Excerpt
I share my journey from becoming a digital nomad to bringing Bitcoin education to Africa. Inspired by my own experiences with hyperinflation, discrimination, and a deep-seated belief in fairness, I found my calling in Bitcoin. I delve into the important role of Bitcoin in Africa’s fight against economic and political challenges. I explain the continent’s increasing involvement and adoption of Bitcoin, thanks to the growing community and the support from initiatives like Bitcoin For Fairness. Watch now to learn more about the ongoing need for education and hands-on support in these communities and how this will impact the use of Bitcoin, not only in Africa but also globally.
Transcript
Hello! What a great conference! Thank you very much for coming, thank you for organizing that one and thank you all each one of you for coming because I believe that each one of you has the power to change the world. So you might ask yourself how did Anita get there? Why did she become a digital Nomad, leave her house and her friends and family to go to Africa to bring Bitcoin education to the Global South? Well, my grandmother’s name actually was Nitka and her family came to Austria from the Kingdom of Bohemia at the time where Bohemia was a part of the Austrian Hungarian Empire and as such we had the same currency, the crown which a 100 years ago went into hyperinflation in Austria. That means we’ve got a common history also. Actually, we know what hyperinflation means. My grandparents told me a lot about the time when the Nazis came to Austria, what happened to their Jewish friends and the danger they were put themselves into when they were listening to BBC Radio which could have brought them into an Arbeitslager. Myself, I’m a lesbian, I’m queer and for the first 30 years in my life I was discriminated by Austrian law. So these kinds of things made me question authority, equality, and fairness and so in 2017 when I heard the second time about Bitcoin I thought that’s it. It made click and I wanted to start to become a Bitcoin educator. In 2018 I launched my Bitcoin podcast, I wrote the book about Bitcoin for beginners which by the way I will sign at 2:30 at the Consensus Network Booth and in the end I founded Bitcoin for Fairness to share Bitcoin knowledge in the global South and for disadvantaged communities. The first time I came to Zimbabwe was in early 2020 and since then I’ve spent around eight, actually 12 months in different African countries. In South Africa, Zimbabwe, most part of it in Zambia and in Ghana and now I want to tell you about how I believe and why I believe that Bitcoin empowers Africa. Now just take a look at that map, you can see the orange and dark red areas are the countries where there is the highest level of authoritarianism and at the same time at that map you see the wealth in those countries and you can see that and I don’t believe that this is a coincidence. The countries with the most authoritarian leaders are also the countries with the poorest population and that’s exactly the fact why authoritarians are authoritarians because they don’t care about the welfare of people. A common pattern in dictatorships and authoritarian countries is also that the infrastructure is totally broken, so people basically need to put all the energy and efforts into surviving. That’s why they don’t have time or energy to educate themselves and to build resistance against the dictatorships and when hyperinflation sets in, you also don’t have money that you can save because you lose all the value immediately. We always hear about Zimbabwe and inflation like 500% inflation. What does this actually mean? Well that’s a typical loaf of bread in Zimbabwe, it has not only gotten smaller in the last months also the price skyrocketed in 2019 the government of Zimbabwe and the central bank for the third time exchanged all US dollars that were on Zimbabwean US dollar accounts into the new Zimbabwean dollar back in that day one US dollar was one Zimbabwean dollar when I came back in 2022 it was 1 to 20 the exchange rate and 10 days not 10 years ,10 days ago when I made this slide the bread cost $4,000 Zimbabwean dollars and today it costs $10,000 Zimbabwean dollars and I heard that the US dollar bank accounts are frozen. So with Bitcoin you can’t do that, because monetary inflation is inherent in the traditional system but you know 21 million Bitcoin can’t be changed by any dictator and that’s why those regions try to ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies because they know exactly that they can’t control it and if Africans and Zimbabweans in general were to use Bitcoin they could topple their dictators because they would dry out their resources because they are stealing through inflation and through corruption another possibility for African countries to gain more Independence would be if they were to start Bitcoin mining. A lot of countries in Africa have excess hydro power, you know, they have a lot of sun so if they instead to taking on the next debt, the next loan from the IMF and sell out their natural resources like Golds gold and minerals if they were to start Bitcoin mining they could build their power grid and could gain independence or more Independence in the coming years. Banks are completely broken in many African countries. The banking fees in South Africa are higher than in Germany. I know a few people in Zimbabwe who unbanked themselves, so they could use the banks but they don’t want to and they have been proven right today again because with Bitcoin you can’t be, I just wanted to say the f word, and also with Bitcoin you know that money is basically speech we express our opinion with money and the protests a few years ago in Nigeria, the feminist Coalition of Nigeria was collecting donations through their bank account and then the Central Bank froze the bank account and they remembered: Ah there’s Bitcoin, they set up their own BTC pay server and were able to collect Bitcoin and fund the protests again. But this is the thing Bitcoin only empowers you when you own the keys to your Bitcoin and when you have it in self- custody. Many, many people in African countries have their money on Binance. Not so good. What does that mean? The median age in Africa is 20 years, the median age in Europe is 43 years, so where do you think will be more innovation, will be more adoption in the future? For me it’s a no-brainer. It’s young people, it’s people who are under abuse of power, they will use a money that’s basically breaking that abuse and who are young and who don’t have fear to use a new technology. So now the other way around how do Africans actually empower Bitcoin? This is a statistic from Bitrefill, that are the cryptocurrency payments on their site and you can see that actually Africa compared to its size and its population has the smallest cryptocurrency and Bitcoin economy, but whereas Bitcoin in Northern countries in our countries is more used as a store of value as a long-term investment, in African regions it’s used as a medium of exchange, as a daily tool in life because people cannot send money in and out of their countries easily. Also most cryptocurrency and Bitcoin payments are done peer-to-peer without know your customer verification, that’s great for privacy and great for financial inclusion and it also means if we think that in the future maybe millions of Africans are using Bitcoin without KYC, how can our regulators then say you’re not allowed to use non KYC Bitcoin? So Bitcoin is one Bitcoin can do medium of exchange, it can do store of value, and it connects the North with the South and the South with the North. The first time when I came to Africa to Zimbabwe in 2020 I knew only one Bitcoin education and community, that was the Satoshi Centre in Botswana by Alakanani. In the last two to three years this has exploded. Now we have the Bitcoiners in Ghana, Bitcoin for Fairness in Zambia, Bitcoin Banamayo in Zambia, Bitcoin Dada in Kenya Bitcoin, Bitcoin Ekasi in South Africa. One by one Africans will see or are seeing already how Bitcoin empowers them and that even when they don’t have internet, there’s an example of innovation by a South African developer it’s called Machankura8333, where you can send Lightning even on a phone where you don’t have internet. So that also shows how important it is, for instance, the work that Qala is doing, an educational initiative for African developers because they are the ones who will need to build the solutions for their own continent, for their problems for the challenges there and so with my new program Crack the Orange, I want to do what Qala does for African Developers for aspiring Bitcoin Educators and Community Builders in African countries. So that they can build their own educational initiative. On top of that, I mean basically I want to make myself, I want to reduce myself, I don’t want to be there in a few years because I believe they are innovators and they will build great solutions. Another thing I’ve built together with Alby is BTCpodcasting. We know how important podcasts are for spreading education about Bitcoin and so we’ve built this platform where you can host your podcast for free and we won’t censor it so or you don’t lose all your copyright like on anchor and on the same time you just need a get a Lightning address and can immediately start receiving satoshis with value for value streaming. So Bitcoin adoption, I mean this is just the beginning. I believe for African countries Bitcoin adoption and communities and users will skyrocket in the coming years and months but Bitcoin is not perfect yet. We need scalable solutions when the fees are rising on-chain, we need more privacy to protect human rights activists and people in that countries who fight against their dictators and so that’s why it’s so important that African developers build their solutions themselves because more knowledge about freedom money brings more power to topple dictators. But I can’t do that alone so maybe you are the next. So please learn about Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn’t have a marketing department as you know so start your own podcast, start your own WhatsApp group and if you don’t want or if you don’t if you think you can’t do it yourself please support us, support our work so that we can do it for you. Thank you very much.
