TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #262: Clean water, a prodigal son's journey, and the Bitcoin Water Trust with Scott Harrison

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

Join Marty as he sits down with Scott Harrison, Founder and CEO of Charity: Water, to discuss: - A prodigal son's journey - Nightclub life - Hitting rock bottom - Turning to a life of charity - Volunteering in Liberia - Starting Charity: Water - How Charity: Water brings clean drinking water to those who desperately need it - Running a charity that allocates funds appropriately - The Bitcoin Water Trust - much more Follow Scott on Twitter Think about contributing to the Bitcoin Water Trust Shoutout to this week's sponsors. Cash App. Start #stackingsats today. Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $10 and contribute $10 to OWLS Lacrosse when you download the app. Lend at Hodl Hodl is a new non-custodial bitcoin backed lending platform, that allows peer to peer lending and borrowing between users, globally, anonymously & on your own terms. Create you offers & set your own terms on lend.hodlhodl.com Compass Mining. Compass wants to democratize bitcoins hashrate and give everyone the ability to strengthen the network while mining bitcoin profitably. Thanks to Compass, it’s never been easier to mine bitcoin. Check them out at compassmining.io Braiins. Braiins are leaders in the mining industry; running Slush Pool, creating firmware to make miners more profitable (Braiins OS+), and building out Stratum V2 to help further decentralize mining and make Bitcoin more robust. Check out their mining profitability calculator.

what is up freaks it's your boy marty bent here to introduce this episode of tales from the crypt i sat down with the ceo of charity water scott harrison to talk about his story charity water's 15-year journey how they're bringing potable drinking water and water wells to people all over the world who desperately needed in their mission to get everybody clean drinking water on the face of the earth a bold endeavor a bold mission but they're doing it and they're implementing bitcoin into their mission as well they have a bitcoin trust which they're currently accepting bitcoin donations for they're going to put the bitcoin in this trust and they're going to hold it until 2025 at which point they will begin

dispersing it to bring more water more clean drinking water to people across the world they're going to hodl and then deploy for a very good reason for a very honorable reason for a very virtuous reason truly virtuous not virtue signaling actually producing water wells that are providing people clean water uh around the world this episode is really interesting and we focus on charity water throughout most of it and getting bitcoin at the end but scott's story is incredibly inspiring and uh it's really uh it was a joy to have a conversation with him about everything that's going on and my father-in-law just turned on the fucking leaf blower uh out back so i'm sorry if the mic is picking that up quite a bit i don't know if he understands how

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That's C-O-M-P-A-S-S-M-I-N-I-N-G.I-O. Last but not least, this rip was brought to you by our good friends at Brains. Brains, double I, B-R-A-I-I-N-S.com. It's a team behind Slush Pool and a team behind Brains OS+, which is mining firmware that allows you to stack more sats with your hash. It extends your hash, makes it go longer. The Brains team tells me that Slush Pool, its update's coming in July. It's coming sometime this month.

Where are we right now? We've been reading that July 9th, they've got 21 days. Is that right? No. 22 days. 22 days, so it was one day behind to get this launched in July. They were just triple and quadruple checking everything in simulations to make sure it's a silky smooth transition when the update does go live. Meanwhile, the latest

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currently supported devices are the amp minor s9 s9i s9j as well as the s17 s17 plus s17 pro t17 t17 plus and the ones that were just added and we mentioned before the s17e and t17e next up are the what's miners of course i'll believe it when i see it along with the s19s from bitmain stay tuned tm for more updates on the firmware and slush pool and check out insights that's i-n-s-i-g-h-t-s dot brains b-r-a-i-i-n-s dot com for content stats charts and mining profitability tools to stay up on top of everything happening in the mining industry enjoy this episode with scott harrison freaks very inspiring story enjoy your weekend enjoy your life enjoy your family enjoy your friends. Love all y'all.

currencies bitcoin is the victor i mean that's part of the bull case for bitcoin if you're not paying attention you probably should be what is up freaks welcome back to tales from the crypt sitting here on the back porch studio today a very nice july summer day here got a nice ocean breeze coming my way. And I'm down, sitting down, excuse me, with Scott Harrison, the CEO of Charity Water, somebody who has one of the most interesting life stories that I've come across. And certainly one of the most interesting stories of anybody I've interviewed on Tales from the Crypt. Scott, welcome to the podcast.

How are you doing? Thanks so much for having me. It's an honor. It's an honor to have you. I guess a little background for the freaks out there. Scott And I met briefly at a party in Miami at Bitcoin 2021. Scott, you explained what you were doing at Charity Water, particularly with Bitcoin and how you're trying to incentivize Bitcoiners to basically donate so that we can get clean water and fresh water to people who desperately need it throughout the world. before we get into uh the the bitcoin aspect of what you guys are doing at charity water i guess we should talk about the history of charity water your story specifically again like i said having watched um a bunch of your talks on youtube throughout the years uh it's pretty wild story how how did you get to our charity yeah maybe not the most traditional path to uh you know

philanthropy or humanitarian work. So like you, we were both born in Philly. So I was born in Philly, middle-class family. My dad was a business guy. Mom was a writer. And when I was four, we moved to South Jersey to get my dad closer to his new job. And we moved into this kind of drab gray four-bedroom house in the dead of winter. The house was advertised as an energy-efficient house, which is fantastic unless said house has a carbon dioxide gas leak, which ours did. So we move in and we all start getting sick. And my dad and I are kind of just sleeping in the house. I was going to school. He was working long hours. Mom is 24 seven in the house. She's unpacking boxes. She's working in the basement. And on New Year's Day, a couple of months after

moving in, she collapses unconscious on the floor. She was kind of the canary in the coal mine. And And this led to a series of blood tests, the discovery of massive amounts of carbon dioxide in her bloodstream. And then eventually to my dad discovering the leak, the gas leak in the heater and ripping it out and throwing it in the curve. And, you know, from from that moment on, my life has kind of changed forever. Our family dynamic was changed. My mom wound up miscarrying and and becoming an invalid and never recovering and living her whole life. with a severely compromised immune system, effectively allergic to the world. So I went into a caregiver role at an early age. Mom and dad stayed together, which was a real miracle. They had a deep Christian faith that they, you know, would cite for, you know, serious values of,

you know, you stand by your partner no matter what, even if she's an invalid. So my dad taught me a lot about integrity and persistence and determination. And I grew up in the church, that kind of good Christian kid who played piano on Sundays. I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up so that I could help sick people like my mom. And then at 18 years old, I realized that New York City was only a couple hours away. And maybe I should just spend a little bit of time exploring life outside the rules, life outside church, life outside the box. And to really not a lot of pride at this point, I went so far off the deep end over the next 10 years in New York City, picking up every vice you might imagine. I became a club promoter. I was out drinking and drugging

and smoking and gambling and you know visiting strip clubs i basically uh turned into this uh decadent hedonist sycophant uh finding perhaps the 180 degree opposite from those values uh the the spirituality morality i was brought up with and you know i had this kind of crazy life that looked very glamorous on the outside i'm dating models that are on the cover of fashion magazines i'm driving a bmw i've got a grand piano in my new york city loft i've got the right watch and you know promoting just for spraying champagne you know from the dj booth on top of club goers and yet i'm morally bankrupt i'm spiritually bankrupt i'm i'm i'm a wreck you know a dumpster fire uh of a human being and it took me a unfortunately 10 years to to hit that kind

kind of bottom. And I started having some health issues, maybe no wonder because of the lifestyle and really just kind of questioned mortality, faith, spirituality, legacy, and just came to this very simple realization that if I died, my tombstone might actually read, here lies a man who got a million people drunk. And I had contributed absolutely nothing to the world. not to the betterment of others i'd lived only for myself and you know long story short this led to kind of a a radical life change maybe act three where i sold everything i owned i quit the drinking and the drugging and the smoking and the gambling and the porn and said i'm gonna i'm gonna find my way back home uh i'm gonna find the complete opposite of my life and see if i can

be of service and that led me to a humanitarian um uh medical mission in liberia west africa as a volunteer at 28 years old which is really where you know my life radically changed i'll pause there i've been talking so long well that's this is one thing we talk a lot about on this show particularly is the sort of hedonist culture that's pervasive throughout society and that's why i love your story so much is that it's somewhat of a hero's journey if you will the way you describe your story particularly when you hit rock bottom uh after a decade of of the club life uh it's really inspiring and it's something that resonates specifically with me and something a message i've been trying to get across on this podcast like to focus on i guess that transition

from you uh sort of noticing that that you were living a hedonist lifestyle if you will and the need to change like i guess to focus on that rock bottom moment like that do you think you needed to experience that that particular feeling to turn into the man that you have today a family man uh running a a charity that's actually doing good work and providing uh others with uh vital um resources particularly water um and like i guess we could start there it's like is that yeah i think the extreme helped for me uh you know it was i mean you know marty one day half my body went numb and inexplicably. And I went and got MRIs and brain scans and you've got hooked up to EKGs and nothing was wrong with me. But I think that was, that was a moment where, oh my gosh,

what if I died? You know, do I, do I believe in heaven and hell? If I still do, I know where I'm going, the way I've been living. You know, starting to kind of think about like, what if I died at 28 years old and this was it um and you know maybe asking those bigger questions that then led to this trip in in punta delesta south america and i just remember you know we were we rented this house and people were waiting on us and serving us and there was a yacht attached to the house and it was my girlfriend was the most beautiful model uh on the whole compound and you know everything was as it should be in this world of partying in south america for two weeks over new year's and i just remember the emptiness the i just remember crying out to god like you know what have i done

you know i mean in in some ways you know you mentioned the hero's journey like it's kind of like the prodigal son story i found myself in the proverbial pig pen you know covered in feces wanting to go back home uh wanting to find my way back home to that spirituality and morality and, uh, purpose. So the funny story is when I, when I actually kind of decided to make a change and go for it, I applied to kind of 10 famous humanitarian organizations that I tangentially heard of. And, uh, everybody denied me because who wants a frigging nightclub promoter, you know, on their serious humanitarian mission. So the only group that took me, made me pay them $500 a month to volunteer. And they sent me to the poorest

country in the world that at that time had just come out of a 14-year civil war, a brutal civil war led by Charles Taylor and a bunch of child soldiers. So I really did find the almost opposite of my life. Instead of making money, instead of spraying champagne, here I'm with a group of Christian doctors paying $500 a month to see if I can be of service in the poorest country in the world. And my role on that, it was actually a huge hospital ship. Marty was a 522 foot hospital ship with about 350 volunteer crew and everybody paid their own way. So that was one of the ways the organization raised money to function was through its volunteer crew. And I signed up be the photojournalist to take pictures and to tell stories of the important work that these

doctors would be doing my third day in west africa i'll never forget being told that the government had given us the football stadium the soccer stadium in the center of the city to triage the patients who would come to see our doctors and a small advanced team had flyered the the country They, you know, posted flyers and said, hey, if you've got a cleft lip or a cleft palate or a tumor or a flesh-eating disease or if a rebel burns you during the war, you know, turn up on this day outside the stadium and our doctors will try to help you. And one of the most transformative moments for me, you know, along the journey was this third day in Africa. And I remember getting up at five in the morning, putting on hospital scrubs, jumping in a convoy of doctors and nurses and surgeons headed to the stadium. And I knew that we had 1,500 available surgery slots to fill. And we would actually hand out 1,500 surgery cards.

And when we turned the corner, there were more than 5,000 people standing in the parking lot waiting for us to open the door. And I just, you know, that hit me hard realizing we were going to send more than 3,000 sick people home without the opportunity to see a doctor because we didn't have enough doctors. and that year uh you know i tried to focus on the hope very quickly and on the on the 1500 people we were able to help the 1500 lives we were able to transform transform and i i finished that year taking 50 000 photographs many of them for the medical library many of them following these patients, their stories of transformation. I mean, some of them already would be ostracized as a volleyball-sized tumor grew from their mouth because people thought they were spiritually cursed. So they would throw rocks at them and they'd have to cover their face. And

what they needed often was just a very simple few-hour medical procedure to remove a benign mass to repair a cleft lip, to remove a cataract, to give someone their sight back. So it was an extraordinary moving experience being surrounded by these doctors who were selfless, who were living the most purposeful lives possible and being there to document it all. And the cool thing was I had 15,000 people on my club list. So like it or not, you know, you went from getting invited to the vip room you know to spend five thousand dollars at a table and bottle service to then pictures of leprosy uh of of medical procedures where i was asking everybody to care and to consider giving money to this organization and maybe to even consider volunteering and i

realized uh some of those people you know some people said take me off the list right unsubscribe unsubscribe i didn't sign up for tumors but others were were really moved and and began to give money and i realized kind of maybe the same gift for storytelling that i had learned employed over 10 years to get people inside 40 different nightclubs telling a story that if you got past the velvet rope if you you know went home with a cute boy or a cute girl if If you drank the best cocktails and sprayed champagne, then your life had meaning. You had arrived. Taking those same gifts and saying, if you care about others, if you are looking for

ways to use your money to end needless suffering, to use your time, your talent, you have arrived. Your life will have more meaning. So it was two years that I did on the ship. And that's really the second year was where I discovered the water crisis. and you know almost by chance even though this was a huge medical mission there were a couple there was one guy who off to the side would go and build five water wells in the rural communities you would basically go hook up five communities of a couple hundred people each with a well that pumps clean water and i remember just thinking it was the most amazing thing i mean i'd sold

first of all i'd never seen humans drink dirty water before and i learned that half the country was drinking dirty water and i had never uh i'd never i i just didn't didn't like i didn't know anything about like oh my gosh people don't have water and and then you can bring people clean water and you get these unbelievable stories of transformation and health and so i really stumbled into the water crisis oh and then i learned that at the time a billion people worldwide one in six human beings alive on the planet didn't have clean water so that was kind of i just stumbled into water maybe as the root cause of so much of the sickness and disease that we were seeing it turned out at the time there was a stat from the world health organization that

said 50 of the disease in a country like liberia was because of bad water and lack of sanitation so one of the the chief medical officers on the ship just said hey kid you know you could you could stick with us and you could take pictures and help us get more people's surgery or you could go out and try to bring everybody clean water and 5 000 people wouldn't be waiting for us outside the stadium if they just had a water drink and i was 30 and i said why not try it sounded so simple and i came back to new york to to start the organization it's again incredibly inspiring and also illuminating about like how something as simple as water something that we take for granted i have a yeti filled with water and ice right now that i'm enjoying just came from my

refrigerator and something as uh an individual grew up in the northeast section of the united States of America, I've never had to think about. But in something that is desperately needed in many parts of the world and in the journey that people go on to get water and the type of water that they're drinking in some of these places is astonishing. I mean, I mean, you've shown videos via Charity Water of people pulling bottles of water out with leeches in them and they try to filter them out. It's not always successful. The sort of taking all this for granted for people in the Western world is it's crazy how big of a problem it is, but how solvable it is as well. um and yeah that's one and and that's that's worth just putting a point on money i mean so

today 785 million people as we're sitting here recording this are drinking dirty water uh it's one in 10 people alive on the planet and you know so many people here listening are you know deep into technology and uh you know as we think of and later talk about bitcoin i mean it's it's of crazy just to think in a world of so much abundance uh in in a world you could even argue of printing cash it seems endlessly 10 of the world doesn't have water doesn't have clean water and the great thing you know and charity water is about to turn 15 years old so i've been at this now for a decade and a half is that we actually know how to help every single human being so So there's not one of the 785 million people right now

who is beyond help. We can get everybody clean water. There's no silver bullet. There's no one size fits all solution. A lot of different things work in a lot of different environments and contexts, but no human being needs to drink dirty water. It's not like, let's say pancreatic cancer, right?

Which still baffles us and kills 90% of the people that come down with it or so, or there's so many incurable diseases where we're frantically deploying medical research, trying to find the cure and the test tube. Waters is not like that. You can drill a well, you can harvest the rain, you can build a filtration system, you can move.

There are just so many different things that work and we know how to do it. We haven't created the movement to do it. We haven't commandeered the global will to do it, but we do know how to do it. Yeah. And I think, again, what you're doing to educate people about this is extremely important. And I think one thing that the message that resonated most strongly with me and something that you have leaned into, and I think more and more people who care about this issue specifically should lean into is the effect it has on women in these areas. and the amount of time that is wasted attempting to to just go and harvest water um imagine the the things these women could be doing if they didn't have to travel hours a day to to go source

this this dirty water and then compound that with the productivity that could be gained from not having a bunch of people who are malnourished and sick from from having to drink the dirty water yeah yeah um I mean look I've been to 69 different countries now since since starting New York I've I've been to Africa 50 times 60 times something like that and it's always the women it's always the girls culturally whether I'm in Central or South America or Africa or India or Southeast Asia the burden falls on the women to collect the water for the family and I don't know what the stat is now, but when we started, I remember there was a UN fat that said 40 billion hours are wasted by women just in Africa walking for water. And most of that water is not clean.

You know, somebody tallied it up and said that's more than the entire workforce of France. Every single human being working over a year in France does not add up to 40 billion hours. So you think of time wasted you think of i realize it's slightly ironic using france as an example but you know you think about like this global unrealized uh economy of work power economic power time turned into productive income that's lost because people are getting water that's not even helpful for them or their families and so is that something that you've you've noticed as you've been getting these these clean water wells in the places is how does it affect the local economy um and what do individuals like the women who would have previously gone to harvest that

water uh what do they do instead yeah access to these yeah well i mean i guess the first thing you know i would just ask people to consider is just just kind of run through your day and imagine you didn't have clean water you know imagine kind of how we just use water and often take it for Brandon, throughout the day, from waking up in the morning and taking a shower and brushing our teeth or, you know, combing our hair, running the coffee machine, going to the gym or the yoga studio. You know, water is such a part of the fabric of our lives. And, you know, what we actually see here is, you know, a woman might wake up at four in the morning and do a six-hour walk to bring 40 pounds of dirty water back for her family and might not you know there's never enough water

when you've got a husband and you've got kids and you've got food that you need to grow and clothes that you need to clean and a small home or a hut that you need to to keep clean as well so i think just the the sheer amount of water i mean someone in the developing world might use 150th of what we use and take for granted every day um water impacts health you know i I kind of touched on that a little bit, you know, obviously impacts women and girls and it impacts the local economy. And so, you know, it's, it is just, it's hard to imagine life without water, but yet that is,

or without clean water. And yet that is the reality for so many people. So, you know, charity water for 15 years has taken a solution agnostic approach. We've got about 14 technologies now that, that we employ across a 20 some country global portfolio. Often they're really simple things that work, Marty. Sometimes it's $12,000 to drill a well and tap into the clean groundwater right underneath the community. And, you know, it's kind of a, you know, the water shoots out of the ground as they flush the well and you've got 300 people dancing, cheering, splashing, you know, basically cheering the arrival of clean water and everybody knowing that life will forever be

changed for the good and you know we do a lot of bringing water and sanitation to schools so there's a huge benefit there and kids go back to school and this is one of the top reasons why teenage girls drop out of school is because they got to go walk for water or their school doesn't have water and then they stay home four or five days every month when you know when the girls get their period, just falling behind in their schoolwork. So, you know, look, you ask what women do. Often women will use the extra reclaimed time to start small businesses and they'll sell rice at the market or they'll sell peanuts or they'll start a brick building business. They'll try to earn some extra income for their family. So it's just a great thing to do. And, you know,

the last thing I'd say, you know, now being in this game for 15 years, Marnie, everybody thinks is a good idea so it's one of the very few things perhaps we can agree on in this contentious divided world uh whether you're a republican or a democrat or a libertarian or an independent you know you're a christian atheist muslim buddhist agnostic everybody can stand for clean water for humans you know it's an inarguable common good and that's allowed us to to build a really big tent of people who believe what we believe that everybody alive on our planet should have clean water yeah and it's i completely agree i mean it's hard to disagree with the fact that clean water is good and most people should have access to it especially if they have the ability

to get access to it i mean it's you just get down to maslow's hierarchy of needs i think everybody can realize and recognize that uh water is on the very bottom of that food water and shelter um and and you would have to be an evil person not to uh want others to have access to that um but another thing you guys do at charity water it's very encouraging and something that you noticed early on is that people have a a very strong uh distrust for charities historically um many charities are are known to get funds pretty aggressively um and that's one thing that you had the intention of fixing when you when you started charity waters bringing transparency and helping give people peace of mind that if they were going to give money to you guys that you're

going to allocate it uh accordingly and and within the mission um as stated and and so i guess how has that helped you as you've been growing this charity for the last 15 years yeah well maybe just kind of taking you back to that founding moment uh so this is 15 years ago me at 30 years old coming back from africa after two years completely broke because number one nightclub promoters are not great at saving money we're very good at spending it and spending other people's money but uh you know not long-term thinkers and then two i had just given everything I had to the medical group I was a part of and the people I'd met in Africa. So I was literally living on a closet floor in Soho, New York for free rent. But again, I had this very clear vision

of what I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to use the rest of my life to bring clean water to everyone. Not a hundred people or a hundred thousand people or a million people, to every single person on the planet or die trying. And I had the advantage of being 30 and knowing people who worked at MTV or Sephora or Chase Bank. You know, I didn't know philanthropists. I knew people who went to clubs. And as I talked to my friends and acquaintances about this idea, I realized most of them didn't trust charities. You know, there was a cynicism, as you mentioned, there was skepticism. I came across a USA Today poll that found 40% of Americans said they didn't trust charities. More recently, NYU did a study that found 70% of Americans believe charities waste

their money, right? It's like one job is to spend money well towards the intended purpose. So there was a huge lack of trust. And as I talked to people, I had a couple of big ideas. Well, first of all, I thought this was a market opportunity. You know, what if I could reach out the skeptical, disenchanted, and get them excited about giving. I believed water would be an issue that could do that. Again, everybody could agree on clean water for others. And then I just had this idea of what if I could promise that 100% of all donations we ever collected from the public would go directly to clean drinking water for people to fund these water project and in a separately audited bank account i would raise all the overhead separately so two

bank accounts right the public bank account the water bank account if a dollar came in or a million dollars came in 100 of that would go directly to help people in need no overhead no staff salaries no office rent no flights no toner for the epson copy machine i would raise all that separately so that was kind of the first pillar and then the second thing was just realizing with this two bank account model we created a non-fungible donation flow so we could use technology to track the donations down to their final uh let's say village and we became the first charity just to put all of our water projects up on google earth and google maps so we said if we you know build 10 water projects you're going to see 10 satellite images and pictures of those if we build 10 000

you're going to be able to see 10 000 of those so kind of proof was this second pillar baked into the organization this belief that if you showed people where their money went the people who were helped he would continue to give we could restore faith in giving and then the third pillar was just this belief that for the work to be culturally appropriate and sustainable you know no dude like me from new york should be running around with a hard hat around uganda you know this work had to be led by the locals uh you know we would go and find the local organizations who could take the money who could operate drilling rigs who could scale their organizations and lead their own countries forward so you know kind of a a local army of water hydro geologists and technicians

and drivers um in each of these countries so we put the 100 model together this this belief that if we proved where donors money went and if we worked through the locals in each of these countries and we kind of took it out to the market and day one of charity water uh i'm kind of sad to say was was a party in a nightclub because i didn't have any better ideas i threw my 31st birthday in a nightclub in the meat packing district and i charged everybody 20 bucks to get in i lured them there with open bar and uh we took the 15 000 in cash we collected that night we took 100 of it to a refugee camp in northern uganda and we did our first few water projects and then we sent the photo and gps and even video proof back to 700 people and we said you came to

a party maybe some of you don't even remember coming to the party but you did and you gave 20 and here's what happened um and that you know those were the first few projects and you know fast forward 15 years and we've raised almost 600 million dollars now for over 60,000 water projects across 29 countries for, you know, this year we're closing in on 15 million people with clean water. Really just trying to run that, a variation on that theme, use 100% of people's money directly for the project to show them impact, have stories of impact, and grow this local partner network.

That's so incredible. Congratulations on all that. And that's another thing that really I think you hit the nail on the head is depending on these local communities to take care of themselves. And that's like there's a Bitcoin podcast. We we're not big fans of the federal government because we believe that everybody in D.C. is so far removed from the local economic information and flow of information that it's literally impossible to make good decisions from a centralized location that is far removed from, again, the flow of information, the grassroots information. and so like partnering i think that's right and and let me just you know let me just say to that like you know people ask sometimes well how do you choose the locations of the wells that's all done at a local level that's done in malawi that's in ethiopia that's done in you know disha india it's done in cambodia by the local partners who will have come to three to five year strategic plans of the areas and regions that have the areas of greatest need that's not us you know cherry

picking any of that from new york it's really a belief that we want to come you know we want to hire forge high integrity partnerships and relationships make sure we've got great audit practices both on the quality of the work and the the flow of money but then really lean on that local expertise to make great decisions and and empower those organizations to lead their communities and countries forward into the future yeah no it's powerful stuff and i mean that's what it's all about right it's empowering people and giving them the just the facilities to and the ability to to make their lives better right i guess it's like if the white man from new york were to come in and try to just like run things uh at a local level in africa it just

doesn't seem as genuine or as advantageous to actually produce the results that that you want which is getting clean water to people so again it's like another decision that you made a charity water it's just extremely commendable and i think smart in the long run that's that's going to produce quality results for these communities and this is something i personally from having helps get a charity off the ground in chicago um it was called it's actually cash sponsor this podcast and they match donations to this charity outreach with lacrosse in schools um owls is the acronym and uh that's one thing i noticed when we were starting that in the south side and west side of chicago is that we we needed to lean on the local community leaders to help us

actually understand how to communicate with with the kids that we were we were coaching yes yep yeah and and part of it is just kind of get out of the way right yeah exactly and and and not only get out of the way but like respect that this is a local community that has its own culture and and you uh if you're going to come in here and try to help should understand that culture and um in the work yeah well i suppose we should talk about bitcoin marty right people like what the heck is this all about why am i listening to this well so right i mean this is this is a bitcoin podcast it is what we get into to these philosophical conversations well how did you find bitcoin and how did you decide to integrate it into what you're doing at charity

water yeah i i got introduced to it in 2014 um by a guy named pete brigger who leads fortress And I met Winston Cesaris and some other people back then didn't understand much about it, but Charity Water has just, we have been early adopters. We're interested in technology. We made one of the first virtual reality films before there were even the VR cameras. I mean, we put eight GoPros on a rig and took it to Africa and made a film. So Bitcoin was interesting to us really in the beginning, just as a way of collecting donations. and turning Bitcoin into clean water, I guess you could say, in the same way we would turn U.S. dollars for Apple stock into clean water. And Tony Hawk was our first Bitcoin donor.

And he gave us 4.8 Bitcoin back in 2014. And we promptly sold those Bitcoin for $312 a coin. And we sent Tony Hawk's $1,500 worth of Bitcoin directly to the field and about 50 people got access to clean water. So Charity Water's first use of Bitcoin. Over the coming years, because we were promoting this on our website and at times to different donors, we wound up taking in 569 Bitcoin. So quite a lot of Bitcoin. And we sold that Bitcoin for $4.4 million. And that's enough to get about 100,000 people access to clean water. It's about $40 a person. So 110,000 people. So I'll just pause there because I think there are a lot of people on the other side of Bitcoin or

critics of Bitcoin that say, what is the use? Charity Water has found a provable use where 110 000 people got clean water through bitcoin uh that's you know five madison square gardens full of people okay it's five staple centers full of people that have clean water because of us you know taking that bitcoin and selling it at spot prices and and charity water was following best practices that's what charities do when we get any asset who is the charity to opinion you know on the future of microsoft stock right or amazon stock the donor gives us 100 grand in stock and wants to go build a bunch of water projects we turn it to cash we then turn it into local currency we go build the water projects so you know this is very much the best practice over

the last kind of year i started getting a lot more interested in and starting to educate myself about bitcoin um you know watching some of the stuff happening with the the value of the dollar, learning more about printing money and inflation and thinking into the future, and just came up with this idea of doing it very differently. Collecting Bitcoin, but promising to HODL for a full cycle, at least four and a half years uh and taking an opinion on the asset so that would be like if you gave us amazon stock i would say i'm not going to sell the amazon stock now because or facebook you know it's a trillion dollar company i think it's going to be worth five trillion five years from now so we're gonna hold

it um very it's not traditional um there was there were a lot of meetings with kpmg and legal to even figure out how to structure this but that's the very simple idea that i you know got to launch from main stage at the Miami Bitcoin Conference, which is we're calling it the Bitcoin Water Trust, where we accept Bitcoin today. But instead of turning it into 35,000 USD or somebody gave us a 10th of a Bitcoin, 3,500 USD,

we are going to lock it up until at least 2025. And we are going to hope and believe that appreciation will happen. And a Bitcoin today, which could help about 8,000 people get clean water. I believe a Bitcoin in 2025 could potentially help an order of magnitude more people get access to clean water. So we launched that from main stage. Very fortunate, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss over at Gemini, who I actually have known for many, many years, even back from my club career,

They agreed to match the first 50 Bitcoin when we got to 50 and, you know, a generous match. And then we've been out there trying to get as much Bitcoin as possible for this for this kind of founding group. And we launched something called the Founding 100, where we are looking for 100 people to do a full Bitcoin. Again, you know, donate it today. Take the tax deduction. Again, pay no capital gains, which is also there's a whole incentive of doing that as well. Not only not paying taxes on the Bitcoin that's donated, you're able, at least in the States and some other parts, to claim the donation. And then we're going to lock it up and we're going to open the trust in 2025. The last thing I'd say about this is we also intend to keep the native currency of the Bitcoin Water Trust, Bitcoin.

So we're not thinking about this in terms of U.S. dollars. We're thinking of this in terms of, you know, could we get enough Bitcoin in this trust by 2025 to go help 20 million people get clean water? Now, that would be about a billion dollars today. But again, we're hoping to even when we unlock the trust in what, four years or so, to start spending the money as we build water projects in Bitcoin or spending the Bitcoin. it's a beautiful thing i mean you've you've you've learned the lesson that many bitcoiners including myself have learned throughout the time is that uh if you hodl over a cycle you're gonna have significantly more purchasing power and the fact that you're locking this up for the purpose of getting people clean water i mean it's just incredible and i'm actually i just spun up a a um a donation address so if you freaks want to donate go to uh charitywater.org slash bitcoin uh and you'll be able to easily uh spin up an address to donate i'm i'm putzing along yeah

and because i'm opening that's awesome i really appreciate the i appreciate the generosity and and the gift and you know look we're gonna we're showing right now there's i think it's 41.2729 bitcoin so we're getting close to unlocking the 50 match the minute we get to 50 they drop 50 and then we've got 100 bitcoin in the trust and you know you can see there people can give uh using their name they can give pseudonymously they can give anonymously you can give and get a tax receipt um depending on what country you live in and uh you know the whole thing is just going to be transparent and and when the bitcoin starts going out in 2025 and beyond you know we're going to track the impact as as well so in in some ways it's such a simple idea there's not a lot to it

give now let charity water and this trust take on the appreciation let us create that story of bitcoin going out and and helping you know we believe millions and millions of people across the world maybe we can even be helpful with with bitcoin adoption at some point in the future you know with some of our partners in ethiopia and ghana and bangladesh and nepal cambodia some of the the great places where where we work but um yeah of course everybody is is is more than welcome to to please consider donating um if you've got a full bitcoin that'd be amazing if if it's a fraction of one you know it's really about participation um as marty said it's just just charitywater.org slash bitcoin and and everything up to 50 is matched and and we're

still trying to get to that 50 number i do not have a full bitcoin on my mobile wallet i just sent five million stats um and yeah i highly recommend awesome uh everyone doing this is a cause i mean it's important like so i guess this is uh maybe an interesting topic to end it on like what is the state of water security like even in the western world like there's a you hear stories of michael berry investing in water assets because he's worried that that water is beating uh at a at a rate that is uh alarming to him specifically of bill gates buying up a bunch of farmland on top of water aqua forest for who knows what uh that's like one theme that that is starting to grow at least in investment spaces and um in the macro landscape is is water

security and and what things can we be doing even in the western world to to secure water supplies and make sure that we have enough water for a population that that is continuing to grow may level off in the next few decades but like like do we need to do more rain gathering activities do we need to work on harnessing snow-packed water and filter filtering that like what are what are some things that you believe we need to do more efficiently with water and just globally yeah i mean look i i'm much less of an expert on water domestically than you know in the countries where we work i mean we are very much focused on the the developing world. You know, America officially has 100% water coverage. Now,

we know that's not true. There are certainly water scarce areas, you know, in some of the Native American lands, that's in parts of Appalachia. And I think we're seeing droughts, right? Well, we're seeing, you know, we saw Flint, Michigan, right? Very different contamination issue there that required what over a billion dollars of infrastructure repairs and remediation to to get that water clean again you're seeing droughts in in california so i think absolutely uh will conservation technology is needed to conserve the water here and there is a great group that i was trying to shout out for people you know who care about domestic work they're called dig deep and they exclusively work on those communities in america that are water stressed and

and you know have scarce water so if that's something you're passionate about go check them out um you know the reality is if if you use less water today marty or i use less water today it doesn't help a woman in ethiopia not walk her seven or eight hours every day you know a well does not pop up in her community um so you know there's i think the water certainly uh we're all all connected right there's a it's kind of the connective tissue of the planet but you know we've just we've really stayed focused on you know trying to bring that set the current 785 million people without water number down to to zero um and there's a lot of great groups working on conservation and new technologies here in the states for sure yeah that's one thing i never

understood is like why the government here specifically has like a aversion to allowing people to to collect and filter rainwater it's always something i never understood that either i i never understood that either um i mean that's one of the things we actually do we work in the the desert of um in the in rajasthan in the far deserts where at least maybe until recently the hottest recorded temperature on planet earth was and there we can't drill wells because the water table is so deep you know it would require a huge amount of energy to get the water out of the ground from such a depth so there what we do is we work with the communities and we build kind of giant um cement but our harvesting catchments it's worth the rain

and then pump it out right next to their house and it's it's protected by of concrete so there's it doesn't evaporate so i mean rainwater collection harvesting is it's something that we employ across our portfolio and it's a it's a really viable solution in parts of the world yeah we need to we need to be more this that's like another thing that we're really passionate about here on this podcast being more efficient with our resources rather the energy resources which bitcoin helps on the mining side by finding stranded and wasted energy sources and utilizing them to produce blocks um but like water specifically especially if there is an increasing scarcity in certain areas of the world like we should be doing everything we can to gather and

use as much water as possible to be as efficient as possible when it comes to water falling and and collecting it and distributing it to local communities. So I'm very pumped to hear that you guys are utilizing RAIN collection technologies throughout your portfolio because that's something that's never made sense to me here in the United States specifically is why the government is against it. Scott, this has been an incredible conversation.

It's been fun. Thanks for letting me share. Thank you for coming on. And I really appreciate honor to have you on here. I think the work you're doing is incredibly important. And again, like I think it's an incredibly inspiring story going from the hedonist party nightclub lifestyle to your, again, like a very dedicated family man helping others in a selfless way throughout the world. And I guess to end it, I would just like to ask you, like, how much fulfillment do you have now compared to that time in your life when you're out clubbing, partying, doing drugs and stuff like that? If there's anybody in the audience who is in their mid 20s, I mean, I was very similar living in Chicago, New York City throughout my 20s, definitely partied and went out and spent more money than I probably should a lot of times.

um and since having a kid myself and dedicating myself to to bitcoin in this mission i certainly feel more fulfilled but um i think it's important for individuals in their 20s to to realize that like going out and clubbing every night is not necessarily the best use of your time and money yeah i mean maybe put simply marty i found there's such a freedom in in helping others and you know i wake up and i say how can i use what god's blessed me with to bless others sometimes that's time and mentorship sometimes that's my personal money that we're able to give as a family to 20 30 different causes we support um it's time but you know i look around the local community the global community and say how can i end this needless suffering you know

what good can we do today? It's funny, my family model, before I even knew how this applied to the Bitcoin community, our family model, I've got almost five and almost seven-year-old, is how can I help? And my kids come down on very good mornings and say, hey, dad, how can I help? But you can load the dishes or you can set the table. So I think it's maybe how can we be of service um how can we be perpetually of service and when you shift from accumulation and you know talking with um i mean it's like you know i think sometimes that that could that could even be a challenge for this community there's never enough bitcoin right everybody has such a universal long view um but but can we share you know can can we share you know what is that enough moment when we

can we can be generous so uh i think about that deeply and and try to uh try to just walk the talk uh myself yeah and i think you're certainly uh backing up your talk with action you're walking the talk and yeah i think uh i think you mentioned water is universally accepted whether you're on the left or on the right is something that everybody can agree should be accessible to every human on earth. And I think finding these topics that bring people together, like access to water, just creates the ability to have more civil conversations as you move out to more controversial topics that rule the day. So I think something like you're doing helps bring some more civility to conversations, which is important.

Some common grounds. Some common grounds, yeah. Agreed. That's what we're trying. Well, Scott, I know you've got your family to get back to. I really appreciate your time. Again, the work that you're doing. Freaks, if you're listening, again,

charitywater.org slash bitcoin. If you want to help push the bitcoin donations to 50 so that the matches will start, um we're getting pretty close um is there anything that you want to just yeah the only other thing you know people are interested in maybe um we've got a video online um in another community called the spring uh which is kind of our our monthly givers you know think of that as spotify or netflix or disney plus for clean water uh where we share stories and content but 100 of the money goes straight to the field and there's a there's a video of the charity water story there that's

gotten about 60 million views across platforms and that's that's something that's another way people could help you could go you could um kind of check out that video see some of the images and and video of some of the stories i was talking about and share it share it with your colleagues your friends your family your kids um charity water is a very small marketing budget so it's really we rely on word of mouth and passionate ambassadors so yeah if you've got some bitcoin And that'd be amazing to donate to the trust, but you can also just become kind of a, you know, supporter of Charity Water through, through the spring and check out the video. So that's just the spring.com.

That's money. Well, thank you, Scott. Keep crushing it. And hopefully we'll be able to do this again at some point in the future with some, with some even better news about, about people. I'd love that. I would love that. Yeah.

Maybe some cool use cases of Bitcoin actually drilling wells. That'd be real fun. Yeah. we'll definitely need to get an update um we'll definitely have to talk after the 2025 fund is uh is released and allocated for sure for sure thanks for having me on thanks for joining us scott that's all we got this week freaks peace and love