The Breakdown - What Grassroots Communities in Emerging Markets Can Teach Us About Bitcoin, Feat. Anita Posch

Starting point is 00:00:00 The need for Bitcoin is the most in these countries. And it's also the strongest argument when people say we don't need Bitcoin. It uses too much energy. It's not good for the climate and things like that. You can always come back and it's in my point of view the most important thing about Bitcoin being this empowerment for the 54% of humanity, which live under authoritarian rules. And so that was basically the main point of interest for me. I never saw it as a investment tool or something like that.

Starting point is 00:00:37 Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. The breakdown is sponsored by nexo.io, Arculus, and FTX, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk. What's going on, guys? it is Friday, February 25th, and today I am thrilled to welcome Anita Posh to the show. But before we get into that, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, and if you want to get deeper into the conversation, come join us at the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.

Starting point is 00:01:15 combe, slash breakdown pod. Now, as I said today, we are talking with Anita Posh. Anita is a Bitcoin advocate, author, podcaster, and solopreneur. She's the author of Learn Bitcoin, a book that actually gives people tools to become financially sovereign. She's also the founder of Bitcoin for fairness, a nonprofit, focused on bringing Bitcoin to billions through education and resourcing of local stakeholders in emerging markets. As you'll hear on the show, Anita is about to depart on a journey to southern Africa, where she'll be both sharing Bitcoin education as well as learning from local grassroots communities. As you'll also hear on the show, this type of activity is near and dear to my heart.

Starting point is 00:01:54 And finally, if you need any more recommendation about why you should listen to what Anita has to say, here's what Lynn Alden had to say about her. Anita has done tremendous work in the Bitcoin community, including and especially the content she has produced about Bitcoin's use in less privileged regions of the world. Her book is a concise and approachable introduction to Bitcoin that covers all the major topics for someone to get started. Without any further ado, let's dive in. All right, Anita, welcome to the breakdown. How are you? Hello. Thank you very much.

Starting point is 00:02:24 for the invitation. I'm great. Thanks. Yeah, this is exciting. We've been, uh, we've had a couple, a couple near misses, uh, previous like holiday shows and things like that. So I was really excited for this context because I'm excited to chat about the, the trip you're about to take and just kind of your view on things more broadly. But let's start for people who aren't familiar with you or your work or your podcast. Give us your background. And, and I mean, I would love to know a little bit about how you discovered and came into the Bitcoin world as well. Oh, yeah, of course. Therefore, I have to start like 20 years ago because I actually started, I'm an urban planner, actually. And then in the year 1997, when the internet came around in Austria, I thought, wow, that's the thing.

Starting point is 00:03:07 That's something I want to do. I want to be involved in this space. And I started to be a web designer and work in the online marketing, e-commerce space for about 20 years. And then in 2016, I decided, okay. Okay, online marketing and e-commerce is not really the thing I think is sustainable and what I want to do for the future and the rest of my life. And I was hunting for ideas, really, like opportunities. And in 2017, I visited a talk about Bitcoin and open blockchains. And the speaker there laid out the positive effects Bitcoin can have on humanity and the social impact.

Starting point is 00:03:53 and I was impressed. And that was the moment where I decided I want to work in this space too. And I set out to be a solopreneur trying to work full-time in the space. And in 2018, I started my podcast, Janita Posho, and I always had a focus on the perspective of Bitcoin being not only a digital gold or an investment, as it's mostly seen here in the Western countries. But as a tool, really an embodiment of human rights in a way, helping people empower them and things like that. And then in 2021, my book Learn Bitcoin came out.

Starting point is 00:04:37 And earlier in 2020, I was the first time in Zimbabwe researching the use of Bitcoin there because people always in the space talk about Zimbabwe and Venezuela, how they are the perfect ground for Bitcoin. but almost nobody is going there. And I think I was the first to report from there. And yeah, that led up into Bitcoin for fairness and all the things we are going to talk about today. Awesome. It's super interesting. A couple parallels, I think, just from my perspective.

Starting point is 00:05:10 One, I've told the story before, but when I was first introduced to Bitcoin, I was in Silicon Valley. And it was presented as just sort of a, it was like literally, it was ironic now, but a square competitor. It was like another option. for paying with your coffee when you were pitching venture capitalists at Kupa Cafe.

Starting point is 00:05:26 And I wasn't interested in sort of payments disruption on that level, you know. And certainly there were people in Silicon Valley. Dan Held was hanging out there at the same time and he got the implication. So it was not just not taking none of the blame, but it was something I just kind of didn't engage with. And my career had actually started in social impact and I had only come out to Silicon Valley originally to work with Change.org but had drifted at that time as technology will have you do.

Starting point is 00:05:51 you get pulled into a million different directions. And it wasn't actually until I left and reconsidered Bitcoin, you know, years later in the context of social impact that I really got pulled in. So I guess I'm interested to know, you know, was it just that first talk? I mean, how, it seems like you, what pulled you into the Bitcoin space was that sort of disruptive potential, disruptive global potential right away versus maybe coming to it for other reasons and then kind of exploring that, that approach? Is that fair? It was right away the fact I felt that's interesting. That's something I want to do.

Starting point is 00:06:27 I want to explore that. And I mean, I was working as an online marketer and web designer at that time. And at the same time, I was working full time. I had to learn about it. And one of the first people I started listening to was Andreas Antonopoulos. And he's a big influence has always been on my work. And so I really came from that perspective. because I also think that the need for Bitcoin is the most in these countries.

Starting point is 00:06:56 And it's also the strongest argument when people say we don't need Bitcoin. It uses too much energy. It's not good for the climate and things like that. You can always come back and it's in my point of view the most important thing about Bitcoin being this empowerment for the 54% of humanity, which live under authoritarian rules. And so that was basically the main point of interest for me. I never saw it as a investment tool or something like that. Your podcast was one of the earliest things that you did.

Starting point is 00:07:31 Was that like a learning in public kind of a thing for you at that time? Or what was the ambition when you started? So it was also learning because you can learn from the best if you interview them. And learning in public is in general not so my thing. I have my background is more like doing things. until you know them and then go out and talk about it. But you can't do that in that space because everything is changing so fast you have to keep up.

Starting point is 00:08:02 You always have to ask questions. And at the beginning it was a little bit a tool for me. I thought it's a marketing tool also to get people into my courses and seminars because that was that what I did back then, like real-life seminars about Bitcoin and blockchain and all the stuff. And more and more with the success I had and the good feedback I got. And I also found it really special to be able to talk with Adam Beck and Andreas and then Held and all those people who really build this industry and this technology and to learn from them. And so the podcast was really very, very important also then for me to write the book to have all the knowledge because I always ask the sources, you know.

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Starting point is 00:10:55 what it means to do Bitcoin education. The reason that I ask and I'm interested is that you clearly kind of got into the, you were excited about education really early in your journey with Bitcoin. And I imagine that over the course of four years of doing education in different formats of education,

Starting point is 00:11:13 your perspective on it has probably evolved. Yeah, my perspective has evolved. I have learned a lot in the last year with the happenings in El Salvador. And my focus is now more on Bitcoin communities. Like when I started out here, I was like educating people working in the financial industry or entrepreneurs and things like that, you know, like investor type people. And now my goal is to share my knowledge with communities on the ground, with the people in those countries

Starting point is 00:11:47 under those authoritarian rules. And what also shifted was the idea of how they can approach that people in these countries very often have a lack of education. You can't explain Bitcoin in a global context in a way to them, but they very much understand the need for it firsthand because they suffer from the problems with the banking system. They really suffer, you know, and they have a much higher inflation and all these things. And I think I learned what the really important things are and that there are also other forms and we will need them and they are coming now, other forms of custody. I mean, self-custody is the most important thing. But there are also models like the Bitcoin Beach wallet that now offer shared custody where a community has

Starting point is 00:12:41 trusted members and they are basically in a multi-signature. They share the keys for the community because people sometimes don't have the possibility to store keys and secure them and things like that. So my approach has shifted from, on the one hand, the target group for my education. And I think also the approach how to do it. It went from I'm educating and I'm telling you how it works to, I come here, very humble and I share my knowledge with you if you want it. I think it's interesting. This is a journey that I think a lot of people make in general when they're interacting with emerging markets, with different socioeconomic groups. This is actually kind of where I had

Starting point is 00:13:27 started. What I was doing in the social impact space was helping students learn about how to make a difference abroad. And basically, you know, I was, I went to college right around the time of the Iraq war. And there was a huge explosion of students who wanted to go abroad and see the world and be a part of it, right? It was like the rest of the world had kind of thrown itself into our purview after having kind of blissfully been unaware for the 90s growing up. And people wanted to go figure it out. And so you saw this massive increase in people who are studying abroad and this massive increase in people who were doing kind of volunteer abroad type programs.

Starting point is 00:14:03 And what happened over and over and over again is that they got to their volunteer assignment and we're like, I can do nothing. There is nothing here that I can be where I could be useful. I'm just dead weight. This is stupid. This is, and you have this, the worst of all scenarios, which is like the community being frustrated, the person who's put themselves there to help being frustrated. And it just seemed like it was, there had to be a better way, right? You can't tell a whole generation to just kind of like sit down and, you know, go back to school for a development degree or something. And so what we ended up doing was just totally shifting the approach to student education where if they wanted to go abroad to volunteer, we put them in teams of, five, there was an education component beforehand. And then their job was just to do whatever, they were basically employees of the nonprofits or community organizations that they worked with.

Starting point is 00:14:52 They didn't come in with some assignment or some kind of highfalutin idea. They had to just actually listen. And if it was clerical work and filing papers for 10 weeks or whatever, that was the most effective thing. And usually what ended up happening is that there was some idea that that organization had had for a while that they just needed more people for and needed more bodies to help actually get up and running. But it was a shift from, we're here to help to we're here to listen and learn and, you know, we are people with brains like you guys and hands and arms and can do things, you know, so assign us. And that was a powerful shift. And I think there's a broader kind of lesson that I took from that in terms of just how we interact and

Starting point is 00:15:30 learn from folks around the world. I guess that brings me to one of my questions that I had written down before we chatted, which is what are the most common misperceptions of how people think about Bitcoin in emerging markets versus the reality that you've seen experienced or learned about? Who? I think it starts somewhere else. It starts with the unimaginability of the struggles these people live through. I think that's the most important thing that if you've never been there and really went there with the approach to learn from the people, you can't imagine how hard life is for them

Starting point is 00:16:08 and what the obstacles are for them. Like in Zimbabwe, for instance, in your daily life you have so many obstacles. Most of them don't even have the time or the money to be able to use it to learn about Bitcoin. I mean, it's an economic necessity sometimes and they have friends that they tell them about it or they show them how it works. But it's not like you have free time, spare time, and then you play around with money. You can't do that there.

Starting point is 00:16:37 One of the misconceptions is also our view, like here in Europe and in the US, we have a very well-functioning banking system. I mean, we have lots of problems with that too, but we are quite secure. But that's a thing that most of the people, like 2 billion people in the world, don't have. They don't have access to a banking account. They can't get a loan. They can't even save money in a way securely. I think these are the misconceptions. And sometimes I think we think that the people, they need our help or education.

Starting point is 00:17:17 They don't. They manage. They find they are so entrepreneurial there. They have so many ideas because they have to have them because they wouldn't live through the next day. If they wouldn't be able to be so flexible and change from day to day to earn their money to survive. And I think that's unimaginable throughout most of us here. Yeah. I mean, that's certainly been my experience as well outside of the context of Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:17:47 So I think it makes sense that it would carry over and pour into it. And what has surprised you, I guess, about how people have thought to use Bitcoin or adopt Bitcoin? Was there anything that specific scenarios or stories that you found surprising or interesting? Well, I met with a guy in Zimbabwe who has been using Bitcoin for years prior to 2020 to be paid in Bitcoin for his online marketing work that he's doing for companies abroad. And I also was surprised to see, like in Zimbabwe, Bitcoin in a way is outruled. There is no regulation in 2017. there were a lot of scams and they even had an online like an official exchange and a Bitcoin ATM in Harare. But the government and the central bank then cracked down on it and closed it.

Starting point is 00:18:47 And then you have a lot of peer-to-peer groups there. So they don't have local Bitcoins or Paxful there, not officially. So they meet in telegram groups or WhatsApp groups. And if someone wants to exchange Bitcoin to US dollars, you just call someone and say, hey, can you meet me? And you meet the people then in person, like with the money dealers that I guess you know for sure them. So you meet the money dealer, you give them your Bitcoin and you get US dollars for it. So it's really a grassroots peer-to-peer movement there, which actually in my point of view

Starting point is 00:19:25 is the optimal and best and most sustainable way for Bitcoin adoption. When we use the term, so I've used the term emerging markets a bunch of times, you have had folks from all different types of places that would be categorized as emerging markets on your show. How much is that term useful versus obscuring, right? How much are the kind of the differences of experience for Bitcoin entrepreneurs in Latin America the same or different than, you know, the folks that you were dealing with in Zimbabwe, for example? Okay, I now started and learned a new word for it, that's the global south, because the global south is basically Latin America and Africa. Yeah, you're right. I mean, sometimes it's really hard to say, I mean, I know I've learned you should not say developing countries, emerging markets is better, but what is an emerging market, as you say? I mean, Zimbabwe is not really emerging. I don't see that there. It's very depressing there still. And the economical situation is dire and the government still steals money from the people. So the differences, I think, between African countries and

Starting point is 00:20:39 Latin American countries, if we even can say so, because it's a very, there are so many countries and millions of people living there. But I think that in Latin America, there's more stability, the education is a little bit better. The prospects like agriculture and things like that, you have a more stable economy in Latin American countries, at least that's what I've learned, and they are also technically very on the front. And opposite to that, in Africa,

Starting point is 00:21:13 I think you have loads of very, very young people who are very well-educated and want to need a job and will want to work in the online space because nothing else is possible for them. And there are, I think, a lot of people who don't have access to a lot of technical possibilities. I've seen so many people with smartphones on the other hand, which was surprising to me too. So, like, really in rural Zimbabwe, you find people with smartphones and they are watching Netflix. So it's very, very different everywhere. But I think so in general, you can say Latin America is a little bit ahead of African countries, I think, in terms of Bitcoin adoption also.

Starting point is 00:22:07 Sure. I think part of it, I would imagine, is Bitcoin exposure tends to follow. there's often an evangelical quality where someone from a place or from a community gets involved and starts to share that with their peers. Even if you look at the pattern of how Silicon Valley came to know Bitcoin, there are a handful, a very small handful of people who were, the people who were rallying all of their peers, you know, and getting everyone to know about it, right? And I think it happened to be that a number of those early evangelists in the U.S. came from Latin American backgrounds too.

Starting point is 00:22:43 So that was just a jumpstart, right? Had there been a, you know, a Ugandan entrepreneur who is a big early bitcoiner, you got to believe that East Africa would have been way earlier in its adoption curve, you know? Yeah, the sub-Saharan nations are at the moment the second biggest market in terms of trading volume on peer-to-peer exchanges. So it's North America and then sub-Sahara and then it's Latin America. they are coming. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:23:14 No, I mean, it's something that we've seen that infrastructure is building, the interest is there. So let's talk about the first time you went to Zimbabwe and Bitcoin for Fairness and how kind of this experience all started. And you can give the proper kind of sequence of events. Yeah, okay. So in early 2020, that was before the pandemic. I went to Zimbabwe and Botswana because, as I said, I wanted to research if and how

Starting point is 00:23:40 people really are using Bitcoin there. And to Botswana, I went because Al-Akanani I Thieri Leng is there. She is the founder of Satoshi Center. And one of the first women and I guess people in Africa who really started to educate their community about Bitcoin. And now in 2021, I thought actually it would be interesting to do. more work in that direction. Again, also with the learnings from El Salvador and the developments, I found it would be

Starting point is 00:24:19 great to also open my work in a way as a platform for others to contribute to share their knowledge in their local communities. So my goal is not only to go to Zimbabwe and to Zambia now, but also over the course of the year, to Nigeria and to Latin American countries, and also try to visit in South Africa. There is a Bitcoin community with surfer, a little bit like Bitcoin Beach. And I want to support them and want to help them like making connections to the global Bitcoin community, to other developers so that I can support their grassroots. movement, you know, because I think it's the most sustainable thing to help people to start

Starting point is 00:25:13 this thing, you know, their personal Bitcoin journey. And if they make positive experiences, they will share it with their peers. And I think that's sustainable more than like donating something to someone without knowing who is that and who is doing what with it. So the goal now is tomorrow I'm flying out to Zimbabwe. I will meet with people I've met two years ago. I want to know what are the changes, what has changed in Bitcoin, in cryptocurrency. I want to also know a little bit more about stable coins, the use of stable coins in these countries.

Starting point is 00:25:55 And I'm going to do workshops and talks. And I'm trying to meet with human rights activists. because I think that's also very important. I'm bringing some treasurer hardware wallets. I would like to help them getting to know about BTC pay server so that they are able to collect their donations over Bitcoin. A guy from Zambia then connected me and said, hey, I've heard you going to Zimbabwe, don't you want to come to Zambia too?

Starting point is 00:26:25 And he organized a lot of talks, even radio interviews and TV interviews. So I'm going to be on the University of Zambia radio station and things like that, which is very exciting. And I'm looking very much forward to it. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm bringing up my past way more than I normally do. But it's so resonant with me. Like the sort of programs that I was telling about, those student programs, they came out of this summer experience.

Starting point is 00:26:54 So I had had this very frustrating experience of wanting to go help people. I was studying in Cairo and I was working with student East refugees. and this was 2004. And again, I was super, super ineffective, right? Like, useless. Other than, like, it was helpful to help people work on their English because that's a key part, you know, a necessary but not sufficient condition for relocation if you're a refugee, right? And the next summer, you know, I was really frustrated. And so I was like, I'm going to go just learn and listen to, you know, young people in organizations all over the world. And I, my friends called it Misery Tour 2005 because I went from the Middle East to East Africa to rewind, to rewind, and I was,

Starting point is 00:27:32 Rwanda to like the into the back into the Balkans. So it was like all the places that had had recent conflicts that I thought, you know, I might want to work someday because I thought I was going to do peace and conflict resolution. And, um, and it was very much that experience where it was like one young person said, hey, you have to meet these other 18 organizations. And like civil society and entrepreneurial societies flourish in these places. There is so much, every person that you meet is on, you know, 12 different committees doing a million things. I mean, the amount of activity and sort of hustle is is pretty profound. And it's very cool to hear that that's sort of you've been your experience around the Bitcoin community down there as well. What are you hoping to do

Starting point is 00:28:15 in terms of sort of the story capture? I mean, will you be, will you be podcasting from there? Will you be kind of, or at least signing up guests for future podcasts? I'm interested in kind of how you're hoping to tell the stories that you learn on the ground back out to the world, too. Yeah, I want to do some podcast interviews again and we'll release them over the course of the following weeks. And this time I'm also bringing a video camera. I mean, it's not very professional because I'm doing this on my own. It's the first time. But I also want to bring some pictures from there and show how people join and how they learn and want to give them a voice that they also can tell

Starting point is 00:28:59 their story and their experiences with Bitcoin. So I'm not sure yet. I hope to do like a 15 minutes video or something about this journey. It's very exciting and a completely new thing for me, you know, writing a storyboard for this thing. And at the same time, preparing for the talks and the interviews, it will be an adventure again. Obviously, the global context right now for the discussion of Bitcoin. is so different that it was in early 2020. How does that change, if at all, how you think about

Starting point is 00:29:34 these conversations or what does it change in terms of the questions that you want to ask? The answer maybe I don't know, you know, it's just, I think it's more of a recognition that there's such a hugely different world even than it was just, you know, 24 months ago. Yeah, you're right. I mean, the first thing I need to find out is how things have changed for the people like in Zimbabwe, for instance. I mean, what I know is when I came back then, the exchange rate from one US dollar to the Zimbabwe and dollar was 1 to 80, I think, and now it's 1 to 220. So their inflation is, I think, the second highest in the world. It's like 200, 300%, I don't know, after Venezuela.

Starting point is 00:30:17 And so they have a daily fight with inflation. I'm not sure. I need to find out how African countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe have been hit. by the pandemic and also, I mean, they are far away from the war now in the Ukraine and from Canada, you know, with all these things that happened that show westerners also that we might need censor, uncensurable money and unstoppable money. That's a thing that Zimbabweans already know. So, yeah, I'm curious how it has changed if more people are using Bitcoin now, if they

Starting point is 00:30:56 also try to hold it more because when I was there two years ago, most people were talking about trading. I mean, there is a big tradition of trading in many African countries and they also do it with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. And yeah, I'm curious to find out if there are more initiatives now, maybe also focusing on Bitcoin. But in Zimbabwe, you have to know that you have to be very sensitive when you speak about Bitcoin. I then very often talk about blockchain or cryptocurrency because the government doesn't really like Bitcoin in Zimbabwe and you never know what happens because you don't really have freedom of speech.

Starting point is 00:31:39 So I was advised to speak kindly and don't attack the government publicly and things like that. So, yeah. It's a different context, different world. What can people who are interested in this journey do? How can they follow along? How can they support? Yes, thank you for the question. So they can follow me on Twitter, Anita Posh.

Starting point is 00:32:04 There is a website that's at BFFBTC.orgi. There's also a possibility to donate, which would be great. And, yeah, I have a newsletter at anita. dot link slash news where I will post or send emails to my followers and talk about the recent things that happened on my journey. Wonderful. Well, Anita, I'm so excited that you're doing this. I'm excited to chat with you when you're back and you've had some time to digest

Starting point is 00:32:36 what you've learned. So good luck and look forward to talking again soon. Thank you very much for the invitation, Nathaniel. And yeah, I'm looking forward to. All right. back to NLW here, and just a quick reflection on the show, I want to highlight how important it is to challenge our priors and how important it is to not let places and people become memes rather than real people of real places. What brings this up in the context of Anita's journey to

Starting point is 00:33:05 Zimbabwe is the fact that she first wanted to go to Zimbabwe because of how much Bitcoiners held it up as an example of a failed currency regime. It wasn't that she was skeptical of that narrative, but that she wanted to see for herself what that meant, what the context was, how things got there, and how people handled it. That's the complexity that's missing when we memeify people of places and events. I think it's incredibly important that we always try to push outside and beyond what we think we know about things, especially people who are so full of richness and complexity and confusion and chaos, that trying to reduce them to a couple soundbites is never going to get the full truth.

Starting point is 00:33:45 I'm excited to see what comes back on Anita's journey, and I'll be sure to have her back on the show to share that with you in the months to come. For now, I want to say thanks again to my sponsors, nexus.io, Arculus and FTX, and thanks to you guys for listening. Until tomorrow, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.

The Breakdown - What Grassroots Communities in Emerging Markets Can Teach Us About Bitcoin, Feat. Anita Posch

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