CD189: MONEYBADGER - BITCOIN PAYMENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA

0:32 Happy Bitcoin Friday, freaks. It's your host, Odell, here for another Citadel Dispatch, the interactive oh, it's not an interactive live show anymore. The show focused on actual Bitcoin and Freedom Tech discussion. It's kind of interactive. I love your comments, freaks, when you leave comments on Fountain and your favorite Nostrap. I really like Primal. So keep your feedback coming, but I've really been enjoying this stretch of audio only non live shows. I'll tell you freaks. Once you are used to dealing with massively large video files and you can just focus just on audio and have a much smaller file, it is so much better to work with. And I think the conversations have been very high signal. So I hope you have been appreciating them as always dispatch has no ads or sponsors.

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2:58 Fantastic. Thanks for letting me on the show. Carol is the founder of Money Badger, and he is focused on bringing Bitcoin adoption to South Africa. Think your perspective is fascinating. I think what you built out there is incredibly impressive, particularly coming from the American mindset where we're not seeing much day to day usage of Bitcoin as money. What is Money Badger? Money Badger is a mission, but the mission is to make Bitcoin money. In other words, medium of exchange would be what's important for us. Yeah. So I think something that you mentioned is that coming from The US, maybe it's we get actually get a lot of critique for what we're doing. But in South Africa, there's there's some real needs that we're trying to address with Bitcoin as something that moves. That's something that's not just static and sitting in a wallet.

3:56 I love it. But specifically, specifically Money Badger is focused on the merchant side. Correct? Money Badger is a merchant services provider. So it's a company commercial entity, central centralized service provider that serves the merchant. So it offers Bitcoin and lightning payments acceptance for merchants, as well as some other things like, sending out with treasury management and sending funds to suppliers, remittances. Do you do you see well, so so at high level high level, Money Badger lets me I can can basically go, as a user, I can go to a grocery store and just pay with Bitcoin.

4:46 Yeah, look, Now the grocery store, yeah, go on. You go. No, high level, that's the goal. The idea is that we want you to be able to live your life on a Bitcoin standard in South Africa today. That's it. You need to be able to walk into any shop and spend Bitcoin. You should be able to cover the basics as well as any other expenses that you want to incur, like travel, electronics, whatever. The idea is that essentially we want to make South Africa like a Bitcoin Mecca. That's what we're trying to do. And we've come a long way. So how many merchants do you have enabled right now?

5:27 So I know there's If you distinguish between a merchant and a shop, so one merchant may have many physical shops, there's at least 650,000, 650,000 physical locations that you can go to. And these range from very small to very large. So like two of the major filling station chains will accept Bitcoin. Some of them biggest grocery retailers. Then from there, everything in between. 50,000 shops. And so filling stations is a gas station, right? A gas station, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Just translating for the Americans. Yeah.

6:08 One thing to point out is that the majority of these don't even know that they're accepting Bitcoin. So what we've done is we've basically retrofitted their existing payments solutions that they already have with their existing payment providers. And we integrated Lightning into these payment providers as a feature. You've met them you've met them where they're at. So how does that well, first of all, you should be incredibly proud of 650,000 locations. This is like our wildest dreams in America. I would kill for that type of outcome here. So you should be very proud of that. That is an amazing level of traction. And I do think the key is that you met the merchants where they're at. So how does that work?

6:52 Is the merchant so one of your big ones is Pick n Pay, right? Which is like a general it's like a general store, right? It's like almost like a Was it like a supermarket plus other things? Yeah. Look, I think that we do feel proud about what we've achieved so far. Still a long way to go, but we've also just gotten very lucky. So essentially what's played in our favor is that in South Africa, there was already a number of payment providers that's QR enabled, QR code. Right. And they already had massive distribution. So we basically came into an environment where there was already a way for us to connect to a vast set of merchants without having to sign each one up individually.

7:47 The majority So you're not of actually going in, you're not going into Pick n Pay, like you don't have, do you have a relationship with Pick n Pay or is it almost like Pay Pay is different. Different. You're using their QR code? Pick n Pay knows. So Pick n Pay is a special case. They're our first lucky break. They approached us initially and said, we have a mandate to add Bitcoin to our payments experience, which in and of itself, I think is incredible that the retailer from their side came to us. We didn't have to go to them and sell it. They already had executives that understood the potential. So they came to us. And so Pick n Pay in particular, they are well aware of the Bitcoin integration. Their staff are being trained. Their signage in stores. So that's already given us initial distribution as our as our first customer.

8:37 They have a 1,600 stores over across the country, and these range from like big hyper stores to small convenience stores at gas stations. And yeah, from there, we realized that, okay, cool, we've done well with Pick n Pay, but we need to go much, much further than that. Okay. But so Pick n Pay approached you and that I guess is the exception. Yeah. I mean, that is unprecedented. So But so how does that look? Yeah. Go on. Go on. Continue. No. I just mean, like, like I've said, we are proud of what we've done, but we've also gotten a few lucky breaks.

9:22 Yeah. But so I wanna just like walk through is the Pick n Pay integration different than the other shops? Like, how does the Pick n Pay integration work? Right. So I think something to note, and this is also, we get a lot of critique for this. Something to note is that we don't provide the QR code to the retailer or to the shop. Typically what happens is that with their existing infrastructure, they have a mechanism to generate a shop specific or a merchant specific QR code. And so with Pick n Pay, what we've done is we've worked with their existing payment provider. They manage the payments flow from generating the code, providing the basket information, and then accepting the payment.

10:09 And we've done the exact same thing with at least four other payment providers. And each of them have a merchant base. So essentially, it kind of works the same for all merchants. There's a merchant, there's a merchant payment provider, that payment provider generates a merchant specific QR code. And then our challenge would be to bridge that non Lightning QR code to a Lightning invoice and ultimately to a Lightning wallet to complete the payment. So the user has to be using what the Money Badger app or something, and they're scanning this QR code that's not a Lightning invoice, right?

10:51 Initially, that was the solution. So we realized that to ask a Lightning Wallet or even multiple Lightning Wallets to add support for proprietary QR codes is a big ask. Nobody wants that. That's very controversial. But what we did in the interim was to publish our own QR code scanner called the Money Badger QR code scanner or the Money Badger app. And that scanner can read a proprietary QR code from the merchant, and then it can generate a lightning invoice, can generate a BALT 11 invoice, and then it can launch your preferred lightning wallet.

11:33 That's clever. I like that. So you so you don't actually the user's not locked into like, quote unquote, the money badger wallet. It's actually just a app that is basically translating to any compile, any lightning rod. They're all compatible as by default. That's a good way to put it. It's like Google translate or, okay, know Google is not a, you don't like Google, but like, it's like a translation application that translates the project QR code into a bot 11, and it works fine. So what it does is it lets you use any Lightning Wallet, even if it support QR code scanning, it doesn't matter. So you can use any Lightning Wallet. But we did find that people kept asking us to avoid having to install a secondary application.

12:22 They just want to use the lighting wallet. So the question is, is it possible to scan and pay with a, you know, generic lighting wallet at the proprietary merchant QR code? Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, that makes look, I think this is to me, this is the coolest part about what you've done is because, you know, a lot of people I it's probably not unique to this industry, but I'm neck. I've been neck deep in Bitcoin for a while. And a lot of people just try it. There's always theoretically, this better option or this perfect option or something.

13:04 And what I love about what you've done is it's just so pragmatic. It's just like, okay, these are the tools we have today. I have to meet the merchant where they're at. And I can provide users who actually have the need to spend Bitcoin and want to spend Bitcoin a relatively easy way to do this. So when when you do the translation, so to speak, presumably, the user is then paying you in Bitcoin paying money badger and Bitcoin, then money badger is converting that to South African, what is rand, I think is your currency? Rand. Converting it to fiat and then you're transferring the fiat to the merchant, right? Exactly. Yeah, because we slot into their existing settlement flow.

13:49 They have accounting systems that set up for fiat settlement. They've got reconciliation systems that set up for that. And typically, like with these corporates, if you try to sell them Bitcoin payments, the CFO or the financial officer would be the first to object and say, well, we don't want any non fiat related accounting on the books. It's just gonna be too complicated. It's gonna be too costly. So one of the sells is that no, actually, there's no impact on your accounting. There's no special considerations for non fiat balances on the books. Everything just plugs in seamlessly, and we're part of the existing flow of funds. So existing settlement flow. So, yes, we receive the Bitcoin, firelighting, we're on our own node, and then we convert it into local fiat and settle the merchant. And obviously, they want an exact amount. They want an exact fiat amount. So we'll take some volatility risk on the exchange. But luckily, this being Lightning, everything tends to kind of complete within about thirty seconds. So volatility as a function of time over a short period of time, volatility is always low.

15:00 Makes sense to me. And then presumably you're taking, are you taking a flat fee in that conversion? Is that the business model? So the commercial model, as a merchant provider, we want to charge the merchant. And so essentially we kind of have a two component model whereby we have a very low transaction fee. So the idea is that for the merchant, it should be competitive against guardrails. Merchants hate paying all these interchange fees. And then typically there's some fixed fee component as well. So the commercial model is pretty straightforward, and the idea is that we try to avoid charging the consumer because obviously we can load the spread, and that is a question we get a lot. Do you load a margin of the spread?

15:42 And for a number of reasons, we don't want to do that. We So don't wanna charge a consumer because the consumer is actually not a client. If they were our client, then there's all kinds of additional compliance stuff that goes with that. So what we do is we add the exchanges fee essentially into the rate. We need to cover the exchange or the liquidation fee because that's a cost to us. But ultimately, we try not to charge consumer to merchant service and the merchant pays for the privilege. But I don't follow. Aren't a bunch of these merchants, they don't even know that you're enabling Bitcoin payments? That's a good question. So in the case of Pick n Pay, that's a direct relationship. We have a direct commercial agreement. We've got our own rates, negotiated with them. In most of the other cases where we work via their existing payment service providers, we have a deal with the payment service provider.

16:38 And so that is that is a feature or an option that they on sell to their to their customer base. And they set the pricing on what the merchant does. Whichever, like, whichever, whatever solution the merchant is using for their Fiat QR codes, you have a relationship with that processor and you Exactly. Can charge So essentially we are like a little plugin that sits on the existing payment processor that can just enable Lightning payments via the network. I love this. That's awesome. And by the way, I'm sure there's plenty of people that are saying like, you should, I don't know, have there been a bunch of people that say you should release a Money Badger Lightning wallet?

17:22 We're not gonna do that, and it's not necessary. So I think something I wanted to answer is the question from earlier, is it possible to do this with any Lightning Wallet? Yeah. So we're good friends with the guys from Blink Wallet. Do you know the Blink Wallet people? Yeah, Blink's awesome, El Salvador. Yeah, and Blink's very popular in South Africa. It's one of those community wallets that seem to get decent traction. So Yeah, their big one to the freaks is they're the ones who built and power now Bitcoin Beach wallet in El Exactly. It is rebranded. Bitcoin Beach became Blink Wallet, I think.

18:02 Well, now, like, the parent company is Blink Wallet. Right. Blink Wallet powers all these individual community wallets, one of them being Bitcoin Beach Wallet. The idea is basically, like, community leaders are running a multisig that's holding the majority of funds. So it's still custody, but it's like at least it's your local community and at least it's multisig, so a single person can't rug you. And then there are custodial funds on a lightning wallet, but hopefully, ideally in the ideal scenario, there's less there because that is by default single sig because multi sig lightning is just not there. But anyway, go on. And by the way, just before you go on, my advice was don't launch a money passer wallet. I just feel like a lot of people Like, I think one of the cool parts is that you don't have a wallet because running a Look, wallet is a of before Money Badger, I built a Bitcoin exchange called Luno, L U N O.

18:58 And I learned the hard way that custodying people's funds is a massive pain. It's basically hell. Yep. You don't wanna do that. So I don't ever, ever, ever want to custody anybody's funds. But again, except my own But anyway, interrupted you, Blink. A lot of people have been using Blink Wallet in South Africa. So, yeah, so we went to Blink as one of these very popular wallets in South Africa and we said, guys, what if we provided an API so that the Blink wallet can do the same thing as the Money Badger translating app? So that we can build the translation feature straight into Blink, And then Blink can scan a Pick n Pay or other merchant QR code and retrieve the Lightning invoice without this secondary app, without the sort of intermediary application. And we try to convince them that this is a good idea, They were having none of it because then they had to add a dependency.

19:59 That's like very controversial if you need to add this regional dependency to a global wallet code base. But then one of the Blink wallet developers actually came up with a clever solution that avoids third party APIs entirely, where they said, well, if we use Lightning addresses in a clever way, we can talk about how that works. But basically if you use Lightning addresses in a very clever way, then we can use open source specifications, open source protocols. We don't have to add any third party APIs and the Blink Wallet can do what the Money Badger application or the translator does without any dependencies. So initially when they explained this to me, thought, well, that's I don't know if that's going to work, but we did a proof of concept, we implemented it, and then it turned out that it actually works really well. So you can now scan with Blink Wallet and pay directly at Pick n Pay. No need for a money badger third party application.

20:57 That's awesome. So presumably, I mean, the the negative of lightning out, Jaris Allen URL, is that you have to have a separate server that's serving up invoices. But presumably in this situation, it's actually an advantage where I'm assuming you have some kind of fixed Lightning address integrated into the into the proprietary QR code and they're pinging the URL, they're pinging the server and then they're pulling what, a different, a special invoice or something? So the way it works, the one controversial change, so this is less controversial than adding API, but the one controversial change that is still needed in the wallet is that it needs to do a pattern match on the QR code.

21:49 So essentially it needs to look at the QR code data and it know needs that this is a QR code for merchant that Money Badger supports. And so in practice, what that means is typically with a Pick n Pay QR code, the string Pick n Pay is inside of the code data. So it's very easy to identify Pick n Pay QR code. And then the way that the information is transmitted to Money Badger is that the wallet can now know because it's a Pick n Pay QR code and it knows the Money Badger domain. It can use the QR code data as the user portion of the Lightning address. And then obviously the server portion would be Money Badger.

22:30 So with the simple pattern recognition and a match, you can craft a special lighting address. That's a dynamic address. So it's a single use address essentially. Single use address for that one QR code. And then it can retrieve the bot 11 from the money badger server. That's awesome. I mean, it's basically an API. It's just like an open standards API. Yeah. Well, it's non API. That's the cool thing is that it uses open standards, existing open standards to retrieve Bot 11 invoices for proprietary QR codes. And yeah, I have seen some comments from developers that are upset with us. They're like, you know, money badger is just doing their thing. They're kind of like stretching the definitions of what the spec says.

23:19 And I kind of agree. Look, I know it's little bit of a cowboy thing that we're doing, but at the end of the day, this means is we now have, I think something like five Lightning wallets that can scan and pay South African stores natively. So you don't have to install the Money Badger application. And there's no third party APIs. No, I love this. It's pragmatic as hell. It's a bit hacky, I also like the most useful tools in Bitcoin. The most useful tools in Bitcoin are a bit hacky if you're trying to live on Bitcoin. Like I, like in America, for instance, right? We like we're buying gift cards, where there's a service called to fiat number two f I a f I a t to fiat, where it's like a 6% fee and I can get like a real reloadable prepaid visa.

24:12 You know, there is hacks all the way down. And this is a as far as hacks go, this is like a pretty clean, clever way of doing it. I mean, I chop props to I like it. This is I think this is awesome. So Blink has integrated this. Mhmm. And so presumably, I mean, I have a little bit of insider knowledge. But I guess Zeus is also implementing this? Yeah. So I'm very excited about that. I actually did the first, or my first test in a live environment with the Zeus AlphaBold. So I know it's not live yet, but the Alpha build at least already supports money badger QR codes and Zoos being my favorite wallet. For me, it's very cool because that's definitely my wallet of choice. And I can use that, you know, natively. Can I use my favorite wallet and I can go out and buy whatever I want with Bitcoin Yeah? In South I mean, Evan's a huge I mean, Evan's basically a brother to me. Evan Kaludis, founder and maintainer of Zeus. I mean, he's also a ride or die like, there's one dispatch that I didn't host years ago, and it was Evan. Evan hosted it. Yesterday.

25:28 So, I mean, it's pretty good. I mean, when we met, we met with our fellow South African friend, Craig Ross, Sparrow Wallet. And I mean, those are like, besides, besides, like, Bitcoin protocol stuff, like the two tools I rely on the most, like my family, absolutely depends on is Sparrow and Zeus. It's like Sparrow for savings and Zeus for, you know, day to day purchases and spending and whatnot mobile. Yeah, you can get quite far with those two things. And I had the privilege of meeting Evan in Mauritius at the last Bitcoin Africa conference. We both attended. And that's actually where I sort of pitched this mechanism to him. And the first thing that people say, or especially a developer says when I tell them about this, they're like, this is crazy, it's too hacky. And then until I show them the sort of the source code change, then they're like, maybe this is not so bad.

26:27 So it's pretty minimal, I guess. Right? Like it's just your QR It's code quite minimal. You're just you're detecting the QR code locally. What? It's it's so minimal. Essentially, it's a pattern match and then just putting together the lightning address cleverly. So that's, I mean, that's a few lines, maybe like three lines of code. That's awesome. Normally. Some other wallets that have implemented this, Aqua. Of the well known ones, Aqua would be one. Other ones would be there's some experimental layer two wallets, Layers, blitz.

27:08 Yeah. There's quite a few now that have implemented this. And look, I'll be my own biggest critic as well. This does introduce sort of this kind of like centralized service provider dependency in the flow of the QR scanner, but it's so light and minimal that if we were to disappear tomorrow, it would have no impact on anyone. And to remove that code would be very, very simple change as well, to be very light lift. I feel like for the convenience, it's definitely worth it. And then presumably, I mean, I guess there's an argument that like, this is South Africa only, but I mean, presumably this is so open and interoperable that there could be like a money badger clone in Ghana or Argentina or that could use the same integration, no?

28:04 That's my expectation is that we'll think this code path in the wallets and scanning code will expand to more and more providers like this. So for example, we know in Kenya, our good friends Tondo, they bridge into the M Pesa network. So everybody there has an M Pesa QR code. So a similar thing. It can be a very light change on the code base of the wallet, and then suddenly you can spend anywhere in Kenya. And like you said, Ghana is an option, possibly Latin America. There's a lot of places like Brazil, I know El Salvador, obviously. There's a lot of places with this QR mechanism where if you have the bridge and you have the mappings, you have a way to identify the code and match it to the bridge provider like Money Badger.

28:51 Then it's very easy to do native payments with your Lightning Wallet of choice. So, I mean, just correct me if I'm wrong real quick. Tondo, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting them, but I've been watching their successes from afar. Meeting them yet, I hope to meet them in the future. They actually they have like they they're running their own custodial Lightning wallet, and then you're like loading up their app with SATs and then paying M Pesa invoices. Right? I'm not exactly sure about that. I think they also do this bridge. I could be completely wrong. And I'm revealing my ignorance. But as far as I understand with Tundra, you can also use your own lighting wallet of choice.

29:36 I think you can get the lighting invoice and then pay it with any lighting wall. Mean, theoretically, why not? Right. So But I'm actually not so presumably, I mean, we're a couple we're like a couple small steps away from someone being able to just pay M Pesa with Zeus if Tondo integrates it this way. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I'm sure if if it's possible to identify an impasse QR code, then yes. They just basically have to run that. The harder part is probably on the Tondo side. Right? Because they have to run the whatever the LNU URL server that's dealing with, That's you know, is not really a problem for a centralized provider. If you're gonna have a server that's going to be up 20 fourseven, it's not a problem. The thing that differentiates what we're doing with Tondo is that they have this national standard, the M Pesa standard.

30:37 Right, it's easier. And what that means, it's easier, but what it also means is that they don't really have a relationship with the merchant. It's like everybody has Mpeza. So if you can do an Mpeza bridge, it's like a neutral thing. Whereas what we're doing here, we don't have a national standard yet. Government's working on it, but we've got these commercial payment providers that have direct relationships with the merchants. We kind of have to support multiple QR standards, but we also get access to the merchant base. Yeah. I mean, like everything else in life, there's pros and cons. Right? I mean, it probably makes in a lot of ways makes integration easier for them, but also they have their own centralized dependency that if M Pesa wakes up one day and it's like, we're not gonna accept fee out payments from Tondo.

31:32 Exactly. Then the whole system breaks. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess it's ultimately Okay. This is awesome. Of what what the trade offs are and, like, what we're willing to the acts we're willing to live with. Yeah. I will say that, I mean, 10/31, we're the largest investor in both strike and primal. So I will talk to Jack and million. I would love to see those wallets support this. Think that'd be great. It's fucking awesome. Would love to strike as a strike user being able to just walk into 650,000 stores in South Africa, just scan a QR code and pay. That's wonderful. That's awesome.

32:24 Do you have any stats on transaction volume? Volumes. Like how are you doing out there? Are people actually using it? So some people are using it. That was obviously, I think our biggest challenge actually that, I mean, a technical perspective, solutions to the technical problems, even on the business front, creating partnerships with these existing payment service providers, that's business development, we can do that. Ultimately, the question is, who's going to use this? And so one of the problems we had initially with Pick n Pay was how would we prove the concept to the executives? I mean, we can build it, but then the question is, will they come? And so we were kind of lucky because we've got these circular economies in South Africa. And one in particular is called Bitcoin Ekasi. I don't know if you know about Bitcoin Ekasi. They're modeled on Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador.

33:20 Of course. Right. So they have this existing community of people that's earning and spending Bitcoin. And luckily we could approach them as alpha testers for the Pick n Pay solution. And they actually made a massive impression on the executives at Pick n Pay because they didn't expect anybody to use this immediately. And suddenly there was a whole community of people going to Pick n Pay buying a single banana, a single roll of bread. And suddenly they realized that there was something here that was actually showing potential to solve some of the problems, social problems that we're facing in South Africa. So specifically people in that Mussel Bay Society, mainly they transact in cash.

34:13 So they don't have access to credit card facilities. And so that has a bunch of problems. Like, you can't transact with cash very far. You can pretty much as far as you can extend your hand and people rob you for your cash. And suddenly there were people that could download an app, download the Blink wallet, and they can store money in this app that they've just downloaded. They don't need to go to a bank to open an account. Don't need to go stand in queue. And they can immediately start spending this money at some of the biggest stores and biggest retailers in the country. So when we showed this to the Pick n Pay executives, this is really what convinced them to push the project over the line and deploy it to all of their stores across the nation. And I think also ultimately what made it possible for us to partner with the other payment service providers. Because when we showed them this, they said, wow, there's some real potential yet to address real needs.

35:12 And I didn't answer your question. You said, are people using this? So initially we had some initial uptake from these guys and it was small. Like in dollar terms, we did about $10,000 a month. I said 10 to $15,000 a month. And where we're at now is we're at approximately $200,000 $200,000 monthly. That's about 15,000 transactions per quarter, 5,000 per month. So it's not a lot, but it's still a lot more than zero.

36:00 But are you higher than that now? 5,000 transactions a month? Right now it's about 5,000 transactions a month. Initially when we started it was like a couple of 100. Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. So what 5,000 transactions a month did I by the way, freaks, one of the advantages of not running it live is that you're going to get really great audio quality, even though our internet connection is poor. But it does mean that Carol is breaking up for me a little bit. So you said five transactions a month, about 200,000 US dollars worth. Is that what you're saying? Would it be better if I switched to a different connection? I think maybe it'll be easier for you.

36:45 I mean, you're welcome to switch to another connection if you want, but also you can just it's been decent. But the the cool part is is the audio is recorded locally and uploaded. So for the people listening, it sounds perfect. Okay, this is gonna be much better, I'm sure. Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you. Right, okay. So just to get back to the stats, so the number of transactions that we're seeing right now is about 5,000 monthly. The average, or let's call it the median transaction size is only about $18 $18 or less. Most transactions are $18 or less.

37:33 And then you get the average is a bit higher than that. It's about $43 because you get a small number of people that's doing larger transactions. They're paying municipal bills. They're buying prepaid electricity and prepaid water, so utilities. And they are covering the basic needs, but it's like largest spend. I mean, I think that's awesome. So I mean, look, I think I think Bitcoin is I prescribe to the theory that these things take time. It's like, where is the where are we in the adoption cycle? And I I don't I think there's only so much you can do to try and inorganically get people to spend Bitcoin. I think they'll spend Bitcoin when they're ready to.

38:29 I think people that are all in on Bitcoin, it's very obvious why they would spend Bitcoin is because every everything they spend money on is is effectively a sale. I mean, if they only have Bitcoin in savings. And I think it's just like how how, like people mentally think about Bitcoin, like if they still have dollars, if they still have other Fiat, they're going to spend that first probably. But also a lot of it is I mean, I definitely depends on a country by country basis. I'm kind of curious in South Africa, do you have obviously like lower income Bitcoin, a cause demographic is they're, they're earning in Bitcoin.

39:14 All they have is Bitcoin. It makes sense that they're spending Bitcoin in terms of the higher net worth side of South Africa in the Bitcoin community. Because Bitcoin has a decent level of adoption per capita in the higher net worth sphere of South Africa. Traction there with people spending Bitcoin and how much of that has to do with government policy, tax policy, that type of thing? Yeah, that's quite a broad question. I think, like ultimately the question is who is spending Bitcoin? And in South Africa, who is spending Bitcoin in South Africa? So one of the things we've learned is that you get people with capital and they use that capital, this is fiat capital, to buy Bitcoin, right?

40:02 When you buy Bitcoin, that is the most valuable thing that you own. You hold onto that for dear life. You don't ever sell it, you don't ever spend it. Logically, when people come to you and they say, Oh, but you should be trying to spend it, you should be trying to use it. You're like, there's no ways. There's no ways. I bought this Bitcoin, I'm gonna keep it forever basically. And that's one mindset. And then for me to try and convince somebody like that to spend their Bitcoin or to say, hey, look, I'm building this service for you. It just doesn't make sense. But then you get these guys in Ikazi, Bitcoin Ikazi, they serve coaches, but they don't have any capital. So they don't have any money or Fiat to buy Bitcoin to get started, but they do earn Bitcoin.

40:47 So like you said, that's all they have to spend. And if that is all that you have to spend, the equation like completely flips on its head. And instead of not wanting to spend the Bitcoin that you bought that's super valuable, now you're strongly incentivized to go out and seek merchants that will accept your Bitcoin because that's all that you have to spend. And so we do see that. We see in our data, we see, for example, the number one store for Bitcoin spend in South Africa would be the pick and pay near Bitcoin Akasi. Number one every single month, most transactions, most value, most volume. But then as for, like you said, sort of the demographic of people that do have capital that have been buying Bitcoin, the spend that we see would be from sort of OGs, people that have bought Bitcoin long ago, they've seen significant gains in the value of their Bitcoin to such a degree that it probably makes up the majority, if not a 100% of their wealth.

41:44 And then they kind of end up in a similar situation where sure, Bitcoin is the most valuable thing that you own, but it's also the only valuable thing that you own. And again, you're in a situation where that's what you have to spend. So it's kind of like these two extremes on the spectrum. And then in between, you'll have like people with radical mindsets that just believe in Bitcoin as freedom money and believe that when they promote the spending of Bitcoin, it's a promotion for freedom. So you get people doing it for ideological reasons as well. But I think like where we're at right now is we've got this system where it serves kind of like two extreme ends of the spectrum. And the question is, can we kind of like start growing inwards and meet somewhere in the middle?

42:29 That makes sense to me. So how are you thinking about that growing inwards? That is very tricky. So ultimately to change behavior, you need incentives, you need to provide incentives. So we've been experimenting with unique incentives with centralized wallet providers offering significant discounts in the form of cash backs. We're working with the merchants to offer unique rewards to Bitcoin spenders because they're saving on fees, on card fees. But to be totally honest, I don't have an answer for you. Like trying to convince somebody that just got into Bitcoin, that just purchased some Bitcoin, or maybe in the last couple of years bought some Bitcoin to spend it is very difficult, maybe impossible.

43:16 Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. And I don't know if like offering them 3% stats back is actually going to move the needle. I'm talking about 20 to 50% that we've done. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. That might do it. Yeah, that, that does it, but it only lasts as long as the promotion. What is the tax policy like? Do you cap gains in South Africa? We do have cap gains. It's one of those things where I feel like a politician would speak of a social compact, but then in fact, if you go look at the way that our rules are set up, there's no social compact. So specifically how it works is we have an initial exclusion. So on the first R40,000, so that would be 2 and a half thousand dollars of capital gains, you pay no tax.

44:13 And so if you're in this mode where you convert all of your earnings into Bitcoin every single month and you spend the portion that you need to sustain yourself and you save the rest, fluctuation in price, and so therefore the gain in capital value is actually fairly low. So actually for most people, your Bitcoin spending falls below this threshold of 2 and a half thousand dollars of capital gains. If you're not also liquidating long term savings for bigger purchases. But this threshold has been the same for twelve years.

44:56 And so it's that same old story that not only is inflation eroding the value of your savings, but it's also eroding these thresholds. Should, I mean, over thirteen years that needs to be like $10,000 threshold. So every single day that you stay in the fiat system, you're just worse off. Not only because your money's getting worth less, but also the thresholds that should apply, they just erode. So yeah, look, that's a very long story, but the short answer is we've got capital gains. There's some thresholds. If you stay under it, you can essentially spend Bitcoin without any tax implication, but it's complicated.

45:40 Yeah. I mean, actually, I think I disagree with the majority of Americans that the current cap gains policy is the reason people don't spend Bitcoin. I don't think that's the reason. I mean, I think It's it's an illogical reason. I think a lot of people use it as an excuse, but it's not logical. Because if you're paying cap gains, then you're already winning. Yeah. You're only paying on profit. It means that you were better off holding Bitcoin than dollars in the first place. You're winning. I do think I, yeah, I philosophically think that capital gains tax is really savings tax. And particularly when you couple that with manufactured inflation on the dollar side or the Fiat side is taxes are already predatory, but it makes it even more of a predatory tax. And we should just remove cap gains on all assets, not just Bitcoin. Like I it's not a Bitcoin specific thought I have, but I do not think that's the reason that Americans aren't really spending Bitcoin at scale. I think it's more of an adoption thing.

46:42 And how like where Bitcoin sits in your quote unquote, or life, right? If Bitcoin is your savings, then you're gonna spend Bitcoin, you're gonna wanna spend Bitcoin. And also credit cards suck, like I'd rather spend Bitcoin. It's great. It's just much better UX. Yeah, the UX, one thing on that, we get a lot of people asking for tap to pay. They're saying, you know, the QR code scanning is awkward. If the lighting isn't great in the store, then there's a reflection, it takes a bit of time. There's a lot of videos of people scanning QR codes and then completing the Bitcoin Lightning transaction faster than if you were to use tap to pay. So even with tap to pay, there's some authorization.

47:26 With Lightning, there's no authorization because there's no communication that's necessary with like the bank and anything like that. It's Lightning native protocol and the settlement completes, like the entire settlement chain complete in less than a second. I I do get the like tap to pay. The unfortunate reality is at least on the iPhone side, I mean, without Apple's permission, it's just a non starter and not gonna happen. But on the Android side, it's doable. If there's demand for it, then it will come. Tap to pay is just simply another communications mechanism. It's not a fundamental infrastructure limitation.

48:08 So if there's enough people that demand it, eventually it will come. And so we are seeing organic growth. We're seeing about doubling or exponential growth year on year. And that's great. But coming from a small base, it's gonna take a bit of time until we reach sort of critical mass where we can demand that point of sale distribution for a nationwide retailer adds support for what's needed to do tap to pay for Bitcoin. Right. Yeah. That's actually like requires like hardware infrastructure. Exactly. That's expensive and slow, but it's gonna have to is why more they're using, I mean, that's why they're using QR codes for their fee out payments in the first place. QR is easy.

48:50 But even tap to pay Bitcoin will come. We just need to be patient. Everybody's just a little bit too impatient. Yeah. Lower your time preference. Lower your time preference. No, we're doing great. The Bitcoin movement is doing fantastic. Has beaten all expectations. At least all of my expectations over the many years that I've been obsessed with Bitcoin. You also mentioned that you do like treasury management and what, like cross border payments. How much are you finding real traction on that side? So I think that's something new for us. What we found is that these merchants that we're now already serving, so that we're already processing incoming Bitcoin payments for them. In some cases, they have international suppliers, that they need to pay. And so they're definitely more interested in kind of stable coin kind of stuff.

49:43 So they would have maybe the cost of their sale is largely denominated in USD because they're importing stuff paying in USD so that they want to split revenue coming in into sort of the USD portion for the costs. And then obviously use that USD to pay the supplier. But that's kind of I don't know. For me, it's kinda boring. Consumer payments to me is more interesting. And I think we only have sort of a limited window of opportunity to actually push this narrative of Bitcoin as money. I don't think we have a lot of time. I think there's the powers that be are conspiring to make it more and more difficult over time.

50:30 Right. I mean, in their ideal scenario, Bitcoin would be relegated to like a store of value only type of controlled asset, and then you'd use USD tokens or, basically CBDCs, just privately run CBDCs for payments. How do you think I presume Tether is the majority of stablecoin usage, USD token usage in South Africa. What is that situation like? And how do you think about it? Is there a lot of you, is there significantly more usage of Tether than Bitcoin in South Africa? So for me, one interesting stat. So we have about four types of wallet integrations. One would be Lightning, and then we've got three that's the major local wallet providers. We only do off chain transactions. So that either has to be layer two or it needs to be like proprietary wallet API.

51:29 So what that means is that we not only process incoming Bitcoin, we only process incoming Bitcoin on Lightning, but for these other wallets, we can do whatever they support. And so what we see in the data is that about two thirds of the transactions that we process is actually Bitcoin, which is an anomaly. I think anywhere else in the world it would be probably like a US stable. In South Africa in particular, it seems like we've got a fairly strong Bitcoin community that are also spending Bitcoin. And so two thirds of our transactions are Bitcoin. And then about, let's say 15%, 10 to 15% is the next biggest one, which is a USD tether.

52:15 So Tether's big Now is that that's on Tron? It's usually on Tron, right? So for us, Tether would be it would be agnostic of the chain. We don't accept a Tether transaction directly to have to go in via wallet provider. So probably Tether on Tron. I think Tether on Solana is also getting more popular, but I don't know actually, to be totally honest. Wait, so how does that work? You have a stablecoin partner that is converting it to then Sats and then sending it to you and then you're converting it to Rand? So let's use Luna as an example. Luna lets us, so we've embedded, similarly, we've embedded our technology into the Luna mobile application. You can go and scan a proprietary retailer QR code with Luna application, we'll return the payment instruction that Luna displays to you. And then you can pick your token of choice because Luna is a multi token exchange.

53:15 So you pick Tether if that's your if that's what you want to pay with, and then Luna ultimately will have a separate settlement process, and that will either be Rand Fiat, or Tether. And so what they're settling with you separately, and then you're just paying the merchant. Yeah. Interesting. So, technically, all these 650,006 I mean, it makes sense. Right? But these 650,000 locations, people can spend any token that Luna supports.

53:56 Yeah. You can spend any token. And what do they support besides this is your old business. Right? Yeah, this is my old exchange. But you're not involved with it anymore. Did you sell it? So I'm involved only in so far as we are partnering with them now as a partner. My stake in that company was sold to an early investor. You might name, it's called Barry Silbert. Wow. Barry. Yeah. The new freaks might not know of him, but his name precedes himself. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. That's it. What other tokens does Luno support? I don't know if this is relevant. I'm just kinda curious.

54:36 Mean, for me, nothing really is relevant except for Bitcoin. I mean, yeah. Look. So one of the one of the wallets we integrated with Binance. Okay. Binance supports all of the things. So essentially, essentially everything. So I can pay with BNB at Pick n Pay? You can absolutely pay with BNB at Pick n Pay. Get rid of it. I mean, if you support if you support Binance, it means I could probably pay with Trump's meme coin and get my You can cash probably pay with Trump's. Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Wild times we live in. What a world. Yep. Okay, Carol, this is this is awesome. I enjoyed it. I think you're crushing it. I will reiterate that I think you should be quite proud of what you've accomplished so far. And I do think it's early days. I think, you know, you'll accomplish much more. You just gotta keep grinding it out.

55:26 Do you have anything else you want to discuss before we wrap here? Yeah, I think just for me, this is kind of like something that's urgent. There's a sense of urgency that I have about this. So thank you for saying that we should be proud, but like for me, this isn't about, you know, doing it for vanity sake. This is something that we need to do today we need to kind of shift the narrative. We need to create a narrative in the first place that Bitcoin is money because most people don't believe that. It's small portion of people that believe Bitcoin is money. And the result of that is you can say, you know, it's fine for now it can be a store of value only and in the future we can spend it, but that's not what's going to happen. What will end up happening is that the system, the broader system configures itself according to how people engage with a technology.

56:20 And so if people engage with Bitcoin as only a store of value, the system will silo it. It will place it inside of a walled garden where you can buy and sell Bitcoin on an exchange using your bank, using BlackRock. And then the moment that you actually want to use it for these use cases where it actually improves people's lives, you find that that's like, it becomes impossible due to regulations, to the way the industry configures itself, and just the way that people perceive it. So I think that we've actually have a very limited window of opportunity today to build out these use cases of Bitcoin as a payment mechanism to show that not only is it possible, but that people will use Bitcoin to support themselves, support their lives.

57:13 And then to show that it's also possible for you to, if you can live on Bitcoin to earn Bitcoin and then everything that goes with that. Ultimately, the goal is to have everybody saving Bitcoin, yes. Like I'm not gonna argue that. The ultimate goal is that everybody saves in Bitcoin. But I do think that if that's all that we do, we'll end up with something that isn't even half as useful as it can be, and we end up with a world that's less free than it should be. Yeah. I mean, I echo that sentiment. That makes I'm right there with you. Actually, while I have you, I'm kinda curious on if you're willing to walk through a theoretical with me.

58:00 Let's say instead of your current situation, you happen to be a PM at Block, formerly Square, and you're involved with their Bitcoin merchant processing. They currently have they've enabled Bitcoin for Square sellers. I think it's America only right now. That's where their largest footprint is anyway. But the Square seller has to go behind the scenes, the whoever is, is running their square account. So like the big boss man, not the cashier, has to go and enable it. And then when you go and you want to pay the merchant, you have to like, talk to the coffee shop, barista and tell the barista you want to pay with Bitcoin, then they have to check and make sure that Bitcoin is actually enabled, then they have to press the Bitcoin button, and then it shows an actual native lightning invoice on the screen.

58:49 Now separately, they have their own QR code proprietary fiat payment standard called Cash App Pay that just shows a Cash App Pay QR code by default when it's enabled on the merchant screen. What is your opinion on how they implemented it versus just doing exactly what you did? And I just scan the Cash App QR code with Zeus, and it just works. And I don't have to talk to them about Bitcoin. They don't have to enable it separately. Do you have an opinion I on think it boils down to something you said earlier and it's about meeting people where they're at. I mean, this is kind of the tricky thing here would be if you're the block PM identifying who are the people that you actually wanna meet.

59:41 So are you trying to solve something for the merchant or trying to solve something for the consumer? If you're trying to solve something for the consumer, where they're at, they're using Zoos, using Aqua, they're using their Lightning wallets, but there's very few of them. So if you're trying to solve a problem for them, that's great. And then maybe you should consider having some option to receive a scan of a Cash App QR code and then emit a Lightning invoice. Then it's very easy. Then you're a breach for yourself, right? But I think if I suspect that maybe the place for them to focus would be the merchant, which is their customer. And I think something to consider is that we can't I don't think we can win this game by taking an approach from only one side. So what I mean by that is we can't win this game if we only take a commercial approach. Like a commercial only approach on its own is not gonna make enough sense unless we attach a community initiative to it.

1:00:45 So if the broader Bitcoin community and local Bitcoin societies don't also step in and step up, essentially what that means is there's no consumer demand for the solution. So you're just building something and then hoping they'll come, but they never come. And so what I would probably rather do as a block PM, mean, obviously it's nice to solve the consumer problem, but I would probably focus on the merchant problem first. And I would go to the barista. I would probably focus more on the barista and ask myself, what do I need to do to train that person to make it very easy and simple for somebody to pay with Bitcoin? And somebody walks into the shop and say, can I pay with Bitcoin? They need to say, yes, of course you can. And then secondly, they need to understand exactly how that works so they can advise the person that wants to pay.

1:01:34 And, you know, maybe then the way to solve this is by community members going to that barista, installing a lighting wallet for them and saying, I'm gonna give you some excellent tips, but you need to install a lighting wallet to know how it works. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting thought process because it is it is they've they're definitely on the merchant focused side and they definitely strongly believe in open standards, which is why I think they went the route of, you know, like a natural Bitcoin invoice. And they they they are providing a very strong merchant incentive, which is economy is not that great right now. And if they accept Bitcoin, they pay no fees until through the end of the year. And presumably, even after that, if they do add fees, my guess is they're going to be significantly lower than traditional fiat rails. So, there'll always be a if a merchant can get an extra 3% on their bottom line, that is a big deal. And so, I think merchants are very excited about it. I think it makes a lot of sense from that point of view. I will say from the consumer point of view, as someone who loves to spend Bitcoin and wants to spend Bitcoin, and the alternative is I'm selling Bitcoin for dollars to pay off my credit card, which is strictly worse than spending Bitcoin directly.

1:02:56 It is a bit of a mental burden and I'm already the exception to the rule. Like I'm a small percentage of potential consumers that is like ready and willing to spend large amounts of Bitcoin at small businesses that I enjoy. The sheer fact that if I walk into a store and see a square terminal, and I don't know if they accept Bitcoin or not, dissuades me from spending Bitcoin because I don't I'm busy person. I'm a busy person. I don't wanna have a conversation with the barista about accepting Bitcoin. I would rather if I can skip that Bitcoin conversation, which is hilarious, right? Because I have a multiple Bitcoin podcast. I talk about Bitcoin all the time. This place I do not wanna talk about Bitcoin is when I'm in a long line at some small business trying to pay.

1:03:41 And I just wanna if I don't know for sure that I can spend Bitcoin, I would and maybe this is an unpopular opinion. But I also I think most people feel this way, that are in my situation, they just don't say it out loud. Like, I'd rather tap to pay without Apple Pay or Google Pay or whatever. Like, I would just not have that conversation, not make myself an outlier, just tap to pay. And so the way you have implemented it is so much cleaner in a lot of ways, even though it's more quote unquote hacky. Right? It's like, I walk into a pick and pay, I know without talking to the person at the cash register that I can just pay with Bitcoin and we're done with it And this is done.

1:04:21 Yeah. So it's interesting. I don't know. It's an interesting Just thing to think ask them for the QR code. They already know how that works. Yeah. Let me ask you this. Yeah, there's no nuances there. Would your hypothetical situation change? You walk into the coffee shop if the tip jar had a lightning QR code on it? Yeah, would tip them a bunch. And then would you you feel more comfortable saying, okay, wanna pay with Bitcoin? That would be a signaling mechanism they've built Bitcoin already, so I wouldn't have to worry. Yeah. And they're kinda doing that. They have their cute little Bitcoin stuffed animal that they're giving to merchants to put out and Bitcoin accepted here stickers. You can solve it through that.

1:05:12 But right now, like and also like if I'm pretty sure they eat like their Cash App, like I need to have the Cash App app to like check the map to see if retail if I don't want to talk to someone I did like, yeah, they have a map that's integrated. I think I could technically use BTC map. I think they've cross integrated. They've definitely pulled in BTC map into Cash App. I don't know if they've done the reverse yet. But also once again, like, I don't want to think about it. Like I can. I don't want to have a conversation with the cashier about Bitcoin. Will have no man. I love I love you know, if I'm talking to an owner, especially over a beer, I'd love to have a long conversation about how they should move to a Bitcoin standard. 100%.

1:06:00 But if there's a long line at the hardware store, or the burger shop or something, I'm not trying to have a conversation with the guy who's making minimum wage behind the counter about Bitcoin, especially since 90% of the time they're going to be like, what the fuck are you talking about? And then I just have to pay anyway. So, like, I've been there. I've done it. And so in my perfect situation, what I would do or what I was hoping they were gonna do is that Bitcoin was enabled by default. The cashier just presses a single button on the back end, presses Bitcoin and shows a lightning invoice. Then if the admin or the owner of the business didn't enable it, they received dollars and not Bitcoin, and that's fine.

1:06:43 Whatever. I got to spend Bitcoin. But supposedly per their merchant agreements, they can't do that. Like, that's illegal. So okay. That's reasonable to me. But then then all of a sudden, it gets interesting where okay. You could do the Cash pay, you could do like, they already show a Cash App pay QR code on a lot of these merchants. Like you walk up and like literally the screen is already showing the QR code to pay with quote unquote Cash App pay, which is their proprietary QR code, fee out payment method. So if I can pay with Bitcoin that way Maybe you just need that bridge and they can provide the bridge. Why not? I'm, yeah, I don't know. I'm thinking out loud here, but maybe, maybe I'll have a conversation with Miles and them about it. Do you think that's why they call Bitcoin hard money?

1:07:29 Because you have to have hard conversations with your barista every time you wanna spend it? It's just hard. It's just hard to use it. I I will say the tip side is an interesting aspect because, I mean, coming from Nashville, right, all the the musicians all have QR codes for tips. Like it's usually Venmo or Cash App in America. But they're sitting up there playing music. They're all starving artists. And they have their QR codes printed out for people to pay them. I'm a big cash guy still. I love cash.

1:08:11 But like 95% of the money they get is through the digital fiat payments. So that's another example, right? Like if I could just scan a Venmo QR code and pay with Bitcoin, that'd be fucking awesome. That'd be so awesome. Then I wouldn't have to have the conversation. They'll just get dollars. I'm sure all of that will come over time. I also love cash No. Not in the way, sir. It's fantastic for privacy, but it sucks if that's all all that you have. What do you mean? If your only option is paying with cash, then it kinda sucks. If that's like the only way that you have to pay.

1:08:52 No, I'd rather pay with Yeah. Bitcoin than If you have a choice, cash is great. But a lot of people Yeah. Like in South Africa, all that they have is cash. It's literally how they save is cash in an envelope. Yeah. That's completely different in America. In America, people are choosing not to use cash. So we all use like track digital payments and that's what it is. Okay, cool. Do you have any final thoughts to the freaks call to action before we anyway, can, can, can the listeners be helpful in any way before we wrap or? Well, okay. Maybe one controversial statement. If you are not spending Bitcoin, then you're actually short Bitcoin because it means that you've I agree.

1:09:37 You have fiat to spend. But whatever, but I think the thing just to think about is that, like, how deeply do you actually believe in Bitcoin as money for freedom? If it's something that you actually care about, most people don't care about, that's fine. You don't have to care about it. But if you care about it, then you really should consider the effort of spending Bitcoin, because what you're doing then is you're creating demand for acceptance. If nobody's spending it, there's no demand for acceptance and the circle doesn't grow. So the number one way to grow it is to create demand for acceptance. Because if one merchant realizes, you know, I'm tapping into a unique market here, then the others will follow. That's the only way to grow it. So yes, it's hard money because it's hard to use for now.

1:10:28 Low your time preference and in the future, the convenience will come. But if we don't spend it today, if we don't create that market of Bitcoin spenders today and that demand, it might not be possible to create in the future. Love it. Carol, this is a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. I'd love to have you on, like, a year again or something like in, a year or so. We can do a catch up and see where you're at. You have me on signal now. Yeah, the hard money. That's the real reason they call it hard money is because it turns all of our hair gray. I you have me on signal now. So if I can be helpful in any way, just don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you. I enjoyed it. And I will visit you guys in South Africa at some point. And I know I brought great shame to my family that I haven't been out there yet. I was talking to her mom about this too, Bitcoin and Cosi, but I'll make it out there. You guys have been crushing it on the Bitcoin adoption front.

1:11:24 And if you come, we'll make sure that you've got excellent stake. That's all that's all I ask. Freaks, thank you for supporting the show. Share with your friends and family. Hope you enjoyed this this conversation. All relevant links are at cyladispatch.com. Download Primal app if you're not on Noster. Use any other Noster app. Reply to the show. When I post the show on Noster, reply to it, give your feedback, engage with other freaks. It's helpful. It's, it's why I do it. It makes it, it makes it more enjoyable being along for the ride with you all. So anyway, huge shout to Carol. I'll put all his relevant links in the show notes and stay humble StackSets. Love you all. Peace.