Hello, everybody. My name is Daniel Prince, and I'm the host of the Once Bitten podcast.
This is a podcast focused on Bitcoin. It's my mission to interview as many people as I can
around the different aspects of Bitcoin and help people understand exactly what Bitcoin could mean
for them and for their families and for their future. I hope you enjoy the show. Thank you so
much for listening. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Once Bitten Podcast.
Joining me today is Brendan, the founder of Bitcoin Kampala, based in Uganda. And I'm dropping this
the day after Uganda has shut down the internet across the whole country. Now we've seen this
happened in Iran recently and now it's happening in Uganda. They have shut down the internet,
nobody is allowed or able to get on the internet because there is an election coming up and the
powers that be, whoever they are, because it's never the incumbent government, believe me,
there's always people pulling strings against them, there are always agendas way higher than
just your government puppets that have decided that the good people of Uganda should be shot
off from the internet it's absolutely i mean speechless really absolutely speechless
if you never if you if you were in any doubt at all as to whether you lived in a tyrannical world
run by complete and utter lunatics then you know have another rethink and start reading some books
start getting your hands on books like operation gladio by paul williams or red symphony by jay
landowski these these books open up a different way of looking at how if you want to john perkins
as well. Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. And you can go and listen to John.
He's been on Preston Pish's show, his Bitcoin show. And read Alex Gladstein's work about the IMF.
Figuring out who's actually behind what's going on out there in the political realm,
in air quotes, will help you get a better understanding of what's going on in the world
and why it's happening.
I would also highly recommend you go back
and listen to my episode with Simon Dixon.
He has the Bitcoin Hard Talk podcast.
He goes live every Friday
and you can catch his own show,
the Bitcoin Hard Talk,
where he goes through all the geopolitics
and the interconnected world
and the fiat currency system
and the proof of weapons network,
as he calls it,
and what we're fighting against here
with Bitcoin.
the silent revolution just opting out of that system and opting into a fair one bitcoin that's
all you need to do and if you're not stacking your sats you 100 should be and that is my segue
into shilling relay for you r-e-l-a-i dot ch forward slash bits and relay are across europe
they are serving europeans over here on this side of the pond this side of the world now's the time
guys now is the time to get rid of your fiat currency of whatever currency or whatever
country you're living in if you're not based in europe find the service that is uh near you
in your own jurisdiction where you try and get peer-to-peer if you can uh if not find a bitcoin
only exchange one that's trusted over in the us you have swan bitcoin for example they've been
around for many years you can set up a dollar cost average you've got services in new zealand
Australia, all over the world. Just go find them. You now have built Bitcoin in Canada and across
Europe as well. So there are options for you. Relay.ch forward slash bits and relay have been
around for a long time and they're going to help you start stacking your sats. The next step is to
get really serious. Self-custody your Bitcoin. Look, you can own Bitcoin. You can have a loyal
title over Bitcoin. It's yours. There's Bitcoin and then there's everything else.
so get some bitcoin because the everything else you might have like a finger on but it's not yours
your bank account the money in your bank account isn't yours only keeping your bank account the
amount of fiat that you are willing to lose it's that simple get hold of your bitcoin you need to
be in control you need to have the private keys bitbox.swiss forward slash bitten you can use the
code BITTON at checkout for 5% off the Bitbox O2 or the Bitbox Nova. Both Bitcoin only additions,
hardware wallets, and again, Bitbox have been around for a long time. Now, if you want to start
accepting goods and services for accepting Bitcoin for your goods and services, the best place to do
that is paywithflash.com. It's that simple. Paywithflash.com. Get over there, set yourselves up,
start invoicing in Bitcoin, start earning Bitcoin, start telling your suppliers, your customers,
whoever it is that you're interacting with, that you want to start accepting Bitcoin. Sure,
they're not going to do it straight away, but you've got to set the stage. And the last shout
out, hit the link in the show notes, go and join Club Orange, come and find us, hang out with 20,000
Bitcoiners around the world. Meanwhile, enjoy this rip with Brendan. All right, Brendan, we are
recording we were going to record this conversation we've had a conversation before which we should
have just hit record on but you were actually in a car i remember you were you were up somewhere
i'm i'm always somewhere it's only today that uh because we had scheduled it ahead of time
i chose a very nice background inside the inside the biggest university where part of
the work that we do is based.
So yeah, it's awesome to finally hit record and talk about this story.
Yes, right.
And what a story to share.
Hard to know where to begin.
I guess we should let people know who you are.
I think that's probably the best place to start and where you are as well.
All right.
So my name is Brendan.
I'm a Bitcoiner, of course, based in Uganda.
Discovered Bitcoin in 2016 and entered a marriage with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is my first wife.
I'm here to find my second.
I've been serving the Bitcoin space, I think, for now seven years.
In and out of the crypto Ponzi scheme grift.
And 2021, I really decided to focus on Bitcoin.
so the journey of our community has evolved since 2021 into PAKOS visit in 2022 2023 we
start the circular economy efforts in 2021 would we decided to create a Bitcoin only company which
is now GorillaSats that's our biggest flagship Bitcoin product so my personal background is
really very tied to the community because i've always been a community-based person everything
i've learned in the bitcoin space i tend to want to transfer it so the story will be if i try to
tell my personal story i'll end up telling the whole story why not why not we're not in any rush
we are not in any rush okay so um i'll skip the crypto the crypto space it's boring i discovered
bitcoin through a scam and that scam led me to do a bit of research i ended up finding bitcoin
myself buying my first bitcoin on local bitcoins putting it in a blockchain.com wallet and i then
sent it to scammers who had promised to send me more money. I learned my lesson the hard way,
but I had retained a very small portion of Bitcoin in that wallet and it eventually grew in value,
which pushed me over the cliff to kind of research how Bitcoin works. And I thought I was going to be
a millionaire if I kept saving in Bitcoin. I'm a millionaire now in such a few millions in my
wallet yet to hit a few million bitcoins hopefully but I have a million certs at least to my name
and right now our community has evolved from that personal story where I went on to share what I
had learned about bitcoin with my friends it went from my friends to my community started
trying to do on ground education at some point I had university kids in a room teaching them how to
download wallets and sent them some certs and provided them an avenue on how to spend those
certs. And that is when, while on Twitter, I landed on a very interesting Twitter call
from Bitcoin Ecclesi, who was asking for any people who are interested in building a circular
economy in their country. And we were supposed to pitch how we were supposed to do it. So I went on,
went through that process i imagined as um as the winner and won my ticket to my first bitcoin
conference which is btc prague in 2023 so in june when we did that um when i did that trip
that a whole big story around that because i crowdfunded i crowdfunded that trip on geyser and the campaign was funded in a day So after I won the poll to go to BTC Prague and experience the Bitcoin circular economy booth I had to find ways of getting to Prague because
what I had won was the ticket, not the flight, not the accommodation. I just had the conference
ticket. So I went on Geyser because I'd been posting a lot of the work we were doing online.
I had a lot of support. People donated to my campaign and that was the first real impact of Bitcoin on my life.
I flew out of Uganda to my first Bitcoin conference. It was my first time on a plane.
It was my first time to leave the continent. It was my first time to get on a subway.
A lot of first times in 2023 and a lot of learning.
So I met Haman in Prague.
I met Fernando in Prague.
And they shared what they had been building both in South Africa and Brazil.
And they taught me, they gave me the confidence that we were already building a circular economy.
But we didn't know that we were.
And we were missing a few pieces to complete the circle.
So when I came back in June 2023, we started on a path to actually find where to build a circular economy.
and the orphanage comes into the picture.
How does the orphanage come into the picture?
The orphanage caretaker throughout the COVID period
had been trying to look for different ways of donations
and luckily through Facebook posts and Twitter posts,
a Bitcoiner landed on the work they were doing
and in 2023 had sent them some Bitcoin.
Now, during the process of the caretaker
trying to cash out the Bitcoin, they had been put in touch with myself and a friend of mine
who works at Machankura because Machankura was enabling Bitcoin payments without the internet.
And the orphanage is in a place where there is no smartphone penetration, there is no
internet penetration. So the three factors came together and yeah, we decided to go and see the
orphanage the bitcoin accepting orphanage and it was the perfect place it was really the perfect
place to start the circular economy because there was already a need for donations there was already
a need for getting these kids in a better state of life when i spoke to her man and and fernando
were about it, they were like, that's where you should start because it is a point of impact.
It is a project that has already existed since 2007. And it really has an impact on the community
and it will change something. So 2023, the first time I visited the orphanage, I visited with more
Bitcoin books than food. I still tell that story up to now that I'm very ashamed because how dare
I visit orphaned children with more Bitcoin books than food.
But yeah, that was the best decision I think we took for the project
because then we now had a really impactful cause
to put Bitcoin behind.
And we didn't hesitate from the first day that we reached the orphanage,
we implemented the model that was being used in Brazil,
which is the fruits for sats.
So now we bring the Fruits for Sats project to the orphanage and we start off the children at the orphanage, giving them daily fruits and making Bitcoin payments using bolt cards.
At that point, I think we had 14 bolt cards and they would have to do rounds with the same bolt cards paying to the Bitcoinized POS machine.
And it was really fun to see that enthusiasm that came, especially for the fruits, but paired with Bitcoin.
And we went on to redo the orphanage premises.
The orphanage was in a very bad condition.
The kids were sleeping down.
So, yeah, we asked for donations online, received all of them in Bitcoin.
We used that Bitcoin to buy the children beds, bed sheets, mattresses.
We did a very strong fruits diet for the whole year.
We paid outstanding bills in health.
We went on to pay the outstanding tuition fees at the school where they were going.
So we really dug deep and focused on the project and tried to solve all the already existing problems before we could get into the Bitcoin circular economy.
And it is something that I mentioned such that whoever is learning from this podcast might know that bringing Bitcoin to a community requires you to get close to their problems first.
Try to solve those problems with Bitcoin and it will be easy for the community to actually grasp Bitcoin.
So we get out of that, what I like to call putting out fires phase, because we are putting out a lot of fires. And thanks to Bitcoin, we got the kids back in health, we got them back in school. And yeah, the project was a success.
I would say by the end of 2023 into early 2024, we had a successful project that had received about 1.4 BTC.
We had put that BTC to use.
We had improved children's lives.
And then we encounter a very big shocker.
We get a distress call from the owner of the school where the children were going.
the owner of the school had been supporting the orphanage throughout the covid time and a lot of
the finances had gone wrong because the orphanage was the biggest customer or the biggest client
of the school so when the owner of the school realized that now the orphanage has a support
system from elsewhere they decided to throw in the towel they gave us a distress call and said
You know, you see that director's health has deteriorated because of the COVID weakening and would like to close the school.
So here we are on top of one mountain.
We have climbed one victory and now we are being taken back down.
So we now get into another management of that situation.
So we actually signed an agreement with the owner of the school to let us use the school for two years as we tried to figure out whether we could buy the school or we could find another school.
And of course, the owner of the school was almost like a mother to these kids because she had looked after them for a while.
She said yes. So we took on the school for, I think, one year and a few months up until recently.
An announcement that we have not made official. It's just still in the corners.
We were able to buy the school. So right now we have a full school that we are going to add onto the Bitcoin standard.
designed a Bitcoin.
We are going to design a Bitcoin focused curriculum.
We are putting in hands-on activities
to skill the orphan children
and the community around us.
So now that's on one side,
the orphanage and the school
are now fully Bitcoinized entities.
The teachers are being paid in Bitcoin.
We still have our transparent system
that we've had all the way from the start
where you can check our geyser
see how many certs we've received check the crowdfunding platforms that we have on the
bitcoin confederation i'll share with you all those links such that people can check them out
you would see really how much we have received and the impact it has done
on the ground the kids are really really in better health because right now we've
we've reduced our health cases to about to a manageable rate of course children will still
get sick, you'll still have malaria, you'll still have a few coughs here and there, but it is not as
bad as it used to be. And even when we get those emergencies, we do not have all the money, but we
have some emergency funds that can at least help us through the first stages. We've been having
the fruits program run since June 2023 non-stop. We've added an eggs for such project on top of
that to bring protein into the kids diet. We've onboarded our suppliers, the supplier ecosystem
built around the school and orphanage to also accept Bitcoin. So right now we pay for our fruits,
our eggs. The person who does our engineering projects, if we need to do small constructions,
they take Bitcoin. The food that we eat, all of it is paid in Bitcoin. And along the way,
we were also able to get a kind donor who bought us a piece of land where we are now doing our own
farming. So we are still paying for our food in Bitcoin, but we are trying to reduce the food
budget by growing our own food. Going out of 2025, when we started the daily administration of the
school, we thought, why not look for a partner? Because my major is not running a school. The
caretaker is used to running the orphanage. So we've since also written another partnership
agreement with a model school here. There's a school that is based in the capital that is
pioneering a different style of education. So the children are learning carpentry, ICT skills,
pigery, farming, all the interesting things that Bitcoiners usually like to do. These guys are
teaching them in a schooling model that has run for eight years So they have experience So we walked to them boldly It was not easy but we managed to close them So they will be
our direct partner when it comes to running the school and modeling the activities of the
school, such that even when the kids are getting out of the lower primary section and they
are transitioning into high school, they already have skills that they can sell for Bitcoin.
They already know how to farm. They already know how to use their computers. They already know how to have animals and raise them well. So there's this whole ecosystem that is emerging out of the small seed that was sown by Ascan in 2016. I've not done the story justice, but I feel like I've been talking for long. Yeah, so that's where we are right now.
I'll pull on a few threads here.
So how many kids are we talking about?
Because like there would have been a set amount of kids in the orphanage
and then even more kids in the school, I'm assuming from following the story.
So how many kids were in the orphanage to begin with?
76 children were in the orphanage to begin with.
76 kids?
Yes.
All sleeping on the floor?
Yes, bro.
Oh my God.
Yeah, and Bitcoin saved that.
I don't know whether Bitcoin has taken enough credit.
I don't know whether I'm the right marketing department
to make Bitcoin take credit for such a thing.
But we literally got 77.
There were 77 and we lost one.
So now 76.
So 76 children now sleeping on beds with mattresses,
with bedsheets.
Oh, we need to buy new bedsheets.
the old ones are we the ones we bought in 2023 have since grown but yeah all that was paid for
in bitcoin and that was paid for from from like a geyser fund a geyser project it was
so we did um we have the geyser site and we also have a btc pay integration where we built a simple
Bitcoin website where we would list the priorities that we had and the update of what we have so far
collected. We've since transitioned to the Bitcoin Confederation, but that website still exists.
It's called bitcoincampala.org. So it has all the priorities that started with all the money that
we raised, all the achievements. We managed to capture all that on Twitter as well. So the
advantage we have about Bitcoin Kampala is from day one, from the day we visited the orphanage,
if you go back to Twitter, you will see from day one of when the project started up to where we are.
So the beauty is everything from a printer that we bought, from QR codes that we printed, to
the first time we paid for fruits using Bitcoin.
All that is captured on the Bitcoin Kampala Twitter handle.
So when we take on the school, the school was initially a big institution,
but throughout COVID, a lot of parents took their kids out of school.
And the strategy for the school had been,
because they had external children bringing in revenue,
they also took on 36 to 37 orphans.
so out of COVID
when all the children
of the community left the school
the total of orphans
that were studying from the school
plus ours were 115
and when we took on that school
we eventually took on
those kids as well
so we have now
a total of 115 children
that we look after
so the number went from 76 to 115
because of that
us taking on the school um yeah so that's that's the number that we are working with 115
so what's the age range because uh when you took over the orphanage that's a lot of orphans like
you know what's the main what's the main reason for the the reason is one the region where the
orphanage is, is a rural area. It's a rural area with no active sensitization about family planning.
The region is also kind of deserted by the government facilities, so there's not so much
development. There's not so many schools. That's why we are talking about a previously private
school that is owned by a local who was also trying to solve a local problem. So it's far off
from the capital and the government assistance.
And the region is mostly full of young parents.
So it's a vicious cycle that already exists
that reinforces early marriages,
lack of family planning,
and back to a lot of children,
children that parents can't eventually take care of,
a high death risk system. So it's like a vicious, bad circular economy that creates all these young
children in the community. In fact, it is an astounding ratio. It is a ratio of two adults
to 10 children. So for every two adults in that community, there's 10 children.
And that ratio means typically the adults cannot take care of their kids, or the adults
are dying at a young age and they're leaving the children
and taken care of.
So the hind story behind majority of these orphans
is some of them were found at church doors
left by their parents.
Some of them were collected from the community
and they had run away from home because they couldn't eat.
So all those children were brought together under an orphanage.
And the story behind the orphanage is
the initial founder of the orphanage was a barren lady who could not bear children.
So as a way of giving back and also enjoying that family love, she took on an initial group of orphans,
raised them, and took on another group.
So when she took on another group, she unfortunately passed on.
But when she passed on, the now caretaker of the orphanage stepped in to look after the orphans.
So that's the behind story.
Wow. What's the, what, I mean, might be a morbid question to ask, but I think it's probably something people are thinking about. What would be the main cause of death there at an early age?
well um i would like to put it at just poor health habits that's one there is um of course
aids because of the the sexual practices that are not very well sensitized against there is um
of course drug abuse for the mostly on the men's side so you'll find a lot of ladies out of the
adults you'll find more adult women than more adult men because men tend to go towards the
drug abuse route especially when you have a big family that you've created out of an early marriage
and then you have to take care of the family so there is a drug problem there is early marriages
and child marriages as well, not just early marriages.
So you'll find a 16-year-old already has two kids.
So if you start at 16 and you started off on the wrong pace,
it's just a vicious cycle that is becoming hard to solve.
Damn.
Sorry, I was just...
Someone just pulled up.
Someone's just about to do donuts through the park.
Wow, that's such a great story, man.
Like, you know, first of all, hats off for everything that you've done
and that you've achieved.
I'm not alone.
I wish those hats were off for me alone.
I'm trying to do a better story to get the people that are involved
in the story to get their credit.
We have the caretaker who is called Isma.
He runs the Offens of Uganda Twitter handle.
We have Edith, who is very big in the space.
She studied the Bitcoin data course, and she came in to help with the orphanage.
We have Afan.
Afan is my day one.
He's the first person I taught about Bitcoin.
We've built Gorilla Sats together.
We've grown the community together.
And we have contributions across the board from a lot of people.
We have Haman and, of course, Fernando, who introduced me to the whole concept.
We have Bitcoin Beach.
They've been our greatest patron in terms of funding.
And they're our ambassador.
They really give the project a lot of platform.
So it's a very communal, global communal activity.
I am just the person who is willing to take the stress of making it happen.
And of course, to people like you who are giving us the platform to tell this story.
Because I think there are many more people like me out there who could be solving a community
problem, who could be using Bitcoin to empower their community.
And they just need a wake up call.
And there's still work that I've not highlighted.
There's still work that we do around the university.
We did not abandon the university.
That's why I'm here.
The background that we have is from the university.
I'm actually inside.
We still do merchant education and we still teach the university students how to spend Bitcoin And they are actually building they are actually spending in the circular economy around the university So we still do education and merchant onboarding around there
But that's like 10% of the total project focus
because it's easier to do it here.
It's harder to do it on the other side.
So we focus all our efforts on the other side.
All the funding we get, majority of it goes that side.
But yeah, not that we've neglected the university area as well.
So what's your link to the university?
Did you study there as well before?
Yeah?
Yes.
Okay.
What were you studying?
So I studied Chinese.
I studied a bachelor's of Chinese and Asian studies for three years.
And I did that after dropping out of law school.
I had initially enrolled for law school.
Went in two weeks. The environment was not what I expected. I expected education to be exciting. And the way the law is presented when you're in the courts is not the same way it is taught.
She started using very old information, very, I would say, outdated information.
And for me, from the start, I realized I can't wait five years of studying and going through this whole, I want to call it archaic system, before I could touch some money.
So I assessed the law school approach and I decided to drop out and go for a bachelor's in Chinese and Asian studies.
I'd been very attentive towards global politics.
So I knew the position that China was taking with the disadvantage that they have.
China has economic power.
It has the financial power and they call it their democratic, political, there's a way they refer to it. It's a communist capitalist country. Yeah, so their communist capitalist approach accumulated them all this economic power in the world, but they still have one big disadvantage.
they can't talk to the world.
So I thought if they can't talk to the world,
because majority of them don't speak English,
and English and I think Spanish and should be Italian
are the widely spoken languages across the world after Chinese.
So if China needed to do business with Africa and to be specific Uganda,
they needed to communicate it was a good opportunity for me to learn their language
learn their economics and learn their culture to become a bridge and I did become a bridge
for about one year or two I think I did my internship in a Chinese company where I translated
and then in my third year just before I graduated I worked with the Chinese companies for a year
So I would do work throughout the day and then study the evening part of the course.
And that's what I studied.
Man, that's full on.
You're clearly a guy that puts your head to something and sticks to it and sees the light at the end of the tunnel.
And that's what you've seen with Bitcoin, obviously.
I mean, Bitcoin is, for me, Bitcoin is the ingredient.
There is a lot that Bitcoin will change.
It has already changed in my life.
I don't think the average youth, I still consider myself a youth because I'm only 26.
There is a lot of opportunity on the table for anyone who earlier on in their life actually
takes on Bitcoin because Bitcoin opens networks, Bitcoin opens funding, Bitcoin opens your
mind towards the realities of economics, towards the realities of how money is actually controlling
or suppressing our financial freedoms.
When it comes to the dollar hegemony and understanding how that plays out in my country, how that
affects the amount of money I get paid as a salary, all that kind of repurposes how
you think and positions you better for whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're in a career,
for you to be able to take the most advantage of the value that you create in the world. So for me,
that core ingredient, it expands into all the other things I want to do. I'm more healthy because of
Bitcoin. I'm more empowered because of Bitcoin. I have friends across the world because of Bitcoin.
So, yeah, that's definitely what I think Bitcoin presents to me.
And the understanding I had of China and the global geopolitics really helped me to understand why Bitcoin was important.
Because there is that traditional power struggle that goes on in the economic side between the countries.
And knowing that Bitcoin is a country without borders.
it's an economy with users without a jurisdiction, and this country or this mindset of people
is participating in the global geopolitics, it gave me a different perspective of what
global political and economic power could look like. So me, I think of Bitcoin as a country,
and everyone who is part of that country can rival or compete against the Chinas and the
USes of this world.
I think an interesting kind of, I'd love to get your viewpoint on this last year, particularly
we've had paper Bitcoin summer.
We've had a lot of reverse listings on specific forces around the world from companies that are just stacking Bitcoin for the sake of stacking Bitcoin, from what I can tell.
And a lot of the narrative is all around Bitcoin being, you know, a store of value.
you're here on the ground building a circular economy and i'm sure you're beating the drum that
bitcoin is a medium exchange and needs to become a medium exchange so with your with your like
unique viewpoint from from where you are the travel that you've done the people that you've met
uh the conversations that you've had the work that you've seen the impact that you've seen it have
over you know 77 kids lives um where do you kind of like fall morally ethically on this whole
kind of medium exchange store of value kind of scale well i think the scale has been imbalanced
um the reason a scale is a scale is because it has a weight and a counterweight so i think the
scale has been really imbalanced for the past few years. Bitcoin by default had to take advantage of
the store of value feature for people to notice it. But now the hard time that the world will have
is to come to places like Uganda and Africa in general and try to convince the store of value
narrative on people
because
the value that people have here
is value in skills
is value in
land, is value in
agriculture
now convincing those people that they need
to keep their money in Bitcoin
means you're convincing them to sell
maybe
a piece of land they have and buy
Bitcoin which then takes
away let's say
their land for farming
We are not a cash-heavy continent.
We don't have our resources and our riches in paper money like the Western world does.
I think Africa is rich in resources.
It's rich in land.
It's rich in capital and human labor.
Now, those cannot be used on the Bitcoin layer as stores of value.
They have to be used as medium of exchange.
We have to exchange Bitcoin for resources.
We have to exchange Bitcoin for skills.
We have to exchange Bitcoin for all these wealth, forms of wealth that we have on the
continent, unlike the West.
It makes sense for someone who had a stock, for someone who had dollars in their account
to convert it into Bitcoin.
but it doesn't make sense for someone who has a piece of land to sell it and keep in Bitcoin and
they are not making revenue. It is rather smarter for this person to farm crops on their land,
sell those crops and convert it into Bitcoin. Are we struggling with internet?
No, no, it's fine. I can see you.
All right. So the whole idea is one side of the scale had to be heavy for us to start thinking about the counterweight of the scale.
So I think it's not a bad thing that all these companies are taking that route.
that route, it's actually a good thing for everyone who is using Bitcoin as medium of exchange on this side,
because the value of what they are exchanging is actually going up.
So I think it's just a representation of the typical Austrian economics of what good money does.
That good money on one side is being used to store value, and on the side where there is value, value is moving on that layer.
And maybe it is switching between the two different places.
Maybe it is attracting the people who would rather be storing value to come into the continent and build.
And that's what I've witnessed.
We had the couple from Canada, student of Bitcoin, and they came, Anuja and Santosh.
And to them in Canada, it would have been, let's keep our Bitcoin and it will grow in value.
When they got here, there was value to be created. They sold some of their Bitcoin and we built a Bitcoin business. Now that Bitcoin business is receiving Bitcoin payments on a daily basis. It is bootstrapping the circular economy here. It is helping the students around the university to understand the value of money and to understand the value of Bitcoin.
so it's not
it's not bad
it's not my worry as well
I would like for everyone who comes from the west to know
it's not my worry
that these guys are choosing to use Bitcoin
the way they are
I'm sure that the model we are taking in Africa
is different
we are using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange
and it works
and it is empowering people
it is feeding orphans
it is helping children in South Africa
serve and learn a new skill
which can put them on a global stage.
It is in the biggest slum in East Africa, in Kibera.
It is empowering merchants there, and they are spending it on a daily basis.
It is bringing electrification to villages that would otherwise be ignored
by the national grid through projects like Gridless.
So the model of Bitcoin in Africa is completely different
to the model of Bitcoin in the Western world.
And whether that is right or wrong is not for us to judge.
I think economics has a way of evening out the playing field.
I think as a medium of exchange here,
Bitcoin makes a bigger case
because people don't have value to store.
They have value to give so they can receive Bitcoin,
but they don't yet have accumulated value to store in Bitcoin.
So yeah, that would be my response.
It's just the weight is evening out.
Well, it's amazing to hear that, you know, as a medium exchange,
it's made such an impact.
And so what's GorillaSats then?
Let's learn about that.
GorillaSats is my baby.
So GorillaSats is, I will talk about the company bit,
but GorillaSats is a statement.
For me in my life, it's a very key point where we went from crypto to Bitcoin only.
And we created GorillaSats as an extension of the education work we had been doing.
But we had an interest in tourism.
So GorillaSats was our bridge from Bitcoin education to having a real Bitcoin company
that had Bitcoin values.
So we went from a crypto education company, which was called Skillhaven.
we announced publicly that we were not doing crypto anymore we pivoted to a company that
we called one after our dream and our belief so we believe a lot in the tourism space in
east africa and africa in general i think africa is the next biggest destination for the world
because it's undiscovered, it's untapped,
a lot of economic opportunities,
a lot of nature in its original form,
as I would like to say.
So our belief was tourism is one of the big industries
that will revitalize Africa, and hence the gorilla.
The gorilla is particular for the unique primates
that share 98% DNA with human beings.
and they are only located in East Africa.
And more than 60% of those gorillas exist in my country, in Uganda.
So we chose gorilla to represent those beliefs
and to also speak to the general tourism space.
And the SATs is to represent our values
and Bitcoin being where we draw our principles from.
and it is not SATs by mistake.
It could have been gorilla Bitcoin.
The SATs is, we think SATs is going to be
the layer of transaction on the African continent.
While the early developers and the early West
were able to spend 10,000 Bitcoin on pizza,
for us, we think the dominating layer of transaction
when it comes to Bitcoin going forward in the world
and especially in Africa will be SATs.
So when Africa catches up with using certs, they will know that we had been a Bitcoin company from the start.
And our vision is hopefully it becomes so weird that people are asking us why we are naming our company after money.
Kind of what it would have been like calling a company back in the day Gorilla Dollar.
so we want to get to a point where we've done so much work and people understand bitcoin so much
that having a name like sats or bitcoin something is is so weird it's like naming a company after
after a form of money so yeah that's the background but it's a tourism company strictly
that focuses on east africa we do rwanda tanzania kenya and uganda we started out in uganda and
And our competitive advantage is we save our client money because they send us money in Bitcoin.
So we remove that 5% to 10% fees they could have paid.
But initially, what our clients didn't know or what the general tourism space goes through is whenever the client pays the fees,
the tour operator or the service, the person who is delivering the service also pays a fee.
So we realized if we combine the fee the client pays and the fee that we pay to receive money from them and get it out of the bank and pay other service providers, we end up losing about 25% of the total transaction fees.
So sorry, of the total amount paid. So if someone is paying me a thousand dollars and let's say.
Two hundred and fifty dollars are going into transactions in total around the whole trip.
That should stop. And that is why we decided to create an alternative route.
We don't force it on our clients, but we always recommend that our clients opt to pay us in Bitcoin.
It saves them money. It also saves us money. And we've transferred that by whoever pays us in Bitcoin, they can get a discount because then we don't need to make a very big profit margin to cater for the transaction fees.
So really the whole idea is when you add Bitcoin payments into the tourism space, you're saving the industry about 15% of transaction fees going back to Visa, going back to MasterCard, delayed transactions.
I mean, there's no reason why Uber should be settling the drivers on Uber after every two weeks.
There's no reason why Airbnb should be settling the hosts every after two months or one month.
There is no reason why Booking.com should do the same.
We think Bitcoin is that secret ingredient.
And eventually, if all these platforms that enable travel and cultural exchanges adjust to reflect that instant payment,
then that means the service provider doesn't have to overcharge.
I think things are expensive in general because people have to always cater for transaction fees.
They have to cater for what they lose when they process giving a service to you.
So that's the mindset behind GorillaSats.
By extension, doing all that work, trying to get people to tour different places,
we've created a very small merchant merchant ecosystem when we go to different parts of these
countries you're able to pay in bitcoin and in uganda when we started by the pilot in uganda
we had a big problem the people we were paying in bitcoin didn't have where to sell their bitcoin
from so we had to take a choice between pushing them to binance and hoping they don't touch all
the other 10,000 shitcoins that wasted our time or building a simple platform that would help them
on-ramp and off-ramp. So part of the service that we offer only exclusively in Uganda is people can
on and off-ramp via Lightning from GorillaSats. It's a service that we've put in the market
because everyone seems to have a form of USDT,
a form of crypto that is embedded in their wallet.
And for us, that distraction to the people we teach about Bitcoin
is not necessary.
And yeah, we've still continued with the education efforts
that we started with.
We are now extending to partner with circular economies
such that I can get you, Daniel, from wherever you are in the world,
organize your trip to Kenya,
take you to Afribeat, take you to Nairobi National Park.
And in doing that, I have bootstrapped a circular economy
and I have also made a bit of profit on that trip
while you're also having fun as a Bitcoiner.
So our typical client right now is becoming more and more
a Bitcoiner who wants to explore East Africa,
but we still take on bigger clients And by being a pioneer something that the world doesn know by being a pioneer in the Bitcoin technology and being a youth company we were able to partner and
work with National Geography. National Geography took interest in our project and they were able
to give us our first contract. We worked with them last year. We handled, I think, two weeks'
worth of activities for them, but they still paid us in fiat, but we made our Bitcoin case.
And the hope with the growth of the company is, yes, we will serve the Bitcoin market,
but we also want to show potential clients from the fiat side that if they pay in Bitcoin,
they save money. And that's the case we are making to currently our biggest client.
Our biggest client is a water entrepreneurship company.
And we've worked with them throughout 2024 and now 2025.
And the whole idea is we've been teaching them how Bitcoin works in our company.
And right now, they know us as the Bitcoin taking company.
So the next step for us is by us offering them the good service.
Sorry about the car.
I don't know if you can hear it.
by us giving them the good service that we've given them for the last two years,
they now trust us.
So they know that Bitcoin is not a scam by extension of us being their service provider.
And I think if we have more service providers that are structuring relationships like those,
where they don't outrightly force their clients to pay them in Bitcoin,
but by being good service providers and consistently providing good services,
make a case for these people to actually explore Bitcoin.
I think that's also another way we will win by,
like we will win trying to onboard people to use Bitcoin.
So yeah, that's GorillaSats.
I can speak about GorillaSats forever.
We've taken crazy risks,
like trying to pilot Bitcoin mining.
That is completely new.
We placed our first Bitcoin miner this year.
we got interest from a local power generator who really got interested in our Bitcoin model.
And when we spoke to them about Bitcoin mining, they said,
why don't you come and try it at one of my sites?
I have some excess energy going.
I can...
Thank you.
Yep, the internet died for a minute.
I got you.
I got you back now.
I lost you for about 45 seconds, I think.
But what you just said was really interesting.
You were just talking about...
Can you hear me again?
Yes, I can.
Okay.
You were talking about you started this new thing, mining,
and you'd been invited across to a company that had some excess power.
So explain that.
What was the excess power?
So they are generating power for a local community using bio waste and solar.
I think there are many Bitcoiners around the world who don't know they are Bitcoiners.
And this power generator is one of them.
He's a former engineer at Rolls-Royce who then came back home to use his experience to actually grow his local community.
So he went far off and went to a local place where the grid in otherwise would not reach.
And he created a bio-waste and solar power generating project that is now supplying its community with power.
And the only thing he's doing is he's taking the agriculture waste from that same community, turning it into electricity and giving it back to them at a rate that is even cheaper than the national grid rate.
And because the area also has a very good quality of solar, he decided to add solar into the picture.
So that alone is a Bitcoiner style of doing things.
And the most interesting ingredient is that project is just next to the biggest national park.
So right now we have an itinerary whereby we get clients to experience the national park.
And just after experiencing the national park, we drive to the energy mining place and we experience that.
And we also get a local community experience.
Maybe people get to cook food, the local food.
They get to interest themselves with the culture of that community.
They get to see how electricity has transformed that community.
And the eventual goal is, even if we get 20 miners or 30 miners there, we get a good mining operation going.
And that's why we are crowdfunding for miners.
If we get miners there, we create a proof of concept for the country because Uganda has a lot of excess energy, but we don't yet have anyone who is actively taking advantage of that using Bitcoin mining.
So if we get the 30 miners, we create a physical place where we can drag everyone who has excess energy to see what Bitcoin can do.
we create a ready revenue making entity for the power site we get to make a bit of money but that's
not yet our goal we create a small project where the community in Uganda can learn from what
bitcoin mining is what impact it has so generally we are still at proof of concept level on that
I'm exploring multiple partnerships with different Bitcoin miners to get the proof of concept done.
Because if we do the proof of concept, we have a lot of bio-waste in Uganda.
We have a lot of solar.
Uganda is crossed by the equator.
So there is no better quality of sun that you will have in the world.
We have a lot of running water.
Uganda is the source of the Nile, the longest river in Africa.
We have the strongest waterfall, Makhshon Falls. That's where the energy site is. It's close to Makhshon Falls. The strongest waterfall in the world is in Uganda. So you have a lot of opportunities for energy, but the people who have the energy right now, the excess energy right now, they're old school.
You can't convince them using internet pictures and a very good explanation like I'm trying to give.
So we are trying to do that proof of concept.
Just like we piloted Bitcoin tourism across the continent, we are trying to pilot Bitcoin mining within the country.
and hopefully that proof of concept becomes
if a Bitcoin miner is coming into Uganda,
instead of sitting across the boardroom
and trying to explain,
they can book gorilla sets.
We put the person they are trying to convince.
We take them for a safari.
After the safari, we take them to the energy site
and we would be able to make the case
for Bitcoin mining on ground.
We are redoing our website to reflect all this.
And I think we should be rolling out
by the end of next week.
So our new website will have itineraries
that are curated for things like this,
where you still do tourism,
but you see some Bitcoin projects along the way.
You still do tourism,
but you see some energy projects along the way.
We think there's huge potential for business.
And if someone is coming for business tourism, we can facilitate that as well.
So there's all these things that are ready to happen within the East African community.
My keynote at Lugano was about inviting people who have experience doing business acceleration to come.
Because East Africa has a lot of Bitcoin businesses that are at a level where I am right now, where we have a lot of ideas.
we know how we want to do them but we just need structures we need funding we need advisory
and they can turn into very big projects but yeah uh that's gorilla sets in a nutshell
i don't know why that is a nutshell yeah you've got a hell of a lot going on my goodness i'm
looking at the website now and it's very very cool so if it's already this cool and you're updating
it even better but yeah you've got uh adventures here like gorilla trekking adventure uh ginger
water rafting ginger is that how you pronounce it j-i-n-j-a yep yeah ginger ginger the ginger
you the ginger on the other side the g-i-n-g-e-r so this is ginger with that spelling
right okay it's the same pronunciation and is that the name of the river ginger ginger is the
name of the city where the river starts where the source of the nile is right and and and the secret ingredient is ginger is along the way when you going to the orphanage So if you are going to the orphanage
you would either make a stop at the source of the Nile
before or after when you're returning back to the capital.
So if people listening are thinking,
right, it's time for an adventure,
either it could be a solo adventure
or couples adventure or family adventure,
you've got it all covered.
And it can all be done in Bitcoin.
And you can...
100%.
And accommodation can be done in Bitcoin.
The food can be done in Bitcoin.
Like, I love it.
I mean, what we have,
the interesting thing that I'm trying to pilot,
and you can help me,
if you have Bitcoiners across the world
who have not yet been able to convince their spouses
and their families about Bitcoin,
Tell them to sell this.
They should just find a very small budget and a very good vacation time.
I'm sure I can convince whoever they want to convince by actually showing them what Bitcoin really does.
Because we've experienced this.
We've had a couple come in and the wife was not very convinced about Bitcoin.
They could understand the value proposition, but they didn't understand why the man was really obsessed with Bitcoin changing the world.
You know how Bitcoiners can be.
Funny enough, after experiencing Uganda, the wife went back and built a Bitcoin product.
No way.
So I'm going to let the cat out of the bag.
Anuja was very convinced about Bitcoin, but a few pieces were missing.
So when Santosh and Anuja, the student of Bitcoin, that's what is very common in the Bitcoin space,
they took the Cape to Cairo trip.
When they took the Cape to Cairo trip and came to Uganda along their way, they had come for two weeks.
But when we took them through our ecosystem, we showed them the orphanage,
We showed them what we were doing with the students around the university.
They stayed for three months.
We built a Bitcoin business called Juicy Bee.
A student of Bitcoin got a new look, got a new focus.
And Anuja was inspired to start Travel with Bitcoin.
Now, Travel with Bitcoin has been doing a lot of trips based around conferences.
So there was a trip in Lugano whereby after the Lugano conference, Travel with Bitcoin organizes a very short day trip that does the highlights of that city.
So we went from trying to convince a very good woman about Bitcoin to now the lady is running a Bitcoin business.
And she has now since immersed herself into the Bitcoin ecosystem.
She's working with Club Orange, which is formerly Orange Peel Up.
She's actively engaging in spaces.
She's giving keynotes at conferences.
So for me, it's like if you really want to show the impact of Bitcoin, bring the people
to the opposite side of the world and let them see how valuable it is.
I mean, I personally also became so inspired by what I found when I went to Prague, because I got to experience another level of obsession when it comes to Bitcoin, because I met all these Bitcoiners.
I saw Sailor for the first time in a room and the way he was speaking about Bitcoin, that energy is infectious.
is infectious. So when you take someone out of their usual environment and you bring them
to another starkly different environment, and that environment still has Bitcoin, it
tends to make a better case for them. But yeah, I also have a very good convincing time.
I want to give myself credit. So I will make sure by the time your wife or husband leaves,
or your children leave,
they understand Bitcoin.
Love it.
And yeah, Anuja,
I know she's now helping out Club Orange
because I also help out there
with monthly calls
and just advisory calls
and whatever else.
But I didn't have,
I didn't know this
like part of her backstory.
So now I'm going to have to get
on the phone with her.
I'm like, what?
Why do you tell us like this?
This is great.
I'm looking at travel with Bitcoin.
Yeah, that's an incredible story.
I love stories like that, obviously
all Bitcoiners do
and it's just so great to see
that's why I tell people
get to the conferences
at the very least
get to your local Bitcoin meetup
start there
and you can use Club Orange
to find these people
and then get to the conferences
but if you go into the conference
don't just beg a weekend away
from the missus
or the husband
depending which spouse is down the rabbit hole.
Try and make an event of it.
Go for five days rather than just the two-day conference in and out.
Meet people before and meet people afterwards.
Explore that city and, you know, have a break, have a holiday,
have a vacation.
And that's what really made the difference with us in my family
because, you know, you're not just that guy sitting at the dinner table
banging on about Bitcoin all the time.
I've just got to plug my computer in.
I'm about to lose battery.
So you'll lose my video for a second.
But to wrap it up, I guess, I mean, the vision is clear,
what you're trying to do.
Everybody can feel that.
And the work, the proof of work that you've put in is undeniable.
So let's find out, first of all, where are you going to be next year?
Obviously, people go and see Brendan there.
That's the big thing people should be doing.
Just go and visit Uganda and use your service.
But will you be heading around the world and doing any conferences,
any keynotes?
Have you got anything planned for next year?
Currently, we just have one.
I will be in Cape Town at the beginning of the year,
so January 30th to the 31st, adopting Bitcoin Cape Town.
we have something there.
I won't be speaking,
but I will be actively networking
and engaging and sharing my experiences.
What I will be speaking at, though,
is there is a small Bitcoin
circular economy summit
that we have paired
with adopting Bitcoin Cape Town.
So projects that are doing
the circular economy work across Africa,
some of them will make it to the conference
and we tend to want to have a showcase of what we are doing,
but to also speak in between ourselves.
Where will that be, the Circular Economy Summit?
It will still be in Cape Town, just around the conference.
It's actually listed on the official Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town website.
And the other interesting news that I have for the world,
I'm going to pronounce it here publicly first,
is the Adopting Bitcoin brand has given us a go-ahead
to be able to organize Adopting Bitcoin East Africa.
So, 2026, June, I think we'll do 23rd, 24th,
we are going to have Adopting Bitcoin East Africa.
So, if everything I just explained,
if you want to go see the wheel that is crossing the Serengeti
after go for a conference,
please mark that date on your calendar.
It is also just around the date of Bitcoin++
that was announced at Africa Bitcoin Conference.
So you'll have Bitcoin++,
which is an open source edition
for the East African edition.
You'll have BTC++ on June 17th to the 20th.
And then you will rest 21st, 22nd,
21st is a Sunday, 22nd is a Monday.
So we will do 23rd, 24th, a Tuesday and a Wednesday.
And the model of the conference that we are working with is day one,
we will have strictly keynotes and presentations from the East African Bitcoin builders.
And day two, we are trying something crazy.
We want to do a walking conference.
We want to do a walking conference into Afribit Kibera, which is the biggest Bitcoin circular economy in Nairobi.
So we are going to do a walking conference there.
We'll speak to merchants, spend some Bitcoin.
The fly is in my face.
Sorry.
So we'll do a speaking day, which is day one.
and day two will be a working conference.
We'll go to these circular economies
and have people actually interact with the people
who receive Bitcoin.
We want to have a mural painting
in the Afribit Kibera community.
So we'll have a full day's activity,
but in the circular economy.
And it's still in early stages,
but we already have confirmation from a few sponsors.
we are still looking for other sponsors.
Yeah, but the most exciting thing
is the Adopting Bitcoin team is behind us.
They are sharing their experience with us.
They are guiding us on how to pull off the best Bitcoin conference that we can I working directly on that conference with Ronnie Ronnie from AfriBit Kibera as our host
And Linda from BitServers EduHub, who is an educator.
She's been a very avid educator in the Kenyan space.
And she's organized multiple My First Bitcoin Diploma cohorts online.
so that's the core team that i'm working with right now we have a core sponsor being treasure
academy for now and i'm looking for more sponsors so if you want to give us a grant you can give us
a shout out you can become our ambassador we're trying to make sure we get first we are focusing
on the on the local east africans i don't want to say i want to get ambitious and try to get
internationals here, I want to first focus on knowledge sharing. And that is why we created
a walking conference. So maybe groups of 20 or 30 from the East African countries,
bring them to Nairobi, have them share knowledge, have them share experiences.
The next day, have them walk around and experience what the circular economy on that side looks like.
So that's something that is also upcoming.
So definitely we'll be communicating a lot more about that in the coming days.
We'll announce it officially probably at the Cape Town conference for the world to know.
But of course, the listeners of this podcast will already know.
They will already know.
So just to get this branded into people's brains,
your Adopting East Africa conference is going to be June 23rd and 24th.
What's the conference the handful of days before that?
The handful of days before that is Bitcoin++.
It's a developer open source edition for East Africans.
And it is running from the 17th to the 20th.
Right. And where's that going to be?
It's still in Nairobi.
Nairobi.
And so where's Adopting East Africa going?
It's going to be in Nairobi as well?
Yes.
So the goal is for us to pair those two events
to make it more meaningful for Bitcoiners to come
and to also make it meaningful for if you want to throw in a safari.
Nairobi is prime because Nairobi has Nairobi National Park in the city
and you have about four circular economies in Nairobi.
You have Afribit Kibera, you have Bitbiashara, you have Bitcoin Githari and Bitcoin Babies.
All these are interesting projects that have reasonable proof of work.
So we are making that the first destination for adopting Bitcoin East Africa.
The goal, though, is to rotate it.
So if these people come from all these countries and they learn, the next edition should be in a different country,
such that we visit that country and bring the same model,
the same Bitcoin efforts to that country.
So hopefully we'll be doing other East African countries
in the coming editions.
So that's the way I'm thinking of it.
I am thinking of it more as a regional conference
that highlights regional impact to the region's people.
more of an inter-region conference
that connects each of us
and allows us to share knowledge
rather than a global conference
because we already have
Africa Bitcoin Conference.
We have Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town.
They are big enough to attract
the global attention.
I want to keep it granular and impactful.
So if people want to come,
they'll still be able to come.
They'll still be able to buy tickets.
but we are not looking to spending a budget on flying in speakers and maybe in five years or 10
years but let's let's start with the region and really start slowly what we have going on yeah
believe me uh i've i've spoken to a lot of the conference organizers and it's it's hard work
and and people people have to remember as well if you've been to a conference and you've had any kind
of negative feedback to give just remember the people organizing these things have never been
event organizers in their lives right that these are just bitcoiners trying to do the absolute best
for bitcoin and putting these events on so they're not all going to run perfectly there you know
sometimes the lights are going to go off or the mics aren't going to work and you know it's uh
I mean, I've always extended that olive branch to every conference organizer.
The story behind our education project is the biggest group of people I have hosted in one room was 300.
And it was a Bitcoin pizza day.
I think Uganda has had two of the biggest Bitcoin pizza days ever.
We recently had an orphanage edition Bitcoin pizza day.
It was featured in a documentary that we have on YouTube.
It was featured in Bitcoin Magazine, The Lightning Issue.
So what we did is we brought the orphanage children from their home all the way to the capital city, to the zoo.
So they got to see animals and everything.
But we celebrated the biggest Bitcoin pizza day.
The other was back in 2021, I think, 2021, 2022.
I need to remember the year.
But we put in the same room 300 people to celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day.
So I know what goes behind bringing 300 people in a room,
keeping them entertained, bringing them to their satisfaction.
But that's not what we're trying to achieve.
our targets and goals for adopting Bitcoin East Africa, at least for the things that we have
control over, which is like the East African attendance and the local presence, we are
ballparking it at around 120, 150. If we have external visitors that join and bring that number
up to 200 or 300, well and good. But our deep structured focus is to get at least a representation
of 20 from each of the East African countries.
If I can achieve a representation of 20 from each of the East African countries at the conference
and for the working conference the next day, I am good.
I think that knowledge transfer will be very impactful.
So that's my measure of success for adopting Bitcoin 2026 East African countries.
Amazing.
well I look forward to you announcing it and I'll help you in any way I can to get the word out for
you you know just make sure you drop me the link once the website is live and I'll tweet it out I'll
put it in the show notes and yeah whatever I can do to help appreciate you no I you've already helped
a million ways because the introductions you've done,
the belief, first the introductions, but the belief.
Most people underestimate what it means for someone to actually meet you
and say thank you or recognize that you're putting in work.
It is what keeps us going.
At the end of the day, this Bitcoin thing is not easy to do.
It's very hard.
and doing it in East Africa, in Uganda,
where people are not following the same script
that the world adopts Bitcoin with.
So you have to go meet them where they're at,
but do it in a good enough way
that it meets the Bitcoin principles.
That best example is how self-custody works.
Self-custody cannot be the way you introduce Bitcoin,
at least for about six months to someone.
But you still have to align the message
that you give to the local person here
to make them understand that it is not immediate,
but you also have to keep the self-custody principle
in the communication such that
the Bitcoin are from Toronto or from Washington, D.C.
is not saying that we are teaching people
Bitcoin the wrong way.
So yeah, it's always appreciated
for people who give us that vote of confidence,
for people who speak about us in the rooms where we are not,
because that's where the most important conversations are happening.
And having a platform like this,
I sometimes still time away and learn from the podcast,
listen to other people's stories.
And it is that impact that really shows
when it comes to what we are doing on the ground.
So thank you too for having our projects because I speak for so many projects.
The work that I do with the Circular Bitcoin Africa Fund, the work that Haman is leading us as we do it,
because Haman is the one who is loosely bringing all of us together,
has taught me that we benefit more when we speak for all the projects
because the world doesn't yet know what is happening
when it comes to Bitcoin circular economies.
Most people think it's just merchants and spenders.
They don't know the importance of the relationships,
the importance of the repetition of transactions,
the importance of knowledge sharing,
the importance of creating a tightly knit community.
So whenever I get the opportunity to speak,
I try to speak across the board for as many products and as many projects that whether I'm involved in or not, I try to make sure they get the attention they need.
Yeah. And yeah, you've got great people down there. Herman, obviously founder of Bitcoin, Akasi. You got Ricky who's helping organize the
adopting Bitcoin conference.
We got my friend Andre.
Andre started BTC.
I'm missing so many people.
Quex, you know, what he's doing.
I mean, Quex has decided to make songs for all Bitcoin projects.
He just keeps dropping songs left, right, and center.
We were among the first Lacket projects
to get our own dedicated Gorilla Sat song.
so we have a man like quake's gorilla sat song it's our theme song we play it everywhere but
yeah there's a lot of interesting people going on on the continent and for me it's a pleasure
to share in their work whenever i get a chance to speak to people to speak on podcasts or to even
present on the stages that i've been able to present on all right last question if you had
one last orange pill left to give to somebody who would you give it to and why
i would give it to
that's a very hard question but i would want to give it to my son i don't yet have kids
if i had one last one i would keep it so far away that i give it to my son because
I've tried my level best to give the orange peel to as many people in the world.
But I would also want it to transfer down into the generation that comes after me,
especially from me.
So I would look at my son or daughter, depending on how God decides to reward me.
And I think if we build Bitcoin from a family foundations principle,
we don't need to go out to orange peel the world.
If the family unit understands Bitcoin, the family unit is the building structure of society.
So my son, I'm sure my son would transfer it to maybe the daughters or the siblings or the friends and it would grow.
And it would grow into the future.
I'm trying not to give it to someone who will at a point when I leave the world or at a point when our generation ends, the seed stays with our generation.
So I would really, really want to put so much effort on the next generation.
I think that's why I love the kids project.
That's why I go down there and I want to dance with them.
I want to speak with them directly because I think we might stay on the layer of trying to convince.
what is his name the gold bag what is his name Peter Schiff we might keep trying to convince
Peter Schiff but even if we convince Peter Schiff the 40 years are not secured if I convinced
a 10 year old they still have 40 years ahead of them so for me I would transfer it to my son
I love it mate that's such a great great response okay so how can people reach out to you I know
you on Club Orange so if anyone's on Club Orange they can just DM you straight up there what are
the other places for them to reach out I've started a crazy feat on TikTok I think we are
over-saturated on Twitter so I started by cutting out all my keynotes and just auto uploading them
to TikTok and they are reaching very new audiences So I happy to have some people join me on TikTok to do that But of course Nostar is our default platform for privacy
I'm on Nostar.
I'm on X.
We have the Bitcoin Kampala handles on both places as well, Nostar and X.
And I have a LinkedIn profile.
I'm also trying to put as many videos there as possible for the LinkedIn guys to loosen up a bit and talk about Bitcoin in the right way.
I've created a personal website where people can actually get around the work that I am doing because I realized it's too much.
So it's brendonmuine.com.
So if you go there, you will find all the socials, you'll find all the videos, all the speaking events.
I've tried to just put it there.
And fun fact, I coded that website in six hours, inspired by Lucas from Blink.
Lucas looked me in the face and told me, Brendan, you're keeping your genius at bay.
Go download cloud, cloud code, and start doing what you have in your brain.
And so the first thing I did was I used six hours, coded that website.
So if you see something that is not perfect, it's AI.
It's not me, but I tried to make it look good.
So yeah, I wanted to give that shout out to Lucas.
He has pushed me to really go to the next level.
And this was just two days ago in Mauritius O3 when we spoke.
So the website is very new, brindonmine.com.
I'm going to try to collect everything that I have interest in,
all the resources, all my best podcasts,
all the things that I think people should look out for.
I think people should look out for Tether.
Tether is becoming a sand in the African shoe.
They are trying to replace Bitcoin adoption with stable coins.
It's something that we are also worried about
because if we keep pushing stable coins on the Africans,
people will use them because they are used to inflated currencies.
But that's like us delaying the problem.
Bitcoin is the stable coin.
I don't know why it's very hard for us to communicate that.
But yeah, that's where people can reach me.
And I always try to respond to every DM
except when it is telling me about a hidden 10 000 usdt with a password that i can redeem
all right brother well thank you so much for coming on and for everything that you've done
and i'll just before everyone we say goodbye get over to geyser.fund and go find the the projects
I've just topped up
sent a few more sats across
for the orphanage there
I think what you're doing is absolutely incredible
and a shout out to Geyser for
making this possible for us all to
support people like yourself and these projects
so I just want to push people there
I will put the link to that
in the show notes as well so go and
sling some sats and let's make sure
that the kids get new bed sheets
at the very least I appreciate that so much thank you for tolerating all the moving objects in the background no problem that that what we get it nice to see you outside doing a podcast that that so
cool so yeah i tried to do as many meetings outside as possible because uh why not why should
we always stay confined to our offices and what.
So, yeah, I try to do more meetings.
You've got the light and you've got the weather near the equator,
so you make the most of it.
Don't lock yourself inside under bright neon LEDs.
Like, yeah.
I'm inside at the moment because it's December in the south of England.
Oh, it should be cold.
It's blowing the cold.
Yes.
Oh.
i won't say it but uh you should consider moving to africa i yeah i know a good tour guide that
could uh show me around so i might get i might give him a call all right take care
okay thank you so much thank you man
there you go guys thank you so much for listening thank you brendan for coming on uh we are sending
love from this end of the world i i hope you're safe i don't know when you'll get to listen to
this because like i said at the beginning here internet has been closed down across uganda
again like go back to this story at the beginning of of how we started this interview
where Brendan told us
he got 76 kids off the floor.
76 kids were sleeping on the floor.
And it was the power of magic internet money
that lifted those children into beds.
And now we can't send it
because the internet has been cut in that country.
it's
get over to Geyser
go find it
Bitcoin Kampala
he's got that project up there
you can send some sats
when they come back online
those sats are just gonna ping
right there
they'll be there
they'll be ready for him
be waiting for him
and he can carry on with the work
that he has been doing for the last couple of years.
And if you've been moved by the story
and inspired to start something yourself,
that's even better.
You can get in touch with Brendan once he's back online.
Get in touch with me.
I'll put you in touch the best I can.
And yeah, let's just keep working.
Let's just keep working.
It won't last forever.
Obviously, the internet shut down.
And when they do come back,
we got to be bigger, better, and stronger than before.
and keep building out this network and keep connecting uh you know 2026 new year let's go
let's go hard let's keep connecting let's keep building let's get everybody over to NOSTA because
that is a much better place to be thinking building together than x or twitter which is an absolute
dumpster fire of noise and negativity get across to NOSTA if you're not there already
come and follow me over there and see who I'm following and follow that list of people as well.
Pick four or five people. If you're worried about like you're going to get over there and it's an
echo chamber whatever just get over there Test it If you not joined NOSTA at this stage there now is the time 2026 is the time get over to a new network leave the fiat networks behind
I'm not saying rage quit x or twitter I still have my account over there still use it but NOSTA
is a completely different beast and the more that that network grows it's like the bitcoin network
is just growing organically and it's decentralized and nobody can shut it down obviously you can if
you shut down the whole internet across the country but i'm sure they're all using bitchat
over there right now which uh operates across bluetooth the tools are being built against the
creep of tyranny so keep an eye on it and start using the tools start uh using your bitcoin sending
some sats across to uh this bitcoin campala initiative or getting on geyser and seeing what
else they have what other projects are out there that's geyser.fund you can start sending them some
sats send your magic internet money across nostr zaps and posts uh get in touch with people that
are building cool projects that you think you might be able to lean into and put your skills
and time and energy towards uh it's it's on us right that there's no one coming to save you
only you can do that and decentralizing yourself getting as self-sovereign as you possibly can
stacking bitcoin having control over that bitcoin using that bitcoin to build is what is going to
carry us forward and i think that is probably the best place to leave the message here don't forget
you can stack Bitcoin across Europe with Relay, R-E-L-A-I.ch forward slash Bitten. You can take
self-custody of your Bitcoin and I urge you please to take self-custody of your Bitcoin.
Bitbox.swiss forward slash Bitten. Go get the discount, go get the hardware wallet. You can
choose either the Bitbox O2 or the Bitbox Nova. There's tutorials of how to use it. If you're
worried if you're not tech savvy enough put that fear aside face it like that that is the signal
get self custody of your bitcoin paywithflash.com is the place for you to go if you want to start
accepting bitcoin for your goods and services and again like i said at the uh the end of the first
reel come and join us on club orange it used to be called orange pill app it's now club orange
there's almost 20,000 Bitcoiners across the world building out that social network and meeting each
other when they're traveling or if they've just found each other in their local towns there are
so many success stories it's a social network it's the Bitcoin network and it's something that you
need to be able to plug into and start getting in front of other Bitcoiners to figure out you know
what's next what can we build what can we do what can we put forward and to help this just in your
a tiny own little way, but you can't do it alone. You can't do it if you're the lonely Bitcoiner
sitting there getting side-eyed by your friends and the family because you won't just shut the
fuck up about Bitcoin. Go find your Bitcoiners. Club Orange fixes this. It's out there. It's been
around for two years. You can go listen to the episode before this one with Mateo, the founder,
and we'll go through the whole journey of the last two years of building out that social network.
that's enough I run out of music ages ago
love you guys thank you so much for listening
and I'll catch you on the next show