Excerpt
I was invited to speak to the students of Bitcoin Dada to address the faults in our current money system, from inflation and banking dependence to currency controls and unfair access to credit. I share what I have learned through Bitcoin for Fairness while working with educators and communities across Africa, especially in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique, and South Africa. Then I explain why Bitcoin can offer an alternative for saving, earning, sending, and owning money without relying on banks, IDs, or centralized control.
Transcript
Let me talk about the fault in our money.
As you know, I’m a Bitcoin educator, author, and the founder of Bitcoin for Fairness, which is an initiative whose goal it is to support local Bitcoin educators, builders, and community on the ground in the global south and especially over the last five years, on the African continent. In 2020, I visited Zimbabwe the first time because I wanted to learn and understand what the problems with money are in Zimbabwe, especially because people in the Bitcoin space always were talking about Zimbabwe and hyperinflation and how Bitcoin is a solution or could be a solution for that problem. I wanted to learn more and not only be an armchair expert as so many people are, and that’s why I started traveling and working in these places. And also I want to say not only to travel, work, and share knowledge, but also to learn. That’s also very important for me.
These are the nine countries that we have been traveling and working in in the last five years. And you can also see we’ve been to Kenya at the end of 2024, working at the Africa Bitcoin Conference and also meeting a couple of Bitcoin Dadas and the makers of Tando, Bitdevs Nairobi. I really enjoyed being in Kenya. Nairobi is a very pulsing and lively city, and the people are nice, and there’s a lot going on. I hope I can come back one day.
What are we doing? We’re organizing local workshops. We are inviting people who are interested in learning about Bitcoin and other decentralized technologies in Zimbabwe, in Mozambique recently. I’ve been to Zambia three or four times, Zimbabwe, actually, the most time I’ve spent there, and also Bitcoin Ekasi in South Africa. I’m sure you have heard about that project too.
What we’re also doing is we’re having a Bitcoin scholarship program for aspiring Bitcoin educators and community builders. People who want to learn more, like maybe after you finished Bitcoin Dada, you can also apply at our program if you want to create your own community, your own project. And we are having an online course, a free knowledge library, community calls, similar to your calls, where African Bitcoin builders from different countries, we have 20 countries now in our program, are learning from each other and can basically continue their experience with others and learn from their peers. These are the countries from where our graduates are, and I will share with you how you can apply at the end of the session.
This is hyperinflation. I’m sure you heard and seen the pictures of Zimbabwe and in Venezuela and all these other countries, and also in Europe, in Germany and Austria. I’m from Austria. We had hyperinflation exactly 100 years ago, and so it’s something that the fault in our money is global. That’s what I want to say with that. Let’s look at the faults I have identified, and I’m very happy if you come up with the faults you have found, then we can discuss that afterwards. I spoke about inflation. What is basically inflation? Inflation makes things more expensive over time. For the same amount of Kenyan shillings, you get less. That’s a phenomenon that’s global. But in some countries it’s higher. In some countries, the central banks manage it a little bit better, and the inflation is a little bit lower or more stable. But still, over the years, you lose value with national currencies. Then another fault with our money is that you need a bank account and the money there that is in the bank account is basically not your money because you’re depending on the bank that it gives it to you, that it gives you access and doesn’t block the access. It’s permissioned, meaning you need to ID yourself. What about all the people who don’t have an ID? It’s totally centralized, so the power over your money lies within a centralized controlling entity and not in your hands.
Now we can say, “Okay, but there is cash. I can hold my own cash.” That’s true, but cash can easily be stolen. It’s difficult to handle, to store, and to carry. When you have a lot of money, how do you bring it from A to B? National countries very often have currency controls, so you basically can’t move your money in and out of the country.
And in most countries other than the USA or China maybe, or Russia, if it’s big countries with big currencies, you can’t use it abroad. If you go to the USA, no one wants your Kenyan shillings. Also, no one maybe in Asia wants your Euros, I don’t know. It’s not a global currency. It’s not accepted in other countries. We or you, many countries in the world accept the US dollar because it’s the most powerful country, basically, until now. We don’t know how this is going in the future, but at the moment, it is that way.
Why are we having these problems with our money? Well, it starts with the creation of money. Because where does money actually come from? To be honest, before Bitcoin, I didn’t know, and I didn’t think about it. And I think most people are not really thinking about where does money come from and why and how. National currencies are created by the authorities. First, by the central bank, or in some countries, it’s called the reserve bank. Through governments, like when they give out grants or benefits, or they bail out banks or other companies. And also by commercial banks that are creating loans. And basically, most of the money that’s being created or coming into the system is created via a loan.
And let’s talk about the central bank for a couple of minutes. The interesting thing with a central bank is it’s said to be independent. But on the other hand, it’s not democratically voted for. It’s just people who were appointed for positions, and those couple of people have a lot of power, and they, as humans, are responsible for managing the value of the money, and also for the amount of money that is being created or that can be loaned out by commercial banks. So we are basically depending on a couple of human beings that are susceptible, if you’re under influence. I don’t believe in the separation of central banks and governments. Like in Zimbabwe: the government wants to print more money, the central bank prints more money. That’s a thing. Also the basis of human decisions is, of course, it’s for some people very good in effect, but for most it’s bad.
And it has a local effect first and foremost. And then the commercial banks, they create money through loans. And you know how a loan works. For a loan, you need to bring securities. How do you want to get a loan if you don’t own anything already? If you don’t have capital, no securities, if you don’t own a house, or like Kenyan women are not able to inherit. So, how do you ever want to have some securities to go to the bank to get a loan to build your own business? And your independence? You can’t, basically. But those who have capital, they can gain cheap money. It’s called cheap money because usually for a loan, you pay interest, but it’s not that high.
That’s a way how those who have capital are getting richer over time. And that means the poorer are getting poorer. The middle class is also losing its status basically, because they can’t spend so much money on building new companies and buying apartment houses – but the rich can. That means the system is not fair. It’s an unfair system.
That’s why my organization or nonprofit is called Bitcoin for Fairness. Because I believe that it gives fairness because it has different properties than our current money. And basically a loan, the bank does nothing for that. Their service is basically only creating a new number on the computer and saying, “Okay, the ledger of debt and loans and money is now bigger.” And then you have to pay back the loan. Someone has to pay back. That means we need to commodify natural resources.We need to work more. We need to spend more. We need to consume more. And that’s one thing that I really dislike about this system, that if we don’t consume more and if we don’t grow it, then it will collapse. Basically wiping out all the wealth of all people.
It’s crazy actually that this system has been working since 1971 now – since gold is not the backing of money anymore. There is no gold in the vaults anymore. Because what we also have is something called fractional reserve banking. That means that banks, like in the early days of banks, you went to the bank, you put your gold in the bank, and for that you got paper money, and it was backed by the gold that you had in the bank. But today, banks don’t need to keep this gold. They don’t have it. And basically when we all at the same time go to our banks and say we want some money back, the banks will collapse because they don’t have the money. They don’t have anything. And this is really crazy if you think of it.
One big problem of our national money is that the value of it comes by decree. We are forced to use it, but it’s not backed by anything. And the other problem is the amount of money that’s being issued via loans or other means has no upper limit, and this is what inflation is. The amount of money increases, which means one unit of money has a lower value. As an example, I want to bring Zimbabwe because it’s really striking there. And Zimbabwe really shows how the fiat money system is basically corrupted because the idea of it might have been a good idea one day, but in the end, there are alternatives now, and that’s great. Let’s look at this bread. You know all this bread. It costs one US dollar. For years, it has cost $1. But the packet has grown smaller. That’s shrinkflation. And on the other hand, in September 2022, I was in Harare, and I saw this guy having this plastic bag in the hand, and then I realized, oh my god, that’s money. And this is not a rich guy. I’m sure he’s not a rich guy. And he has that amount of paper money in a plastic bag. What’s going on? In 2019, the US dollar was the currency in Zimbabwe that you could use. And then from one day to the other, they reinvented the Zimbabwe dollar and said $1 is now a value of ZW$1. But of course, everyone knew this will not hold this exchange rate. Already in the next year, in 2020, when I came the first time, the exchange rate was 1 to 28, so you needed ZW$28 for $1. And then every year it exploded, from 28 to 105 to 200. That was when I made this picture. In the next year, it went to 4,000, then to 12,000, and only in three months in 2024 from 12,000 to 35,000 Zimbabwe dollar. And what did the government? And people don’t earn more. You know that. It’s really crazy. What did the government and let’s say the central bank, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe do? They invented a new currency and started from the beginning. And the interesting story is that people in Zimbabwe, of course, they don’t trust the system anymore, so nobody is actually using the ZiG, the Zimbabwe Gold. And they also say it’s backed by gold, that’s why they call it Zimbabwe Gold, ZiG. But they never brought a proof of gold, that they have the reserves. It’s all very intransparent. And they sadly can use the system as a means to extract value from people. And that’s very, very sad.
I also have an example for Kenya. The Kenyan shilling also, of course, has inflation. What does it mean? We saw it’s loss of purchasing power. You can’t afford the same things with the same amount of Kenyan shillings anymore. An average car in 1980 cost around 200,000 Kenyan shillings. Now, in 2026, it’s 4 million. And at the same time, interestingly, if you were to use Bitcoin, in Bitcoin, you don’t have monetary supply inflation. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin.
And there’s an algorithm, and this is fixed. It’s not possible that any government, any politicians, any bankers decide, okay, now we make more bitcoin. And that means also, for instance: an iPhone, an average iPhone, in 2011, you had to buy it for 162 bitcoin. And in 2023, you got it for 0.031 bitcoin. That means basically if you save money in bitcoin, everything gets cheaper. You win double because first you don’t lose through national currency inflation, but on the other hand, things get cheaper in bitcoin because the value of bitcoin increases over time, mostly. There’s no guarantee that this will happen, but over the last 16 years, we have seen an increase from zero to, I don’t know, now it’s $70,000 or one Bitcoin is $75,000. I don’t know exactly. But it didn’t get less. Okay. $80k, thank you.
Let’s go back to the bank account – problems with bank accounts: High fees, a lot of bureaucracy, and it’s being used, sadly, for financial oppression. Bank accounts are being closed when people do things that governments don’t like. That’s a fact. And that’s possible because it’s permissioned. You need to ask for permission to receive a bank account. Just as an example, in Nigeria in 2020, 2021, there were EndSARS demonstrations. That was a demonstration against police brutality in the country. And the Nigerian Feminist Coalition collected money through their bank account to support the demonstrations. They bought food and drinks and other things for the demonstrators. So the Central Bank of Nigeria shut down their bank account, and then the young ladies reminded themselves that there’s something like Bitcoin. They set up a BTCPay Server and started receiving Bitcoin and were able to basically support the demonstrators again. They were able to manage their own money, to hold their own money, and could not be shut down. That’s why I also often say Bitcoin enforces human rights because it enables freedom of speech and freedom of association, and this is one of the best examples for that.
Also, with bank accounts comes a lot of exclusion. You know you need an ID to have a bank account, but about 1.7 billion people, if not more, are unbanked because they don’t have an ID, and 58% of those are women. Women also don’t have equal accessibility to money. As I said before, and you know it much better than I do, women can’t inherit in Kenya. And there are still many countries where women are limited in managing their own money, in managing assets, and not allowed to own property. And Bitcoin is a tool that enables women to do that without anyone interfering. Basically, if you have your money on a bank account or in your M-Pesa, you don’t really own it.
Then, as I said before, you can use cash, maybe. Cash is in a way great because cash gives you privacy. This is also something that the traditional system less and less gives you. It’s being turned into a system of surveillance. Every transaction is being recorded. Banks know where you purchase what and where your money is coming from and everything. It basically criminalizes us. And cash, of course, also suffers from the same inflation as your money on your bank account because it’s the same fiat currency. You can’t hide cash easily. You can’t transport it easily. It can easily be stolen or taken away from you. You can’t move it out of the country, and if you can – what do you do with it there? And also, more and more authorities want to ban cash, because I believe on the one hand, they say it’s more practical to have digital money and not cash, but I think it’s also to have more control about the money flows, basically. That means cash won’t be around forever, and it also has inflation, and no one wants your cash abroad.
The great thing is now we have an alternative. Bitcoin gives you opportunities that your local currency can’t give you. And Bitcoin is an alternative. I always say it’s an alternative. There are people who say Bitcoin should be the only money, and there will be so-called hyperbitcoinization. If you hear that, I don’t think so. But I actually think it’s great. It’s a big, big success already that we have a working alternative. And from my learnings so far, from being on the ground, talking to people, using it myself, seeing other people, how they struggle with their bank accounts in Zimbabwe, how people struggle with the changes in the money. Each five, six years, a new currency and your old wealth, basically, or your old savings are being wiped out. It’s ridiculous.
With Bitcoin, you can have savings despite national inflation. You can receive remittances from abroad very easily, which is also in many African countries, a real problem, how to get the money inside of your country, how to earn from abroad. In Zimbabwe or Mozambique the same, it helps you to bypass the broken banking system. It’s uncensorable, like I said before, with the example of the Nigerian feminists. There are also no payment limits. It’s not that someone can say, “In Bitcoin, you’re only allowed to send, I don’t know, 1,000 shillings and not more per day.” That’s not a thing.
Anyone can use Bitcoin because you don’t need an ID for it. You only need a self-custodial wallet on your phone. And even if you don’t have a smartphone, you can use a wallet like Machankura for instance, on your regular Nokia phone that’s not a smartphone. It makes international payments easy and cheap and secure. It basically solves the problem also of transactions within the African continent between different countries and globally of course. It gives people, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and also bigger companies and individuals access to a global market, to a global workforce. You can apply for a job in the Bitcoin space that is in the US maybe, and then earn a US salary and receive it via Bitcoin to your home.
And, which is also very important, Bitcoin gives you the opportunity to own your Bitcoin. It really gives you back agency and ownership. Its value comes from its utility and uniqueness because there is no other good cryptocurrency. There are many others I know, and they have different use cases, but for long-term savings, I think Bitcoin is the best. Even for short-term spending and earning of money, it’s great.
Okay, so we said that before, Bitcoin works without IDs or bank accounts, but you have to have it in self-custody. And self-custody is a wallet that gives you 12 or 24 English words. I’m sure you will learn that in the coming sessions, where it’s more specifically about Bitcoin wallets and things like that. Self-custody is important. It gives you the opportunity to send money globally, fast, cheap, private and secure.
If we look at the development of the value of Bitcoin, I rather say value and not price, because price makes it so investment theory, speculation, blah, blah, blah. For me, Bitcoin is a savings instrument and a tool that you can use to easily send and receive and manage your money. The value is basically mirrored in Bitcoin’s price on the market. And as you can see, 10 years ago, in 2017, I think one Bitcoin was about $2,000. The highest value it had was last year in October, and now it went down again. You could say, “Hmm, yes, there’s a lot up and down.” So you need to know that, you need to calculate with that. You need to have liquid money when you need to spend something. You shouldn’t put everything in Bitcoin because you risk that you can’t pay for important things. Always have enough money that you can use to pay the important bills and your living costs and food and whatever. But the money that you will not need, maybe in the next three to five years, you could think about putting it into Bitcoin. But of course, I’m not a financial advisor and you need to know yourself what you’re doing.
But the fantastic thing about Bitcoin is it gives us agency to earn, save, and manage your own money. You can build an independent future for our next generations and for ourselves when we grow old. We can also save together. We can uplift each other by what you’re doing in this fantastic group. We have 60 people here now, 60 women here. I believe it’s a fantastic opportunity.
We all know the stories. I know it from my own history, my own family. It’s happening in Austria of course too, that many men sadly drink a lot. They take the money away, and nothing stays for the family. I believe Bitcoin is really a great opportunity.
Now, you might think when you look at the graph that we saw before, Am I too late now? Bitcoin is now, what did I say, $80,000, one Bitcoin. No, you’re not too late, because the perfect moment to start is always now. It’s better now than in five years. You don’t need to hurry. Start slow. Get acquainted. Learn about it first. It’s also what I did. When I started being interested in Bitcoin, it took me three or four months of intense learning before I dared to change a little bit, and it was really a small amount, into Bitcoin and to use it in my first self-custodial wallet and to see how it works and to get more comfortable with it.
And over time, I added a little bit here, a little bit there, where I could save something. And I can only tell you it’s super. And if this young boy from Bitcoin Ekasi in South Africa can manage a Bitcoin wallet and go and buy some drinks with it, then everyone can do it. And in Kenya, you really have the perfect environment to do it with Tando. I was in Nairobi at the time that Tando just started, and I paid everything in Bitcoin. Every taxi ride, every food I had, everything. And it was great. And I’m really jealous of this opportunity because we don’t have that here. It’s not possible here. There are too many regulations, and people don’t want to spend their Bitcoin because there’s a lot of tax on it, and then for each small payment, you would need to have this administrative headache. This is really fantastic, and I envy you for Tando.
But how can you receive your first Bitcoin? I admit it’s a little bit difficult maybe, but not so much for you, I guess, because you have a lot of peers. But one opportunity, what you could do is you could start using Nostr. Nostr is a decentralized internet network, basically, which you can use just like Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. You can have your own profile there. And the great thing about it is it’s not in an account at Facebook or at Google. It’s like Bitcoin in self-custody. You own your profile and you own your content, which is fantastic.
And the next great thing about it is that if people like what you share, they can send you Bitcoin. What you can see here at the bottom with the yellow arrow, this is for one post on Nostr. I earned 231 Satoshis. Satoshis are the smallest unit of a Bitcoin. 231 Satoshi is a small amount. But over time, if people like your postings and you contribute, you can receive some Satoshi that maybe over time, I don’t know, $5. I don’t know how much that is in Kenyan shillings right now. But it’s an opportunity to get a little bit acquainted with it and to earn some Satoshis.
I just want to show you two apps that you can use for Nostr, one for Android and one for iPhones. I’m using both. I like them both. And you can create a profile there, and you will find out how you can create a Lightning address to receive zaps there. It’s called zaps. You’re zaping someone.
So I can only say please reflect on what we spoke about here or I spoke about. Be the Nosihle in your area. Nosihle is the young woman in the middle. She is the first merchant in Bitcoin Ekasi who started accepting Bitcoin. And just on a side note, also in El Salvador, you might have heard of the project there. It was also a woman, the first merchant to accept Bitcoin. These are the stories we never hear, but they are true, and most women are just badass and can manage their money very well. And I met Nosihle, I think last year in Cape Town, and this was in 2022. I was the first person to basically visit Bitcoin Ekasi. And I met her again, and I said to her, “How are you?” And she was like this over the whole face. Because of course they had to struggle in between because, as you saw, the value of Bitcoin went down. But she kept her bitcoin. She didn’t spend it during that time because she built the trust that it will go up or might go up again, and she just needs to manage her money accordingly. And she did it, and I feel it’s fantastic.
