Jamaica, this happens
every season, every hurricane season or different, you know, certain points in the year.
Are certain things potentially different now, whether it's maybe some of the infrastructure
that's being built, emergency readiness, whatever that is, even people being able to rely on
something like Bitcoin a little bit more?
What feels like it has sort of changed for the next time something like this happens?
So first, I'll say that Jamaica is usually very lucky during the hurricane season.
You know, the hurricanes come through and they might hit Haiti.
They might hit, you know, Haiti.
They might hit Dominican Republic.
They might hit Cuba.
You know, but 75% of the time, they circle Jamaica and don't really hit us.
So this happening is probably one in three or one in four or five year occurrence.
It might start happening sooner as we know that climate has been changing in general.
but what I've seen that has changed so far is more the technology around the recovery right like we
before you know we didn't have as many emergency beacons set up emergency systems set up
this time around they had almost immediately emergency reporting system like with a map where
you could really just point out where people need help and emergency services would be able to get
there within a reasonable amount of time for Jamaica. So I think I've seen that setup like
spun up on the spot here. And a lot of things like that are giving me hope that by the next
hurricane, we're going to have a lot more quicker response time to areas in the country that were
previously unreachable. So I'm really happy that this has allowed the country to kind of see where
the weak points are and then have quick response teams that are ready to go to those areas during
the next hurricane. That's like the most important thing is saving lives, right?
It seems like a lot was learned from this and a lot of, you know, in terms of preparedness and
responsiveness to this stuff. So I'm happy to hear that at least this seems like a silver lining or
something good to come out of all of it. That's really, really inspiring to hear. In terms of
people using flash i want to start with a little bit of an overview of it super cool wallet uh fork
of i think is bitcoin beach wallet which is now blink um but has all these other features like
the on and the off ramp to the traditional structure i think you ended up employing the
the breeze sdk i think it also has something like something similar to stable stats so i was hoping
that you could talk a little bit about the wallet and then how people were ended up using it or i
mean were they did they quickly learn how to use lightning was it relatively easy for them were they
using the base chain? Essentially, when people picked it up and had to learn it within minutes,
what was their go-to? Yeah, great questions. And I'll start off by kind of narrowing it down to
just the very, very basic part of the wallet, which is when you just download it for the first time,
all you see is a USD or JMD balance. That's it. You don't really know anything about stablecoins
it or lightning network or bitcoin or anything like that it's just flash and you can use it to
pay for stuff and that's how we present it to people in jamaica because people in jamaica don't
have paypal or cash app or venmo or zelle they know about these things from the u.s but the average
jamaican that doesn't have access to the u.s doesn't have any fintech app on their phone
per se they might have a beta version or an entire not beta a new version of link which is kind of the
the CBDC type wallet that Jamaica has has implemented.
And that's a whole different conversation we can get into.
But most people don't have it.
It was only 2% adoption.
So most people don't have a FinTech app on their phone.
So a flash is usually the first touch for a FinTech app.
And we made it as simple as possible.
You press start, you see the USD wallet,
or if you switched currencies, it's the JMD wallet.
And then you can just go to a store and spend,
or you can top it up from your bank account.
And that's it.
Like very, very MVP version.
Now, to your point, there's a lot of things in the settings, right?
So if the, you know, the techie ones or the really Bitcoiners that are hiding in Jamaica
and don't want to, you know, come on podcasts like me, they would open up the wallet and
they would see, oh, advanced mode.
And then you can turn on the Bitcoin side of the wallet, which to your point, we integrated
Breeze SDK to do that.
So it provides you with a non-custodial wallet that you get your 12 words for your seed phrase.
you write it down and you can switch between each wallet, your USD wallet and your Bitcoin wallet
back and forth, depending on where you want to hold your funds. I consider it to be like a
checkings and a savings account. And then you can, you know, off ramp into your hardware wallet if
you want to, because it does on-chain as well. And then the exciting part for me is that because
we're a community type of culture, you know, people always want to chat and commerce and do
all their little peer-to-peer, you know, fun, trading, etc. And we created Noster as a button
in the, as a tab in the wallet that allows people to chat with their fellow merchants,
chat with each other, send zaps, just like you do on Noster. And also we'll be integrating the
P2P trade version of Noster. So it's like a NIP, NIP 69, where you can just post stuff. And it
doesn't have to be you're posting Bitcoin. I know Bitcoin does have to post Bitcoin, but I could post
a table for sale. I could post my monitor or my Xbox. And that P2P trade thing will be inside the
app where you can zap people to get what they want from them and then collect however you want. So
we're very excited about the social aspect of it, the simplicity of it. And then it still gives them
the sovereignty of having a non-custodial wallet in there too. It's amazing. And how dare you bring
non-Bitcoin propagandists to Nostra? How dare you bring normal people that can use this for
normal things. It's so crazy of you. I want to dive into a little bit of your making the app
because I think it's a really cool story and I don't do too much Bitcoin story stuff here,
but I think this is really important because of your intention in making it. I think your
educational background is great for people to understand as well, but there was just really
this earnest motivation for you to create something that would really be this amazing
financial services slash money app for people in Jamaica, especially given that complete void that
existed before you brought Flash to people. So if you want to go as far back as you're comfortable,
but maybe just a little bit of background on how and why you created Flash.
yeah sure so um i saw a podcast actually um about el salvador and when i first saw it i realized okay
el salvador has been something really cool with bitcoin i was already buying bitcoin and i was
you know following the the technological side of it really as a coder as a developer but then i saw
that a country in my region el salvador was using bitcoin in this small little beach town and i
wanted to see what it was all about and how it was working for them because I saw people that I
could relate to using it, not, you know, a techie or an investor. So I contacted Mike Peterson,
who I saw on the podcast, and I just DMed him on Twitter and said, hey, can I come down and check
it out? And Mike was like, sure, come down whenever. I'm like, all right, I'm coming Thursday.
He said, wait, this Thursday? So I showed up, found the, you know, the most recognizable hotel
I could find because I didn't know anything about El Salvador.
And from your history, reading about El Salvador, you'd know it traditionally was a very dangerous
place to go to.
So I tried to find a safe hotel, checked in, and randomly as I walked into the hotel, there
was a huge table with this massive fish in the middle of the table.
And around the table was sitting where people I recognized from Twitter.
It was like, you know, Jack Mahlers, Peter McCormick, Miles Suter, a couple, you know, reporters.
Mike Peterson was there.
Jorge and Ramon, if you know about the Bitcoin speech story.
And a couple other people just there kind of, you know, almost brainstorming on El Salvador and what was going on there.
And I just walked up to them and did a bold move that changed the trajectory of the rest of my life saying, hey, guys, I'm Dred from Jamaica.
I'm a Bitcoiner. Can I join you?
And they said yes.
so from that point forward i learned a lot about what was going on in el salvador almost directly
you know and then was able to volunteer immediately to help them build it out so i stayed there for
another couple weeks i helped to onboard people that were just learning about bitcoin you know
half spanish half english my spanish is terrible but i was able to like you know show them how to
move money on the blink wallet i learned a lot just how to adopt and how to you know create a
circular economy from these guys. And then I took all that knowledge and went back to Jamaica and
started building. At first, I thought I would be building just a circular economy, right? I would
go do the same thing, onboard merchants. But then that didn't happen because we don't have Blink
in Jamaica. We don't have an ATM that you can use to move from cash to Bitcoin. So the rails just
weren't there in Jamaica that we had in El Salvador. And I'd go back to El Salvador every
couple, every couple of weeks, no, not months, every couple of years, every year, I go back to
El Salvador. Every year, I'm back to El Salvador and checked it out and saw how they were progressing.
This is right around the time, you know, Bukele started picking up steam and they created the
Chivo wallet and they had the Bitcoin law, you know, all that happened while I was trying to
make this happen in Jamaica. And I turned around and I said, okay, I realize what the gap is.
It that we don have a Blink or a Bitcoin Beach wallet in Jamaica so I going to build Flash And then as I built Flash I realized that okay not only is this just going to help me with a circular economy this is in general a new way
for us to bring money into the country, bring it out of the country, and also use it digitally
between the entire country, not just in a small beach town. And that's when I realized, okay,
this is the real value that Bitcoin brings. It brings 21st century finance to everywhere in the
world that traditional banks can't reach and everybody in the world that can't access a
traditional bank via their traditional means. So I'm really happy to be continuing that mission.
And I hope I'm, you know, making the El Zante guys proud that I'm standing on their shoulders
because those guys are giants. I have no doubt that you're making them proud. No question about
that. One thing I wanted to touch on though, we talked a little bit about this last time we spoke
was the amount of people that just in Jamaica who have a bank account or who don't have a bank
account. So having a bank account is kind of difficult for, I think, a few reasons, as you've
mentioned. But if you wanted to maybe touch on that to help contextualize why something like
Flesh is so important. Yeah. So a lot of people will look at the statistics and say that,
oh, well, 75 to 80 percent of people in Jamaica have bank accounts. The number might be somewhere
around 77. But if you look at how many of those people are economically using those bank accounts,
the number drops to almost 40%, 30-something percent are people that are actually using their
bank accounts. Why? Because compared to the salary and the expenses and things you buy in Jamaica,
the fees to use a bank account can be prohibitive for many people, right? If you're getting a certain
pay and you deposit it, and by the time you deposit it and take it out to buy food, you've
lost 10% to 15% of your monthly wages, you're probably not going to put it in the bank, right?
Or if it goes to the bank via pay, you're probably going to pull it all out and keep it so you don't have to pay a transaction fee every time you want to spend your money.
So it's that small level of margin that caused people not to want to use banks.
And I think there's a space there.
I know there's a space there for digital currency in general, because now with Flash, you can do Flash to Flash for free.
So people can do transactions without having to stash the money under their bed, right? Or keep it safe from criminals that know they just pulled out their entire monthly check at the ATM. So we're solving two problems. It's one, giving them digital access and two, keeping them safe if they really want to have their money, you know, to spend without people knowing.
And I think there's also another misnomer, which is that, you know, because Jamaica is a cash rich country or not cash rich, a cash first country, you know, that cash is king, that we don't have the technology there.
And that's why. And that's not true. Jamaica has a technology. Like, you know, we're a very technology first country.
were actually very progressive in terms of the Caribbean islands and the tenology that we have.
We were one of the first countries in the region to launch and roll out a CBDC,
which is a central bank digital currency that people could use.
Banks could use it and people could use it.
So I know that the people have the capability and the capacity and the incentive to use tenology.
I think we just haven't had the right tenology in their hands yet for them to use it properly.
Amazing. And you've given them that. And speaking of that technology, one of the things that I really love about it is that on a certain level with the Bitcoin Beach store, you kind of, I don't know, soft forked the idea of the circular economy and brought it to Jamaica.
But on the other side of things, you actually did fork the Bitcoin Beach wallet, now the Blink wallet, as the foundation layer.
I think that's a fair way to put it of Flash.
So I think that this stuff is really interesting for people to note because it's not like Bitcoin development happens in a vacuum.
It's obviously the nature of open source tech that it doesn't.
We can all see what everybody else is building because it's open source.
But I think it's really important to highlight this point of you went to El Salvador.
You saw how people were using this wallet.
I don't want to put words in your mouth
But I'm assuming maybe you thought
Oh, this seems like a really good onboarding mechanism
This is a good place for people to start
I've used Blink, I think it's a great wallet
I know people are critical sometimes
You know, it's custodial or whatever like that
You've made some changes
People can use the Blink SDK
Can you talk a little bit about that though?
Having that Gallois stack, the Blink stack
To start building with, or the Bitcoin Beach
The wallet to fork and start building with
Did it give you some confidence?
Did it take some of the cognitive burden of creating the app off of you?
What was that process like?
Yeah, without that kind of foundation to start with,
I probably would have spent another two years building it from scratch.
It was a big accelerator.
Not only did they already find out what worked in the market,
like in the wild, and they were able to get that real feedback,
but also the open source nature of it allowed a lot of other Bitcoiners from around the world to contribute to the code,
you know, and provide reviews, provide improvements.
So it wasn't, you know, it was twofold.
It was the on-the-ground experience that gave real-time feedback to create UX and UI improvements,
and then the Bitcoin community and the open source community providing security updates and audits
and improvements to the code to provide, like, world-class code,
even though it was kind of all over the place
because it was many people contributing,
but that's the way open source works.
If you look at Linux or any other open source project,
it starts off all over the place
and then it creates this coalescence
of a really strong product that everybody wants to use.
And that's what happened with the Blink wallet.
I think that it's gone productized now, as you know.
Blink has its own thing apart from Galoi,
which is still open source.
Blink is still open source too,
but Galoi was the foundation.
and we have also forked so far away from them.
As you know, we've kind of put a scalpel to it.
It made a lot of improvements.
And the most important thing we did
is we made UX improvements
that were much more focused on the Caribbean communities
and both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking
and Dutch-speaking Caribbean communities
that have their own culture,
their own flair for things,
their own words that they kind of recognize
and ways that things work.
We really focused on that
to make sure that people felt like this was a product they could be proud of.
You know, it wasn't just a random product that was coming from another country.
And then on top of that, we were able to use our relationships in Jamaica
to make sure that people can on-ramp and off-ramp,
either at agents or through their banking system.
And Blink couldn't provide that directly.
Maybe we could have still gone through them and had partnerships with them,
but that kind of ownership and that cultural ownership was very important
because people are skeptical.
You know, people are very skeptical of the digital currency and cryptocurrency industry in general.
So if it wasn't coming from someone that they could point to and say, you built this, then adoption would have been much harder.
So it was very helpful to have the blink as a start.
And then putting the Caribbean Jamaican face on it was really the accelerator that made it, you know, made it all work together.
The security in the beginning, the time-tested proof in El Salvador, and then the one love Jamaican face on top to make it work.
I love this.
And it's something that's coming to mind as you're saying it.
One of the things, I used to be a writing professor and I would tell my students more details, more details.
I want to know exactly what you're talking about here.
So one of the things I want to know, how did you Jamaicify the app?
What are some things that are sort of a signal to the people that are using it?
This was made by a Jamaican.
So if you go on the website, getflash.io, getflash.io, you'll realize it immediately has all the Jamaican colors.
The background is a skyline of Kingston.
So people recognize our downtown pier and, you know, the buildings there.
But then when you go into the app, like you download it and you onboard to the app, the first thing the app asks you when you press start is, what's your name?
And in front of that is our national bird. It's a doctor bird, we call it, which is a type of hummingbird that Jamaicans know very well. But it's like almost metallic, futuristic, cyperpunk type of hummingbird. And that is our mascot.
So from the beginning, you're just getting inundated with just Jamaica, Jamaica, Jamaica and the Caribbean at large.
And then from there, everywhere you look in the app, we try to put a little, you know, style, whether it's maybe a different word you use for an action that might be patois or a different color or a different form.
And, you know, it's just really, really cool that way.
And we also have all of the currencies of the Caribbean and languages of the Caribbean as well.
So you can change your language, you can change your currency to match your culture.
Amazing.
Speaking of currencies, one of the things too, how much are people using Jamaican dollars
versus US dollars and then now potentially even Bitcoin?
Are they currently thinking about Bitcoin as more of a savings asset?
Are they using it as money?
Are they using US dollars within the app?
What tends to be their go-to as far as like day-to-day spending money when using the app?
It shifted over time, actually.
I would say last year when we were in our pilot phase, it was almost exclusively U.S. or Jamaican dollars.
And I want to make a point of clarification.
We are just like the Blink app where the base currency on the dollar side, on the stable coin side, is U.S. dollars.
But you can show your display currency differently.
So even though you're holding U.S. dollars, it'll show you the Jamaican equivalent.
right but then if the if the exchange rate changes you might see a up or down shift in by pennies
of the of the forex between u.s and jamaican dollars so that's a point of clarification
the majority of people last year were using the just the usd side they just wanted to hold
dollars in their hand it was cool that it came through bitcoin or lightning but they were like
yeah let me just hold the dollars and see what's what it's like as of december january february
that started to shift. People have gotten a drastic increase in curiosity, I would say,
in the Bitcoin and stablecoin space, and they want to see how it works.
So a lot of people are now opening up the wallet, turning on the Bitcoin side, and all
purchasing, topping up Bitcoin, whether it's from their own exchange that they know of,
or they can top up straight from the Flash wallet and then move money back and forth between their
savings and their checking. And that's happening a lot more now, we've realized.
Breeze has been a great partner, I have to say. As we grow with them, the non-custodial wallet
SDK just gets faster and cheaper and easier to use.
And I'm really happy that we're able to build with them
and see what else they come up with
because as they create more functionality in their app,
our app Flash immediately gets that functionality
that people can use.
And we hope that that kind of growth will continue
and that Jamaicans will eventually have the same parity
of usability in all the apps that they use
because Breeze is like an SDK for all apps, right?
Not just for Flash.
Yep.
Yeah, the Breeze team, they just do not stop.
And it's not even a huge team.
They just continue to ship and to improve and to iterate it.
They're truly an amazing group of people.
Danny and Umi are here in New York,
and I see Roy quite frequently.
So shout out to that team,
and I love that you're working with them.
Yeah.
You mentioned this a little bit earlier
about the messiness of open source development,
And then and then and then, you know, this compliment you just paid to the breeze team. But this idea of working all together with people, sometimes there's pros and cons to that. You're classically trained. You went to school, I think, for computer engineering or computer science, whichever. Yeah.
So you have this formal college education in doing things a certain way.
You have a background, I think, working within more traditional structures, more traditional companies.
I'm kind of curious as to, I guess, emotionally what it's like to go through.
I mean, technically as well, to go through building an open source app, working within this open source culture.
Are there moments where it's frustrating, where you just wish it could be a little bit more streamlined, that you're making the final decision and you're just pushing forward with it?
Or has it been far more, I don't want to be too dramatic, but has there been more pros than cons in this process of having to work with other people in open source culture?
Yeah, I would say it's been a journey overall.
to your point I've been a classically trained engineer and went to becoming a process engineer
and a management consultant and worked you know in much more structured formats right you start a
project and you kind of have all your resources and your docs lined up the open source community
is very different I didn't come into it actually trying to work in the beginning I came into it as
you know a student learning everything about FOSS and not just that everything about Bitcoin at the
same time. So I would say I ended up with a three to four year degree in just learning about how
open source coding happens and how it's different. And then from that point forward, I was able to
start building smaller projects on my own, you know, like contributing to projects that were
already on the way. I did a long stint with, if you know the guys from Start9, Start9 Labs,
and they create, if you guys don't know them, they create sovereign computing, which is basically
your own server that you can run in your own home and you can run your own node on it and you can
also run anything else you want on it instead of the cloud. So you can check it out start9.com and
I started working with them for a while and got my chops under me for open source coding you know
like figuring out how to contribute things figuring out ethics behind open source contributions
and licensing and that really got me interested in the whole world of it because I had not done
that before in corporate America. In corporate America, it was about IP and it's about speed to
market and protecting your capital, your code. And it was just a completely different world.
So that took a little bit to adapt to. But once I did, there's no going back. You realize that
everything you write at this point, everything you produce as a coder, this is kind of what
the cypherpunks were saying when cypherpunks write code, is that what you're writing is going to
benefit the world in some way once it's productive. You're not just benefiting your pockets or one
segment. You're opening it up to the world and whoever wants to use it can use it. And there's
kind of a sense of, I don't know, zen there, you know, writing like that. I think a lot of coders
and programmers and engineers in general that do open source products are operating at a higher
vibration, is the best way I would put it. You know, they're operating at a higher vibration,
and they're doing it for a good cause.
And therefore, a lot of the greed that you might see
just doesn't exist as much.
There's still some, of course, we're human,
but there's a lot lower proportion of it.
And I think I like living in that space.
I like working in that space.
And that's the reason why everything we do at Flash
is open source.
Of course, we can't open source the PII
and the bank account numbers
and the way we do our trades,
but we open source everything in terms of code
and everything that we build,
we hope that other people use it.
to either create products like ours,
products comparative to ours,
complementary to ours,
or collaborative to ours.
Amazing.
I do agree that people are operating
at a different vibration.
And I mentioned earlier
just how kind of a soul you are,
and I can't highlight that point enough.
So if you ever get a chance to meet Dredd here,
please introduce yourself to him
and absorb some of that good energy.
On that notion of
creating something for a higher purpose, what is your greatest hope for Jamaica with what you're
creating? So obviously, you know, you've now created a tool that can be used in emergencies,
could be used to foster some sense of financial inclusion. But in terms of like,
maybe even a borderline utopian vision, what does Flash do for Jamaica?
Oh, wow. I love these kind of, you know, cosmic questions. I think that, you know,
a lot of people in Jamaica are very hopeful, very hardworking. We are probably some of the
hardest working people in the world. That's why we're so talented in general. Probably something
to do with the food too, the yams. But I think that the people that have that potential in
Jamaica are going to start being able to realize they can use it you know And of course this is not every other show talks about AI so I won go into AI too much on this but AI has an
acceleration effect, right? And you have people that are able to use something like AI and use
something that they can fully control their own sovereign money without being, you know, diluted
or inflated or censored. Then I think a lot of things that are being held back right now,
in terms of talent, in terms of potential, might explode. That's my utopian vision,
is that Jamaica becomes a productive explosion of productivity and talent. And people that
probably left Jamaica, we call it brain drain, they left Jamaica to go have a better life
somewhere, will realize that, oh, I can live in my hometown, in my home country,
and still do great things with the tools that we have today. And there'll be kind of a big
repatriation as well. I mean, these are all utopian visions, so don't think of it as, you know,
I might be being bombastic, but people coming home, people being productive, and us growing into this,
you know, very, very wealthy, bountiful country, you know, just because we're freed the people to
be able to actually work is kind of my utopian vision. Lots of relations between here and there,
but I think it's a good vision to keep working for.
I spoke with a handful of other people who have started using Bitcoin when I was working on the piece that I worked on a few months ago about Flash and your efforts. It seems like there has been some traction already. You know, there are people using it already. I don't think that that sounds utopian. We're seeing repatriation in places like El Salvador, which we've talked about.
are you seeing anything that's sort of the early stages of what you're talking about?
Are you working with any developers on the ground there,
with any people who are benefiting from this technology directly?
And to your point, so much so that they're not thinking like,
how do I get out of here?
It's more like, no, no, I could be okay,
because now I have sort of what I need to be productive and to be fruitful
while still living here, as you put it,
while still being home in my home country doing this work?
Are you seeing any kind of early stages of that thus far?
I think my view, my aperture is a little bit smaller than I would like it to be.
I'm sure there are people out there that are doing it,
but my aperture is focused on a lot of my users and the merchants.
And the merchants that I see, they are showing a lot of signs of that.
A lot of merchants that are working there and getting revenue in Jamaican dollars
are no longer thinking of how to get it out of Jamaican dollars
or how to escape the current jurisdiction.
They're now thinking, the opportunity is here, right?
I can actually save here in Bitcoin
and go back to Jamaican dollars whenever I want to.
So those merchants now are no longer feeling reliant
on foreign institutions or foreign currency
in order to keep their business running.
And that is an amazing thing.
It gives them a lot more freedom to build things that last on the ground.
You know, a lot of the short term thinking was because of the, you know, need for, you know, foreign resources.
And that doesn't that doesn't require it anymore for a lot of the merchants.
And they're slowly starting to realize that, I think.
Now, granted, there's a lot of steps that still need to happen for this to become a normal thing.
But a lot of the forward thinking merchants are heading that direction.
And I think I see more of that every day, not just for Bitcoin, but for stable coins, for digital assets, for, you know,
ways that people can digitally transact and communicate. I think that all of that plays a
part in the way merchants are changing the way they think and how to do business today. And I'm
looking forward to that happening more and more, you know, because that's going to create more
flash merchants for us. Yeah, that's amazing. There does seem to be a bit of a contagious effect.
There's like people, they start using it, they feel the benefits of it, they teach a friend about
it. I think on a certain level with any sort of new technology, there's some anxiety around it,
but then just the fact that it sort of sticks around and just continues to be reliable,
it's great. I'm just kind of thinking about you having given your home country such an amazing
product. I think about this a lot and I think about it as a non-developer. Do you feel any
sense of like pressure to continue to make it really good to make sure to keep up with it because
I because it is such an amazing enabling thing that you're doing but also does some of that
pressure potentially get alleviated because it's open source because there are other people that
can look at the code that can help you out what is it like playing the role that you're playing
yeah it's a good question and I think um last year some of that pressure was realized mainly
because we're at a point in the project
where we're not necessarily getting a lot of reviews
or stars or GitHub will be stars or follows.
And we're not getting those kind of needed reviews
to do a lot of security audits
or a lot of code reviews to check for bugs
and contributions to documentation, to functionality.
We're not seeing that as much.
You might get that in a wallet like Blink
or a wallet like Phoenix or others
that are much more well-known.
but I think we need to get to the point where we're getting more independent reviews from
Bitcoiners that you know love this kind of thing then that would really help us out so reach out
to the community and see if that can happen another thing that was a little bit of a learning curve
for us was also the usage of the tool you know like we started off you know trying to use it
in a much more cypherpunk way like you know this is Bitcoin and a lot of people couldn't understand
it. So, you know, we learned how to kind of tailor it so it's a lot more understandable
and realizing that education is needed alongside the actual app. So we're building a lot of that
education out as well in terms of documentation, YouTube videos, and that kind of stuff. But I
would say that those are some of the things that we needed to build out to make sure that the app
was usable in Jamaica. Yeah, I forgot what the rest of your question was. No, that's it. No,
I think it's great. I was just saying, like, what sorts of responsibility do you feel?
Do you feel any pressure to make to make sure, you know, obviously it's safe, usable, all these things.
But I think that, you know, it's interesting.
I think a lot of people come out of with that sort of cypherpunk.
This has to be cool and kind of almost edgy But then you like look we just trying to make digital money that makes people life better We making technology that people generally speaking you know want to use and want to use as easily as they use maybe like comparably to something like Cash App here in the United States
And I say I say this because I don't think it necessarily means that the spirit, the cypherpunk or like the Bitcoin spirit is inherently taken away if you're not approaching it with that edginess.
Because I think just the fact that you're enabling people and providing them with the opportunity that it does provide them just to have this app and what it facilitates for them, I think you're still keeping that spirit alive.
You're just doing it in a more subtle way.
You're not hitting people over the head with it saying, this is what I'm all about.
But at the same time, they're feeling the benefits of what you're all about and what you're trying to do for them.
Is that a fair way to put it?
I don't know.
I've been trying to refine this sort of perspective on Bitcoin myself.
So maybe I'm just projecting here.
I don't know.
No, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. I think I like to term it the trying to find the lowest common denominator customer and make sure that they are taken care of. There's a good friend that I have in Jamaica, that's his name is Mikey. And for Mikey to use the app, it can't be, you know, only for iPhone 16, you know, it has to be able to run on a phone that is, you know, commoditized or a low resource phone. And then Jamaica doesn't always have the best internet everywhere.
so you can't just have a high bandwidth internet access to the phone it has to be able to run
offline partially part of the time or in a low bandwidth situation and these are the kind of
things that i say okay we can get to that customer even a customer who doesn't like to type that much
you know a lot of people in jamaica and the caribbean and latin america everywhere except
sorry for the cursing everywhere except um the u.s almost uses whatsapp and when you use whatsapp a
lot of people use voice notes so we you know we're getting to the point where as the app can you can
you work for people that want to use a voice note, you know, to send a message instead of
typing, then the app has that kind of accessibility controls in it. You know, so imagine you're using
the app, you're sending a Nasta message and you tell the app, you know, zap 100 sats to my friend
Mikey. And the app converts that into an actual action that you can confirm and send the money to
him. Not techie at all, right? It's just a voice note you're sending at that point. And that's where
we want to get to. We want to serve those kind of people. And that's really what drives me and makes
me feel like, you know, we're covering that gap. Yeah. Amazing. It sounds, again, as a non-technical
person, that sounds quite challenging, but super, super cool to think about. You actually also kind
of beat me to my last question here is sort of what comes next. Any other things like that? I
know that accessibility is really big for you. So if you want to touch on that a little bit,
and then in terms of what comes next, obviously what comes next for Flash and then just
next steps for you, what's happening with Jamaica, the recovery effort, and then maybe ways that
people might be able to still help if they want to. Sure. So first, what comes next for Flash?
You know, we're rolling out our new beta release soon. We still haven't fully launched. Like all of
this has been happening in a pre-launch stage and it's been amazing, you know, adoption. So we're
going to be launching on Bitcoin Pizza Day, May 22nd. We have a lot of really cool surprises that
I can't tell you on this podcast, but I really want to. I'll probably tell you offline, but just
know that you're going to have a lot of really cool, exciting things that people all around the
world can participate in as part of our launch. And then, you know, we're going to be also having
a lot of new rollout features, you know, a lot more Nasta stuff. We're going to have additional
features for Jamaicans to access the international markets, you know, as a finance, basically, not
investment, but just buying things and being able to use international bank accounts. So we have
that rolling out. And then on the Hurricane Melissa stage, like I said, we're still sending buses
over to the west of the island. But most importantly, once we have our final set of
solar panel generators land in Jamaica and get cleared, we're going to be going to different
community centers and donating those to the community center. Now, granted, the community
centers have already probably gotten their internet back up, gotten their electricity back up, and
they're running again. But these are the places that are going to be the center for the next
disaster that happens, right? So we want to make sure that before the next disaster happens, we
have them up and running with internet that can work without, you know, needing the grid,
electricity that can work without needing the grid, and then finally, Bitcoin that can work
without needing the grid. So if we can set them up with those three things, a node, Starlink or
something and the solar panels, then we're going to have these really resilient nodes around the
country that can withstand the next disaster. That is the goal. So you're actually thinking
in terms of this like resilience by like a disaster standard, that's sort of your,
how can I say, like your baseline almost at this point? I don't know if that's the best word to use,
but is that like... Absolutely. Yeah, it's like the table stakes. The baseline is if we're setting
you up with a node and you are going to be one of our, we call it Project Island Resilience.
And we're setting you up with one of these nodes. This node is going to have internet power and the
way to actually send either communication via Nostra or payment via Bitcoin. And that, you know,
will be, of course, checked every now and again. We were looking into different ways that we could
do offline payments as well. So I'm not really sure which protocol we'll use. And we're kind of
experimenting with that right now. But that'll be part of it as well. You know, as merchants around
the area will need to still transact, right? So you might have a mint in the node. A lot of that's,
you know, technical, but the point is it's a resilience node that we'll have around the island.
And if you are in disaster zone, that should be the place you go to and get what you need without,
you know, having to wait for help or wait for recovery. Wow. That's amazing. In terms of
creating these hubs, is it all just organic? Is it just, again, that coordination amongst
different groups that you mentioned in the beginning of this conversation? Is it all just
happening? Or is there some level of federal government involved with this? Or is this all
just basically grassroots efforts between different people working together on this right now?
It's all grassroots at this point. We haven't even approached any of the federal or other
institutions. And I think it's a good idea for us to do it. But I think that it would be much
better to actually like lay a kind of proof of concept, a foundation that works, and then go to
them with this proof of concept saying hey this works You know so at the federal level if you guys are interested in rolling this out we have a method that works We have the knowledge to volunteer and give to you Let do it together And I hope that happens because Jamaica is really known for adopting things well if they work and going viral with it
So if Jamaica adopts this, we could see at a federal level this happening all over the country and all the region.
But, you know, I am always the utopian.
So at a bare minimum, we're going to have 10, you know, community centers that will be donated with solar panels and Bitcoin nodes.
And then we'll take it from there.
Bananas. Absolutely amazing.
That's yeah. Maybe bananas isn't the best word, but I'm just like kind of blown away that I didn't know this was all happening.
But it's just really, really amazing to see because I think oftentimes with relief efforts, from my limited understanding of being involved with them, there's a lot of like, OK, let's let's repair things and get things to like a state where it's like, OK, everything's good enough.
And now we can get back to our daily lives. But there's a level of proactivity here of preparing, knowing that this is going to happen again.
But using this technology on that level, I haven't heard of anybody else doing that, at least not to this extent.
And also, I think combining these different elements that you're talking about, it just seems like an absolutely amazing, just an absolutely incredible effort.
So I commend you for it. Very much appreciate you sharing it here.
Where can people follow not only you, but the effort?
Are you documenting this anywhere that they can sort of maybe follow along or continue to get more information about it?
I probably should. I've been so heads down that the documentation part is always falling to the wayside.
So I'm happy I'm doing podcasts like this.
And, you know, I'm probably going to start writing some articles too.
But if you want to follow what we're doing in general, you can follow us on Twitter.
It is on getflash or lnflash on Twitter.
On Instagram, it is getflash.io.
It's getflash.io on most social media.
And you can go to the website and see all the social media links there.
And then we're also on Noster as Flash.
So, you know, definitely follow us on Noster.
But the open source community knows a lot of our team and knows us.
And I have to shout out to the open source community.
Like, you know, people who are building on Fedimint, people who are building on Cashew, people who are building on stablecoins even, you know, a lot of the open source stuff.
Anyway, a lot of that stuff has really helped us to maintain velocity, you know, like to maintain the velocity of innovation that is needed for countries like ours and countries that are in conflict zones and countries that are in consistent disaster zones to get the resources they need.
Like this is the change in the world that we need to see so that we can move at the speed of technology.
You know, the people that need electricity in Africa, they're getting, you know, expanded electricity from companies like Gridless.
These things are needed and we're going to keep building it.
And I'm really happy to be a part of that.
And I thank the open source community that I'm working with and the human rights community that I'm working with that helps with the, you know, everything that we're doing.
So if you want to reach out to me directly, I am Dredd also on everything.
everything well not on instagram but on twitter and nostril aren't you pull pull vault uh i'm
spacing out a pull vault hero i forget it it's pull wall dream well what do you call it the the
name on it just says dread okay if you type in pull wall dream you'll see dread and i'm you know
check out what i'm doing and what we're doing we always we always you know meme and crap post on
Twitter whenever we have the chance.
Yeah, and for those who are unaware,
Dredd is a pole vault champion.
I don't know the easiest way to say it.
We have the picture behind him there.
We didn't get into this today,
but competed in the national game.
Yeah, I was going to say,
maybe a quick, before we go there,
just maybe a quick overview
of your pole vault skills.
Yeah, I competed for Jamaica
from high school all the way up
to professional.
I tried out for the Olympics twice
and competed at every other level down,
won a couple medals,
And I guess the biggest achievement is that I held the national record for Jamaica in the pole vault for 11 years running and then coached the guy that ended up breaking my record after it was over.
So I coached as well after, you know, my heyday.
But it's been a passion for me and I still follow it.
And hopefully one day I'll be coaching my son as well on how to pole vault.
Amazing.
Go pole vault.
I hope, yeah, thank you for taking the time to do this, Dredd.
I know you're busy.
I hope everybody listening just gets how awesome the work that Dread is doing.
It's really, really amazing stuff.
And I think it's a true testament to not just cypherpunk culture or whatever, but you can just do things and you can use this technology to do such incredible good in the world and tell people about that.
You know, we oftentimes we're hearing about a lot of the financialization of Bitcoin and all this other stuff, which is fine to each their own.
Everybody can do their thing.
But, you know, using Bitcoin freedom tech, what's now becoming emergency tech, as we were saying, you know, it's it's truly changing lives.
It's making stuff better for the next time things go wrong that that a place like Jamaica experiences severe hurricanes.
And, you know, this this narrative does not get out there enough.
And the only thing I think that's significantly harder than spreading this narrative is being the person building the technology that that underpins it all.
And that's actually creating this technology and making it usable for people. So Dred, many thanks for the work that you do. You're an incredible inspiration. And thank you again for taking the time to jump on here with me and talk about this stuff.
Thank you, Frank. One love. And I hope to see you soon.
Absolutely, my friend. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. We will talk soon. Take it easy.
Hey everyone, Frank again. Just wanted to say thank you so much for listening. It was an honor to help Dredge share his story, as not only is he an incredible Bitcoiner, but a remarkable human being as well. Feel free to share his story far and wide.
Also, as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, I'm always looking for more good stories like this, so please feel free to contact me with any leads at newrentcap at gmail.com. That's N-E-W-R-E-N-C-A-P at gmail.com.
finally once more we would greatly appreciate if you could subscribe and maybe leave a rating and
review it would really help the algorithm find us and that's that thank you again for listening
and we'll talk soon much love everybody