TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - Tales from the Crypt #9: Zah

Episode Date: January 8, 2018

Join Marty as he sits down with Barstool's resident Zimbabwean, Zah, to talk about the history of Zimbabwe, its political situation, what people use as money during bouts of hyperinflation, and how people are using Bitcoin in the land locked African country north of South Africa.

what is up freaks welcome back to tales from the crypt it's your boy marty bent we're in the year 2018 it's been a few weeks since we met here on the internet sorry for the hiatus that takes some time off you know recalibrate it's been it was a crazy 2017 in the crypto markets bitcoin specifically all coins more heavily towards the end of the year in the beginning of this year uh yeah it's totally been chaotic uh there's been crazy crazy crazy all coin pumps in the first couple weeks or first week of the year we're not even a weekend yet um and towards the end of last year um but today uh as you all know we do this here at barstool sports radio or excuse me in barstool sports studios and as some of you may know there's a lot of characters

uh in this office and it's this is an office of characters and uh one of which i'm very interested in uh from a bitcoin perspective because he has a better perspective than all of us when it comes to money and how it can be bad how it may be good um and how bitcoin may help he's not a bitcoin expert per se but he's uh he's he's experienced some monetary turmoil in his life i want to introduce you all to Zaa. Zaa, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me, Marty. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk about the Zimbabwean currencies and Bitcoin. Yeah, well, thanks for coming on. I appreciate you taking some time out of your Friday afternoon.

I'm sorry, I did not bring any alcohol today. I usually feed my guests alcohol. I did not bring any today. That would have been awesome. Nah, it's all right. It's all right. It's actually my New Year's resolution not to drink. I had a very tough New Year's Eve. Yeah, what happened? Oh, man. One of my friends was actually in town from Zimbabwe. We went to high school together, and so I had to take him out in the city,

and we had a good time New Year's Eve. And then that New Year's date, my resolution was I'm not going to drink. So I'll see how long I can keep that up. I think about 80% to 90% of the people in this country had that same resolution. That's usually what happens. You get the massive hangover, and it's like I never want to drink again. Well, I'm about five days in, so I think I'm doing pretty good. Usually, you know, it's out the door by now, but I'm five days in and keeping strong.

I think I've been good, too. I've been good this week. I tried to lay off the sauce for the first week. There you go. There you go. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to negate that tonight. Exactly. It's the first weekend, actually, after New Year's Eve, so we'll see.

This is the true test, actually. It is. It really is. And I am weak-minded. I'm not going to be able to contain myself. But, yeah, so, again, I wanted to bring you in. You're from Zimbabwe. Yes, sir.

So you moved here eight years ago now. Eight years ago, 2010, yeah, from Zimbabwe. 2010. To study finance. To study finance. Where'd you go to school? I went to school in Tampa, University of Tampa. Awesome.

Shout out the Spartans. So you're not used to this bomb cyclone weather? No, no, no. So these are actually my snow boots. So for those that can't see this, my snow boots are a pair of Nike free runs that just do not do well as snow boots. Yeah, they're not really water resistant. Yeah, not at all. So, yeah, that was a rookie move on my part.

I learned yesterday when I had to go pick up Dave's lunch and it was piles of snow that were like waist high. and well yeah it's uh yeah i mean i used to live in chicago and this is uh this is very reminiscent of chicago weather i think chicago is a little worse than new york right now but uh it hasn't been this cold on the east coast uh in a while yeah so so i hear so i hear so and i immediately after that after yesterday i put in an order on amazon for a pair of snow boots i'm actually gonna do the same i'm rocking bands right now my boots from last season are actually destroyed so i need to pick up a new one i've been slacking on that but away from weather and back to monetary talk. So, yeah, this is why I brought you in. I was telling Za before the show that

I had Santiago Sirion from Argentina. He had a very interesting story about how they had bouts of hyperinflation and political turmoil throughout his life, and sort of how Bitcoin can fix these problems. And I thought it would be great to have you in the studio to talk about Zimbabwe's story, sort of how it got to the point of hyperinflation there, and the political situation with Robert Mugabe and everything, that's sort of happening with that right now, or the last few years. Yeah, yeah. The last few years.

I guess it's happening right now. I mean, though he's out, it's happening right now. But yeah, no, we, just to dive into just a little bit of history economically from Zimbabwe, we got our independence in 1980, and we were dubbed the breadbasket of Africa. So we were meant to be the model state in Africa. everybody look at Zimbabwe they're great you know they're gonna do great in the future and all that and we had all I mean we had all the we had all the ingredients for for for for a healthy successful healthy healthy economy we had you know a lot of minerals mineral rich the the workforce was

very educated I think we I don't know if we still do but uh at one point for a very long time we had the highest literacy rate in Africa and all that good stuff so we were the model state you know the the the the the one to to look at and for the first uh mugabe mugabe president as you mentioned president mugabe was was uh he was president uh from independence was it uh representative democracy at this point yes uh yeah yes you know what i think it was more was more say let's uh you know for lack of better terms i don't mean this in a mean way or whatever It was more say, all right, let's just get the white man out. So we would, at that point, I mean, if you're going through colonialism, you'd understand.

At that point, anyone that exerted some sort of leadership qualities and all that, and if you were just black, people would follow you. I felt like that. Well, at least that's my opinion. And Mugabe was there. He was the right man. Well, right place, right time kind of guy. you know he he himself didn't actually fight in the liberation struggle he was he was under arrest

for for for the for most of the time and all that but he came in he was educated you know he wasn't like a guerrilla type and so they they were like all right people backed him they were like all right you lead us and kind of so when he took over economically we were doing the british left us in very good shape okay and for for the first i would say for the first 10 years so from 1980 to 1990 we were doing very well and so was there any like term limits or anything over there was or was he just elected so so when when uh when they came in i think we took over the constitution that the british had uh had had left initially and as as the term as he went through his term that's when they started you know making changes to to the to the actual constitution

so they made changes to the constitution that allowed him to be president pretty much for for 30 37 years holy shit yeah so were the people mad when that happened were they was he a good leader up to that point they're like initially initially as this is because the economy was doing great and all that though i mean every every leader has his good and his bad so when he took over he he's from the major tribe in zimbabwe when he took over he went and he pretty much to to consolidate his power the first move that he did i think it started the operation started in 1983 if i'm not mistaken is uh he went and he you know he he conducted pretty much a genocide against against the the other less dominant tribe you know just to consolidate his power so that's

the major major black mark from his early years that he has to his name okay people thing but But apart from that, economically, we were doing great. We still had a lot of the white guys didn't leave immediately. The part of the deal when we broke the independence from the British was, you know, you slowly ease in. So we still had actually, we still had white people still, well, part of the white people from the previous colonial government, still part of the government structures. They're still hanging around. Exactly. Helping. It was more of a transitional period. That's the term I was looking for. Thank you for helping me.

It was more of a transitional period where, you know, they were still very active and all that. And that's when we're doing great. So this is like mid-'80s? Yeah, this is mid-'80s. Actually, throughout the 80s. And then I was born in 1990, and we were doing pretty awesome. Till about, I'd say, probably 1996, that's when the first... Yeah, there was a global currency crisis, Latin American, Russian currency crisis.

There was a lot of currency crisis around there. I actually had no idea because that's actually when all of a sudden the highest denomination for our notes in Zimbabwe at that point was a $50 note. Then all of a sudden you see we start, they produced a $100 note of Zimbabwean currency. So still when we had our own currency. So those were the early signs that only probably the experts, the economists and all that could start seeing. everything else was it was it was a gradual inflation so people didn't it's like the boiling of the frog exactly analogy exactly you can put a put a frog in water and and if it's laying in that water and you start boiling i won't realize that it's boiling until it's dead uh-huh then now

into into the late 90s to the early 2000s that's when you could see that there's something up that's when you know it slowly started going up and so was there any like uh justification for for the printing of the higher denominated notes was there was the economy suffering and they said we need to print more money dump it in uh to help stoke growth or was it more just trying to to buy uh goods outs goods outside of zimbabwe early early stages at the early stages i really don't think so but towards the end of the 90s early 2000s yes that's when you could see that the economy was you know it was struggling a little bit that's when you know more printing next thing you know we have a hundred dollar note next thing we have a five hundred dollar note a thousand

dollar note and all that it got up to a trillion and uh that that was toward that was at the end that was towards the end we'll we'll get to that but yeah so so what triggered what triggered our downfall is that whole the selfish the selfishness now the whole racial going back to the colonial times all right let's let's kick the white man out completely okay so the man in which and and And how Africa was colonized was when the white man came, right, what he did excellently. Because, you know, as a human being, you look out for your own interests and what he did, what the colonizers did excellently was they pretty much made sure that going into the future, us, the indigenous people, for us to succeed, we would need to rely on them. so they didn't teach us their techniques as to you know how to farm well how to do this this well and all that they segregated us there were schools for black people and white people only that type

of stuff so that happened they created dependency they created that dependency and now when when when uh we wanted when when the government said you know let's let's have we want we want our land we want the whole country now you know they kicked out they kicked out those white people that occupy the very productive farms that that were the backbone agriculture was the backbone of our economy agriculture and mining so they were kicked out and replaced by by indigenous people who aren't skilled so even you could be a medical doctor at that time anyone and everyone you could sign up i could go there as a as a 16 year old register or and i'll get exactly so you see that there you see an immediate floor right there then you got anyone from any walk of life that is

now entitled to productive land land that was the backbone of the economy okay so because of those people coming onto that land it doesn't it's not as productive anymore right so they don't they don't know how to make it productive exactly exactly so backbone of your economy slowly is you know degrading and and uh we had a genius i'm being sarcastic that genius uh reserve bank uh governor at that time that uh had no had he actually had no background in economics i believe he i think his only educational his highest educational formal his highest formal education was was high school so he was a high school grad i don't think he went to college he was given an honorary doctorate because that's how we that's how we roll in africa

anyone and everyone can get a high a doctorate so uh he he took over as governor and he violated economic economics 101 principle that you know to fix to fix a crisis print more money type of thing so that was his response to to uh to to our economic crisis just print more money and as you know that leads to that leads to inflation and in your case hyperinflation and due to the as as the years went on and on you know the 2002 was when was when the that land reform that land reform let's take back our land thing was you know put into full effect that's when a lot of the white farmers were kicked out so because of that i mean you know you're killing people's livelihoods other people are seeing that seeing you do that right you get you get rattled it could be me next

type of thing so people started leaving so there was a mass exodus big exactly a big brain drain These are qualified, educated people leaving the country because, you know, they don't feel secure. They don't feel like their livelihoods are secure. So that went on, and, you know, they printed, printed more currency, and that seriously went out of hand. It got to the point where if you pull up on Google, if you just Google Zimbabwe inflation, you'll if and you go to the images you'll run into a picture of a little kid that that uh i mean i'll call it as it is this this you know you can you can tell that he's a he's a poor he's from the poor walk of life that little kid right there poor walk of life and he's got in in your in what in

what functional society that does a poor man have that much currency on him yeah and what's it called and that at one point could barely buy you a loaf of bread. To further describe what Zah's talking about, this kid's holding, he's probably three and a half feet tall. Yeah, he's like six years old or something. He's got three huge stacks of $200,000 bills. Oh, yeah. It's crazy.

So you would go to the store and that could buy you a loaf of bread one second. And it got to the point where we're in a line. We're in a line. We're doing our grocery shopping. I'm holding the same types of goods that you're holding. I get charged, let's say, $2 million. You're the next person in line.

They'll stop it, recalculate according to what's going on in the streets, the exchange rate and all that. Then you, when you come up to pay, it could go from $2 million to $8 million. Holy shit. This is like in a matter of seconds. Like that. How are they even figuring that out? That's hyperinflation right there at its best.

It's crazy how it was constant adjustment, constant on the phone with people on the street. What's the U.S. dollar going for against the Zim dollar type of thing? It's fast calculations. At some points, they would actually stop. Like in major, major, the main grocery stores, they would stop people for a little bit while they figure out the situation, the pricing situation and all that and continue so what was uh what was the vibe like amongst the citizens of zimbabwe at this point like what like how like how did you even get like your hands on that much cash like was it just being printed at like banks you would walk up the wheelbarrow walk

away with it or oh yeah they literally flooded they flooded the what's in his response to anything was just print a higher note and print a lot of it so they literally flooded the market with they they flooded the economy with currency as you can see by that little kid holding, holding that. And it was, it was crazy, man. It was, it was, it was nuts. But that, I mean, how, how, how sustainable, how sustainable can that be? It's not sustainable. Exactly. So due to that now arose the, the, the, the, the informal black market. So the people's market. So that's more,

that's where people were either you, you, you, you would either trade in foreign currency or some form of commodity, some commodity that you know it's a store of value so like for example the the joke i tell which is not really a joke is which which was real life at the time is uh for school fees for example school fees uh you could go to a school the beginning of beginning of the year school a guy would pull up in an ml a mercedes-benz ml that uh that a mercedes-benz suv with like goats in the back so livestock is a form of yeah that's like goats in the back to come pay school fees I paid for my high school

towards the end of it I used to pay it in gas in gas for like car like oil and stuff like that so that's what happens we're taken back to the stone age where we were barter trading now no currency

because our currency literally did not store any value and you'd be an idiot to give well not really an idiot but people would refrain from giving actual foreign currency because a foreign currency was valuable at the time.

So they would look to barter when they could. Yeah, so I'd rather give you a goat than pay you in U.S. dollars type of thing. So that went on, and so the formal system completely collapsed. So you'd go to a grocery store and find nothing on the shelves. However, if you step outside the grocery store, there'd be guys sitting outside there with every single thing that you needed for your groceries really yeah so then the formal system collapsed the informal system uh completely thrived rose in its ashes oh yeah and it was it was very prominent it thrived it did very well and so

what year what year are we in right now so we're in uh so right now we're about let's say the peak of it we're like 2006 the peak of it was was was 2008 printed out a 500 trillion dollar note printed out a fight this that's 500 trillion with a t by the way that was after actually dropping dropping i think they they dropped zeros twice so they dropped three zeros and dropped another three zeros from our currency so that was after dropping six zeros so that 100 trillion an actual actual zim currency add another six zeros to that that's what that was i don't know if you follow it seems like hocus pocus just like manipulation yeah mayhem complete mayhem so dropped a couple zeros that that that hundred trillion dollar note was in circulation for about uh three four days

and then they just decided you know what this is this is not this is not working whatsoever this is dead the formal formal economy with at that point was worth about uh two billion dollars or something crazy yeah so everybody at a certain point just put their hands up and it's uh the old saying like uh these empires don't go out with a bang they go out with a whimper it was just one day everybody was just like oh yeah they were just like they were done yeah because because i mean they were printing money but no one was actually using that money no one people were not accepting U.S. dollars, sorry, Zim dollars anymore. It was either foreign currency or gas kind of thing.

So that collapsed. They scrapped it completely, so we have no formal currency of our own right now. This is now 2008. Inflation was, experts will tell you inflation was 100 million percent or whatever. The truth is it was unmeasurable at that point. They'll pin a number to it. Whoever pins a number at that point in 2008 is lying to you. It was unmeasurable.

it was so high it was unmeasurable so pulled the currency scrapped it completely adopted a multi-currency system with uh with the main one being uh being the u.s dollar because that's that's the currency of the world and then we're also we're boarded by south africa so south african rand the rand was very prominent the botswana the botswana pula too depending on the side of the country that you're on was being used in some uh some parts of the country uh the british pound the British pound too, people would accept that. Not as freely as the U.S. dollar, but people would accept that. The euro, the same way.

You'd bargain a little bit. Exactly. The two main ones, the two ones that we're using were the rand and the U.S. dollar. So, yeah. So, that's 2008 now. Things stabilized a little bit. Yeah. And so, was this like a formal multi-currency market or was it just like a black market

where people were like, all right, we're only going to accept- They finally formalized it. Okay. Formalized it in 2008, the black market before that existed probably, that came into existence probably like 2004 or something. So the black market was already trading in those. So has Zimbabwe stabilized at all since you went to a multi-currency system? Yeah, so what the multi-currency system did was just stabilize things, no actual real growth. So our problem stems from the politics.

That's where our main problem stems from, the corruption of the politicians and, yeah, from the political situation, which I probably shouldn't get too into because, you know, you never know who's listening. It's one of those places where, you know, you can't think. But, yeah. I'm not going to make you go there. No, no. It stemmed mainly from the political situation. So if that's not sorted out, you know, the economy cannot thrive. Wow.

See, this is exactly why I wanted to bring you on, because literally I was telling you before the show, as Americans, as somebody who was born and raised here, we literally cannot fathom a system like this. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. You're very fortunate to be having a stable political situation. I want to call the political situation unstable. Trust me, it is very stable.

You don't have people. You don't have Donald Trump trying to kill Elizabeth Warren just because she's a Democrat. That's true. That's what happens in Africa. If you're opposition in Africa, your head is taken out immediately kind of thing. So at least in that sense that it's a little bit stable. I will ask you this. Are you optimistic?

I mean, yeah. I mean, you know, we're at rock bottom. We can only go one way now. we're literally we're literally at rock bottom we can only go one way and that's up and i'm optimistic there has been uh so let's actually let's run through run through 2008 to up until now so multi-currency system just to just to give it some just to give what i'm going to say some perspective multi-currency system is adopted uh there's there's some political change there was serious uh serious opposition the first ever serious like opposition party that contested

elections they stayed i mean they came into existence in 2009 but the first one where where the ruling party was actually rattled was the one in 2008 because things were bad then they had to bring them into into what's what's called a unity government that's when there was no no majority so you know you combine the two parties and you form a unity government that's when things stabilized a little bit we got a little help from the international community because of the presence of the opposition the international community backed the opposition so things stabilize they came in um 2013 we had another election because the unity government was a temporary measure for four years okay but as you know in in africa in most african countries

the the ones that aren't as politically mature like south africa most african currents countries uh power only changes via the gun so 2013 came an election that uh because that unity thing uh collapsed the ruling party of course won in the 2013 2013 till now has been tough it's you know it's we've gotten to rock bottom we're using the u.s dollar it's it's it's not our own money so it can't facilitate any growth we just don't have it's not as liquid the the economy is not liquid enough to actually facilitate any real economic growth so we've just stayed stagnant and yeah we just had a coup we just had a coup uh this uh this past year towards the end of the past year robert mcgabee so this was just the rule this was actually within the ruling party so opposition is

not involved it was factions the ruling party politics they broke up and all that and two factions mcgabee was mcgabee's 97 now or 93 or however old he's in the 90s so they were they They were trying to plan a succession plan. He wanted to rule till he died kind of thing. But the two factions that were fighting from within, one of them made a bad move that triggered the coup. So the army, the military, was backing one of the factions. And the one that was not backed by the military made a bad strategic move. And that triggered the whole military coup.

Mugabe was ousted. And this guy that's favored by the military was put into power by the military, and he rewarded some of those guys that held the coup for him. Now they hold the government positions. Wow. Like I said, I can't even fathom it. It's crazy. The amount of strength that I feel the Zimbabweans have to have after going through all this is something admirable. that's one thing we are resilient and we survive yeah so what um so you still have family back in

zimbabwe so so i'm i'm a zimbabwean as they come um i was born around just here temporarily for for my studies and you're gonna bring the brain back uh yeah yeah eventually who knows when eventually but uh yeah i hope i'm hoping the the environment allows for for i'm hoping with this change this guy this guy it's still a wait and see period with this new leader to see to see how he truly is he's only been in power for like a month or two so i'm hoping he he he provides an environment that that allows for that allows for for the talent to come back and actually help the country out um before we get into bitcoin stuff one thing i'm more interested to talk about is like how has the internet affected anything like down there like from

a from an information spreading perspective has it helped at all do you think so so it's it's it's It definitely has. The use of the internet is growing a lot exponentially. Does it help delegitimize sort of the ruling factions? Yes, yes. So the big, big thing that people down there now use, and I'm looking for the term. The big thing that people use down there is WhatsApp. Okay. WhatsApp, that was just recently bought by Facebook, and that's really allowed, that's democratized how information is spread.

So these WhatsApp groups, you know, the ruling party propaganda, the media machine, you know, will say this one thing, but you'll get the truth, like in WhatsApp groups and stuff like that. So rumors, the coup and stuff, that's actually how I kept up with what's going on. It's through, you know, people sending you stuff through WhatsApp. So the internet, it really does help, it has helped a lot. But it's not really, the use isn't really as widespread as, you know, it's in the cities. Yes, everyone has access to it and all that, but the rural areas are still playing catch-up,

and that's where the majority of our population is, in the rural areas. I'm ignorant to this. I'm fucking ignorant. No, no, no. How big is it, by the way? How big is the population? So last time we had a census before the brain drain, the last census we actually had was in 2000, in the year 2000

and there was about 13 million of us okay I would say with the brain drain and people leaving and stuff like that right now

I would put the population probably at about 8 8 million okay yeah 8 million people wow and yeah

so about 4 about 3 million of those live in the major cities the rest live really yeah that's the thing that's why I love this podcast

that's why I love being able to talk to people like you we're stuck in I'm stuck I'm stuck in this bubble in the northeast part of America and you really

and that's why i love the internet i wanted to bring that up is because it sort of breaks these boundaries and creates empathy and lets you let you hear these stories say holy shit how can how can we make it so their lives are more similar to ours it definitely is breaking a lot of boundaries it's it's helping out a lot with the communication and all that the internet is people people love it down there people people it's just it's it's uh at this stage it's not a widespread commodity so it's a little bit a little bit expensive so not not the the average joe can't can't you know can't afford to be on the internet kind of deal okay but as as it grows and the influence of it grows it's becoming cheaper now and more accessible and and all that type of stuff

okay um mpeza is that using zimbabwe at all that's uh east africa east africa no i actually don't know i've i've heard i've heard uh it's i've been meaning to actually look into into impeza but uh i heard it's it's it's a very innovative uh innovative uh payment uh payment thing right that yeah it works for your burner friends from what i understand yeah yeah yeah i i i don't know much about it because that's in kenya yes mainly it i think it originated from kenya but i've been meaning to i've been meaning to i've been meaning to barstool barstool's keeping me busy that's my excuse i just showed some of my ignorance let's see another thing americans don't realize is just how big africa is like i have no idea what's going on in kenya it's it's

it's huge zimbabwe's like the size of it's the size of florida probably actually it's just probably the same size as texas or just actually just a bit smaller than the state of texas and that's a tiny country in africa by the way zimbabwe's tiny really yeah it's a tiny country in africa it's like almost the size of texas damn this is a lot like oh yeah i'm very happy right now happy to be here so yeah again i wanted to bring you in because obviously zimbabwe has the monetary crisis i'm into bitcoin i talk about bitcoin here um you hear things on the internet about zimbabweans taking advantage of of bitcoin but obviously it seems like not every zimbabwean has access to the internet they probably don't have the amount of money to funnel into bitcoin

so what have you heard i know you've you've heard some stuff about bitcoin in zimbabwe what's what's the word on the street there are people using it do they find it helpful um can you help give us some so so uh so uh because of the because we don't have our own currency as as we as i mentioned a little bit earlier because we don't have our own currency um there's there's a shortage of actual hard cash right so so it's in our culture our culture so far we're not we haven't converted into like the the card system and all that though they are that that technology is present in the cities it's just a cultural thing we haven't transitioned from from hard cash because you can't trust in africa you can't trust you can't trust the person that's right in front of you

exactly so that card people don't trust that they need like that hard cash kind of thing so because we don't have enough of that circulating people are looking for alternative ways to to store value so it's it's a trust thing you you deposit uh you deposit your money your hard-earned money you deposit into a bank you go to the bank the next day you try withdraw your money they tell you they don't have any currency in the system so that's your money stuck in the bank yeah you go there they might give you five dollars in like quarters type of thing really so because of us because of that situation where you know you hand in your money and you can't get back from the banks that trust uh that trust has been broken with that quickly that's why stuff

like bitcoin now is kind of coming into play now but it's not uh it's not fully accessible to the ones uh to the people in the rural areas and all that but people in the cities are beginning beginning slowly to use it really people in the cities yeah i know a lot of my friends that have bitcoin accounts in there they're using it uh to trade in uh in zimbabwe to facilitate that that gap that void that was left with by uh not having enough currency in the in the economy what um so how are they using are they using as like a store value as a savings account so they can no they're actually using it for for what i believe for what i believe bitcoin was made for okay for actual transactions all right so let's get into this yeah so they're they're actually they're actually

using it to try buy stuff and sell stuff but this is not on the formal this isn't this is an informal market okay and the formal thing they still they still uh you know they still accept the the formal forms of payment the cash cards but you know there's no cash and then people don't have money in their banks because they don't trust them sorry and no i'm sorry for interrupting you there's this is a very interesting topic right now because that's a huge debate going on the bitcoin world is is it a trend is it possible to be a transactional currency right now because the the the nature of the protocol is so that you only have a limited amount of space per block and when you have more people coming on the network that want to use bitcoin and transact

in it there's more demand to get your transaction in each block which sends the fees higher which makes it uh harder to use the transactional currency on the protocol level so that's one thing that's i would say it's causing a lot of confusion right now because a lot of people want it to be that transactional currency um and we're finding out that the nature of the protocol just the physics of it is is making it harder unless we increase the blocks which centralizes the system a little more so you're sort of caught between a rock and a hard place and like we were talking about before the show we're nine years into bitcoin it was a very easy to use as a transactional currency until like the latest bubble when a bunch of people came on the price price went up

been satoshi uh fees denominate uh u.s dollar fees went up uh precipitously because of that i'll admit that i'll admit that point blank but um so but there's there's solutions being worked on the second layer lightning being one of them where it's trying to help create that transactional layer where or fees are as minimized as possible um so have you have you heard some um your your buddies from back in zimbabwe have they talked about this fee problem at all or uh they not really so the thing is the thing is with us because because we don't have any other choice we don't have any other choice we you know people here to transact you know you got your u.s dollars and everything because we don't have any other choice people will just yeah they they i don't

think they even pay attention to it okay because they they just need something to be able to facilitate a transaction we can't go back to that you know i give you a gallon of oil for you to give me this type of thing for me to give you an education exactly i give you a gallon of oil for you to work my fields type of thing so people people are don't actually i don't think they actually even know the economics or how bitcoin actually works they just know it works to a exactly it's it's it's they've been told they've been well not really been told they have an idea of what it is of course but you know it's they're using it to facilitate those those uh to fill that void that cash cash is left and all that so that fees and stuff they don't even they don't pay

attention to that interesting very interesting yeah it's it's it's crazy man it's uh it's a time to be alive things it certainly is things might be more chaotic obviously for you they're getting more chaotic here in the States but the the the emergence of the Internet now an Internet of money is creating incredible possibilities it's it's it's alleviating so much it's it's it's because now what What Bitcoin has done for some people is we don't have to go through those people that we don't trust anymore. We don't have to deal with, I don't trust anybody in that government. And, you know, I'm neither this party nor that party.

I just don't trust any politician, period. You trust your instincts. There you go. I don't trust any politician, period. I'm the same way. I don't trust the U.S. politicians. And especially with the way we've been burnt with our economy all of a sudden. Like, for example, that whole, they just converted the cash that you, the banks, the money that you had in the bank in that 2008 period was just converted into U.S. dollars and is just worthless.

It was converted into, like, cents. Really? And, yeah, so because of moves like that, you end up not trusting your government and whoever's in charge of the monetary system and all that. And that's what Bitcoin, that's the void that Bitcoin has come in and is filling now. You only have to trust math. Math's pretty hard to not trust. Oh, yeah.

It's been proven to work. Math is, for generations, too. For generations. For millennia. Many things have come and gone. you know you have you've had companies that have come and and they're gone now but math has been there since the beginning of time uh and it's not going anywhere anytime soon oh yeah it's just becoming more and more prominent as we as we go out through other lives ah so yeah now there's

there's this big big opportunity i feel like bitcoin this is exactly the situations that zimbabwe is in is exactly what bitcoin was made for and that's the um so that's the thing that i try to get through people's minds when i'm describing they're like why do we need this like the u.s dollar works visa works like why do i need bitcoin i was like we don't need bitcoin there you go just take it take a trip to africa and you'll see why you need why you need bitcoin so let's get into this a little bit how do you how can we help specifically zimbabweans out like how i mean i'm i'm not gonna say like what what do you think is the best course of action to help pull zimbabwe up out of out of this sort of rut that you guys are in right now uh not from a bitcoin perspective

from any perspective yeah oh okay so from any perspective to be honest it's it's it's on us it's it's it's it's it's on us zimbabweans on the people it's just it's it all comes down to one thing corruption yeah so if you can weed that out as as i said this was when the british left us And we were the most mineral-rich, one of the most mineral-rich countries on the planet. Still are. We actually just recently discovered, we just recently discovered, I think it was in 2000 or 2001, I forgot when exactly, diamond fields in the eastern part of our country. Oh, really? That, yeah, when the geologists or whatever they call them, the guys that do the quantity surveying or whatever, whatever, those, the geologists, I'll just call them geologists for simplicity's sake.

I think that's correct. There you go. When the geologists came and they did their thing, they found that we actually, that field, well, that area of the country had close to, I think they might have said the second largest diamond reserve at the time in the world. And you tell me how, if you as a country, and that's just one mineral, I'm not mentioning gold and platinum and all the other stuff that we have. you tell me how as a country if you have so-called the second biggest diamond reserve on the planet how are you poor especially when you're trying to feed you're trying to feed eight million mouths how are you poor so it all comes down it all comes down to corruption if we can weed that out of people so what happens the government taking it selling it and keep the money on the

side president's very rich uh well no i'll i'll people yeah i can cut out i can cut out Sorry, no, the president and all them, the politicians are very, very, very wealthy. You've got people with mansions and property and assets globally. It's like if they came out and said that our former president, Mugabe, who's now out of power, is worth $70 billion, I would believe it. Really? Yeah. Holy shit. That's how much.

Hey, man. That's like Bill Gates money, and that's not even. And if you look up on Forbes, he doesn't even appear on anything like that. That's like the greed is dumbfounding. Oh, yeah. Being a politician in Africa is big money right there. And being a politician anywhere is a job for a psychopath, in my opinion. Yeah, so you let us weed out the corruption.

Once we've weeded that out, then the international community can step in and help us, you know, with providing access to, like, funds and stuff, like loan facilities and all that. So that's how the international community could help. Just financially, yeah. Yeah. And I don't want to sound like some white knight, like I'm going to come out. No, no, this is, I'm loving this experience.

Yeah. Fire away, fire away. Whatever's at the top of your mind, just fire away. Top of my mind right now. You can answer those questions. What's Zimbabwe's favorite sport? Soccer, cricket? Yeah, soccer.

Soccer is the biggest sport. Soccer is the biggest sport amongst the population, amongst the elite. It's stuff like the elite will play. So everybody will play soccer. The elite will do stuff like they'll play cricket, rugby. Rugby is pretty big. Cricket is pretty big. Tennis.

Tennis. Swimming, that type of stuff. What do you miss most about Zimbabwe? oh that's tough that's tough uh the politically correct answer would probably be my family but yeah i miss i miss the food i miss the people the family it's just the whole culture yeah what's the food like down there awesome i love it it's all it's all organic actually i actually funny story i had no idea what the word organic meant until i came here like i did i did not know the word organic was not in my vocabulary until i came here

because we're not rich enough to buy chemicals to shoot up our animals. You might be lucky because of that. I would argue that that's only made us unhealthier. You look at the heart disease rate and the diabetes rate, the diabetes rate in this country, it's astronomical. So the chicken drumstick was like this big. I come over here in America and you can get one that is like this huge. It's crazy.

So, yeah, no, the food, people, I guess just the culture, everything about it. The weather. The weather's awesome, too. It's not a snow BS and all that. It's beautiful weather all year round. Actually, now that I'm here in New York, I've come to really appreciate the weather. So the weather is flying up the rankings. Yeah, so you moved to the States eight years ago now.

How has this changed your perspective living in America for eight years? open opens my mind it's it really it really does same way same way same way with what i've been telling you now you know sometimes you're like oh you're like oh i didn't i didn't know much about america well i had been fortunate enough to come visit and uh and and all that but you don't you don't learn you don't learn anything about a culture than on three-week vacations no because you're stuck in you're stuck in celebration florida at disney theme parks and stuff like that whole three weeks and all that so that's probably the most vapid part of our culture yeah no so it's just been it's been a complete eye-opener it's you know it's i go from

in high school classes classes high school classes learning with people that look like me talk like me you know act like me and all that and occasional one or two white guys occasional one or two indian guys to you know in a class with with a guy from kuwait from venezuela from bolivia and all that so it's really it's being here really has opened my mind yeah especially here in new york city like you walk outside and you hear five different languages yeah no no one speaks english here it's incredible it's like people you hear different values and all that you hear a bunch of boneheaded americans oh yeah that don't like that but i love it i love the culture i love new york city specifically being able to go experience different cultures in the

city it's possible if you want to do it if you're adventurous enough oh yeah no it really is a melting pot it's there's over there i feel like there's an awakening going on around oh yeah i feel like we're all coming together realizing you born in zimbabwe me born in philadelphia we're not that different oh you're like wait we had the same needs there you go the same uh maslow hierarchy of needs i mean hey you're taking me back into back to what's it called what was that management the motive motivation was safety security safety security social whatever self-esteem at the top yeah oh taking me back to college that's that's awesome but yeah no and just to sorry just to just to piggyback not really piggyback but to the iran thing triggered triggered a thought

in my mind uh to to bring it back to to to crypto since this is a crypto uh podcast another very good use for bitcoin is for countries countries like iran north korea that are under sanctions under sanctions yeah so and zimbabwe too is on the same well not the country but individuals in zimbabwe under sanctions so in situations like that you know that can help you still be prosperous and you know money out of the country exactly be able to to negotiate those uh and whether people like it or not that's a use case oh yeah oh yeah because i mean i mean the story story is two sides so what what you americans think is just might not be might not be considered justice by by the iranians kind of thing uh what we did to iran was not just i will come out and

say it yeah the iranian revolution us putting in uh um what was that in the 70s the 79 it was the 79, 78, oh yeah, the role you played, you know, some may justify it as just some. I would call it disgraceful. Because, yeah, you grow up and you hear these narratives in the media where they're like, oh, Iran's a devil, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they're going to nuke us, they're trying to kill us, and then you meet an Iranian and he's a normal person like you. Like, I had a class, summer of 2014, I did a design boot camp and there was an Iranian and he went to University of Illinois for college

and he was doing this design boot camp with me and I had those preconceived notions. Oh my God, anybody from Iran is like bad. Just from what you hear in the media growing up and then you sit there and you talk to them. It's like, holy shit, this person is just a person and they're like me in a lot of ways. It's funny you say that

because just when I moved over here, I met a man from Afghanistan. so my perspective of afghanistan we we get uh we get so we get access to to your your your television so like the cnn's and all that and all that that's if you can afford it and what's it called in zimbabwe so my perspective of a of a guy from afghanistan you know was was not as you know was painted was painted from the american perspective kind of deal from the propaganda because of 9-11 type of thing yeah and i had this picture of what what you know people from afghanistan are meant to be because of you know the external media influences and all that and i met this man

from the indies i'll never forget it this guy is you know probably one of the nicest guys i've ever met i've never met and you know i i we we talked for for about like two hours or so and i was like holy snap he's actually a pretty you know they're actually human exactly we're all humans that's what everybody has to realize is like and that's another thing i tried to do this podcast is create empathy it's like we're all in this together we're all like it's it's i mean there definitely are bad people in the world but you have to go back to that adage that most people are good it just oh yeah i truly believe that i'd need to travel more yeah you guys should come to this i would love to come to do it do it yeah no no when you're going back next that's the thing

that's uh whenever whenever i'm there you know you could come donnie's interested in coming you know donnie right yeah donnie i was talking about donnie i want to go to donnie to see some of the chinese mining yep that the bitcoin yeah that's where they're at yeah that's where a lot of houses and all that the warehouses i watched a documentary i would love to do a story with donnie down there i think that would get some good content that actually would be awesome i saw that but yeah no it's uh it's it's it's a pretty it's a pretty sweet place you should uh you should uh i think i I'm not well-traveled. That's one of my goals

as I enter the second half of my 20s is to get out more. Do it, do it, do it. See, I got a question for you now in relations to, I can ask questions, right? Yeah, you can ask questions. In relation to what's it called?

That the blockchain technology, that's what people are actually, the in-the-nose, for lack of a better term, sorry. The in-the-nose, I couldn't think of anything that's in, that's another thing that's actually tough side note by the way english is not my first language so i like think in my native language then actually have to translate it so a lot of the

time you know i won't be able to pick up the words so i apologize in advance for that no another thing americans don't realize is that most of us only have to learn one language oh yeah trust me language is very it's very hard to translate it's very hard to translate but yeah the blockchain technology applications i was actually i forgot what i saw i think it was like last week or two weeks ago which i think is would actually be a very good application for it in zimbabwe the whole the ledger the ledger system how how for and i was actually thinking of a story of my related to my grandmother actually that ledger system how if you put like a record it then creates like a code for that then when you put in put another record for that thing it wraps it into that

record and both of them are now stored on that key or that chaining what's it called is it The way the blockchain works, with Bitcoin specifically, so every 10 minutes a block is made in Bitcoin. And the way Bitcoin works, to create a block, what you have is miners around the world, basically putting their computing power to prove everything that's happened on the Bitcoin blockchain up until the latest block. And then they compete with computing power to batch transactions in the last 10 minutes. 10 minutes hash it into what's called a block and the miner that does that uh gets the block reward which is bitcoin right now it's 12 and a half bitcoin per block and what happens when a block is created is yes it hashes that data and it's incorruptible you can never rewrite it

and it's it's a ledger that can't be overwritten you would need a crazy amount of computing power at this point to rewrite the bitcoin block it's not economically sound it wouldn't be a good I think. So this is the first time in human history we've ever had a censorship resistant ledger. And that's the true innovation with Bitcoin is the censorship resistance is that nobody can change it. Nobody can. And what can help out Zimbabwe is that they can't change the money supply, the amount of Bitcoins that are created. So nobody's ever going to be able to say, hey, I mean, it's technically it is possible, but the likelihood of it happening is so low that it's negligent i want to say negligent but it is very highly unlikely that you would ever get

because to change the amount of bitcoin you would have to get most people on the network to agree to change it and there's such an intolerant minority that is only in bitcoin because of the 21 million bitcoin cap that that's unlikely to ever happen so so what what i applied that to is a little situation that happened to my grandmother my grandmother owned uh she she she's now passed unfortunately but she owned uh she owned a farm she owned a farm uh and towards her retirement she started renting out i think yeah in her retirement years was it actually when she was no yeah it was after she had retired she rented that out as a form of income to someone to someone else right then as she got older she wanted to sell it but however the guy that she had rented

it to they this was this was over like a 10-year period this guy was renting it from her for like 10 years and all that she you know how old ladies are they you know they developed oh this is my son developed a level of trust and all that and it's time that now she wants to sell it you know she goes and she she uh goes to the farm because she never actually used to go to go check and check up on it she goes to the farm you know it's like all right to go tell him hey this is what's going to happen she sees that it's not even the dude oh that she'd put there it was someone else that said that he was renting it from him so or no actually no he had bought it from him so what he had done was pretended like he owned it exactly and he was able to to create to create actual

title deeds that were that were for created them they were forged of course but he he i don't know if he i don't know if he he he bribed the officials i don't know what happened but they were actually approved and stamped and the transfer of the title of this fake title was approved so this guy now owned it so she's standing here and she's like wait hold on wait a minute this is the title deed right here oh shit and right here is the title deed this guy whoops i was like no you're wrong this is the title deed so it's the same address same whatever two title deeds so now my mom has been fighting this court case for for i mean my grandmother's past but my mom has been fighting the court case for like five years now oh shit so that's where that whole blockchain uniqueness

that could be applied to a situation like that. And I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah, that's one thing. That's actually one of the most practical applications. Not right now, but as we evolve, it's going to get to a point, yes, where you can hash that title into the Bitcoin blockchain and say, cryptographically prove that you owned it at one time. Exactly.

And to hand over that title on the blockchain, the dude who stole the farm from your grandma would have to get access to her private key the key yep which which is unlikely if she she has good security and so that would that would be impossible if the titles were exchanged on the blockchain so when i learned out i'll put my hand up i admit i wasn't a believer but when i learned about that and when the whole crypto and built bitcoin and all that but when i learned about that that uh that whole when i watched a documentary and learned about the the chaining or that the that process that you were explaining that's when i was like okay all right there actually might be

useful this thing yeah censorship that's so that's the innovation is the censorship resistance is that no no no joe schmo can forge a bitcoin or forge a hash like it's all cryptographically proven with math like we were saying you can trust math and i i don't think people at this stage get it no they don't because i can i can i can get a printer that printer outside there i can get it and slide my $100 bill in there and put that out and, you know, be able to go buy some sandwiches from the deli and all that. You probably won't be able to do that, but there is a fork. You get the idea, you get the idea.

There is forged money out there. You can forge currency and all that. That's the idea. Of course, I can't do it here, but, yeah, no. That application, I thought, was very awesome, and I hope. You had your aha moment. From aha? Oh, yeah.

I wasn't a believer at all. I was like, yeah, no. Bitcoin, it's a fraud. It's a mind fuck. that's what it is because we've literally like i was saying before we hopped on the show there's only been so many times where technologies like this have come along that people don't even realize what to look for where the innovation is and i don't think people have fully grasped the innovation that is censorship resistance in a decentralized system it is gonna wholesale

change the change the the course of of human history from here on out oh yeah and i died And I really hope, I really hope, the thing about human nature is that people, we're resistant to change. This is, this is, this is like, this technology is, is, it's, there's the internet, right? You know, there's the internet and now there's, you know, there's Bitcoin. Bitcoin's like another layer. It's the next thing. And that's one thing, again, I'm trying to do with this podcast is, is help people realize that the pace of change that we've experienced in our lifetimes is unlike any other, any other amount of change. that any other human has experienced at any point in time so we have things changing around us at

such a quick pace that like our monkey brains are like running around like what the hell's going on what's going on like and we can't get our bearings unless we take a step back and all right i think learning about history and how the world has evolved over time and how technologies have affected the course of history is very important and i would encourage anybody out there to study the history of the internet and how life was before it and how how it has evolved and how quickly it has evolved after um because that's one thing people don't take the don't take the time to stop to stop and think back yeah no exactly not at all you're just born into it and you start running you're like i forget you forget before the iphone you had that you had that

uh nokia 3310 like it only exactly favorite game still is one of my favorite games of all time When you actually stop to take it and look back at where we started, it's incredible. It's a great time to be alive. Yeah, no, blockchain is really, it's solving that problem, that trust problem. That trust problem, and I hope we can, as a society, we can embrace it sooner, sooner rather than later. Though it does take time for societal shifts. it does but

this is a good first step conversations like this help us come to come to that realization there we go and I think this is a great spot

to end the episode Zaha I want to thank you for coming on where can people find out more about you on Twitter on Twitter

the midget Zimbo on Twitter I mean yeah I guess that's that's that's where you know

we can I interact I give my opinions on there on things I mean I'll talk a little cricket in soccer i'm sorry to to to the american fan base but you see i talk about things that i'm

passionate on there and yeah no that's important to be passionate oh yeah no but thank you thank you for having me this was this was really awesome i was very excited all week to have this conversation i'm really happy with how it went i appreciate it thank you marty um and on And peace and love. Woo! There we go. That was fun. Thank you.

When you said 30 minutes, I was like, wait, is this guy crazy? How long ago? That was awesome. That was awesome.