CD205: JASON - TANDO - SPEND BITCOIN ANYWHERE IN KENYA

WEBVTT

NOTE
Transcription provided by Podhome.fm
Created: 06/09/2026 18:26:37
Duration: 3797.290
Channels: 1

1
00:00:32.100 --> 00:00:37.219
Happy Bitcoin Tuesday, freaks. It's your host, Odell, here for another Silhouette Dispatch.

2
00:00:37.620 --> 00:00:42.099
The show focused on Bitcoin and Freedom Tech discussion.

3
00:00:42.499 --> 00:00:45.859
The current block height is nine five two nine eight nine.

4
00:00:46.304 --> 00:00:49.664
Sats per dollar, 1,640

5
00:00:49.664 --> 00:00:56.544
Sats per dollar. That equates to a full Bitcoin price of $60,990.

6
00:00:56.544 --> 00:00:58.385
We just fell below 61.

7
00:00:59.019 --> 00:01:06.139
Guess markets are feeling a little bit bearish right now, but not me. I'm feeling bullish. Let's fucking go.

8
00:01:06.939 --> 00:01:10.139
The current time in fiat time is

9
00:01:11.034 --> 00:01:12.874
is sixteen hundred UTC,

10
00:01:12.874 --> 00:01:18.474
Tuesday, June 9. You'll probably be listening to this in an hour or two. I like to get them up right away.

11
00:01:19.114 --> 00:01:24.874
As always, dispatch is supported by listeners like you. We have no ads, no sponsors,

12
00:01:25.429 --> 00:01:26.789
just me and you guys

13
00:01:27.269 --> 00:01:30.869
shooting the shit, talking about what's important, focusing on the signal for

14
00:01:31.349 --> 00:01:35.029
many years now. I don't know. Six years, seven years. What a ride, guys.

15
00:01:35.589 --> 00:01:40.549
The top supporters from last week's episode was PGS Design

16
00:01:40.874 --> 00:01:48.154
with 10,000 sets. You did like the finger Rocky emoji and Mav 21 ride or die freak with 10,000 sets. He says great rip.

17
00:01:49.354 --> 00:01:52.154
Freaks. All the relevant links are at cielodispatch.com.

18
00:01:52.154 --> 00:01:57.169
If you don't have sets to spare, I know bear market. Everyone's feeling a little bit poor right now.

19
00:01:58.129 --> 00:02:06.689
Best way to support the show, maybe even better than sending stats, is sharing it with friends and family. Just take their phone, open up their podcast app, search cital dispatch,

20
00:02:06.849 --> 00:02:07.969
click the subscribe button,

21
00:02:08.555 --> 00:02:12.155
and then they'll just get that sweet, sweet signal. They won't even know what hit them.

22
00:02:13.995 --> 00:02:19.915
Anyway, freaks. I have a great show lined up today. We have Jason here. He's the cofounder of Tando,

23
00:02:19.915 --> 00:02:22.474
a Bitcoin payments app in Kenya.

24
00:02:22.795 --> 00:02:23.674
How's it going, sir?

25
00:02:24.419 --> 00:02:28.099
Well, thanks for having me. Is it Tando or Tondo?

26
00:02:28.339 --> 00:02:31.060
I say Tondo. Tondo.

27
00:02:31.459 --> 00:02:35.700
Noted. I've been doing podcasting for a while. Pronunciation is still not my strong suit.

28
00:02:36.180 --> 00:02:36.819
The

29
00:02:37.379 --> 00:02:38.260
what let's give.

30
00:02:39.574 --> 00:02:43.894
So I think this app is awesome. I think what you guys have been building over there is fantastic.

31
00:02:43.974 --> 00:02:51.894
I have brought great shame to my family because I've never made it over to the Continent Of Africa, period. Even though through Bitcoin, I've made many friends

32
00:02:52.759 --> 00:02:55.639
that are based there. What is Tondo?

33
00:02:56.199 --> 00:02:58.279
And, you know, what are you guys building over there?

34
00:02:59.319 --> 00:03:00.999
Yeah. So at the basic level,

35
00:03:01.319 --> 00:03:05.559
Kenya's had fantastic payment rails since 2007 with M Pesa.

36
00:03:06.064 --> 00:03:10.144
Pretty much runs the entire country. There's 40,000,000 people that have M Pesa accounts.

37
00:03:10.464 --> 00:03:14.624
Everyone from your street vendor to retail shops to

38
00:03:14.784 --> 00:03:15.584
ISPs,

39
00:03:15.584 --> 00:03:27.559
pretty much everyone except M Pesa there. And so what we did is we took their API, and we took the Lightning Network, we merged the two, and so now you basically have a way that you can spend Bitcoin anywhere in Kenya.

40
00:03:28.679 --> 00:03:34.095
So, yeah, that's cool. A high level. Wait. So first, I guess a good place to start is actually

41
00:03:34.654 --> 00:03:38.175
let's start with M Pesa. So M Pesa's mobile money.

42
00:03:39.135 --> 00:03:42.814
I guess a lot of people in Kenya still have feature phones. Is that correct?

43
00:03:44.159 --> 00:03:44.799
Yeah.

44
00:03:45.199 --> 00:04:00.295
There's both feature phones and smartphones, and some people carry both. Like, they'll have their their smart their feature phones where they keep their money, their own basic account, and then their smartphones for maps or whatever else, Twitter, whatever else they're doing. And I think that might be for security reasons or discomfort purposes.

45
00:04:00.855 --> 00:04:03.655
They're just used to using like a regular

46
00:04:04.294 --> 00:04:13.760
old school cell phone to send money via cell phone number. Right? Yeah. It's just intuitive. They just, you know, second nature. They've been doing this for twelve plus years. So, yeah.

47
00:04:14.079 --> 00:04:18.879
So how does that work? There's no usernames or anything with M Pesa. It's just all based on phone number.

48
00:04:19.279 --> 00:04:26.525
Correct. It's all number based. So there's three types of payment methods. There's the kind of the p two p, which is phone number to phone number.

49
00:04:26.844 --> 00:04:27.805
Then there's

50
00:04:27.965 --> 00:04:36.925
tills, which is kinda like retail shops. So if you go into a restaurant or something, they'll give you like a short five to seven digit number. Type that in. It maps to that

51
00:04:37.359 --> 00:04:38.479
merchant's account.

52
00:04:38.879 --> 00:04:47.279
And then the third type is bill pay where you have an account with someone else, so like it could be your ISP or schools or your rent.

53
00:04:47.359 --> 00:04:48.959
So you'll type in the

54
00:04:49.654 --> 00:04:54.214
number of the account owner, so that could be your ISP, and then your account with them.

55
00:04:54.614 --> 00:04:55.335
And so,

56
00:04:55.894 --> 00:05:00.854
the first two methods, money stays within the M Pesa ledger, that third method goes

57
00:05:01.094 --> 00:05:13.819
to a bank or a third party, So those are the three types of payments that you see in M Pesa. Do most people use it just they don't even go to a bank account? They're just constantly just staying within the internal M Pesa system?

58
00:05:14.139 --> 00:05:17.099
Pretty much. Your daily spending is all on M Pesa.

59
00:05:17.674 --> 00:05:25.754
Like, why would you even use a bank account at that point? You just Just higher limits. And Pesa is limited to 2,000 shielding account balance and 250,000

60
00:05:25.754 --> 00:05:27.034
per transaction.

61
00:05:27.434 --> 00:05:28.474
What is that?

62
00:05:29.754 --> 00:05:34.029
It's about $1,000 a little bit higher somewhere around there. 1,200 maybe.

63
00:05:34.829 --> 00:05:41.389
So if you need to go bigger, bigger spending, you'd probably go through a bank account. That's pretty high limit, be honest. Yeah, for most things.

64
00:05:42.764 --> 00:05:43.564
Especially.

65
00:05:44.444 --> 00:05:47.884
Yeah, fair enough. Okay, so that's how M Pesa works.

66
00:05:48.124 --> 00:05:59.800
40,000,000 users and most merchants are you like accept M Pesa? Like if you is very rare that if you're going into you're going into a random shop in country that that they don't accept it.

67
00:06:00.359 --> 00:06:02.279
Yeah. Especially in the rural areas.

68
00:06:02.679 --> 00:06:08.199
You know, in Nairobi, in the big cities, you'll get merchants that accept Visa, Mastercard, cash,

69
00:06:08.679 --> 00:06:09.319
and then Pesa.

70
00:06:10.024 --> 00:06:14.504
Because of tourist. Right? Yeah. Once you get out of the city, it's pretty much only M Pesa and cash.

71
00:06:15.224 --> 00:06:18.824
What about what is the breakdown do you think about between, like, cash and

72
00:06:19.144 --> 00:06:20.184
M Pesa?

73
00:06:20.984 --> 00:06:32.169
It's probably skews much more higher to M Pesa just for security reasons. You don't have to carry on lots of cash, and it's convenient. It's just on your phone. You're already carrying your phone. So I think most people use M Pesa these days.

74
00:06:32.649 --> 00:06:34.089
Mean, that's what it's obviously

75
00:06:35.554 --> 00:06:36.434
There's

76
00:06:36.434 --> 00:06:49.729
a way that you can take your M Pesa account. You go to an agent, which is just like a person on the side of the road, and you can get cash from them. So, like, human ATMs, essentially. So you're withdrawing your your M Pesa digital money into physical cash.

77
00:06:50.529 --> 00:06:54.529
And then, just take some kind of vig. Exactly. Whatever. It's like market rate.

78
00:06:54.769 --> 00:06:57.969
Yep. And that's kinda how M Pesa really blew up, is like empowering

79
00:06:58.449 --> 00:07:08.494
people to make money off these little, you know, kiosks at the side of road where you could be an ATM, you get your little vig. And so, yeah, people love the affiliate programs here in Africa.

80
00:07:08.974 --> 00:07:10.494
It's interesting because

81
00:07:11.454 --> 00:07:17.454
for years, people have said, The war on cash, governments want to ban cash, it's too private, it gives people too much freedom.

82
00:07:18.379 --> 00:07:21.499
I mean, obviously, it's a different situation in The US.

83
00:07:21.739 --> 00:07:30.459
Same, same, but different. But I mean, most of my peers have moved away from cash just from a convenience point of view. Like governments didn't even really have to ban it. Yeah.

84
00:07:31.335 --> 00:07:42.934
Well, that was always my biggest concern. When I first moved to Kenya about four years ago, it was like, this is the easiest way to turn a system into a CBDC. It could be a CBDC overnight if the government came in and said, Hey, we're taking this over.

85
00:07:43.699 --> 00:07:49.379
The government actually owns 30%. Well, 30%, and they're trying to sell some of it. Take in SafariCon,

86
00:07:49.379 --> 00:07:51.939
which is the the company that runs M Pesa.

87
00:07:52.339 --> 00:07:54.339
I mean, it's I like to call it.

88
00:07:56.114 --> 00:08:01.634
I it's easy meme wise for people to be and politicians to be anti cbdc.

89
00:08:01.634 --> 00:08:02.434
Right?

90
00:08:03.074 --> 00:08:03.794
Because

91
00:08:03.954 --> 00:08:11.234
for whatever reason, I guess it's a success in that. It's just really bad marketing. Like people know that cbdc means evil.

92
00:08:12.149 --> 00:08:16.789
And but what we're seeing globally is basically what I call like pbdcs,

93
00:08:16.789 --> 00:08:18.869
like private bank digital currencies,

94
00:08:19.669 --> 00:08:39.364
that are nearly as bad as CB can be nearly as bad as CBDCs because of public private partnerships and coercion and centralized points of failure, maybe not quite as bad. Like it doesn't give governments like fine tuned control over the money that a pure play CBDC might. But on that note, like, do you is that a is that a

95
00:08:40.259 --> 00:08:49.139
obviously, mean, I think people should probably just operate under the assumption that there's there's complete surveillance on the M Pesa system. But unlike the

96
00:08:49.620 --> 00:08:50.579
censorship,

97
00:08:50.899 --> 00:08:52.100
money freezing side,

98
00:08:52.884 --> 00:08:58.404
is that a is that a common problem? Do people see their M Pesa accounts get frozen a lot?

99
00:08:58.964 --> 00:09:00.404
It's a good question.

100
00:09:00.644 --> 00:09:06.964
You know, if you're not doing anything illegal or suspicious, I think you're okay. Of course, M Pesa does have that power.

101
00:09:07.649 --> 00:09:18.610
They got a little bit of heat during, I think about a year and a half ago, there was a big set of protests in Kenya over the financial bill. They're trying to raise taxes and tax some things that people didn't want taxed,

102
00:09:18.610 --> 00:09:20.290
and people took out to the streets.

103
00:09:21.164 --> 00:09:27.404
There were some rumors, I don't know if it's true, that the government was locating people through Safaricom,

104
00:09:27.484 --> 00:09:31.564
you connect to the tower with your phone, things like that. It's

105
00:09:31.564 --> 00:09:34.044
hard to prove that, but that was the concern.

106
00:09:34.124 --> 00:09:38.420
I didn't ever hear stories about anyone getting their account shut off,

107
00:09:38.739 --> 00:09:43.779
but yeah. I mean, certainly possible. I I assume it happens, but if it's not widespread, then that's a win.

108
00:09:44.179 --> 00:09:45.300
Yeah. I mean,

109
00:09:45.779 --> 00:09:47.699
what we see in The US is,

110
00:09:48.420 --> 00:09:56.714
and this was notorious, especially early in my Bitcoin journey, PayPal was just freezing accounts like crazy. And yeah, I mean, the common

111
00:09:58.234 --> 00:10:04.714
gaslighting is like, Oh, if you're not doing anything illegal, then you shouldn't have any concern. But there's

112
00:10:04.794 --> 00:10:08.160
a tendency with these large corporations to proactively

113
00:10:08.160 --> 00:10:11.279
overstep out of an abundance of caution and liability.

114
00:10:11.519 --> 00:10:12.240
Where,

115
00:10:13.519 --> 00:10:33.984
you know, there's they're they're freezing accounts, not they're not getting a warrant, there's not like a judge's order or whatever. They're just lawyers are like, Nope, this is too risky. This is too risky for us. So we're just gonna they're gonna freeze it, and then the customer can come and complain to us afterwards and try and call back their money or whatever. That's exactly Especially what for lower value accounts, right? It's like.

116
00:10:35.420 --> 00:10:40.940
Sorry, I was just saying that's exactly how I got into Bitcoin, was I had a startup back in 2005,

117
00:10:41.100 --> 00:10:45.980
pre Bitcoin, and I got debanked by PayPal. I was bootstrapping the company with PayPal.

118
00:10:46.139 --> 00:10:55.644
They kicked me off, for whatever reason, they don't tell you, and that was the moment where I realized, hey, I need unsensible money. Then, you know, ten years later, discovered it. It's like, okay. Yeah.

119
00:10:56.364 --> 00:10:57.644
Seems so it's a real purpose.

120
00:10:58.044 --> 00:11:03.004
Yeah. I mean, it's actually in America, I believe it's actually illegal for them to tell you if it's for

121
00:11:03.689 --> 00:11:04.889
a suspected

122
00:11:04.970 --> 00:11:06.249
criminal reasons.

123
00:11:07.289 --> 00:11:08.649
And once again, suspected,

124
00:11:08.649 --> 00:11:10.089
alleged. Right? This is not

125
00:11:10.970 --> 00:11:15.209
I'm obviously not insinuating that you were doing anything particularly nefarious.

126
00:11:15.449 --> 00:11:18.089
And, like, once again, like, classic regulation sense,

127
00:11:19.004 --> 00:11:24.204
it's pitched like it's coming from a good place. It's like, well, why would you wanna tell the criminals what you know about them?

128
00:11:24.524 --> 00:11:35.929
But, like, you think about it from, like, an average user point of view, you're running a business, and you're completely caught up caught off from your financial rails, and they won't even give you the most basic explanation

129
00:11:36.089 --> 00:11:48.464
of why that happened. They're just like, go go to hell. Yeah. After we left PayPal, we went the traditional route to, you know, credit card, accepting credit cards. So, I mean, they obviously accepted the account, but it was a constant

130
00:11:49.264 --> 00:11:57.745
cat and mouse. Like, you know, six months we have an account and then whatever they'd get acquired, small banks would get acquired, they'd, you know, derisk for whatever reason.

131
00:11:58.064 --> 00:12:01.824
And then we had to go find a new account to replace that one. It was just a joke.

132
00:12:03.709 --> 00:12:04.509
Tondo

133
00:12:04.749 --> 00:12:11.389
yeah, go on. Sorry. Yeah. Just like you're saying, they don't tell you why they shut your account down. Yeah. It's ridiculous. So

134
00:12:13.709 --> 00:12:14.909
Tondo

135
00:12:14.954 --> 00:12:19.994
is basically kind of almost like a translation layer between M Pesa and Bitcoin,

136
00:12:20.235 --> 00:12:22.074
if I'm understanding it correctly.

137
00:12:22.634 --> 00:12:25.675
I would download the app when I'm in country.

138
00:12:26.154 --> 00:12:26.954
And then

139
00:12:27.159 --> 00:12:37.399
I do I just plug in an M Pesa account number of someone I want to pay and then lightning invoice pops up and then I just pay the lightning invoice and then they receive M Pesa showings.

140
00:12:37.559 --> 00:12:37.959
Exactly.

141
00:12:39.524 --> 00:12:54.269
So you put in someone's phone number, you put in the amount of shillings, we tell you how many sats it is. We don't have a wallet service built in, so we just trigger your external wallet, whatever is installed on your phone, whatever your default is. You get to choose your own wallet based on your preferences,

142
00:12:54.509 --> 00:13:05.229
opens that, and then you authorize the payment within the wallet, and then Tonda receives the Bitcoin. And once that's received, we release the shillings that you originally typed in to the endpoint you typed in.

143
00:13:05.949 --> 00:13:15.674
Pretty simple. Yeah. I mean, I kinda love that it doesn't have the wallet built in. You just outsource that. There's plenty of good mobile wallets. Just pops you out to Phoenix Wallet or whatever, and then you just pay it.

144
00:13:16.074 --> 00:13:21.194
Exactly. And we don't wanna have to deal with the customer service of, you know because these a lot of these people are new to Bitcoin, and so

145
00:13:21.979 --> 00:13:24.219
dealing with that, it's like, no. Waldustoshi,

146
00:13:24.219 --> 00:13:26.699
Phoenix, they have great customer service that can handle that.

147
00:13:27.259 --> 00:13:29.819
It's a whole another it's a whole different business. It's it's

148
00:13:30.219 --> 00:13:39.985
so are you familiar? I've had Carell on from Money Badger in South Africa. It's Yep. It's quite similar to what he's doing in South Africa. Right? Very similar. Yeah.

149
00:13:40.785 --> 00:13:43.345
And what what are the do you know what the main differences are?

150
00:13:44.785 --> 00:13:52.009
My understanding is that so in South Africa, they have had like a QR code payment system for a long time.

151
00:13:52.409 --> 00:13:54.409
And what they do is they

152
00:13:54.809 --> 00:13:58.569
they do something clever with the QR codes where they turn it into

153
00:13:58.889 --> 00:14:07.975
a l ln URL, and then your Lightning Wallet can pay that LN URL, they do And some translation on the back it's more merchant focused, guess, because

154
00:14:08.535 --> 00:14:10.295
South Africa doesn't have

155
00:14:10.535 --> 00:14:12.535
an M Pesa like system, or?

156
00:14:12.855 --> 00:14:28.119
No, they don't do as much mobile money. And so, is much more retail focused in South Africa there. Whereas Kenya's, you know, mobile money plus those two other payment methods I mentioned. Yeah. It's super interesting this mobile money piece. And my technologists have talked about this for a while

157
00:14:29.264 --> 00:14:29.904
where,

158
00:14:30.224 --> 00:14:42.304
you know, in the Western world, like we laid down phone lines, and then like we had a transition to like cell phones or whatever. But Africa just went straight to cell phones and then kind of skipped bank accounts in a lot of ways and went straight to mobile money.

159
00:14:42.809 --> 00:14:52.329
And so as a result, they kind of leapfrogged us. And it does give you this huge advantage that you can just plug into this existing network and system that is like relatively

160
00:14:52.329 --> 00:14:53.289
programmatic.

161
00:14:53.289 --> 00:14:54.889
I mean, it's not like

162
00:14:55.209 --> 00:15:23.579
it's not like cryptographically verifiable, but it's relatively programmatic. And I actually saw something similar in Costa Rica. They have something called SIM Pay, which means a much smaller population. I think it's a little bit less sophisticated of a system. But both Bitcoin and specifically the Bitcoin jungle community over there plugged into that system. And for instance, when I was in Costa Rica, I was able to just like simply pay my nanny. And she didn't even know she was, you know, getting paid in Bitcoin. She was just getting paid, you know, through her sim pay account.

163
00:15:24.059 --> 00:15:38.245
So a Tondo is the obviously with a smartphone, it's it's you're you know, you're you're showing an invoice or I guess, yeah, you're showing an invoice that is just text that can be copied and pasted into any wallet or a QR code that can be scanned. Mhmm.

164
00:15:38.485 --> 00:15:44.339
What what if the user doesn't have a smartphone? Can they still participate? Or is it smartphone only right now?

165
00:15:45.379 --> 00:15:49.379
Well, the Tando side is smartphone only, because you have to generate that invoice.

166
00:15:49.619 --> 00:16:02.894
Right. You could, if you had both. There's no reason why you couldn't pay with Muchenkora, because Muchenkora can pay Lightning invoices. Right. You can paste it over to that and paste it from your Machin I've had KG on this show too. Machin Kurra is awesome. Yeah. He's great.

167
00:16:06.334 --> 00:16:10.175
So the so we we covered the sending side.

168
00:16:10.254 --> 00:16:10.574
Mhmm.

169
00:16:13.299 --> 00:16:30.014
Is the reverse true too? Can someone pay me through M Pesa and I receive Bitcoin or no? That's not something we do just because we don't want to deal with the fiat side of things. We like the Bitcoin. There is a company here called Botika that kind of does the opposite. So you can put in your M Pesa phone number and a Lightning address, and it'll

170
00:16:30.254 --> 00:16:37.454
prompt you on your phone, do you authorize this payment? And then it'll basically you're basically buying Sats through M Pesa.

171
00:16:37.614 --> 00:16:40.709
It's pretty quick, so it's kinda like the inverse of Tondo.

172
00:16:40.869 --> 00:16:42.789
But didn't you guys didn't

173
00:16:42.949 --> 00:16:47.589
did you guys not just announce something where, like, every phone number has a Lightning address?

174
00:16:48.229 --> 00:16:50.549
Yeah. Exactly. So that's

175
00:16:50.324 --> 00:16:57.605
it's basically Tondo without the Tondo app. Every phone number, since it can receive That's still sending. That's still Right?

176
00:16:58.804 --> 00:17:00.805
And then we also added a feature where

177
00:17:01.285 --> 00:17:01.524
so

178
00:17:02.339 --> 00:17:06.899
at some point, we hope that as more people understand that Bitcoin is just money,

179
00:17:07.219 --> 00:17:07.619
and

180
00:17:08.019 --> 00:17:16.099
integrate with your daily life, they will actually want to start desiring the Bitcoin. That's kind of the ultimate goal there. And so what we did with this feature is like,

181
00:17:16.754 --> 00:17:53.774
since your account number everyone is so used to your phone number being your financial account number. Right. Which is something I wanted to ask to actually talk to you about because I know you're very sensitive about giving out phone numbers, but here, like, that's the norm. Like, people just take out phone numbers. It's like, so what is the difference between a phone number and a bank account number? Nothing really. It's just a string of numbers. Right? So anyways, but back to the the point is that once once you're comfortable with Bitcoin and you wanna receive it, you claim your phone number, and now instead of receiving shillings, you'll receive Bitcoin. So it's kinda nice. Awesome. Yeah. So I already I if I obvious, like, I'm let's say I'm Kenyan, I already have a phone number. If I'm not a Bitcoiner, any Bitcoiner can pay me with just my phone number at what's the domain?

182
00:17:54.014 --> 00:17:55.454
At bitcoin.co.

183
00:17:55.695 --> 00:17:59.294
They literally just put my phone number at bitcoin.co.ke,

184
00:17:59.749 --> 00:18:04.470
and I I just receive M Pesa shillings. But then if I'm a Bitcoiner,

185
00:18:04.470 --> 00:18:10.869
I can just enable it within your system or whatever. And then that conversion never happens. And I'm receiving Bitcoin

186
00:18:11.190 --> 00:18:11.590
instead.

187
00:18:12.184 --> 00:18:26.459
Goes right to whatever lightning wallet you want. So we're kind like a proxy in that situation. And we just never have to have that conversation. Like, if I go to a merchant and the merchant likes Bitcoin, he receives Bitcoin. If I go to a merchant and the merchant doesn't like Bitcoin, he receives shillings. Boom. Exactly. So pragmatic.

188
00:18:26.460 --> 00:18:36.219
This is what I love about this is like, the Bitcoin. One of the cool parts about the Bitcoin community is that we go so deep on like technical nuances and third party risk and trade

189
00:18:36.379 --> 00:18:43.374
offs and whatnot. But one of the things that's so frustrating is and I think the shit corners have done a much better job than us at it is like,

190
00:18:44.174 --> 00:18:50.429
oftentimes we lack, like pragmatic tools that just help people that just work well. And

191
00:18:50.429 --> 00:18:54.829
I think that's what you guys are doing really well. I think that's what money badgers doing really well.

192
00:18:55.469 --> 00:19:01.469
I think that's what munching Cora is doing really well. And it's just fantastic to see that. Mean, that's like, that's the dream if I could.

193
00:19:02.764 --> 00:19:06.924
I mean, I guess we don't have mobile money here. But the corollary would be like,

194
00:19:08.204 --> 00:19:10.844
we have we have so much of the,

195
00:19:11.804 --> 00:19:34.574
like, the non official economy runs on Venmo, which is owned by PayPal and Cash App. And so the corollary would be like, if I paid my nanny on Venmo or at the farmer's market or something, and they were a bit corner, they would just receive Bitcoin. And I wouldn't have to like, have a conversation with them and see if they were a bit corner and deal with the whole back and forth and the mental friction of them exchanging invoices or whatnot. That is awesome.

196
00:19:34.894 --> 00:19:40.734
Yeah. It's personal choice. Right? There's a company in Europe, I think they're out of Estonia,

197
00:19:40.734 --> 00:19:47.454
Bringin, they kinda have something similar where you can create a lightning address that you connect to your European, I guess it's an I band bank account.

198
00:19:48.149 --> 00:19:51.989
And so you can then and then funds will go right into that account.

199
00:19:52.230 --> 00:19:56.069
So That's cool. Yeah. We're seeing quite a few of these pop up.

200
00:19:56.629 --> 00:19:58.709
Yeah. I mean, I think it I mean, obviously,

201
00:19:58.789 --> 00:20:00.789
you live and die from the permission of

202
00:20:02.104 --> 00:20:09.944
M Pesa or whatever the mobile money is, right? Like, M Pesa wanted to kill your business, they could literally just you could wake up tomorrow morning and you'd be done, right? A 100%.

203
00:20:10.585 --> 00:20:25.419
We've actually talked to the people at M Pesa Africa. We were at a conference and they came up to the booth and big scary looking guys, like, are you guys doing? Because, like, we didn't really seek permission. We kinda, like, went under the radar for a long while. Let's just see if this thing works. Like, scratch our own head.

204
00:20:25.819 --> 00:20:28.940
And I explained to him, I was like, look. You know, Kenya's got a pretty

205
00:20:29.575 --> 00:20:39.814
large tourist economy, a lot of people come here for the safaris and this and that, and I said to him, like, any tourist that comes in the country, they're gonna be spending money Visa and Mastercard. Right? You get none of that revenue.

206
00:20:40.294 --> 00:20:49.629
So with this feature, now we've got this global money called Bitcoin, anyone that comes into the country can spend it right on your rails, you get the revenue from that. He's like, Okay, keep going.

207
00:20:50.269 --> 00:20:54.669
Yeah, I mean, you're pushing volume through their system. Exactly. And then presumably over time,

208
00:20:55.444 --> 00:20:57.524
there's like the most dangerous

209
00:20:58.964 --> 00:21:00.484
time is the

210
00:21:01.604 --> 00:21:10.939
growth stage on your side where you start to get big enough where they notice, but you're not big enough where you're driving a significant portion of their revenue. Yeah.

211
00:21:11.259 --> 00:21:16.219
But I mean, if we're right about how bullish most of us are on Bitcoin,

212
00:21:16.619 --> 00:21:19.579
I mean, it shouldn't take too long for you to be a significant

213
00:21:19.979 --> 00:21:23.419
share of their revenue. Why would they cut you off? That would just be

214
00:21:23.979 --> 00:21:24.539
bad business.

215
00:21:25.195 --> 00:21:40.830
Right. I mean, the other risk, if you wanna call it that, is like, they could just take the idea themselves and do it. Like, we're not doing anything magical. Right? They just need to They can just give everyone an M Peso Lightning address. Boom. Done. Yeah. I guess, like, the one moat we have is now that we have that at bitcoin.co.ke,

216
00:21:40.830 --> 00:21:43.709
you know, we own that domain, they don't own that, so they probably have to buy Yeah.

217
00:21:44.909 --> 00:21:58.734
But, yeah, they, I mean, they could do it, but then, great. And also, why would they? Like, it's the same reason why you're not running a wallet in Tondo, right? Like, they, you're doing all the heavy lifting for them. You're doing the hard work. They're still making just as much money as they would So

218
00:22:00.014 --> 00:22:03.454
what is your I assume you charge a transparent

219
00:22:03.454 --> 00:22:05.614
fee to make this whole thing sustainable.

220
00:22:05.774 --> 00:22:06.734
What is that situation?

221
00:22:07.159 --> 00:22:12.199
Yeah. We don't actually charge anything. We actually eat the cost, so that's another, like, incentive for

222
00:22:12.839 --> 00:22:18.919
user adoption is, like, you know, M Pesa charges us a small fee because we're using the API. It's much smaller

223
00:22:18.919 --> 00:22:24.424
than the retail cost of using it in M Pesa, But, you know, we can we can afford that just

224
00:22:25.064 --> 00:22:29.784
based on when we sell our Bitcoin to liquidate for more Kenyan shillings if we're So what

225
00:22:30.104 --> 00:22:33.144
is your business model? This is a for profit business. Right?

226
00:22:33.544 --> 00:22:34.744
Yeah. So

227
00:22:35.059 --> 00:22:39.859
this new feature that we just announced, that does have a 1% transaction fee. The Lightning address?

228
00:22:40.019 --> 00:22:40.659
Yeah.

229
00:22:41.219 --> 00:22:44.979
Got it. So, the idea is like, build brand recognition with Tondo,

230
00:22:45.379 --> 00:23:00.574
build trust, that's another big element, because we have to prove to the people that we're reliable, that you know, if something goes wrong, which can happen sometimes, you know, we're dealing with technology, we we refund them back to SATs. Everyone's made whole. And so as we build up that trust, then people will use more services. We've already had

231
00:23:00.975 --> 00:23:05.454
we've talked to Akawala and a few other companies. They already wanna integrate with that lightning

232
00:23:05.455 --> 00:23:10.389
phone number service. And so that that side of the business can be, you know, revenue generating

233
00:23:10.709 --> 00:23:12.069
at that 1% rate. I

234
00:23:13.349 --> 00:23:16.629
like that. I mean, 1%, and that's completely reasonable. Very competitive.

235
00:23:17.269 --> 00:23:20.469
And we're just starting there. We we can adjust that as we go, see how it goes.

236
00:23:21.744 --> 00:23:23.744
Yeah, I mean, like, I'm, I'm like,

237
00:23:24.304 --> 00:23:30.144
I'm a capitalist. Like, I think what would you want to like, we want to hit scale, we need like sustainable, Speaker ethical, profitable

238
00:23:31.344 --> 00:23:35.344
percent that don't rely that don't rely on like charity and

239
00:23:36.849 --> 00:23:37.969
open grants.

240
00:23:38.369 --> 00:23:39.649
Unknown Yeah, exactly.

241
00:23:39.809 --> 00:23:43.489
And then me going out and raising money all the time for

242
00:23:44.289 --> 00:23:45.409
no cut. I

243
00:23:48.034 --> 00:23:56.834
cool. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Let's talk about phone numbers. You brought up phone numbers. They they hold a special place in my heart. What is your opinion there? Podcast.

244
00:23:57.154 --> 00:23:59.394
You're railing on them as you always do.

245
00:23:59.794 --> 00:24:01.154
On the web podcast?

246
00:24:01.234 --> 00:24:05.739
I guess Mara. You're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking phone numbers, man.

247
00:24:06.619 --> 00:24:12.379
Yeah. When we She was blown away she was blown away how angry I was about phone numbers. Anyway, continue.

248
00:24:13.899 --> 00:24:17.019
We when we made that announcement on Twitter, there's a sorry. X.

249
00:24:18.194 --> 00:24:31.559
Yeah. One of my favorite photos is, you know, an Uber driver. He literally took a Sharpie and writes his phone number on the ceiling of the car just so it's easy to, like, pay him. Yeah. Like, people will just give out their numbers like it's nothing because there's a chance someone might send you money. Yeah.

250
00:24:31.719 --> 00:24:35.559
So, yeah, people are just used to it. It's not an issue here.

251
00:24:36.119 --> 00:24:37.559
No. Mean, look, I think

252
00:24:38.119 --> 00:24:39.639
it's the same in America.

253
00:24:40.279 --> 00:24:48.274
That's the problem. Right? In America, you're born, and then if you're registered with the system, you get a social security number, like a digital ID number.

254
00:24:49.234 --> 00:24:57.394
And then when you're like, I mean, I don't know. It was obviously it was a little bit different when I was a kid. But presumably now it's like when you turn like eight years old or nine years old,

255
00:24:58.249 --> 00:25:01.129
and your parents get you a phone and you have a phone number.

256
00:25:01.529 --> 00:25:12.009
And then the phone number never changes for the average person. They have the same phone number for the next sixty years, seventy years of their lives. And so from a convenience point

257
00:25:12.330 --> 00:25:14.169
of view, it's

258
00:25:14.384 --> 00:25:17.424
the most lending network effect ever. This is why

259
00:25:17.904 --> 00:25:25.264
WhatsApp got 5,000,000,000 users. This is why Telegram has 2,000,000,000 users because they just plug into the existing phone number system

260
00:25:25.424 --> 00:25:34.789
that everyone is already a part of and has all their friends and family's phone numbers. And they can easily just bootstrap off that network effect. It's the ultimate network effect.

261
00:25:35.109 --> 00:25:44.244
Now, but that's also the danger, right? The danger is that's effectively a it's a de facto digital ID, right? To the point of the CBDC

262
00:25:44.324 --> 00:25:45.924
versus PBDC,

263
00:25:45.924 --> 00:25:47.444
right? Everyone is,

264
00:25:47.924 --> 00:25:52.324
I think rightfully scared of a move into dystopian digital IDs,

265
00:25:52.724 --> 00:25:54.884
where they track everything you do. Well,

266
00:25:55.679 --> 00:25:59.519
society already opted into it with the phone number system.

267
00:25:59.759 --> 00:26:00.319
And

268
00:26:00.639 --> 00:26:02.719
you don't realize how bad it is.

269
00:26:03.599 --> 00:26:12.894
But the difference is with the phone number is privately run, right? But it's still there's public private partnerships all the time. Once again, there's coercion, there's data sharing, there's data collection.

270
00:26:13.294 --> 00:26:17.694
There's a profit motive for collecting data, right? Data is the

271
00:26:17.934 --> 00:26:24.649
quote, Data is the new oil, right? Like you can profit off of people's information. So, there's marketing companies and whatnot that are collating all this information.

272
00:26:24.809 --> 00:26:40.064
And so, then you go to the hardware store and you sign up for the rewards and you give them the same phone number that you've been using for the last forty years. And then you go and use Venmo and you use the same exact phone number and you do every one of your financial transactions through there. And then you go apply for an apartment

273
00:26:40.304 --> 00:26:47.424
and you give your landlord your phone number and then you go get a car and you put you doing the car loan, you use the same phone number. And then there's like

274
00:26:47.424 --> 00:26:58.759
50,000,000 different marketing companies that all see every single transaction you're doing and everything you're doing living your life and buying and selling it and sharing it and using it against you all the time.

275
00:26:59.239 --> 00:27:03.079
And if you just even just barely try and opt out of that system,

276
00:27:03.319 --> 00:27:06.359
it is the most painful process. Like, I have

277
00:27:07.034 --> 00:27:11.914
maybe 30 different active phone numbers right now. Really? Wow.

278
00:27:12.235 --> 00:27:17.834
How do you And I don't really. It's really hard to manage. Like I like

279
00:27:18.475 --> 00:27:23.929
like it. I I'll miss miss messages from plumbers or

280
00:27:24.009 --> 00:27:26.249
I don't like everything like

281
00:27:26.809 --> 00:27:27.609
like

282
00:27:27.689 --> 00:27:36.569
car payments. I do a solution there. Just aggregate all my messages into one. Let me reply and you route it where it needs to go. Yeah. There's some so

283
00:27:37.184 --> 00:27:38.384
so I, you

284
00:27:39.184 --> 00:27:41.024
know, this is threat modeling, right?

285
00:27:41.664 --> 00:27:46.864
My goal with using phone numbers is multiple phone numbers isn't to be NSA proof, because

286
00:27:47.504 --> 00:27:52.239
I'm trying to live my life, right? I have a family to raise, I have businesses to run.

287
00:27:52.799 --> 00:27:53.919
Life is short.

288
00:27:54.079 --> 00:27:55.439
And ideally,

289
00:27:55.439 --> 00:27:59.439
like my own government shouldn't be in my day to day threat model, even though there

290
00:28:00.479 --> 00:28:05.574
can be arguments on both sides there. But that's part of the reason why Bitcoin Policy Institute exists is like, okay,

291
00:28:06.214 --> 00:28:07.494
let's try and

292
00:28:08.774 --> 00:28:11.254
remove the US government from most Bitcoiners

293
00:28:11.254 --> 00:28:14.294
in America's threat model. But anyway, I digress.

294
00:28:15.014 --> 00:28:17.014
So I use an app that is

295
00:28:18.970 --> 00:28:20.409
tied to

296
00:28:21.610 --> 00:28:25.690
my real identity. So there is a there's I'm like, I'm trusting a company,

297
00:28:26.090 --> 00:28:38.194
but and as a result, I have all of the phone numbers in a single app interface. Now the interface sucks and it's still really hard to manage, but at least it's more it's more reasonable to manage

298
00:28:38.594 --> 00:28:48.569
than, you know, managing a bunch of SIM cards and phones. And like, I don't know. That would be insanely difficult. It's already difficult as it is. But even that little step helps a lot because

299
00:28:48.969 --> 00:28:49.849
it means

300
00:28:50.089 --> 00:28:55.049
the bank has a different phone number than the hardware store that has a different phone number than,

301
00:28:55.849 --> 00:29:06.714
you know, the the plumber that has a different phone number than the car dealership or whatever. So those connections are a little bit more difficult. Obviously, I'm trusting this company that this company isn't

302
00:29:07.114 --> 00:29:09.354
making the connection for people. But

303
00:29:10.315 --> 00:29:10.874
you know,

304
00:29:11.514 --> 00:29:18.849
in their best interest not to do that. Like that's their business model, right? Like their business model is, people that at least want some modicum of privacy.

305
00:29:19.409 --> 00:29:28.529
I was gonna ask, like, do you have like so do you have to remember or do you have something like a big word and like, which number do I have with my bank? And you just type in the That's the hardest part. Yeah. So

306
00:29:29.169 --> 00:29:31.009
like the app has like basic labels.

307
00:29:31.734 --> 00:29:35.094
Okay. But yeah, it's like good old fashioned organization.

308
00:29:35.094 --> 00:29:40.774
I need to keep track of which phone number. I mean, look, and my wife does it too, by the way.

309
00:29:41.174 --> 00:29:42.774
Because look, at the end of the day,

310
00:29:44.129 --> 00:29:45.889
we're running this family together.

311
00:29:46.049 --> 00:29:50.129
So if if she's making mistakes, then I'm making mistakes. And so for instance,

312
00:29:51.169 --> 00:29:51.329
there

313
00:29:52.129 --> 00:29:53.009
she's she's

314
00:29:53.169 --> 00:29:56.690
she takes care of her own garden. We have, a nice nice garden at the house.

315
00:29:57.514 --> 00:29:59.674
And my oldest son wanted a

316
00:30:00.075 --> 00:30:01.034
wheelbarrow,

317
00:30:01.274 --> 00:30:06.954
a specific wheelbarrow that they saw at the garden store. It's like a child sized wheelbarrow, but nice quality. And

318
00:30:08.475 --> 00:30:41.214
she sent me on Saturday. She sent me to the store to get with him to get the wheelbarrow. Super excited. I get to the cash register and she's like, Do you have a phone number with us? I was like, Oh, my wife put the phone number. She's like, they go, So what's your wife's phone number? It's like, I don't really know. I don't care about boards. Just give me And they look at you like you're crazy. It's like, how do you not know your wife's phone numbers? Like, well, I know one of her phone numbers. I don't know which one she used for this specific store. And so it causes all those sorts of little issues around and you know, like you miss out on some rewards, you miss out on some text messages, whatever.

319
00:30:41.990 --> 00:30:44.309
But it's a real pain in the ass. And and

320
00:30:44.470 --> 00:30:50.309
society has basically defaulted into the expectation that every single person has a single phone number is kind of my point.

321
00:30:50.710 --> 00:30:58.084
And I think people don't realize how much that exposes you. It's possible. It must be worth it to you in the end. I imagine.

322
00:30:58.164 --> 00:30:59.524
Unknown I mean,

323
00:31:00.404 --> 00:31:01.684
I think probably.

324
00:31:02.004 --> 00:31:02.644
Okay.

325
00:31:05.044 --> 00:31:06.804
Speaker You know, there's definitely

326
00:31:07.684 --> 00:31:15.139
you don't you end up you know, you end up not doing like one phone number per service, right? Like I group things together that are like,

327
00:31:16.099 --> 00:31:20.099
kind of thematically connected because it would just be ridiculous.

328
00:31:20.739 --> 00:31:21.299
Retail,

329
00:31:21.699 --> 00:31:22.819
friends, family,

330
00:31:23.299 --> 00:31:29.314
etcetera. Well, I mean, honestly, the single biggest hack I did was I created a independent burner

331
00:31:29.714 --> 00:31:30.514
for

332
00:31:31.234 --> 00:31:34.594
signal because signal requires a phone number to register,

333
00:31:35.234 --> 00:31:43.569
but no longer shares it with people. So you use it. They use it as like a spam mitigation technique. A lot of companies use it as

334
00:31:44.529 --> 00:31:48.129
the de facto bot mitigation technique. It's

335
00:31:48.129 --> 00:31:49.809
relatively hard to get a phone number.

336
00:31:50.289 --> 00:32:03.834
And so they require a phone number and a text message verification to sign up. But then after that, you know, they don't require the phone number anymore unless you get locked out of your account. So you still have to keep the phone number just in case. But anyway, so I set up a signal

337
00:32:04.474 --> 00:32:07.514
with this separate phone number, and 99%

338
00:32:07.514 --> 00:32:18.369
of friends, family business runs through signal now. So they don't even they don't text me or call me traditionally. Like, they can call through signal too, which was that was the key unlock.

339
00:32:18.529 --> 00:32:21.409
And with family, actually, the cheat code is

340
00:32:21.970 --> 00:32:35.304
with friends, the cheat code was they just would never hear from me if they didn't message me on signal. So like, I might have lost some friends as a result or I, you know, don't stay in touch with them as well as I could. With family, the easy one was you want baby photos?

341
00:32:35.624 --> 00:32:41.070
You want baby photos, you gotta get signal my 90 year old grandma has signal, it's

342
00:32:41.070 --> 00:32:42.749
the only way she gets baby photos.

343
00:32:44.909 --> 00:32:45.309
Well,

344
00:32:45.789 --> 00:32:47.709
that's I the high think Kenya recently,

345
00:32:49.230 --> 00:32:56.464
SIM card swapping could be an issue, especially if you got money in your account, There's a financial incentive to take someone's account over if you can.

346
00:32:57.825 --> 00:32:58.624
And also,

347
00:32:59.264 --> 00:33:03.264
ability to port your number to a different carrier if you wanted was another concern.

348
00:33:03.664 --> 00:33:13.499
But the High Court of Kenya recently ruled that now your phone number is yours. Like, it cannot be ported. It can well, you can port it if you want to, but the companies cannot, you know,

349
00:33:14.220 --> 00:33:19.179
give your number out to someone else. It's yours for life, essentially, at this point, I guess Yeah. Something affects

350
00:33:20.124 --> 00:33:26.204
I mean, as long as the user still has control over if they want to switch carriers or switch numbers,

351
00:33:26.524 --> 00:33:35.484
then that's how it should be. I mean, to your point, right? Like if, if the user is going to have to deal with the bad parts of having a unified identification number

352
00:33:35.809 --> 00:33:39.169
for their life, they should at least get the benefit of

353
00:33:39.489 --> 00:33:45.889
some level of ownership of it. Like that's like debanking on steroids. If you take away if someone's

354
00:33:45.889 --> 00:33:47.889
phone numbers, their entire financial,

355
00:33:48.049 --> 00:33:51.249
financial life, and you take it away from them, that's an incredibly

356
00:33:51.784 --> 00:33:52.664
powerful

357
00:33:53.704 --> 00:33:55.544
ability for a corporation to have.

358
00:33:55.944 --> 00:33:58.104
So I think that's probably think.

359
00:34:02.104 --> 00:34:07.929
Well, I'm glad we got the phone number conversation out of the way. I hope we move away from it. I mean, I don't know. It's

360
00:34:09.130 --> 00:34:12.329
gonna take a while, I think. Well, what would be the alternate

361
00:34:13.130 --> 00:34:16.890
mean, a bank account is also a number, and that's a way to But even email is

362
00:34:17.774 --> 00:34:24.574
emails So, not perfect. Right. But that's a perfect that it's, it's, it's a good counter example to the phone number situation.

363
00:34:25.054 --> 00:34:29.214
Like it's so it's so much easier to spin up a new email account,

364
00:34:29.374 --> 00:34:35.589
and manage it and manage multiple email accounts than it is to manage multiple phone But

365
00:34:35.589 --> 00:34:45.269
that's just because the carrier is the issue, right? Ultimately, they have to route the number somewhere, whereas email, you can just do it yourself. Yeah, I mean, because email is internet native,

366
00:34:45.429 --> 00:34:46.149
right? While

367
00:34:48.214 --> 00:34:53.335
phone numbers are still based on this legacy system of routing calls through cell networks.

368
00:34:53.734 --> 00:35:01.255
There's Phone calls these days are voice over IP, right? It's all the I know. But it's still that legacy piece, right? Like

369
00:35:02.379 --> 00:35:03.339
and then,

370
00:35:03.659 --> 00:35:07.019
I mean, the other piece is like, if you are using VoIP numbers,

371
00:35:07.099 --> 00:35:19.595
like just Internet native numbers, which do exist, like companies have come out to to do that. Like a lot of services will will block those numbers. The big two exceptions that don't block it are

372
00:35:20.154 --> 00:35:26.714
signal doesn't block it. Telegram doesn't block it. I mean, I have lot of issues with Telegram, but they do not block VoIP numbers. But,

373
00:35:28.349 --> 00:35:33.549
like WhatsApp blocks it. WhatsApp's used in a ton of places around the world.

374
00:35:33.949 --> 00:35:34.829
Like if I

375
00:35:35.149 --> 00:35:44.494
I like I don't like having WhatsApp isn't that heavily used in The United States. But when I travel abroad, it's like, you know, you gotta use it. And so I don't like keeping it on my phone.

376
00:35:46.174 --> 00:35:57.119
And I I have to install it. I so I install it when I like right before I go going in LatAm or whatever, I'll install WhatsApp ahead of time. And that that requires a sim based,

377
00:35:57.199 --> 00:35:58.799
like physical phone number.

378
00:35:59.119 --> 00:36:00.799
So like I have a phone

379
00:36:01.679 --> 00:36:07.039
that I have to have on me when I install WhatsApp because it sends me the text message verification.

380
00:36:07.359 --> 00:36:09.119
Like I have to actually have a

381
00:36:09.804 --> 00:36:11.964
physical device that is charged,

382
00:36:12.284 --> 00:36:16.444
that is carrying a phone plan just for just for WhatsApp use.

383
00:36:16.604 --> 00:36:24.709
And that's intentional. Like they know they know exactly what they're doing. And so you don't see that necessarily with email that That lever just doesn't even exist.

384
00:36:25.029 --> 00:36:28.390
Obviously, like if I was going to live in a perfect world, it should just be a

385
00:36:28.709 --> 00:36:30.390
public key private key pair.

386
00:36:30.789 --> 00:36:35.909
Right? You can generate millions of those on the fly offline whenever you want with no company involved.

387
00:36:38.174 --> 00:36:42.494
Other the first way of that is, like, if you we were trying to get our company's

388
00:36:42.494 --> 00:36:45.855
X account, you know, the blue the company blue check,

389
00:36:46.015 --> 00:36:48.095
and we're trying to get the Kenyan phone number,

390
00:36:48.575 --> 00:36:56.469
X will not send the SMS verification to Kenyan numbers. I think Nigeria's got the same issues. Like, no, 254, we're not handling that. And so it's like They just rejected.

391
00:36:56.949 --> 00:36:58.390
Yeah. Just flat out.

392
00:36:59.269 --> 00:37:15.075
And I I wonder if that's for spam reasons. It might be for they see a lot of spam and bots come out of there. Could be. But when there's also legitimate use cases, and what do we do? So it's like, now you have to go jump through hoops to figure out some other solution. Right now compare that to like a Gmail,

393
00:37:15.394 --> 00:37:18.834
or I mean, and obviously, is like the most dystopian of email providers,

394
00:37:19.349 --> 00:37:22.390
and sometimes requires you to authorize with a phone number.

395
00:37:22.710 --> 00:37:26.710
But like compare that to an email address, it's like relatively easy to spin up an email address.

396
00:37:27.589 --> 00:37:31.349
Yeah. But I mean, at the end, we all need some sort of identifier,

397
00:37:31.349 --> 00:37:41.064
right? Guess, you know, the ultimate is just like you said, a private public key pair that anyone can generate and it's not owned by any corporation, but it needs some way to route whatever it is, email, phone, I mean, money to

398
00:37:41.624 --> 00:37:42.984
techies,

399
00:37:42.984 --> 00:37:48.709
the techies will say like zero knowledge proofs. They have like a bunch of different technical solutions for

400
00:37:49.429 --> 00:37:51.589
giving you like an identifier that

401
00:37:53.509 --> 00:37:56.389
that that is that is a static identifier

402
00:37:56.389 --> 00:38:05.005
that is that is useful for a lot of the things we use these things for, but doesn't allow linking between a bunch of different services. But

403
00:38:05.005 --> 00:38:08.125
I mean, the status quo is so bad that there's

404
00:38:09.404 --> 00:38:13.964
simple answers for these things, I think. I think the biggest thing

405
00:38:15.269 --> 00:38:20.630
is it's a societal problem. Right? It's just and so that makes it much it's not

406
00:38:22.069 --> 00:38:27.349
a technical problem in search of a solution. It's a societal problem under the expectation

407
00:38:27.934 --> 00:38:29.694
that of course you use

408
00:38:30.494 --> 00:38:36.015
the same phone number and same email address, to be honest, for everything you do in your life. Right?

409
00:38:36.574 --> 00:38:40.414
Yeah. And so you get burned before they figure out that the solution.

410
00:38:41.249 --> 00:38:48.209
Yeah, I mean, problems like it's just windy. It's hard to move move society in a fundamentally

411
00:38:49.009 --> 00:38:51.649
a fundamentally different direction. But in the ideal world,

412
00:38:53.694 --> 00:39:05.534
yeah, like you, I mean, you should have you I think you should probably have the ability, you should have the ability to basically have multiple identities that you can use for different things. Because, because some of those identities are,

413
00:39:06.099 --> 00:39:12.019
if you use the same identity, they will undoubtedly be linked to each other. In the age of

414
00:39:12.659 --> 00:39:14.019
constant surveillance,

415
00:39:14.019 --> 00:39:18.979
and digital lives, and now with AI, which is like, you can ignore all the AI

416
00:39:20.084 --> 00:39:20.964
today

417
00:39:21.284 --> 00:39:22.084
already.

418
00:39:22.084 --> 00:39:24.164
LLMs are amazing at, like,

419
00:39:24.564 --> 00:39:37.759
combing through large data sets. And so you can just imagine, just think about it in your head, just like some random person. And by the way, you can think your intelligence services are great. Like, maybe you think the NSA is their patriots, you know, and whatever,

420
00:39:38.799 --> 00:39:43.439
like, I don't know, like, mi six, whatever, wherever country you are, like, oh, they're patriots.

421
00:39:43.759 --> 00:39:51.844
They're spying on the terrorists for me. But like, it's not just them anymore. Like, it's some random person that works for Facebook.

422
00:39:51.844 --> 00:39:54.724
In a simple language search can be like,

423
00:39:55.124 --> 00:39:55.924
okay,

424
00:39:56.164 --> 00:40:00.889
like, what? Where does Jason like to travel? Right? Where is the most?

425
00:40:01.129 --> 00:40:03.209
Where's the most of on a Tuesday

426
00:40:03.369 --> 00:40:17.285
at 4PM? Where is he usually at? And it's, it's, they're not coding. They're not looking through any, they're just doing a simple language search is coming through all the marketing data. And they're like, okay, well, you know, he usually goes and buys a kebab at this place,

427
00:40:17.765 --> 00:40:20.325
you know, and he clearly works over here.

428
00:40:21.604 --> 00:40:24.244
The IRS in France just gives away the data,

429
00:40:24.819 --> 00:40:25.779
right? Exactly.

430
00:40:28.659 --> 00:40:29.379
When

431
00:40:29.619 --> 00:40:35.939
you have one identity to rule it all, when you have one identity attached to everything, then it gets really scary and really dangerous,

432
00:40:36.914 --> 00:40:37.874
very quickly.

433
00:40:38.035 --> 00:40:42.275
And so the fundamentally, what is the solution there? The fundamentally, the solution is

434
00:40:43.154 --> 00:40:52.839
empower people to and and make it the status quo that people effectively have multiple identities. Right? It's like, okay, I own a I own a kebab shop.

435
00:40:53.719 --> 00:40:56.999
And that kebab shop has a fixed identity. And so if

436
00:40:57.399 --> 00:41:07.734
you if you go there for the next ten years, like it'll always have the same payment code, you know, And that's normal and expected. But then when I go and pay my rent, it's a different one,

437
00:41:08.134 --> 00:41:08.694
right?

438
00:41:09.334 --> 00:41:10.854
You just separate the two.

439
00:41:13.014 --> 00:41:16.934
This is kind of bringing it to the Noster part of the conversation, public private key pairs.

440
00:41:17.489 --> 00:41:19.969
I know in the beginning, there's no easy way

441
00:41:21.569 --> 00:41:27.650
to have multiple private key or public keys that map to one master key. Has that been solved yet,

442
00:41:27.809 --> 00:41:28.529
Nostr?

443
00:41:28.609 --> 00:41:29.009
No.

444
00:41:29.424 --> 00:41:30.464
No. Okay.

445
00:41:31.504 --> 00:41:43.264
Like I said, I think the technical solution to something like that is over my pay grade is like $0 proofs or something. But on a practice to my point about what what I love about Tondo and Money Badger and stuff is like pragmatic solutions.

446
00:41:44.359 --> 00:41:56.839
And so like, I think from a practical solution is what you see in primal right now. In primal, we we make it easy for you to make multiple accounts. It's literally like two clicks, you make another account. And it's all in the same app.

447
00:41:57.404 --> 00:41:58.045
Right?

448
00:41:58.204 --> 00:42:01.644
And so do they cryptographically map to each other? No.

449
00:42:02.204 --> 00:42:04.605
But it's all in the same interface for you.

450
00:42:05.005 --> 00:42:11.964
And then people say, oh, well, like people aren't gonna back up private keys. Well, it's like, okay, I'm gonna get shit on by the hardcores here. We just

451
00:42:12.389 --> 00:42:17.349
opt in, you can opt in to back it up to iCloud. And so like you have your seven different identities,

452
00:42:17.749 --> 00:42:19.749
you opt in to back it up in iCloud.

453
00:42:20.309 --> 00:42:22.789
You know, is it is it perfectly private?

454
00:42:23.029 --> 00:42:32.765
No. Is it perfectly secure? No. Is it significantly better than the status quo? Absolutely. Does it solve real problems for people where they're, they're managing seven different

455
00:42:33.005 --> 00:42:39.005
keys, and they're worried about losing them? Yeah, it solves, it solves significant problems for them for the average person start model.

456
00:42:40.059 --> 00:43:01.794
That is probably an incredibly secure way for them to use these these keys and and they with very reduced risk. Right? Yeah. I mean, the reason I asked was because, you know, currently with Tondo, when we built it out, we didn't wanna do any sign up process, but we needed to generate some unique identifier to so if you ever have an issue, you need to contact us. Okay. Send us your app ID.

457
00:43:02.114 --> 00:43:09.939
And so we just said, alright. Well, maybe at one point, we'll use Nostre Wallet Connect as a as a wallet interface instead of opening up a different wallet.

458
00:43:10.179 --> 00:43:16.259
So we said, We might as well use Nostre keys as your unique identifier for your app ID.

459
00:43:16.979 --> 00:43:22.435
And so in the next version we want to have, you know, customer support would be just a Nostrad chat interface eventually.

460
00:43:22.595 --> 00:43:26.355
So that's kind of what was asking, if there's a way to have multiple

461
00:43:26.434 --> 00:43:33.730
Nostrad keys all tied to your, you know, your Odell account, and then you'd have your Tondo account, which would be a sub account, but we're not there yet.

462
00:43:34.210 --> 00:43:41.490
Yeah, no, I think the answer is you kind of like you're doing on the Bitcoin side is you just saw you saw that on the app on the app level.

463
00:43:41.650 --> 00:43:50.255
Mean, I think part of the cool part about Noster is the simplicity of the protocol design. So when you start trying to add all this stuff in, it's like you're adding a bunch of complexity.

464
00:43:50.814 --> 00:43:53.214
Different apps are not going to support the same thing.

465
00:43:54.094 --> 00:43:54.654
And

466
00:43:55.774 --> 00:43:57.934
when when you can get 99

467
00:43:57.934 --> 00:44:05.880
there by just doing things on the app layer, And we, you know, a lot of my bias comes from Bitcoin side, right? It's like Ethereum, Solana, they tried to add it all.

468
00:44:08.039 --> 00:44:11.559
And so, but on the Bitcoin side, you keep the protocol stupid simple.

469
00:44:12.424 --> 00:44:21.944
And then you add things either on second layers like lightning or on the app level or a combination of the two. Right? It's like so we add a second layer with lightning.

470
00:44:22.424 --> 00:44:36.759
And then people say, Oh, well, at its core lightning is, you know, a open protocol and open interoperable protocol for batch Bitcoin payments using multi sig, and you need to have an on chain transaction, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, well, that sounds really complicated.

471
00:44:37.079 --> 00:44:40.919
Maybe some users will do that. But other users will use an app,

472
00:44:41.525 --> 00:44:45.045
different apps that have different trade offs that make it very simple for them.

473
00:44:45.844 --> 00:44:46.404
And,

474
00:44:46.644 --> 00:44:53.604
and move it up another, another notch. And so I think that's probably the way to do it on Noster too. I mean,

475
00:44:54.549 --> 00:45:05.909
I think that's the coolest part of where we are now in development cycle. It took fifteen years to get all the protocol level stuff dialed in, and now we're in a place where

476
00:45:06.244 --> 00:45:13.364
people like me that aren't protocol developers and co founders, like, can kinda just play around with the tools and build things that are more

477
00:45:13.525 --> 00:45:14.724
application side,

478
00:45:15.124 --> 00:45:25.039
and, like I said, pragmatic for people. I mean, it gets really interesting with the AI dev stuff too. I don't know how much you played around with it. But once you have open protocols for these things,

479
00:45:25.359 --> 00:45:30.159
like I what there's been like a million different projects that have focused on,

480
00:45:30.799 --> 00:45:33.919
like making it easy to accept Bitcoin donations,

481
00:45:33.919 --> 00:45:33.999
right?

482
00:45:34.994 --> 00:45:36.674
So dispatch.com.

483
00:45:36.914 --> 00:45:39.154
Like, I literally just said to the LLM,

484
00:45:39.394 --> 00:45:40.914
here's my lightning address,

485
00:45:41.794 --> 00:45:44.274
receive Bitcoin donations on the site.

486
00:45:44.514 --> 00:45:46.274
And so like, you press the donate button.

487
00:45:46.959 --> 00:46:04.525
And it just generates an invoice from my lightning address. Like, that's all it does. Like, I don't need like a, I don't I don't need a separate company to do that for me. I don't need you know, a full fledged open source. Like, I love BTC pay, but like, I don't need BTC pay to do that. I just need someone to like, click donate,

488
00:46:04.765 --> 00:46:15.404
and get a lightning invoice. And I have a way to receive lightning and generate lightning invoices through the open ln URL spec with lightning address. So I just gave the ln my lightning address one prompted a donation flow.

489
00:46:15.979 --> 00:46:34.674
Like that shit gets really powerful when you start mixing and matching open protocols. And then it was like, okay, well, one thing I've noticed is one thing I've noticed is that people are more likely to donate if they have a leaderboard, right? It's one of the reasons I shout out people that support the show in the beginning. And then you know, like I said, brighter die freak map 21. Thank you for supporting the show at 10,000.

490
00:46:35.154 --> 00:46:39.234
So in the donation flow, my first prompt was generated an invoice

491
00:46:39.555 --> 00:46:40.914
for my lightning address.

492
00:46:41.474 --> 00:46:50.259
It did that I was like, Okay, that was super easy. And then I was like, Okay, I need a leaderboard. And then I was like, add a section for an optional Nostril username. If you put like odellaprimal.net

493
00:46:50.259 --> 00:46:51.540
in the donation flow,

494
00:46:51.940 --> 00:46:56.420
then your little profile picture with a link to your Nostril profile gets put there. Boom, done two prompts.

495
00:46:58.704 --> 00:46:59.504
Yeah. That's kinda

496
00:47:00.864 --> 00:47:01.344
what we

497
00:47:02.304 --> 00:47:04.304
we we use a little bit of LLM

498
00:47:04.304 --> 00:47:12.704
for the that phone number feature. Like, how do we route this? Like and and, know, build me the regular expression for Kenyan phone number. I can't do that off the top of my head. Like, it's so good.

499
00:47:13.529 --> 00:47:16.730
It just figures it out, and then you're off to the races.

500
00:47:16.969 --> 00:47:17.769
Yeah. I

501
00:47:18.169 --> 00:47:20.169
think we start to see really

502
00:47:20.169 --> 00:47:21.529
good compounding

503
00:47:22.329 --> 00:47:23.130
acceleration

504
00:47:23.130 --> 00:47:23.930
effects

505
00:47:24.969 --> 00:47:26.969
with open source, with open protocols,

506
00:47:26.969 --> 00:47:28.569
and with open source AI,

507
00:47:29.664 --> 00:47:32.304
just because it's just so much easier to integrate.

508
00:47:32.464 --> 00:47:33.584
Like that example,

509
00:47:33.904 --> 00:47:38.864
you just can't do with Venmo. Like, I there's no way for me to have an LLM

510
00:47:39.264 --> 00:47:41.264
set up a donation flow that

511
00:47:41.719 --> 00:47:48.839
goes to Venmo. Now, if we use your example with the Kenyans, because they have M pace and because Tondo exists as a translation layer,

512
00:47:48.999 --> 00:47:53.239
they can literally have an LLM set up a donation flow to receive shillings.

513
00:47:53.814 --> 00:47:54.535
Yeah.

514
00:47:54.854 --> 00:47:56.055
In one prompt,

515
00:47:56.294 --> 00:48:00.374
this is my lightning address at bitcoin.co.ki.

516
00:48:00.454 --> 00:48:05.654
And then it just gives them they can set up a whole merchant thing probably with like two prompts, three prompts,

517
00:48:06.229 --> 00:48:06.949
Totally.

518
00:48:07.109 --> 00:48:10.469
Where anyone in the world can pay with Bitcoin and they just receive shillings.

519
00:48:10.869 --> 00:48:31.624
Yeah, we've already had a couple people reach out and they like said, oh, we want a Tundra API. Was like, well, we don't have a proper API, but it's just an LN URL. You can request, you know, dot LN URL at this string, put in the phone number at the end, and it'll tell you if that's a valid phone number, and we'll we'll handle the the payment, whether it's shillings or Bitcoin on the on the back end. I mean, in a lot of ways, it's better that's better than an API.

520
00:48:32.339 --> 00:48:32.980
Yeah.

521
00:48:33.220 --> 00:48:39.380
I wonder if it might, you know, this AI revolution might force people like Venmo to say, well, I guess we need a way to

522
00:48:39.700 --> 00:48:40.740
plug into

523
00:48:41.460 --> 00:48:50.005
LLMs and let people use the platform. So maybe it's I think a so. You're seeing that. You know, they keep the words the hype word is agentic payments.

524
00:48:50.164 --> 00:48:51.845
I think it's like a little bit

525
00:48:52.404 --> 00:48:53.684
too much hype,

526
00:48:53.765 --> 00:48:57.444
but is they love doing that web three agentic payments.

527
00:48:57.525 --> 00:49:03.949
But it's directionally correct. I mean, and you see that with look, the way I always say is the

528
00:49:06.509 --> 00:49:07.389
innovation

529
00:49:07.389 --> 00:49:09.390
doesn't happen from the incumbents.

530
00:49:09.549 --> 00:49:11.949
Right? It always happens from the challengers.

531
00:49:12.189 --> 00:49:19.194
You know, in the in The US, Venmo was the number one p2p payments app. I hate calling it p2p because you know, but whatever.

532
00:49:19.434 --> 00:49:20.954
That's their vernacular

533
00:49:20.954 --> 00:49:24.315
number one p2p payments app. So Cash App adopted Bitcoin.

534
00:49:24.795 --> 00:49:29.769
Cash App was number two, they needed an edge, they needed to try and supersede

535
00:49:29.769 --> 00:49:34.729
Venmo. So they added it right. Every Cash App user has a lightning address.

536
00:49:35.049 --> 00:49:37.929
Yep. Right now, it's not as clean as Tondo

537
00:49:38.744 --> 00:49:52.744
as Tondo's implementation in my opinion, but every Cash App user has a Lightning address. And so as a result, they can do all this LLM stuff without basically, you know, without Cash App's implicit permission. And so Venmo is gonna see that if that gets significantly

538
00:49:52.744 --> 00:49:53.304
more used.

539
00:49:53.839 --> 00:50:00.160
If that gets significantly more use, then they're gonna adopt it. If you wanna go even further on the step of the challenger side,

540
00:50:00.959 --> 00:50:23.894
like Strike is a challenger to Cash App. Right? I'm very involved with Strike's development. We're the largest investor in Strike. And, you know, we have significant user growth, but it's negligible in comparison to cash apps user base. And so like, one feature we have is obviously not only do you have a lightning address, which we had, by the way, before cash app, because we were the challenger to cash app and cash ups a challenger Venmo.

541
00:50:24.539 --> 00:50:28.460
But like, if you go to strike.meodel,

542
00:50:29.419 --> 00:50:39.474
like, you can just pay me. Any person can just pay me straight to my strike account. Like that is something that has always been foreign to at least the American based FinTech apps. And that's only

543
00:50:39.474 --> 00:50:43.474
the received Bitcoin and do you get to choose if you receive dollars or?

544
00:50:43.954 --> 00:50:45.634
Yeah, on the

545
00:50:45.634 --> 00:50:50.354
user side, I can choose, right? But like, let me I'll use it as an example.

546
00:50:52.349 --> 00:50:53.789
My wife actually

547
00:50:54.349 --> 00:50:57.389
gets credit for this one. So whenever I would like,

548
00:50:58.189 --> 00:51:04.589
one of the ways like I try and incentivize Bitcoin payments in like my small local communities is I'll I'll say to like,

549
00:51:05.594 --> 00:51:09.755
different contractors we have or whatever, I'll give you 10% more if you accept Bitcoin.

550
00:51:10.154 --> 00:51:15.194
And when I say contractors, I mean like the nanny, right? It's like, okay, if you take Bitcoin,

551
00:51:15.674 --> 00:51:18.234
I will give you 10% more. And historically,

552
00:51:18.234 --> 00:51:19.914
I've always tried to go like the pure

553
00:51:21.490 --> 00:51:29.650
cypherpunk route, like the least cypherpunk would be like a Phoenix wallet, like iCloud backups, like, okay, like have a proper Bitcoin wallet, whatever.

554
00:51:30.210 --> 00:51:37.134
My wife, like, a year and a half ago, two years ago, she's like, Matt, this isn't working. This is like, it's a complete freaking mess.

555
00:51:37.294 --> 00:51:39.614
You should be onboarding these people to strike.

556
00:51:40.174 --> 00:51:41.614
Right? So like, I

557
00:51:42.174 --> 00:51:54.160
they're already using Venmo. So like the trade off, like, KYC is dangerous. Okay. I agree. I've been very loud and outspoken about it. Ultimately, KYC is a list of Bitcoiners in our transaction history. But

558
00:51:54.719 --> 00:52:05.275
Venmo is fully KYC ed and a list of their of them and their transaction history and all their financial transactions. So they're not actually making a trade off there if they're using strike instead of Venmo.

559
00:52:05.594 --> 00:52:08.154
And then the beauty there is I can actually go

560
00:52:08.795 --> 00:52:14.474
without them sending me a bill or sending at the end of the week, I can just go to strike.me slash my nanny's username.

561
00:52:15.529 --> 00:52:20.089
It generates a lightning invoice, and I can just pay with any lightning wallet. That's great.

562
00:52:20.409 --> 00:52:21.529
Right? And and,

563
00:52:21.689 --> 00:52:22.249
and

564
00:52:22.649 --> 00:52:27.449
strike has no idea that who paid it, first of all, and they have no idea

565
00:52:28.144 --> 00:52:32.784
the transaction history because it's lightning. Lightning, by default, gives the sender incredible privacy.

566
00:52:32.944 --> 00:52:35.024
Get very strong privacy guarantees.

567
00:52:36.384 --> 00:52:36.944
That was kind of Yeah, more

568
00:52:37.904 --> 00:52:39.344
on. I was just gonna say, one of the

569
00:52:39.664 --> 00:52:40.864
nice perks

570
00:52:41.059 --> 00:52:44.339
we originally started Tonda just to scratch our own itch, like, could this be done?

571
00:52:44.819 --> 00:52:58.275
And then once we got into it, was like, wait, we're stacking all this KYC free Bitcoin as part of the process. This is awesome. Feel like another great side benefit. It's like, oh yeah, this is great. I want you to Well, I mean, I think that's when you start to see so like, I think

572
00:53:00.755 --> 00:53:04.835
I think pragmatic tools like yours are incredibly important right now.

573
00:53:05.474 --> 00:53:11.669
It makes owning Bitcoin and earning Bitcoin just way more useful. Right? Yeah. We've actually heard from

574
00:53:11.829 --> 00:53:17.509
I don't know if you know, Afrobit is in Kibera. It's kinda like the largest slum in in Nairobi.

575
00:53:17.829 --> 00:53:27.305
They've got a pretty good system in terms of trying to educate the the locals there on what Bitcoin is, and how to use it, and trying to start circular economies there. And we went there and visited,

576
00:53:27.784 --> 00:53:36.744
and there's a lady, she's got her small hut where she sells her goods out of. It's probably like three feet by three feet by four feet,

577
00:53:37.419 --> 00:53:52.539
and just selling vegetables or food out of it. And we were talking to her like, why do you accept Bitcoin? And she told us like, well, now that I have Tondo, I'm not worried about what I can do with the Bitcoin. So they're much more willing to accept Bitcoin because of tools like Tondo. It's like, oh, that's such an exciting Cool. Would've thought of.

578
00:53:53.315 --> 00:53:56.434
Yeah. So I mean, where yeah, exactly. Where I was going with it is

579
00:53:56.674 --> 00:53:57.874
the ultimate

580
00:53:57.874 --> 00:54:12.410
vision that I think a lot of Bitcoiners want to see, and I I think you're probably in this category as well, is merchants accepting Bitcoin natively, that they want Bitcoin. They actually want they want your Bitcoin, they would rather you pay them in Bitcoin than shillings.

581
00:54:12.569 --> 00:54:16.969
They don't want to go through M Pacer or Tondo, they just want to actually receive actual Bitcoin.

582
00:54:17.209 --> 00:54:21.449
And that's when you actually see really sticky merchant adoption. That's when you see merchants

583
00:54:21.529 --> 00:54:26.334
that stay the course, accept Bitcoin for years, train their employees on how

584
00:54:26.574 --> 00:54:28.574
to talk about Bitcoin and receive Bitcoin,

585
00:54:28.974 --> 00:54:31.374
educate their customers on paying

586
00:54:31.374 --> 00:54:43.150
in Bitcoin, maybe offer discounts, stuff like that. But the biggest problem is even if you're ideologically minded, you receive the Bitcoin, and then you have to pay for supplies, you have to pay for other things. So things like Tondo

587
00:54:44.109 --> 00:54:54.505
supercharge that they accelerate that because as the merchant, they can go buy the different goods and things they need to facilitate their business and continue going. You need the circular,

588
00:54:55.144 --> 00:54:57.864
you need to be, I should be able to use the Bitcoin easily

589
00:54:58.424 --> 00:55:12.339
for receiving it to make sense. I've had this vision. I don't know what the right tool is to build it. But like, in my mind, I see like things like money badger or Tanda, like, we're like the clutch that keeps the gears spinning in circular economy.

590
00:55:12.660 --> 00:55:24.314
And, you know, when you let off the gas or, you know, you wanna switch gears, like, we we keep that going, the flywheel going, until we get to that point where, yeah, the merchant says, oh, wait. I want the Bitcoin. Okay. Cool. Let's go. Help you get set

591
00:55:24.314 --> 00:55:32.075
up your BTC pay or whatever it is. And now you're accepting the Bitcoin, but it's a it's a slow grind getting people on there. Every

592
00:55:33.194 --> 00:55:34.554
bit helps. Just gotta

593
00:55:35.079 --> 00:55:36.679
whereas life

594
00:55:36.679 --> 00:55:40.119
is short, the grind is long. Yeah. One of the little

595
00:55:40.359 --> 00:56:00.404
tweaks we made to the app after we launched it, this was like some feedback from users. So the payment flow with regular and Paces is you make the payment and then you show the merchant, here's my receipt number. It's like a eight digit string of, you know, some random string, and they compare that to their point of sale system and says, okay, mine matches and the amount matches, cool, you paid your bill.

596
00:56:01.169 --> 00:56:24.535
So we generate that same receipt number on the Tondo side, and so all we did was like, you know, you have you still have to show that to the merchant, and then at the bottom it says, I paid with Bitcoin using Tondo. And so now it starts that conversation. It's like, oh, I keep seeing these people come in here paying with this Tondo thing. What is this Bitcoin thing? Tell me about it. And now we've got this army of people that are using Tondo that can kinda do the orange billing and have that That's awesome. Point of sale where they're actually spending.

597
00:56:24.934 --> 00:56:30.749
So, yeah. Nice, beautiful feedback loop you got going there. It's the little things. Yeah. Yep.

598
00:56:31.549 --> 00:56:37.069
I am. You don't have to be there at every purchase to try to orange pill every merchant. Like, no, you do it.

599
00:56:38.084 --> 00:56:40.164
Yeah. I mean, that just wouldn't be scalable.

600
00:56:40.324 --> 00:56:41.044
Exactly.

601
00:56:42.644 --> 00:56:48.804
Awesome, Jason. I mean, I I enjoyed this conversation. It was a good chat. What are you I mean, before we wrap here,

602
00:56:51.509 --> 00:56:54.390
what are you excited about? What are you thinking about lately?

603
00:56:55.829 --> 00:56:56.869
Well,

604
00:56:56.869 --> 00:57:00.949
I think we kinda touched on it is that, you know, with these interoperable

605
00:57:00.949 --> 00:57:02.710
protocols and these

606
00:57:03.269 --> 00:57:04.469
AI tools is like,

607
00:57:05.494 --> 00:57:16.454
you know, especially in Africa, the youth, there's so many young people that have access to laptops and Internet, and like, what are they gonna build, and how are they gonna integrate these things and solve real problems here on the ground for them that,

608
00:57:16.614 --> 00:57:21.050
you know, as we just don't see as Westerners looking in from the outside.

609
00:57:21.369 --> 00:57:24.410
So I think that's kinda what I'm looking forward to. I know right now there's

610
00:57:24.569 --> 00:57:31.049
like three conferences coming to Nairobi. There's Bitcoin plus plus is coming up in like a week. There's the Bitcoin

611
00:57:31.574 --> 00:57:33.734
Sorry. Nairobi Bitcoin conference.

612
00:57:34.054 --> 00:57:35.494
And then the Africa

613
00:57:35.894 --> 00:57:44.854
Routing Hackathon is happening as well, run by Africa free routing that's going on soon. That's awesome. Big month this month in Nairobi.

614
00:57:46.150 --> 00:57:52.789
But, actually, that actually reminded me. What is the, like, current regulatory environment over there? Isn't it a little bit

615
00:57:53.189 --> 00:57:53.829
tense?

616
00:57:54.549 --> 00:58:02.874
Yeah. So, you know, we launched about eighteen months ago, and back then, there were no rules specifically around crypto generally.

617
00:58:03.274 --> 00:58:05.354
I think it was 2015,

618
00:58:05.354 --> 00:58:30.674
if I'm not mistaken, the Central Bank of Kenya issued a notice like, this is the Wild West. We can't do anything. We can't regulate it. You're on your own. For me, was like, great, that's all I want. It's not illegal, and, you know, everyone's on their own, perfect. But I think the rumors I've heard is that, you know, Kenya is very dependent on the IMF, IMF loans, and FATF had Kenya on the gray list, and so they kind of twisted their arms, like, hey, if you want off this gray list,

619
00:58:30.994 --> 00:58:35.714
you gotta pass regulations on this crypto stuff because too many people are using it for illicit purposes. So

620
00:58:36.514 --> 00:58:43.429
we're kinda still in the in the process of learning what that exactly is, but long story short, come November,

621
00:58:43.429 --> 00:58:51.349
there's gonna have to be registration and and figuring out where we fit into the the legal structure of a a crypto company in Kenya.

622
00:58:52.309 --> 00:58:52.949
So,

623
00:58:53.589 --> 00:58:59.424
unfortunately, there's been a lot of scammers taking advantage of Kenyans, and so the government has to kinda step in and set the

624
00:59:00.144 --> 00:59:03.105
rules for everyone else. Can Many such cases.

625
00:59:03.344 --> 00:59:03.904
Yeah.

626
00:59:04.785 --> 00:59:07.904
I wanna be left alone, but, well, they no. I can't be left alone.

627
00:59:08.919 --> 00:59:14.599
Look, this is one thing I learned from Adam Back very early on in our friendship was the

628
00:59:16.519 --> 00:59:18.119
early cypherpunk movement,

629
00:59:18.519 --> 00:59:20.519
and everyone always disagrees.

630
00:59:20.519 --> 00:59:24.424
They've disagreed since the beginning, but like, it has to be

631
00:59:24.904 --> 00:59:30.984
when they were when they were dealing with encryption and message encryption and the legal attacks against it.

632
00:59:31.224 --> 00:59:31.624
Especially

633
00:59:33.464 --> 00:59:41.979
if you're raising a family and you're running businesses, and you're trying to build things, it's got to be a two pronged approach. Got to be you have to be constantly

634
00:59:43.179 --> 00:59:48.859
fighting the legal battles, while you're also shipping useful tools that empower people. Because

635
00:59:49.419 --> 00:59:50.219
you can you

636
00:59:50.774 --> 00:59:56.854
you can ignore your government, but your government isn't gonna ignore you, especially if you're doing anything interesting. They're going to,

637
00:59:57.094 --> 00:59:57.814
you know.

638
00:59:58.694 --> 01:00:00.454
My And sometimes they might mean well.

639
01:00:01.254 --> 01:00:03.974
The results are still bad, you know? Yeah.

640
01:00:04.869 --> 01:00:07.349
No, I think, you know, the Bitcoiner

641
01:00:07.349 --> 01:00:17.909
philosophy is like, okay, eventually everyone on the planet, all 8,000,000,000 people, is gonna need Bitcoin. So you're gonna need your personal Bitcoin strategy, your company Bitcoin strategy, even your government Bitcoin strategy,

642
01:00:18.424 --> 01:00:21.064
and kinda starting to see the beginning of that, maybe.

643
01:00:21.784 --> 01:00:36.230
And so, my delusional dream is like, one day Kenya wakes up and says, wait, we need Bitcoin. He's like, okay, we've got a service, you give me shillings, I'll turn it into Bitcoin for a fee for you, at, you know, whatever rate that the people that are spending Bitcoin wanna spend it at.

644
01:00:36.630 --> 01:00:39.990
But, you know, that's a long conversation, and

645
01:00:40.309 --> 01:00:46.614
I don't know if I exactly wanna get in bed with the government, but it is what it is. You gotta get this thing out to more people. Well, mean, it's kind

646
01:00:47.254 --> 01:00:53.574
of same, same, but different on what we were saying with M Pesa cutting you off. It's like the most dangerous

647
01:00:54.454 --> 01:00:55.974
time is when

648
01:00:56.789 --> 01:01:00.630
you're like just getting past that growth stage, and you're like big enough to notice,

649
01:01:00.869 --> 01:01:03.509
but but not big enough to be significant.

650
01:01:03.589 --> 01:01:07.989
But I mean, we see this with the big tech companies right now, right? It's like

651
01:01:08.709 --> 01:01:09.989
Bitcoin miners

652
01:01:11.054 --> 01:01:12.734
had a lot more difficulty

653
01:01:13.134 --> 01:01:15.134
getting power agreements and whatnot,

654
01:01:15.454 --> 01:01:17.374
than the AI companies are getting.

655
01:01:18.254 --> 01:01:27.649
Even though the AI companies are much more hated. Like I thought people hated Bitcoin miners, like Bitcoin miners are boiling the ocean. The amount of hate people have for big AI

656
01:01:27.969 --> 01:01:29.089
is wild.

657
01:01:30.129 --> 01:01:31.969
Some of it is founded, absolutely.

658
01:01:32.289 --> 01:01:33.409
But my point is,

659
01:01:33.809 --> 01:01:36.129
governments are cool to bend the rules for them,

660
01:01:36.769 --> 01:01:42.654
because they're a significant portion of the GDP, right? They are a major part of the economy.

661
01:01:43.454 --> 01:01:51.454
Especially the way these AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are selling it to the government like, you need us. Yeah, you got to surveil all the people and fight China.

662
01:01:51.694 --> 01:01:52.014
Yeah.

663
01:01:52.569 --> 01:01:56.889
Awesome, Jason. Oh, I guess one more thing. And you can just tell me now. No.

664
01:01:57.289 --> 01:01:59.689
Because I know how it is running a private business.

665
01:01:59.849 --> 01:02:03.449
Do you have any numbers you can share about adoption of Tondo?

666
01:02:03.609 --> 01:02:04.329
Like how many?

667
01:02:05.004 --> 01:02:17.964
Like, on the on the volume side, any direction on, like, what kind of user user growth or acquisition you have? We're just running these numbers. Sabina, the cofounder, she did a fireside chat with Gladstein

668
01:02:17.964 --> 01:02:21.220
in in Oslo. So about 5,000

669
01:02:21.220 --> 01:02:24.020
different user accounts that have made transactions,

670
01:02:24.579 --> 01:02:26.019
a 112,000

671
01:02:26.019 --> 01:02:27.380
total transactions,

672
01:02:27.859 --> 01:02:28.979
and 31,000

673
01:02:28.979 --> 01:02:33.460
distinct recipients across the entire M Pesa network. How many recipients?

674
01:02:33.779 --> 01:02:35.059
31,000.

675
01:02:35.564 --> 01:02:38.284
That's awesome. In eighteen months? Yeah.

676
01:02:38.924 --> 01:02:40.684
That's impressive. You should be proud.

677
01:02:40.924 --> 01:02:41.644
That's really good.

678
01:02:43.644 --> 01:02:47.164
I'm in the fortunate position to see a lot of numbers. You should be very proud

679
01:02:47.484 --> 01:02:48.364
of that number.

680
01:02:48.604 --> 01:02:49.244
Cool. Yeah.

681
01:02:49.979 --> 01:02:57.099
Maybe off air, I'll tell you volume numbers. Fair enough. Jason, this was awesome. Before we wrap, final thoughts for the audience. Go.

682
01:02:58.379 --> 01:03:00.299
Keep building, keep exploring,

683
01:03:00.779 --> 01:03:01.739
be curious,

684
01:03:01.899 --> 01:03:02.699
don't stop believing.

685
01:03:04.234 --> 01:03:10.154
Love it. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Freaks, for listening. As always, all relevant links are sealed dispatch.com.

686
01:03:10.154 --> 01:03:12.634
Share with friends and family. Usual Bitcoin

687
01:03:13.194 --> 01:03:15.914
is easier than you think. Stay humble StackSats.

688
01:03:15.914 --> 01:03:16.314
Peace.