29. Bitcoin's Social Impact in Emerging Economies. Feat. Joe Nakamoto
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[00:00:00] Joe Nakamoto: I do hope that in maybe five, 10, 20 years time, we don't need to explain what Bitcoin is cause everyone's just using it. A bit like how we don't need to explain what the Euro is because everyone's just using it. But it is really important to understand, what is money? Where does it come from? And why can't I just create it? I think there are really important questions to answer yourself if you want to understand why Bitcoin is important. Because it's a new monetary paradigm. And I think that it's not inevitable, but I think that the direction of humanity is going towards a more Bitcoinized world. We're very early in this journey, but I think that 10, 20 years time, there will be a lot more countries adopting it as legal tender. And a lot more people using it as a day to day money.
[00:00:56] Mizter Rad: Hello, beautiful humans. I want you to imagine a future where our freedoms are a bit mixed up. Picture a future where central banks and corporations team up, not only to determine the value of your money, but also to control how, when, and where you use it. Now, I think many of us do not want to live in a society like that. And here's where the bright spot of the story comes in. There is a new kind of money in town. Decentralized and free from too much control. My guest today is like a friendly guide sharing stories about communities around the world using this liberating money, not only as a store of value, but also as a medium of exchange. Joe, welcome to the Mr. Rad Show. How are you doing? Como estás?
[00:01:47] Joe Nakamoto: Hey man, how are you doing, man?
How are things?
[00:01:52] Mizter Rad: Good. Thank you for being here joe. It's a pleasure to have you here. We finally made it.
[00:01:58] Joe Nakamoto: Yeah, no, thank you for having me and thank you as well for rescheduling. I think you caught me when I was in Ghana and I was completely swamped and also without a stable internet connection. So now you're talking to me from Portugal and yeah, the internet connection is a lot more stable.
[00:02:12] Mizter Rad: What were you doing in Ghana? Actually,
[00:02:14] Joe Nakamoto: I was attending a conference called Afro Bitcoin, which is a sort of Bitcoin conference in Ghana, West Ghana. Where is it? West Africa? Yeah. It's West Africa. I've just come back from there. I've forgotten where it is. And, uh, I was also traveling around seeing what the Bitcoin adoption scene looks like in Ghana as well.
So I went to the Togo border. And I went to a couple of places just outside of Accra to, yeah, to see what was happening, which is sort of part of my job and part of what I like to do as well as a, as a passion project.
[00:02:44] Mizter Rad: that's amazing. Joe, I want to start by understanding how are people in the emerging world, let's say in a country like Ghana or in Peru, where I know you also went recently. Are you using Bitcoin?
[00:02:57] Joe Nakamoto: Awesome. Okay. So it's, how do I explain this? I mean, I guess your audience is mostly sort of Western centric, so they might have heard of Bitcoin. Maybe they think that Bitcoin is a scam. Um, maybe they might have already switched off when they heard there's this crazy Bitcoin guy on the, uh, on the other side of the microphone.
Um, yeah, I was going to say, to which I say, please, please do stick around. It's not what you think. And I was also where you were, uh, six years ago when I used to make and write content for Bloomberg, among other sort of mainstream publications. And I actually was living in the Ivory Coast. And I used to drive to work every day.
Uh, well, I didn't drive. My driver drove me, um, a really lovely gentleman called Guillaume, who I'm still in contact with. And one day, this was early 2019. He explained to me that his son was sending him Bitcoin, uh, as a, like a remittance tool from Paris. So his son was living in Paris. Guillaume was living in Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory coast, where I was going to work every day.
By the way, sidebar, I was paying a bribe to go to work every day. And the bribe was like less than a Euro. Uh, like the equivalent and I ended up expensing this bribe to, uh, Oxford business group, which then was paid by Bloomberg. So Bloomberg effectively paid for my bribe to go to work
every day.
[00:04:08] Mizter Rad: go. There you go.
[00:04:11] Joe Nakamoto: Um, but back to the story, uh, Guillaume was explaining how his son sent him Bitcoin, uh, as like, you know, his son was making a lot more money than he was in, in Paris. And the best way to get the money there was through this Bitcoin thing. So I stopped Guillaume and I explained to him very carefully that Bitcoin is a scam, it's a Ponzi scheme, uh, it's a joke, you know, it's going to zero, um, you need to stop using that thing,
[00:04:33] Mizter Rad: was this? Sorry. Sorry. When was this? What year was this?
[00:04:36] Joe Nakamoto: Like, uh, 2019, like February, March. At this point, I'd already heard about Bitcoin quite a few times, and I'd actually use Bitcoin as a student at university, uh, on like the silk road. Which your listeners might be familiar with, but it's like a giant sort of marketplace where you can buy all sorts of funny things, which is really interesting and fun to do as a student.
[00:04:56] Mizter Rad: Right.
[00:04:57] Joe Nakamoto: But I sort of wrote it off and wasn't aware of its potential, I guess. And I just saw it as this really annoying digital money tool that was hard to use. But I understood why the Silk Road used it because Bitcoin is technically pseudonymous. Like, it's not anonymous. You can't hide. And if you want to do some funny business, do not do it with Bitcoin.
That's a really important PSA that I have to make. Um, because a lot of people get that wrong.
[00:05:18] Mizter Rad: Right. A lot of people think that Bitcoin
[00:05:20] Joe Nakamoto: if you are
looking... exactly. And, uh, if you actually want to do some naughty things with Bitcoin, uh, then you're going to get caught. And lots of people have been caught. So if you want to do some naughty things, use the current system.
So, you know, use central banks, use your local banker, like fiat money is really good for doing dodgy stuff. Just look at terrorism, you know, it's 99 percent funded by, uh, fiat money. Uh, anyway, we've gone off track here. So I stopped Guillaume and I explained to him that, uh, yeah, it's a scam and all that.
And, uh, slowly, but surely I realized that I was wrong. And that, uh, Bitcoin is actually this very useful tool. And it's particularly important in emerging markets, which brings me to your sort of, uh, opening question. Uh, so I. try to write positive stuff for Bloomberg and Oxford Business Group about how there was lots of remittance into Africa through this Bitcoin tool.
They didn't like it because in their eyes and their view, Bitcoin is this sort of scammy Ponzi scheme. So after a couple of years of sort of soul searching and trying to work out where to best put my efforts, I quit the sort of mainstream media industry and started working for a company called Cointelegraph.
And with them, I was able to sort of flex my muscles writing about Bitcoin and to an extent, crypto, um, and other things, but mostly Bitcoin, uh, through the view of the emerging markets. Because that's where I had my experience, like prior to working at Cointelegraph, I'd lived in, Tunisia, the Ivory Coast, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Serbia, uh, Senegal and a few other countries like what we'd call, you know, frontier markets or developing countries. The lingo always changes.
[00:06:52] Mizter Rad: Right.
[00:06:53] Joe Nakamoto: And, uh, yeah, so this year I've been observing Bitcoin use in Peru, uh, where I spent a month earlier this year.
I just came back from Ghana, of course, which I mentioned. And where else have I been? Senegal. I can't even remember where I've been this year. It's been
[00:07:09] Mizter Rad: Weren't you in
[00:07:10] Joe Nakamoto: year.
[00:07:11] Mizter Rad: Cabo Verde?
[00:07:12] Joe Nakamoto: Yes. I made a documentary there. Correct. Thank you. You've done your, you've done your
[00:07:16] Mizter Rad: did my homework,
[00:07:18] Joe Nakamoto: Good man. And the whole point is that yes, we know that in the West Bitcoin is this, uh, savings tool. Like it tends to go up in value over time, and that's really useful because we know that fiat money, you know, money issued by governments or central banks, it tends to inflate and lose its value relative to other things.
On a day to day basis, what does this look like? This is why, you know, houses are going up in value. This is why anything that's sort of a hard asset or hard to produce asset is going up in money, monetary value because the money is so easy to create. I'm trying to do like really top line explanations here.
Cause I don't want to go into like a deep dive of,
[00:07:58] Mizter Rad: not. Absolutely. Go ahead.
[00:08:01] Joe Nakamoto: But it's going to sound a bit like I'm dismissing things, uh, rather than going into like the real fine detail of, uh, okay, is it really like money's inflating or is there, you know, is there something more to this? Uh, but you know, if, if people want to look into this more than I suggest they look at books like the internet of money by Andreas Antonopoulos. Or, you know, the Bitcoin standard is a classic go to, although it's quite heavy hitting, or another one is the progressive Bitcoiner. And these books, they tend to examine money and the history of money before explaining why Bitcoin could be this really useful, um, money.
Okay. Bitcoin evangelism done. The, uh, the Peru stuff was fascinating for me because there I was investigating what's called a Bitcoin circular economy. Now you might've heard of Bitcoin beach in El Salvador.
[00:08:47] Mizter Rad: No.
Wait, let's go. Let's go
[00:08:49] Joe Nakamoto: You haven't.
[00:08:50] Mizter Rad: Um, let's go step by
step. So first of all, you said that Bitcoin is used as a remittance tool in those emerging markets. And why is that important?
[00:09:00] Joe Nakamoto: So right now, if you want to send money to say Columbia, where you're from, best way to do it, I imagine would be through something like Western Union or MoneyGram or another sort of money remitter. Is that fair to say?
[00:09:15] Mizter Rad: let's say those brands have the most awareness. And so, yes, I would say a lot of people would use them.
[00:09:22] Joe Nakamoto: Nice. Okay. Um, alternatively, you could get on a plane or you could send someone on a plane with a load of cash. Uh, you know, that would be a bit old fashioned, but people still do do that. This might be hard to believe, but it literally is the case.
[00:09:35] Mizter Rad: Hopefully, hopefully that bag only has cash.
[00:09:37] Joe Nakamoto: Yeah, exactly. Right. I've got, I've got plenty of stories, um, like that. There are all sorts of weird, things you get offered in airports
[00:09:45] Mizter Rad: Oh, yeah,
[00:09:45] Joe Nakamoto: Um, particularly in, uh, in, uh, yeah, in, in interesting countries. Let's say, uh, we move on. So With Western Union and MoneyGram, while they are, or other brands, of course, there are other ways of doing this, while they are useful to some extent, they're also, uh, they take a huge commission.
They take, you know, anything from 10 to 30 percent just for the privilege of sending your money overseas. So for every pound or dollar or euro you make, they would take up to 30 cents or pence of that, um, just for sending your money a couple of thousand kilometers. Yet, if we can Send an email. We can send a video. We can, you know, send music across borders. Why can't we send money across borders? And the wonderful thing about Bitcoin is that, up until about 2017, you could send Bitcoin across borders very easily, with, Bitcoin on chain transactions, which takes about 10 minutes to send. Now in 2023, you can also use the lightning network, which is instant fee less effectively.
And, uh, again, very secure and a very quick way of sending money. Uh, you know, All around the world.
[00:10:50] Mizter Rad: But just just just just a quick quick quick one on that, because I think some people might not understand what you mean. What is lightning network in very simple words?
[00:10:59] Joe Nakamoto: sure. So Bitcoin to explain what a lightning network is, I've got to explain very basically what Bitcoin is and why it's sort of necessary, otherwise it's not going to sort of, that jigsaw is just going to be missing. So Bitcoin is a blockchain, which I've heard you explain this on previous podcasts to people like on the, um, the NFT one about the Satoshi Island.
So basically blockchain's a really clunky crap piece of tech, but they're really, really secure. And they are immutable and they're decentralized. So basically once they start, it's very hard to roll them back or do edit undo or command Z or control Z or whatever. So that's like this fantastic ledger that's going to stay the way it is for the rest of our existence.
It's going to outlive us all. You can think of it as like this sort of, commandments written down into stone that will never, ever change. But the issue with this tech is that it's very slow, very clunky, and it's very, very hard to scale. So blockchains don't really scale. There's also one, one thing I wanted to caveat to this, which is that, um, a lot of people talk about how blockchains as a thing are amazing and they're gonna revolutionize everything.
They're really not . I just, uh, I've gotta get this point across because a lot of people will say that because Bitcoin blockchain, Bitcoin's blockchain works, my blockchain works as well, but Bitcoin is the only blockchain that has been proven to be genuinely immutable, genuinely decentralized, and genuinely censorship resistant.
Every other blockchain has at some point paused, been hacked, or had some sort of rollback. For example, Ethereum had a rollback where basically they had a hard fork early on in the Ethereum creation, and there was Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. So Ethereum Classic is technically the original Ethereum, but Ethereum, the new one, uh, carried on because Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, or one of the co founders of Ethereum, decided that that won wasn't right for what they wanted to do. So you've got to be really careful with this whole blockchain terminology, because now I go to blockchain conferences where there are bankers and businesses who are effectively promoting their blockchains as being like permissioned blockchains
[00:12:53] Mizter Rad: Yeah,
[00:12:53] Joe Nakamoto: centralized
[00:12:54] Mizter Rad: it got.
[00:12:55] Joe Nakamoto: an oxymoron.
[00:12:56] Mizter Rad: yeah, I say, I see what you mean. It got corrupted the term for sure.
[00:13:00] Joe Nakamoto: Yeah, no big time. So now we've got blockchains out of the way. Um, and we understand that while they are great. In terms of being like secure and decentralized, they're never going to, uh, sort of scale up to the needs of billions of people. So these blockchains have to scale in layers. And one of the most effective payment layers on Bitcoin is called the lightning network.
And the lightning network works quite simply, basically on the Bitcoin blockchain, the layer one, let's call it, you can open up effectively a bar tab with someone else. And in that bar tab, you can send each other money or sats, satoshis, the smallest amount of a Bitcoin, back and forth, effectively infinitely.
And then whenever you want to settle up your bar tab, you can go back onto layer one and close that bar tab and, you know, close that transaction. However, it's not just one bar tab between me and Mr. Rad, for example, it could be me and Mr. Rad and, you know, listener Bob or listener Alice. And so we're all opening up bar tabs with one another, pinging satoshis between us.
In this sort of mini network, and it's really, really fast. Hence why it's called the lightning network. And it works really, really well as a payments tool. Um,
[00:14:09] Mizter Rad: And for that, let me just jump in there. So for the regular Bob and Jane.
This is important because it makes it faster. The average Joe.
[00:14:18] Joe Nakamoto: Yes, no, I'm used to it. Yeah, the importance is the speed of course, but the other thing is that it's scalable. So whereas in a regular Bitcoin block, you can process up to seven transactions per second with the lightning network, you can in theory, process infinite transactions per second, because you can constantly be pinging, uh, you can open up as, you can open up seven bar tabs per second with whoever you want around the world.
And then with those people, you can, you know, send sats or stream sats or whatever it may be. And if Bitcoin is going to be this basement money on which we build the next financial layer, then we need to process effectively infinite numbers of transactions and we've got to do it in different layers. So lightning is one layer on Bitcoin.
And I think for the average listener in or the average person, rather the average Joe in five years time, they won't really use Bitcoin layer one or Bitcoin on chain. They'll just use lightning or liquid or arc or any other of these, um, layers
[00:15:13] Mizter Rad: can you could you could you would you say that this layers would be a bit like the money grams or Western Union kind of services? Is it a bit like
[00:15:23] Joe Nakamoto: Yeah. No, it's a good way to frame it. Like, cause if you explain things with the existing system in mind, it does help to, it helps, helps as a metaphor, right? The tricky thing to imagine that is, is that Bitcoin is a completely new system that, you know, people call it gold 2. 0. People call it, um, I don't know, like magic internet money.
People have all sorts of ways of framing it, but it is completely new. But yeah, if we're going to use this metaphor of, if we're talking about fiat models. Bitcoin is, you know, central banking and the creation of money and it's not secure layer. And then on top of that you have remitters such as MoneyGram, Western Union.
And then on the layer three might be, you know, retail banks. Uh, and layer four could be, I don't know, uh, su sus or community banks. Places where there's like a friendly or community pots of money and that's effectively what bitcoin will do as well. You have this Incredibly secure decentralized base layer and on top of that you've got various protocols or you know layers Which will be used to make money Easier and also it breaks down the barrier of entry for money. Like with the lightning network All you need is a phone and an internet connection To take part in in that. And the implications of that are absolutely astounding because, and that's why we're seeing these pockets of progress in developing countries, Because you can't get a bank account in say the ivory coast without proving your date of birth and your address
[00:16:46] Mizter Rad: That's where I want to get. Yeah, exactly. What? Why are they opening a Bitcoin account or a Bitcoin wallet and not a bank account?
[00:16:54] Joe Nakamoto: Yeah, so it's the framing of that question is interesting because it's, it's more like, why are people forced to open up a Bitcoin account? Because, because they can't open up a bank account, you know, the, the KYC AML laws, which, they're in place to stop money laundering and terrorism, all that nasty stuff.
But they also stop and they have this horrible impact of stopping people from participating in the financial system. And that's why this system of Bitcoin is so important. What it's actually what gets me outta bed each morning is knowing that Bitcoin can be used by a software developer in Abuja, in, in Nigeria.
And like five or 10 years ago, that software developer would never be able to be paid for their work because they couldn't prove their date of birth. They couldn't prove where they live. Um, I mean, the software developer definitely can read or write. Uh, also the, the issue of illiteracy and being able to go into a bank and, you know, write down the documents, the distance from a bank. Like when I was in Peru, we were, um, at one point we were two and a half hours from the nearest bank, so everyone was using Bitcoin because it just made much more sense than having to actually literally physically
[00:17:57] Mizter Rad: Tell me about, tell me about that story in Peru because I understand that Peruvians from what I learned, around 50 percent of Peruvians are not banked. They don't have access
to a bank account because of X or Y reason. Maybe one of the reasons is because of what you said. They cannot go through the lengthy process of opening a bank account.
They don't have they don't even have maybe a national I. D. They never registered with the central government. I'm from Colombia. I can tell you a lot of people are very, very informal in their lives. They live the day to day basis on a day to day basis. They don't care about, even being registered in the central office, of the country. They just,
they just live like that. So why? Or better said, tell me about the experience you had in Peru. So what happened when you went there? What were you looking for? What
did you find?
[00:18:50] Joe Nakamoto: And also like those, uh, stats and examples you bring up are also kind of surprising and shocking to me. Like I grew up in the UK and like the first time I went to Tunisia to do a project there, I was astounded to realize that the official economy of, or GDP of Tunisia, it's a hundred, like call that a hundred percent.
There's another 130 percent of that economy, which is informal. So Tunisia is doing, you know, 30 percent more in just cash transactions that are never declared, that are never obviously taxed and never go to, uh, you know, the building of roads and state education and healthcare and all that sort of
[00:19:23] Mizter Rad: Or the pockets
[00:19:24] Joe Nakamoto: it's been quite eye opening for me. Well, there you go. Yeah, that's, that's also why people like to keep it in, in cash and not pay these corrupt politicians. Um, so yeah, for me, Peru is a similar to Tunisia, and actually similar to Morocco. Morocco, I think is one of the most unbanked countries in Africa.
Um, so yeah, Peru, I think the official stat is up in the 74, 75 percent of Peruvians are unbanked. Um, I, I thought this was initially because of those problems we've discussed. Like, you know, proximity to a bank account, uh, you know, also just, I don't want to be banked because it doesn't even serve me. But one of the things I was surprised to learn was that a lot of Peruvians just don't save money at all.
Like savings culture is just not a thing whatsoever. Now there's, there's lots of countries I've been to where savings culture is a thing because they cannot save, like physically cannot save. But even in the sort of lower middle class, uh, sort of, Families or communities. I was quite shocked to realize that, Oh my God, they don't save.
Cause it just, it doesn't compute. I don't know how to explain that,
[00:20:22] Mizter Rad: You mean like
[00:20:23] Joe Nakamoto: a, this surf
[00:20:24] Mizter Rad: education is not there, or is it?
[00:20:25] Joe Nakamoto: Yeah, I guess so. And just, even when I was trying to explain to this guy who ran a surf camp in Chicama, like this really famous left hander wave, that's absolutely beautiful, and if you're in Peru, you must go to it. Uh, The guy there, he had a car, he had a house, he was building, uh, a second room for his, uh, another child that was on the way.
And I was like, oh, he must be putting some money away, because we were talking about Bitcoin and saying, you know, maybe save some money in Bitcoin. And he was like, why would I save money? And I was like, what? Like, what kind of question is that? I don't understand why you wouldn't save your future. So even for me, that was a bit of a culture shock.
And he was like, no, Peruvians do not save money. We, we, we have money, we spend it. That's how it works. And so also I was like, huh, that's interesting because the Westerners see Bitcoin as this savings tool, right? This speculative tool, whatever you want to call it. And there in Peru, people were still using Bitcoin, but they were not at all using it as a savings tool.
They were using it purely for the things we've touched upon, remittances and yeah, payments and, you know, income, that sort of thing. So the Like I visited, I think 10 circular economies all around Peru, and these are all funded by an NGO called Motiv. So that's one really important thing to bear in mind here, is that these circular economies only exist because of the work that Motiv did.
[00:21:43] Mizter Rad: Tell me more about Motiv and tell me more about the actual circular economy. Like maybe you give me an example of one of the, circular economies that you remember that caught your attention.
[00:21:53] Joe Nakamoto: Okay, so Motiv, it's not at all a Bitcoin company. I mean, I guess it now is, but basically three years ago they were helping kids get access to shoes, uh, during the pandemic. Another thing that surprised me about Peru is that in my head, before going to Peru for the first time, Peru is quite an advanced Latin American country.
It's, I guess, comparable to Mexico or to, no, I think Mexico is a comparison, you know, in a sense that it is the middle class is slowly growing. And while there is obviously poverty and extreme poverty, it's not on the levels of say, you know, Venezuela or Nicaragua. When I got there, I was like, Oh my God, like it's, it really needs, better systems in place to, help people have social mobility, that sort of thing. Um, and one of the examples that Motiv looked to address was the fact that children were dying of hypothermia in places like the Andes and, near the high Amazon in the Northeast of Peru. Because they were getting, um, hypothermic sort of feet and, you know, they were losing the toes and eventually they'll have to be amputated and then it'd have to die.
And so like one really quick fix for this absolutely awful story is just get kids shoes because the second they have shoes, you know, they have warm feet and, you know, survive the winter. And so Motiv started doing this. I know it's called like the simple steps for life or something. And it was one of their first projects in Peru.
And then they realized, Oh my God, we can do a lot more stuff in Peru. Uh, and bear in mind as well, that Motiv is a, uh, it's quite a Christian charity and Peru is quite a Christian or Catholic country. Um, so the values there like the core values of what Motiv did and what Peru Peru is all about sort of matched up quite Well. As they started looking at where else they could help, uh, you know improve outcomes and break dependencies or break toxic dependencies for For peruvians. So they started sort of observing where they could have an impact and with which local leaders they could sort of skill up and then help to Empower and raise up towns. So one of their ideas was to go into these sort of young towns And find a local leader And help them sort of raise up these places. Now, one of them was called Caraballo.
Uh, another was called, uh, from Ancon in Peru. There's a video I've made recently about Ancon. And they were doing this up until sort of early 2021 when this, let's call them a Bitcoin whale, basically a Bitcoin whale is someone who has a lot of Bitcoin who's, you know very, very wealthy. Uh, he approached them and said, listen, I like what you're doing, uh, with your work in Peru, have you thought about doing it with Bitcoin?
And they were like, what on earth is Bitcoin? And, uh, two years later, uh, or two and a half years later, I went out and visited them and was trying to understand what has happened since these guys have effectively adopted Bitcoin and is Bitcoin a useful tool for NGOs, for charities, for those looking to make an impact.
And it's. It's all very new because of course, this Bitcoin thing is only 15 years old now. And one of the things, you know, we've talked about already is that Bitcoin is not sorry, Peru is not a saving country. So, you know, if people aren't going to get, uh, that exposure to savings, then what are they actually using it for?
And I was amazed by the interviews that I conducted with some of the women living in these towns, uh, with some of the, uh, some of the men as well, but it was mostly the women because a lot of them commented to me that domestic violence in the town has effectively been eradicated because of Bitcoin.
[00:25:14] Mizter Rad: How is
[00:25:14] Joe Nakamoto: if that sounds mental, yeah, exactly.
It's just absolutely mental. Um, so during the pandemic and in the aftermath of that as well, these, it's really hard to put into words. And I'm hoping that the documentaries I'm going to make about it illustrate this point a bit more. Because also it doesn't sound great when you've got this white privileged man explaining about all these issues about how domestic
violence
[00:25:36] Mizter Rad: the documentary out already?
[00:25:39] Joe Nakamoto: No, and this is what I'm working on at the moment. So I'm taking time off from my regular job to try to get these stories and bring them to life. Because I, it's really a delicate, very, very delicate subject and one that needs a lot of care. So these, effectively, you've got these young towns where there's not a lot of opportunity where the women are effectively Baby machines.
And then the fathers, if they have money, they spend it at the bars or, you know, on other sort of, uh, you know, a lot of them are drinkers. Um, a lot of them have several partners and there's just not a lot of good coming from these places. So the NGOs going in there and it's trying to teach people how to, you know, teaches the women to sew or teaches them to make a t shirts or to, um, do like basic pottery skills, that sort of thing.
And initially it was doing it with cash, but a lot of the cash was going missing. It was ending up in, the men's pockets, for example. And a lot of these men for for whatever reason were, you know, would beat their women, would, would, would rape the women, whatever it was. All these stories were pretty harrowing.
And maybe it's gonna sound a bit unbelievable coming from my mouth, but I'm hoping the documentary will, um, explain this point a bit more clearly. So they start using Bitcoin and the key thing here is that with Bitcoin, you've got your money on a phone with a password, and it's secure. So with cash, it's easily stolen, right?
So with Bitcoin, even if you steal the phone, then, you know, you can't really use it and you can get a new phone anyway and reinstall those wallets and away you go. Um, it also means that, you know, you can send money to shops, over the internet, as opposed to walking up there and paying with cash.
It also avoids problems with change. So, you know, you probably experienced this in Columbia a few times, but you go to buy with quite a big note. The equivalent in the UK, in Europe, sorry, be pay with 50 euro notes and they reject your sale because they don't have enough set, uh, change for that, um, purchase.
so it sort of solves a lot of these issues as well as just general safety of people walking around with cash. And the knock on effect of this, uh, two years later is that, um, Women now have something to do, which is, you know, these classes, I've got some money so they can stand on their own two feet. And they're transacting and well, some of them are saving, but not a lot, um, a saving in this tool, which makes them think differently about their future.
So some of these women have taken the kids and they've left the men that have been beating them, whatever. And they're now standing on their own two feet, which is absolutely wonderful. And there's been a sort of chain reaction of this, um, of these people now coming together in these communi community centers, which is also a safe, safe space, which the NGO has put together.
Um, maybe I should link to a video by, um, there's like a two minute video I shared on Twitter when I was
[00:28:21] Mizter Rad: That's amazing. Yeah, I can add the link on the footnotes of the, of the episode. For sure.
[00:28:26] Joe Nakamoto: Nice. Um, because yeah, she, she explains, you know,
[00:28:31] Mizter Rad: Violencia domestica. Si,
la violencia domestica caido por bitcoin. That's amazing. That's an amazing story. Actually. I didn't expect that, at all.
[00:28:41] Joe Nakamoto: I didn't either, no,
But it's one of those.
Right. ...tool. So we can think about our futures differently. And I certainly think about my own future differently because of Bitcoin.
Like prior to Bitcoin, I was a millennial who thought I'm never going to be able to afford a house. I, uh, I'm just going to work my entire life. Maybe I'll get a pension if I'm lucky. Um, you know, home ownership was getting. Further and further out of reach and as someone who's living in London and a journalist, you know, you, you just not gonna ever earn, you know, 100, 200 K to be able to afford that down payment on a house.
And now with Bitcoin, I'm like, holy crap, if I save my money on Bitcoin, you know, look over a 10 year time horizon, then at one day, you know, a house will become affordable, but that's like a very privileged outlook. Whereas here you have people in communities in places like El Salvador. I mean, El Zonte was the first Bitcoin circular economy.
Which started in 2019 and actually led to the adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender in El Salvador. Now say what you want about Naib Bukele, um, he was of course quite an authoritarian president, but I've never been to a country that is so hopeful and so energetic and so energized about the future. it's absolutely staggering.
I did a documentary about El Salvador cause I also wanted to see with my own eyes,
okay, what is
[00:30:02] Mizter Rad: was that? Oh, and did you shoot it?
[00:30:04] Joe Nakamoto: Bitcoin. I shot it in, it was October and November of last year. And then it's published in like January or February on the Cointelegraph channel. Like the, the, the plan was to, um, I wanted to survive on Bitcoin for two weeks.
So I would have to live entirely on Bitcoin. And then also I wanted to get a sense of what locals thought about this whole Bitcoin thing. And so I did a bunch of street interviews and, uh, yeah, interviews with people that had it up to Bitcoin and people that was kind of staunchly against this whole Bitcoin thing.
And I think that a lot of what was revealed still rings true to this day in that the El Salvador Bitcoin thing didn't really manage people's expectations. Like people just thought that El Salvador would adopt Bitcoin and boom, you know, that'll be
like streaming stats to each other and saving in Bitcoin and all this sort of thing.
But in reality, like Bitcoin is like learning a new language, you know, it's going to take years before people really understand what it is. And then there's all these secondary and tertiary consequences, which we've kind of touched on already, which are just completely anticipated, sometimes wonderful. I guess there's some negatives too.
Right. But
[00:31:07] Mizter Rad: But do you think people really need to understand what Bitcoin is and how it works? Because I feel like a lot of people in the world don't know what money is and they don't know how money works. Like if you ask someone randomly on the streets where money comes from,
it's a hard question. Like no one really knows. Like it's maybe nowadays more and more people start getting aware of the injustices of the current fiat system, but You cannot really tell where money comes from. It's a hard question. So I don't know. I
don't, I don't know if I agree with this, what you just said that, it will take time for people to understand Bitcoin. Is it really necessary for people to understand Bitcoin? Is it more important that actually Bitcoin with all these examples that you're giving me becomes more, let's say trustworthy. Or The brand itself becomes more appealing for a day to day use, you know, use it as a medium of exchange rather than only, uh, at least in the Western world as a store of value.
[00:32:09] Joe Nakamoto: Hmm. Uh, well, okay. Uh, how to unpack that. Yes. I do completely agree. I don't want everyone to go out of their way to learn what Bitcoin is. And because it's a bit like, you know, some people at school don't like maths and I totally get it. It's
fine. But at some point in your daily life, you will have to use some maths, you know, it's, it's kind of like that.
You don't need, you don't need to know, you know, Pythagoras and trigonometry and all that, but it's going to be useful if you are able to do some basic addition or subtraction. Uh, but the, uh, and a lot of people will go very, very, very, very deep into this math rabbit hole or this Bitcoin rabbit hole and, you know, make it their whole identity or whatever.
Like I, to some extent have got very, very deep down this rabbit hole because I find it fascinating. I also find it fascinating from this sort of travel, uh, view. Cause I just love seeing how people are you know, interacting with this new technology, I do hope that in maybe five, 10, 20 years time, maybe we don't need to explain what Bitcoin is.
Cause everyone's just using it. A bit like how we don't need to explain what the Euro is, or, you know, the Bolivar is because everyone's just using it. But it is really important to understand, okay, what is money? Where does it come from? And why can't I just create it? I think there are really important questions to answer yourself.
If you want to understand why Bitcoin is important, um, because it's, uh, you know, it is a new monetary paradigm. And I think that it is, it's not inevitable, but I think that the direction of humanity is going towards a more Bitcoinized world. I think we're very early in this journey, but I think that, you know, 10, 20 years time, uh, there will be a lot more countries adopting it as legal tender and a lot more people using it, um, as a day to day money.
And to that point about spending Bitcoin, very few people spend Bitcoin. It's only the weirdos like me. Or, um, the circular economies around the world, or some extent, you know, more impoverished places, a lot of like Americans, for example, um, demonstrate like HODL culture...
[00:33:58] Mizter Rad: why? Why do you think is that? Why do you think people in the emerging markets in the circular economies that you talked about spend Bitcoin, use it on a day to day basis and in the more modern VIP advanced economies, people HODL or don't spend Bitcoin and just keep it there. Somewhere stored in a wallet.
[00:34:17] Joe Nakamoto: I mean, top line answer is financial privilege, right? If you're in a position to save money, then you're financially privileged and you are going to end up, you know, calling hodl, hodl, hodl, or whatever. But if you are literally living a hand to mouth existence where everything you earn gets spent, then inevitably you are going to spend all you earn.
And if all you're earning is Bitcoin, then all you're spending is Bitcoin. Um, there are certain like. Yeah, there are certain like country, country, like specific issues. Like in America, a lot of people will say, Oh, I, I can't spend my Bitcoin because I have to fill out a tax form or whatever. But I think that's a bit of a cop out.
And I think that, you know, if you were really interested in experimenting with this new peer to peer technology, then you would, uh, you know, spend something or just try it out, you know, buy a coffee with it, tip someone in Bitcoin, for example. And that's something that I find a bit frustrating because yes.
Hodling Bitcoin is important. And yes, the number go up nature of Bitcoin. The fact that it has gone from 1 10 years ago to, I don't know how many thousands of dollars, like, is it 35, 000, 40, 000
today? I don't even, it's, it's a lot higher than it was, you know, three, four, five, 10 years ago, and it's going to keep on this trajectory.
Uh, so I get why people don't want to spend it, but if you only have Bitcoin, then you also have to spend Bitcoin to live, right?
[00:35:34] Mizter Rad: In this countries, in this, uh, circular economies in Peru, in Ghana, Senegal, Cabo Verde, wherever you've been, are people using Bitcoin with a with a simple UX. And what I mean with that is I feel like one of the, maybe you correct me if you think I'm wrong, but in my experience, one of the things that block people from using Bitcoin is this difficult path to get to use the technology, the apps, the passwords, the keys that you have to store, all these things that compared to a bank, Make it much more complicated to use. So in this circular economies, this emerging markets are people using very easy to understand apps or what kind of technologies? What kind of wallets are they using?
[00:36:21] Joe Nakamoto: No, I totally get your point. Um, but when I think about my dad and his approach to online banking, you know, he was completely bamboozled by it. And yet he's able to do it some 10 years later. So I think that while the UX for Bitcoin could be better, and it certainly needs to be better. Uh, there are some amazing wallets and apps out there, like the, the Bitcoin beach wallets, which is now called blink is used by a lot of these circular economies and it's super easy to use.
It has three buttons, which is like receive, send, and scan. Which obviously would do what they say on the tin. And, um, it is, I mean, if I compare my online banking or like applying for a mortgage or any or any of those sorts of things, it is pretty complicated, whereas with Bitcoin, you know, that you just, okay, I earn what I can, uh, and I save whatever's left over at the end of the month into Bitcoin. And then I, uh, yeah, I wait for that to go up over a five or 10 year period. And then I spend it if I want to, it's quite a simple equation as opposed to what you would have to do nowadays to make money, which is probably open up a stocks and shares account, probably get an ISA, probably get some ETF thing going, you know, work out what CDOs leverage trading, all this nonsense is.
Um, if Bitcoin is what I really like about it, or what I've personally found with my own life is that, you know, pre Bitcoin, I would have spreadsheets of, you know, uh, financial stuff that I would track. And it would be, uh, you know, uh, what would you call it? A balanced portfolio of all these sorts of, uh, financial things.
And now I just save money in Bitcoin and I wait, and I get to spend more time doing the things I'm passionate about, which is, I think ultimately what life is about, right? We shouldn't have to be obliged to financialize every moment of our existence because the money is broken. We should be able to just focus on, you know, providing value to others and, you know, pursuing our own, um, interests and, you know, contributing to our own local communities as best we can. And that's another thing that I really like about Bitcoin. Jesus. I sound like such an evangelist right now. I need to, I need to reel it in.
[00:38:19] Mizter Rad: You're definitely a Bitcoiner. I can see that. I had a, I recorded an episode recently with, Bronwyn Williams. She's, she's an economist and a futurist from, South Africa. And we talked a lot about, social credit scores, which is, fascinating and scary topic at the same time. But anyway, when you talk about this communities, do you feel like this, this communities in Peru, again, and all these emerging countries, um, are they siloed in their community?
Because as soon as they go out of their community, they cannot use Bitcoin anymore. Is that a problem for them?
[00:38:53] Joe Nakamoto: Yeah. So this is one of the things that affects the development of these economies. It's really important that when they start these economies, wherever they are, there is some way in which they can sell the Bitcoin for cash if they need it, because it's, it's pretty horrible. If you want to like trap someone using Bitcoin and I do that, you know, if I'm showing Bitcoin to someone and I tip them and always say like, you can sell your Bitcoin and I don't care if you do.
Like you can change it for cash or whatever. And this is why the Elzonte one was so successful. It's because, you know, three years after it began, you can now spend Bitcoin across the entire country from Starbucks to McDonald's. Yeah. And to your, um, the economist who's from South Africa, there's now, I think four circular economies going in South Africa.
Uh, it started with this place called Bitcoin Akazi, which is a township project.
[00:39:42] Mizter Rad: I heard about it.
[00:39:43] Joe Nakamoto: and. Yeah, Herman Vivier, the founder, amazing guy, he might actually be, might be a really good, podcast interview. But, um, So with South Africa, there's these supermarkets called pick and pay, and it's like a Walmart, I guess, for South Africa, and there you can spend the Bitcoin too.
So it's cool that there are sort of national places you can spend it as well as, I mean, I buy all my SIM cards with Bitcoin. I use Uber credits. I buy that with Bitcoin because there's a lot of companies that accept Bitcoin for gift cards. So it's cool to have this sort of network in which you can then spend that Bitcoin elsewhere.
Because otherwise you can use it in your local community and say you get you get paid in bitcoin for the t shirts that you make Then you spend it at the restaurant down the street and the bar in the evenings and maybe the local supermarket. But then you travel to see your cousins one weekend and you're stuck with this bitcoin nonsense in your phone You know, what do I do with it?
Um, but the other the nice thing is that most people Well, wherever I've traveled around the world, most people are now starting to see the value of Bitcoin. And a lot of people have actually asked me to buy Bitcoin off me, knowing that I have, you know, a little bit of Bitcoin on me, wherever I go, because I don't travel with cash anymore.
I travel with Bitcoin and I do a, what's called a PIDs. Yeah, yeah. Cause I just find it so much easier. Like if you, especially the circles I'm traveling in, I know that I can get there and I will be able to access local currency without going through a currency exchange. But you know, if, if I went to Columbia tomorrow, I'd, you know, in the past, I would have to go to a bureau de change and I'd have to change my euros for, you know, Colombian, what is, is it, uh, what's it called?
What's the peso? Colombian peso. So, um, and now I'll just know that I'll go to fly into Bogota or fly into Medellin or wherever it is and go to a local Bitcoin meetup and be like, yo, who wants to do a peer to peer?
[00:41:25] Mizter Rad: But on the other hand, just as
[00:41:27] Joe Nakamoto: Bitcoin.
[00:41:28] Mizter Rad: being devil's advocate here, I can also just take my card from my bank here, Revolut and N26 here in Europe and just go anywhere and pay with that. On even go to the ATM and get cash local fiat cash anywhere. So
again, why, why is that better?
[00:41:44] Joe Nakamoto: though, right? Cause I get charged for that.
[00:41:46] Mizter Rad: Sorry.
[00:41:48] Joe Nakamoto: You've got the premium versions by the sounds of things. Cause I get charged. If I withdraw money in Columbia with like my international card, I'll get charged like 8 for the, for the privilege.
[00:41:57] Mizter Rad: Right. That's a, that's a monthly fee. Yeah. Well, no, actually,
no, what I, what I wanted to say, I pay a monthly fee to the bank so that I don't get
charged. Yeah. It's not that high, but
[00:42:08] Joe Nakamoto: pay the bank just so that you can use your own money.
[00:42:10] Mizter Rad: yeah, sure. Okay. I,
[00:42:14] Joe Nakamoto: I'm just being cheeky, but we are, we're, we're tricked into thinking that banks are our friends, but in reality, they're making so much money off
[00:42:21] Mizter Rad: see, I completely see what you mean, but I think the regular again, regular Joe and not yourself, but another Joe would think, okay, I just want comfort. I just want to have a comfortable life. I don't know. I don't care if the bank is making money out of my money.
I don't see it. I don't care. I, I, I can still get my money out. In theory, whenever I want it. So, you know what I
[00:42:44] Joe Nakamoto: Yeah, that's the thing in theory, right? Yeah. So like how many bank runs have there been in the past two years in countries all around the world? You you're in, uh, you know, you're in Greece right now. Cyprus had a bank run where anyone who had more than, I think it was 80 K in the bank had a haircut in which, you know, the value of their money in the bank was just chopped in half.
Obviously the financial crisis of 2008 was caused by, Bankers being bankers and, uh, pushing it to the limits. And lots of my friends are bankers, right? They work in the city of London and they love what they do. And that's great. But I don't think that the 21st century will be defined by more and more central banking and, you know, bankers making money off like stupid things.
Like I was sending my money across overseas. Uh, that, you know, that's going to charge you or withdrawing cash overseas. Oh, that's going to charge you as well. Like the, yes, you can have a normal life and you can go about things and you can, uh, yeah, travel and use your N26 or Revolut card. But the nice thing is that you can also opt out of that system, which is inherently fair because of all the things we've discussed about so far.
And you can build in this new world, which is this Bitcoin thing. And, you know, learn about that, knowing that your money protects its value, sorry, keeps its value, over a long time period. And it's a more fair system and it's a system in which everyone plays by the same rules. And so it's kind of like, that's where I got to.
I was like, well, what do I want to do with my life? Do I want to carry on in the fiat system? Or do I want to start learning more about this Bitcoin thing? And that's why I jumped ship from Bloomberg and Oxford business group and went, went down this path instead.
[00:44:15] Mizter Rad: I do agree that bankers and the financial system, especially in the last 10 years, is getting a pretty bad reputation. And it's obvious that they getting bad reputation because of all the things that you mentioned, but also because, they use your money in ways that you are, you're not aware of, and in the end, you actually do not have cash in your bank account. It's just a bunch of numbers there that you believe correspond to yourself, but they're not. But my point here is, yes, people have a bad image of banks, a bad image of bankers. That has been for a while like that, and maybe it's getting worse at the same time when I tell you this story some time ago in Athens, three weeks ago, I took a cab, started talking to the cab driver, the cab driver tells me, So what are you doing here?
We started talking about work. Then we ended up talking about politics, of course, and then we ended up talking about the financial markets and I asked the guy, do you own Bitcoin? He said, no, I don't own Bitcoin. I know what it is because the guy, let's say it was in his early thirties, he understood what Bitcoin was, but he told me I don't own Bitcoin because I cannot see it. I cannot touch it. And then. He continued saying, I think people in Greece in general would love or love to see money that you can touch and you can see. And of course, you could say this is an antiquated way of seeing money. It's not the money of the future because everything is going digital and that's kind of very seeable and obvious. But do you think that's a obstacle for Bitcoin at this point? Do you think? This is not not a real concern, because as we go into the future, this is not going to be a big problem anymore for people. How do you see this?
[00:46:07] Joe Nakamoto: Yeah, it's quite a common rebuttal, or I guess a common complaint about Bitcoin, you know, I can't touch it. So it's not real. Um, and then I, my, my classic reply to them is okay. And what about your Spotify playlist? Is that real to you? You know, I know that we used to have CDs and record players, you know, what about your, uh, you know, this conversation we're having online?
I can't touch you, but I'm pretty confident you're real. Um, so it's, I, I know that people like cash and I understand the psychological implications of cash. Like if I put a 20 pound note on the table right now, we would both look at it. Just because it's cash, just because it's there, there is a really powerful, um, hook from physical cash.
And I don't know what it is about humans and money. Maybe it's like something from, you know, thousands and thousands of years of evolution of using money from beads to stones to precious metals to, you know, fiat money. There's something about humans and using money that is really, it's almost like biological, right?
Um, but I think that with the new generation, You know, the, the Gen Z's and Younger, they are trading things on, I don't know, Roblox or Minecraft, and they know what in game currencies are. So while that's, the sort of archaic image of cash must be physical. It still might be an argument in 10 or 20 years time soon.
Like, you know, No one's going to care about that sort of
thing. And for your taxi driver, yeah, for sure. Like it's, it's only an, it's inevitable everything that we're doing is becoming, uh, digital and, you know, ethereal and, you know, something that we can't touch. I'm sure that guy probably plays on a PlayStation or, you know, has a WhatsApp chat with his girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever it is.
Um, and those messages are real, you know, they might appear on a telephone screen, but they are, they are real. So I wouldn't be surprised if that guy buys in when Bitcoin is going up to, you know, 150 K in a, you know, six months or a year's time, uh, because he suddenly realized that, oh, it can be, it doesn't have to be physical and yet it's still meaningful, you know,
[00:48:01] Mizter Rad: Yeah, but is it is that a concern that you've heard off when you go around in this communities that you find in emerging markets as well that are already adopting Bitcoin, but maybe there's some resistance still. Is that one type of resistance that you see or what are the resistances that you see mainly on those people in those communities?
[00:48:21] Joe Nakamoto: nice. Yeah. So the, I recently was in Lugano in Switzerland. And I saw lots of signs up in restaurants and bars saying cash only. Now, Switzerland, as you know, is a very, very, very banked population. And they're also adopting Bitcoin in quite a serious way. So in Lugano, which is this small sleepy Italian speaking Swiss city, right in the Alps, there's like 350 or 400 bars, cafes, restaurants, shops, you know, you name the place they're accepting Bitcoin.
And yet there's also these anti bank anti Bitcoin people who were like, no, I don't want to touch anything. It's digital. So I was quite interested by this as a journalist in a place that, you know, is, is adopting Bitcoin. And so a lot of the mains viewed them as like, Oh, so why are you against banks first?
And then why are you against Bitcoin? And the against banking thing was, I don't want to be tracked. I don't like the idea that surveilling is, I don't like the idea that I've got to give them my details to be able to use money because obviously with cash, no one knows what we're doing and that's how it should be.
You know, we should be able to privately transact and the government should have no say in what we're spending on a day to day basis. And I was like, totally get it completely understand. And then, you know, onto the Bitcoin thing, we discussed that and I sent them some Bitcoin and was like, Oh, what do you think?
And they're like, yeah, but who, who saw that? And I was like, no one saw it. Did I take your name? Did I take your address? Did I take your phone number? Whatever. I'm like, it's pseudonymous, you know, which is basically, you know, almost anonymous, but not quite, um, you know, still stick to cash. If you want to do, you know, you want to be completely private, of course.
But they still didn't want to use the Bitcoin thing because it wasn't physical. They wanted to touch it. So yeah, it's, it's a very valid thing and it's not just emerging markets where there's sort of a lack of financial literacy where there's a problem. This is Switzerland. You know, everyone has at least six bank accounts.
Yeah. Um, so I think that this, this, uh, um, challenge will be recurring. And I also don't think it's a bad thing. Like, I don't want everyone and their dog dog to start using Bitcoin because a like the network isn't actually ready for it and be like, you know, people will make mistakes. And one of the classic issues that people have with Bitcoin is that they, they rug pull themselves in that they don't write down the 12 words, you know, the seed phrase for their wallet properly.
They lose it. And then I go to speak to the Bitcoin customer service and they realize there is no Bitcoin customer service because there is no Bitcoin CEO. It's just a line of code that is getting more and more valuable over time. Um, so I think that, yeah, the, the, you can't and you shouldn't try to get people to use Bitcoin until they're absolutely ready to do so.
And for a lot of people, it could be a survival thing. Like in these Bitcoin circular economies, like it is like, it's literally, I don't want to say saving lives, but it's definitely making people's lives a lot better. And so that's a wonderful thing. Um, but it's funny, like in the circular economies, there's almost like this network effect that takes place.
You, if you, appeal to a few of the local leaders and they understand this Bitcoin thing is useful, and then they sort of put out their feelings to other people, then slowly, but surely other people start adopting it and using it as well and realizing the benefits too. But, you know, it's like credit cards in the seventies and eighties, right?
People used to go door to door knocking on, you know, houses being like, Oh, can we, uh, could be interested in this credit card thing? And they'd be like, why do I want to use that? I've got cash. It works just as well. And now everyone and their dog has a credit card. Um, but I don't think that what credit cards did was a good idea.
I want to see a more natural or organic, uh, approach to Bitcoin and Bitcoin adoption.
[00:51:46] Mizter Rad: From your experience, when you go to these places where people are mainly unbanked and then Bitcoin is coming in and trying to grab them as let's say, customers or users do banks try that as well? Are banks competing with Bitcoin in terms of getting those users, using their services or how, what, what is the position of banks in those places from your perspective?
[00:52:10] Joe Nakamoto: Yeah. I mean, a lot of the banks just aren't even there. They don't care for these communities and they don't care. No, I mean, why would they care? It's banks job is to make money and it cannot make money in these places. It would actually probably be a cost to them. And on top of that, the KYC AML laws make it very hard to effectively bank these people.
So even if they are like a small community bank, which might do some, you know, good in the area, it would have to establish an operation. Now I'd have to set up an ATM. I'll give you one quick example in Chicama, the wave I mentioned, which is the world's longest left hander wave. You know, you can surf this way for one minute and it's world famous.
Rip Curl have, uh, in Quicksilver, they have big surf competitions there every year. Kelly Slater, the world's best, uh, surfer and arguably one of the best sportsmen in the world, sports persons in the world he surfed there quite a few times. And yet in this town of maybe 15, 000 people, is there an ATM?
Nope. The nearest ATM was an hour drive away. And so like Bitcoin is now being used there. You know, I actually helped a lot of people accept Bitcoin and they were actually really excited by it. And. One of the cool things with one of the apps that I use the blink Bitcoin beach wallet app is that I can see when other people have been invited to that app from my invite.
It sounds a bit
[00:53:23] Mizter Rad: You're an
[00:53:23] Joe Nakamoto: scheme. It's not. No, no, it's not. I don't know. I don't know about that. But it's um, but it's just quite a nice notification to receive because you realize that, hey, like other people must be realizing that this is kind of a useful thing and going from a pure cash based You know money under your mattress situation to having, you know, money secure on your phone It's a real life improvement for a lot of these people And you know avoids these issues that they have with the tills with atms with traveling to banks all that sort of thing. But yeah to answer your question bluntly No banks do not care about disadvantaged communities around the world. And they're not financially incentivized to care about them either. So they're we know we are always failing these poor communities around the world And there is a way now to, you know, not fail these communities.
And it's through, you know, Bitcoin and lightning. Um, and you know, I've, I've seen this enough around the world now to, to realize that, Holy crap, this is the one way we can help people be banked. And once you do become banked, that completely changes your optics on the world, right? You can think about your future a bit differently.
It inspires you with hope. It makes you think about, Hmm, what can I do for my kid's future? What can I do for, you know, my grandkids future? And that is just, you know. Phenomenal to see. And that we're seeing mostly in El Salvador. Yeah. It's, it's like, I mean, it's, it's almost like, you know, country or community changing rather like we're seeing it pan out in El Salvador on a nationwide scale right now.
And, I think that example will be copied and will be drawn as inspiration from, for, for other countries around the world.
[00:54:55] Mizter Rad: Fantastic. Joe, I want to know just to wrap up. How do you see the world in 50 years from now? From your perspective, how will the world look like?
[00:55:05] Joe Nakamoto: I do like this question. So have you seen Bodies on Netflix?
[00:55:09] Mizter Rad: No. What is
[00:55:10] Joe Nakamoto: No. Okay. I'm sorry. Just.
[00:55:11] Mizter Rad: is that? Right?
[00:55:14] Joe Nakamoto: drama series. It's a, it's a bit sci fi, a bit, um, I don't watch a huge amount of TV, but this is the first series I've seen in maybe a year where I've been like, this is absolutely amazing. But there's the reason why it's relevant to this question is that there's a scene that's set, or there's a series of scenes that are set, uh, in the year 2055 or something.
It's like a good 25, 30 years in the future. And what I thought was interesting is that they haven't really dramatized how different the year 2050 or the year 2070 will be. Um, because I think that humans have this real incapacity to imagine what the future will look like, because if you think about what life was like 50 years ago, there wasn't even the internet.
And now here we are having a conversation with you in Greece, me in Portugal, and we're from, we're not from that country either. And that would have been, you know, insane in all of itself. And here we are having a video call and explaining that someone would just have blown their mind. And I think that the rate of technological adoption and the rate of, you know, AI adoption, and of course, Bitcoin adoption, um, does give me this quite hopeful, optimistic, and almost utopian vision of the next 50 years. But humans also have this tremendous capacity to kill one another and wage wars. So it's a tricky thing to answer, but yeah, 50 years time. Man, let's go, let's go big. I think we're all going to be sort of semi robotic. We're all going to be transacting with Bitcoin.
We're going to have some sort of AI thing that's connected to us. And, I hope, I really hope that the disparity between like the wealthy places in the world and the poorer places in the world is a lot closer. And I hope it's a lot closer because of these technological advances. So that, you know, California, you know, I don't know, Silicon Valley does not look like a different planet to say the outskirts of Ghana.
I don't know. It's such a wide question. Like where, where should I take it?
[00:57:01] Mizter Rad: that's that's an absolutely amazing answer. I think it came from your heart. So that's what matters. It's a very difficult question also, like, you can go different ways. And,
uh, but what's interesting is that most of the people that I interview, that are, you know, working on cutting edge ideas or these are from suppliers.
So Concepts, are optimistic. They're mostly optimistic. I think maybe one or two people that I've interviewed a little bit more negative about the future.
And since my podcast is about the future, I want to share this message of optimism or whatever message come across. But so far out of my almost 30 episodes, 95 percent of them have been with an optimistic outlook. I think that's super important in my opinion, because a lot of people that I they're very put down by all this news and all this war
information and images that we get fed, by Instagram and stuff. And so we're not very hopeful about the future anymore as a society sometimes. But people that are
working on this cutting edge stuff and that are out there in the front lines, let's say, are optimistic.
So that's very interesting.
Man.
it was a pleasure. To wrap up, where can people find you, Joe? Where can people learn more about you? Where can people watch your amazing documentaries and learn more about Bitcoin from you and from your experiences?
[00:58:27] Joe Nakamoto: Thanks dude. No, I appreciate you giving me your platform and yeah, the message of optimism is definitely a thing in the Bitcoin space. So if you're feeling a bit negative, come learn about Bitcoin. And then in terms of where they can find me, well, I'm Joe Nakamoto on Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, and Nostr.
And my existing documentaries are on Cointelegraph. just any, if you just type in Cointelegraph on YouTube, that's where previously I was posting stuff. But in the future it's going to be on my own channel. I'm trying to find sponsors at the moment to help me do this on a more permanent basis, but all the Peru stuff will be on there.
All the Ghana stuff will be on there. And there's also some fun stuff from Bulgaria that will be on there as there's a Bitcoin football club in Bulgaria. But that's definitely a story for another time.
[00:59:10] Mizter Rad: That's super cool. That's super cool. Well, Joe, it was a pleasure to have you here. And, if you're around Greece these days, let me know. I'll be here.
[00:59:17] Joe Nakamoto: Cheers, mate. Appreciate it. Likewise for Portugal.