The Pomp Podcast - #577 Scott Harrison on the Bitcoin Water Trust

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Scott Harrison is the founder and current CEO of the non-profit charity: water. Harrison is the author of Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World. In this conversation, we discuss charity water, non-profits, the bitcoin water trust, and doing good in the world after achieving enough.  ======================= Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide. Circle is also a principal developer of USD Coin (USDC), the fastest growing, fully reserved and regulated dollar stablecoin in the world. The free Circle Account and suite of platform API services bridge the gap between traditional payments and crypto for trading, DeFi, and NFT marketplaces. Create seamless, user-friendly, mainstream customer experiences with crypto-native infrastructure under the hood with Circle. Learn more at circle.com ======================= Exodus is an absolute game changer in the crypto wallet space, and we’ve teamed up to offer an exclusive discount for you, as listeners of the podcast. Sign up for Exodus today using my promo code Exodus.com/pomp. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today.  =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Scott Harrison is the founder and current CEO of the nonprofit Charity Water. Harrison is also the author of Thirst, a story of redemption, compassion, and a mission to bring clean water to the world. In this episode, we discuss Charity Water, nonprofits, the Bitcoin Water Trust, and doing good in the world after achieving enough. I really enjoyed this conversation with Scott, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Circle. Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables

businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide circle is also a principal developer of usd coin usdc which is the fastest growing regulated fully reserved dollar stable coin in the world now standing at more than 15 billion dollar market cap and adding nearly 300 million dollars of net new digital dollars in circulation every week the free circle account and suite of platform api services bridge the gap between traditional payments and crypto trading for defy nfts and crypto trading. Learn more at circle.com. Again, go to circle.com and check it out today. I've had Jeremy, their CEO on the podcast before. I'm a really big fan. And I think that you'll really

appreciate the awesome growth from the products that they've built over at circle.com. Next up is Exodus. Exodus is leading the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. With its focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. It's supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies straight from your wallet. Interactive charts let you view an asset's price history and your portfolio's performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the

treasure hardware wallet, making advanced security easy for everyone. Visit exodus.com slash Pomp for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or the Play Store. Again, exodus.com slash Pomp for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or the Play Store. All right, let's get in this episode with Scott. I hope you enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his

personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. Got Scott here. Thank you so much for doing this. What's up, man? Miami. Good to be here. Although we both have all black on. I was just joking. You know the New Yorkers. All right. You've done some incredible work with Charity Water, but you had a whole life before Charity Water. Let's just start there. What did you do for the 10 years before Charity Water? Well, I was born in Philadelphia. I was raised in a very conservative Christian home.

My mom was an invalid from the time that I was four. There was this weird carbon monoxide gas leak, which is a much longer story. But I really moved to New York City to rebel against all of that, you know, give the middle finger to the church and the rules. And I found out there was this remarkable job called a nightclub promoter where you could rebel in style. And if you were good at this job, you would get paid to drink alcohol in public. You'd drink for free, all your friends would drink for free. So, you know, to the horror of my parents and, you know, the church community, here I am in New York City at the beginning of the bottle service era, models and bottles as it as it later became called and so what you basically are like walking around new

york city trying to meet like rich people who like to party or beautiful girls and then get them to come to a club yeah basically okay and and if and if you can put those two things together you know you also need the right dj the theme you need to make it interesting you need to be at the right club but the promoters uh create the party the environment and then they just move so we were venue agnostic so over the 10 years i worked at 40 different clubs so we would come to your club we'd bring all the people you know we'd try to ring 50 g's and boos uh and then the minute our group got tired of that club we'd look for the next club got it and and then you would be able you know the scarcity right of not letting people in and the velvet robe would then allow you to

make a bunch of money to just charge everybody afterwards so that was 10 years and look i i was chasing all the markers of success the car the watch the model girlfriends the you know flying on somebody's private plane to paris and milan and buzios brazil i mean just it was the whole lifestyle and was it fun uh yeah it was but it you know it was almost it was almost like the frog and water getting boiled. So it started with smoking and then it was two packs a day and then it was drinking

and then it was gambling and then it was Coke and then it was X and then it was MDMA. And then the next thing you know, you know, you zoom out on your life and I was this despicable, selfish, hedonistic, sycophantic scumbag

and my tombstone was going to read, here lies a man who has gotten a million people drunk. That was the only positive, I mean, there was no positive impact. There was no legacy. And I'd actually, it was so far of a departure from the morality and the spirituality I'd been brought up with.

So I had this moment at 28. I was in Puente de Lesta, partying in South America. We'd rented this compound. My girlfriend was in the cover of a fashion magazine. We had a yacht that came with a compound, people serving us. And I'm like, this is not how I want my life to be. It was like a game of musical chairs. And the music stopped.

And for the first time, there was nowhere to sit. And I came back to New York City. I said, I'm the worst person I know. I'm spiritually bankrupt. I'm morally bankrupt. I need to start over. And I sold everything I owned and tried to start over. And the only idea I had at the time was to try to find the exact 180 opposite of my life.

So not a pivot, not a small course correction. Just freaking do everything exactly opposite. it. And my idea was to go volunteer on a humanitarian something, right? To go serve people in need and see if I could be useful. Not serve them alcohol. Not serve them alcohol. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, you can imagine, you know, I'm 28, I'm applying to Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, Save the Children, you know, these organizations I've tangentially heard of, and no one will take me. Of course, I'm denied by 10 groups. And then finally, one organization says, if I'm willing to pay them $500 a month

and go live in post-war Liberia, then I can join them. So I'm like, this is it. It's opposite. I'm going to pay to volunteer. And I'm going to the poorest country in the world at that time that had just come out of a 14-year civil war. So that was basically what started this new chapter. You probably would not have wanted to talk to me during the 10 decadent years. But I went to West Africa. I was immediately in a country with no electricity, no running water, no sewage. I'd never seen poverty before. And I learned half the country was drinking from swamps and ponds and rivers. And I'd never seen humans drink dirty water before. We were joking earlier, you know, I used to sell Voss for $10 a bottle in clubs and people wouldn't even open the water. They would just order 10 bottles, let it sit there and drink champagne instead.

So I learned that, you know, half, 50% of the people living in the country were drinking disgusting, dirty, contaminated water. And 50% of the disease in the country was because of bad water. So I wound up finishing a year, turning it into two years. And at the end of two years, I was like, I have to do something about it. There's a responsibility to do something about what I'd seen, specifically this issue. And I came back at 30 and said, I'm going to try. I'm going to try to bring clean water to everybody on the planet.

I'm broke. I'm living on a closet floor in New York City in Spring and Mercer at the time because I'd given all my money to the organization and the people I'd met. But I had this very clear vision that everybody in the world needed clean water to drink. and so what's the first thing you do when you come back and you're like i'm gonna go try to solve this because that's a really really big goal yeah so i had so there was something about having the pictures i'd taken 50 000 photos so my my role on that um it was actually a hospital ship my role was as a photojournalist so i was paying 500 a month to take pictures and write stories of the the impactful work these humanitarians were doing so i came back and i

would go out to the clubs at first and I would open up a laptop and I would make like six or seven presentations a night. And people were kicking me out of DJ booths. They're like, bro, you're killing my buzz. You know, just can you just have fun? Like, I'll give some money to your charity, but like, get out of here. So I just did that again and again. And enough people would give or would make an introduction. And I had the advantage of talking to everyday people who worked at Chase Bank or MTV or VH1 at the time or, you know, the Sephora and were in fashion or music. And I realized almost all of my friends, almost everybody I talked to didn't trust charities. They were cynical. They were skeptical. They believed charities were opaque and not

transparent. They said, well, where's my money actually going? How much would even get to the people that are suffering? And I thought, wow, this is a huge opportunity for a paradigm shift for a new business model, what if a charity could reach out to all these skeptics and cynics and say, we're going to do things completely different and encourage them to give. So really the big idea when I started Charity Water, and this is 14 years ago, was just this very simple promise to use 100% of all donations that we would ever get to directly fund projects that got people clean water. And then in a separately audited bank account, I would go raise the overhead from investors or entrepreneurs or visionary people who knew that you need to have

a staff and you need to have an office. But that kind of separation of church and state was very unique at the time. That then kind of led to this realization that with non-fungible business models or two separate accounts, we could use technology to track where donations went. So we were the first charity just to geolocate all of our wells. So I could say to you, you know, here is exactly where your donation went. Here's a satellite image of your well in Malawi or in Ethiopia or in Guatemala. And, you know, we started to just prove where the money went and we could prove where a $9 donation went and people just loved it. You know, they love this kind of transparency. So we put that together and, you know, we, we believe that for the work to be sustainable, it had to

be led by locals. So we said, we're going to raise awareness. We're going to raise money as efficiently as possible. But then it's got to be Ethiopians actually drilling the wells in that country or Cambodians in Cambodia. So I threw a party to start it off at a nightclub. That was day one. I got 700 people to come. I gave them open bar for an hour. And then on the way in, there was this giant plexi cube. And you had to donate $20 to walk in the club. And we collected 15,000 in cash that night we immediately took it to a refugee camp we did our first wells and then we sent the photo and video proof to the 700 people and we said you came to a party you may not even remember coming to the party but you did and you gave 20 and your money helped these

communities get clean water and the response was so kind of overwhelming we said let's just keep doing this over and over again let's show people where their money goes and we can grow the movement and when you start doing this do people understand the clean water problem or are they just trying to like go to the club go to the party and it almost like didn't matter if they really knew where the money was going or not it was more so just you knew what it would take to raise capital and then over time you could kind of tell the story it was exactly i think you said it you said it uh perfectly um this is not a i remember um having to speak uh after the head of a cancer charity once. It was a big conference, 10,000 people. And he walks out on stage and he

says, how many people here have had cancer? And some hands go up. And he said, okay, how about a family member? More hands up. How about a friend or a loved one? The entire audience. And then he starts his speech, right? It's not true for dirty water. I mean, how many people have had to drink dirty water or walk eight hours or, you know, experience a child dying of diarrhea, you know, because they, they drank from a swamp, you know, it's nobody that I talked to. So yeah, the, that became kind of the first challenge that we would have to build awareness. I mean, you know, as we record this 785 million people are drinking bad water. So, you know, as, as I'm here in Miami at a Bitcoin conference, right. With thousands of people, uh, talking about, you know, the, the

state of finance and the future of technology, like 10% of the world is drinking dirty water. 10% of the world doesn't have the most basic needs. It's just not something people think about. You know, we take water for granted. We take our long showers and we have water in bottles for convenience. And so that's been, that was really the second thing that we had to do was create these campaigns, these awareness moments. We created PSAs where New Yorkers would go to Central park pond actually jennifer connelly was in our first psa and i convinced terry george from hotel rwanda to direct it and we put on this like million dollar commercial for 20 grand balthazar catered it for free it was awesome and she takes her children uh all the way from tribeca to central

park and she waits in line and she gets nasty green water and then she gives it to them and you know we ran that on uh american idol to you know millions of people in a million dollar donated time slot and that took over the homepage of youtube uh for world water day so we were doing all these kind of scrappy edgy uh awareness building um you know initiatives that then started to get people to think about water a lot of the donors are uh in the technology community right so investors entrepreneurs people who work at tech companies etc how did you get that subset of people interested in this was it just like one or two folks and then they kind of brought their friends? It was a cold email. It was the first one. I had come across a guy named Michael Birch

who had just sold Bebo to AOL for $850 million. And I just wrote him. I said, hey, I'm a 31-year-old kid. I've got a vision to give everybody clean drinking water. I'd love to meet you. And he actually responded and said, okay, I'll come into the office. And this is really, we may not even have time for this, but that at that moment I was about a year and a half into charity water and I'd raised so much money for the water projects that was working. The a hundred percent model was working, but it was really hard to raise the overhead. And I had this moment where I had $881,000 in the bank account that I couldn't touch, right. That was going to go out and build 80 wells and two weeks of payroll. And you know, the advice I was getting from everyone at the

time was go borrow against the 880. You'll pay it back later. You got to pay your people. You have to make payroll. And I was like, no, I will shut the charity down and send the 880 grand out. Like if we borrow one penny, we have betrayed the trust of the public like this. There'll be a crack in the foundation. We should all resign in shame. So I was actually talking to lawyers at that moment. This is after the cold email. And Michael walks in the office at that moment. I remember having what I thought was a two hour terrible meeting with him where he didn't seem to really like what i was doing and then he left and the next day he wired a million dollars in the overhead account really he said i love what you're doing it was a year of capital so we had so that he was

kind of like you know tech entrepreneur number one then he made a couple intros then um i remember speaking at twitter when there were 48 employees the very beginning of the company we were the first charity on instagram day one um i remember speaking at facebook's old university avenue campus. So it was the early age of social media. And I just believe that for us to succeed at our movement, we would have to grow it online. And we were early there. So we were the first charity to get a million Twitter followers at the time and built all these campaigns. So that just kind of led me from, I guess, Jack to Michael Birch to Johnny Ive to Reid Hoffman to Sokka to a bunch of these people and they loved paying for our staff. So when you got the entrepreneur, they

actually didn't want their money going out and building wells. They wanted to hire a UI engineer or a UX engineer or a water program specialist. So they got it because they'd all built companies. So while it was really hard in the beginning, then these two different value propositions kind of began to maybe solidify. The public, which is now well over a million donors from 150 countries, loved knowing that a hundred percent of their money would go. And then business leaders and entrepreneurs love building the thing and knowing that they were kind of the backers, the builders, they were paying the staff and the people. So, but you have to do these things in perfect balance. And that was the challenge. Too much money in the overhead set account, then you're not efficient.

And too much money in the water account, if you miss payroll, then the whole thing crumbles. So it's been, it's been a 14 year dance. Along the way you took how many Bitcoin in as donations yeah so we were early uh just you know as i mentioned with a lot of the technology we were you know one of the first charities to use virtual reality for example we showed it to thousands of people and we made millions of dollars with our vr film bitcoin was the same in 2014 uh tony hawk gave us 4.8 bitcoin uh that then later led to 569 bitcoin all right tony hawk was early he was early 2014 he's handing out bitcoins to people 2014 he came to a gala and I remember we raised a couple million dollars that night

and he wanted to pay his gala pledge in Bitcoin. And his gala pledge was 1500 bucks. So you do the math. I think the math was $312 a coin. So all 569 Bitcoin, well, maybe just a little bit of context. So when charities take donations of any kind, the best practice is you immediately sell

whatever you were given to put it to charitable use, right? So if you gave me $100,000 of Apple stock right now, maybe it depreciated, there's a tax benefit for you to do that. I sell it and I go build 10 wells in your name. That's what you want us to do. I'm giving the money to further the charitable mission. So we treated Bitcoin just like any other stock or property that we're given.

You immediately sell it and then you put the money to work. But, you know, the 569 Bitcoin we sold for about $4 million. And just over the last crazy 30 days, it's 26 to 35 million. right so we helped a hundred thousand people with all that bitcoin but we could have helped 600 to 900 000 people so that's really you know that that that's where this kind of idea you know so 500 bitcoin that you sold for four to five million dollars four million 4.4 million dollars exactly 4.4 million but it could have been 25 to 35 million if you had held more in the future potentially yeah um and you think you helped a hundred thousand people that's enough to help

110 000 people okay versus six to nine hundred thousand got it six to nine x and all you were doing was just following best practices for sure right so you know i met um pete brigger was actually the first guy that kind of got charity water thinking about this and then i met wences and you know a bunch of the early people in the space and the more i learned about you know both bitcoin and then also how people think i said well we're never going to take in any substantial amount of bitcoin for philanthropic use if we follow this best practice because people don't want to give you the bitcoin then have you sell the bitcoin into cash because their whole thought process is that over time there's a universal i at least i believe i've experienced

and again this isn't my core business i'm running a at the moment like a hundred million dollar a year you know annual charity that's that's trying to help two million people a year but everybody has a universal long appreciating view of this asset right so nobody thinks that this is where it peaks at 38 000 or wherever it is where we're talking today um however what i found through a bunch of conversations is if the charity was willing to hold the asset people would be willing to give it now and let the charity take the appreciation. So that's really where this kind of idea came from is could we create a fund that would hodl Bitcoin for, you know, a period of time? And we basically said, OK, at least one full cycle, 2025. We're not going to

touch it. We're not going to sell it until at least 2025. So give it to us now. Take the tax benefit now. Right. Because if you I mean, as you know, so many people, I don't even think they think about it but if they sell they're gonna have to pay huge capital gains on on all of it so we say donate it to us we will allow it to appreciate we're gonna sit on it till at least 2025 allowing your one bitcoin to be worth you know a lot more in the future philanthropically and you get the tax benefit now um immediately so that's kind of so that then you know we had some conversations you were really helpful just with with advice and um and that's that's kind of where we landed. So we were launching something. It's called the Bitcoin Water Trust. And then we

said, all right, well, I wonder if we can get a hundred people to do one each. Like, how do you launch? Right. And then we just started making calls and like, hey, will you do one? Will you do one? Will you do one? Then they said, all right, well, then I wonder if I can get a match behind it. So can we turn one Bitcoin now into two Bitcoin and then we hold both in the future? And then so this started to work and people started saying, yes, I guess, you know, a lot of the whales it's but but the whole idea behind this just so people are clear is the bitcoin water trust is part of charity water and folks are donating in bitcoin yep they can donate in dollars or anything else and you'll turn it into bitcoin at the moment we're working on building

where other coins could go to bitcoin but the only thing we're holding is bitcoin okay right now and then you hold that bitcoin and you're committed to not selling the bitcoin for five years until at least 2025. Okay. And the thought process is it's a full cycle of the havings. It's going to appreciate between now and then. And you will benefit by holding it just like a corporation would benefit from holding on his balance sheet, just like an individual would benefit from holding it personally. Now that power is now kind of in your hands as well. Right. Now we could look stupid. So there is a risk. This is a little bit of a swing, right? If we're wrong and all the Bitcoin we collect today that could have helped people immediately get clean water depreciates over time

then we have helped less people get clean water and that's why charities never do this because like who are we to you know to take any sort of position on anything so you know that maybe just one one last thing just to jump back in the story so i've been at this for 14 years now from that first party at the nightclub we've raised 550 million dollars okay so we've raised half a billion dollars in fiat and we have incrementalized the organization from 2 million to 6 million to 9 to 16 to 23 to 28 to 35 to 45 to 50 to 70 90 million last year 100 million dollars this year so it's you know we're the largest water charity in america but dude we're solving we're incrementalizing there's nothing exponential about my experience over the last 14 years or

really the impact that we're able to make. So we have helped 12.7 million people get clean water. Okay. So listen, it's Madison Square Garden 700 times. Okay. So it is 700 back-to-back sold out shows at the garden. It's a lot of people, but you put it against the problem I'm trying to solve. It's one 65th. So I've done one 65th. I'm 46 years old now, bro. Like I want to solve more than 1.6% of the global problem that I had a vision to solve. And half a billion dollars is not that much money. I mean, there's, you know, I probably backstage ran into, you know, 14 people that, you know, have a lot more than that. And this is what I worked 14 years and we're considered one of the fastest growing charities in the country. And we're considered, you know, a picture

of rapid acceleration. So the idea here is that, you know, I believe Bitcoin could provide an exponential growth story where because of this strategy, people are willing to give it both big and small. We had someone's giving us 50 Bitcoin. Actually, Tyler and Cameron are matching the Winklevosses are matching the first 50 Bitcoin of this fund. So I think there's there's an opportunity for people to, you know, to give in a significant way. And then I want people to be able to give 15 bucks worth of Bitcoin, 60 worth of Bitcoin, you know, $140. And one of the other things that you and I were talking about and you were helpful with is the idea is to keep this trust Bitcoin native as well. So we don't imagine in 2025, like just thinking about this in dollar

terms, we actually want to spend the money in Bitcoin as we start unlocking the trust and as the Bitcoin starts going out to provide clean water for people, hopefully vastly appreciated in four and a half, five years, we don't imagine turning it back into dollars to then turn into Ethiopian burr or the Rwandan franc. The whole idea is take Bitcoin in, hold Bitcoin,

and then five years from now or more, when you go to build that well that previously cost $10,000, now you spend a tenth of a Bitcoin, right? Or whatever it is. You build 10 wells. Yes. And when you do that,

what you're actually able to do is you're able to use a global currency to accept, hold, and spend and do it across all these different countries. But what you're really benefiting from is the appreciation of the purchasing power. Exactly. And you talked about this, you know, why should we suffer the same? So my core business is in US dollars. I'm going to raise a hundred million US dollars this year from a million generous individuals all around the world. But you know, why should we suffer from the same depreciation with our purchasing power as we're trying to get human beings clean and safe drinking water across 29 countries. So I think there's a lot of things

not only can the Bitcoin appreciate in price as we hold it over a period of time, you know, like if you give me one Bitcoin today, thank you. You very generously joined the founding group. But if I took your Bitcoin today and I sold it, I can give three communities clean water. That's a lot. I mean, that's significant. And I'm already doing that. You know, people can do that if they want to. If they say, no, actually, I've got a lot of Bitcoin

and I want to help people now. We'll still allow people to do that. But I really believe in the future, you know, it could be 30 communities with that same Bitcoin. And, you know, would I rather help, you know, 30 communities or 10 communities? So the idea is 100 people are seeding this

with one Bitcoin each. Exactly one. Myself, a whole bunch of other people that folks would recognize i don't want to say names they can go on the website we'll talk about in a second they can see who's there uh cameron and tyler gonna match the first 50 so we'll have 150 yep winklevoss match 50 you're at 150 now and then the thought process is that game on anyone in the world who's listening to this or watching this on the internet that feels compelled from literally you know 0.001 bitcoin yep all the way up to 100 bitcoin yep and we built a leaderboard

I think we're showing it at 0.0005 or something. Okay. So you get on the leaderboard if you give 0. I think it's 0.005. It's on the website. Okay. It's about 20 bucks. All right.

And so anyone in the world can participate here. And the idea is to get Bitcoin or dollars converted into Bitcoin, sit it in the Bitcoin water trust. And that Bitcoin water trust is going to hold this. And it's going to have strong hands for five years. And then we're going to go and we're going to start helping people build these wells. But the key being the goal, and there's work to be done, But the goal is to take that Bitcoin and pay it out to people all over the world in these developing countries.

To buy these water project materials. So if you're the person doing the construction, the architecture, you know, whatever. You could go buy PVC or pipe or cement or the drilling rigs. Yep. The materials needed. It's all paid in Bitcoin. That's the idea. And like you said, there's a long way between now and then.

But, you know, that's where I think the world is going. And I think we'll have an opportunity to help with adoption across 29 countries as well. I completely agree. How big do you think it's going to get? How big do you want it to get? Well, I'd like at least a thousand. A thousand Bitcoin. So, you know, using the, you know, the kind of aspirational goal that a lot of people

have with a million a coin, that'd be a billion dollars. And that would get 20 million people clean water. So again, you know, just think, so I've been at it for 14 years. I've helped 12.7 million people. I would love this trust to help 20 million people through small and large donations. And, you know, let's say a thousand feels like a great place to get. I think we'll be at 150 when we get through this founding 100

and they give one and unlocks the match. But it'd be great to have all of these, just a huge amount of participation from around the world. A thousand feels like an awesome place to be. A thousand Bitcoin, a million dollar price point, a billion dollar Bitcoin water trust. That helped 20 million humans. 20 million on top of the 12 and change that you've already helped.

Plus what you'll do in the next five years, you'll be somewhere around 50, 50 million, 40, 50 million people, right? Yeah. It's incredible.

That's the goal. Well, that's a dent. That's a bigger dent. It's a bigger swing. Listen, there's always the pessimist who says, Oh,

but you're only helping 40 million, 50 million of the 700 million. And then there's the optimist like me who says, well, the person who is the pessimist, they're not doing shit. Yeah. Well,

we're helping about 5,000 new people every day. So I'm trying to kind of think of, okay, like today, you know, when I sat with you and I sat through, you know, some talks this morning and a bunch of meetings, like by the time, you know, from the morning, a full cycle happens, 5,000 new people went from drinking dirty water, putting their lives at risk, the lives of their children at risk to clean water, therefore vastly improving their lives. So that, yes, that's like the KPI. and and i won five thousand to go to six thousand and nine thousand and fifteen thousand and twenty thousand when you think about uh where this puts charity water moving forward is there a world where like if this works you then go to like all bitcoin or you go dollars in bitcoin or like you

just say hey we just want to do it the one time in the one bitcoin water trust or like is it too early to kind of understand what the pathways there are i mean listen getting a bunch of people this far uh what has not been trivial i know my board my finance committee so you know this this works right now because i'm continuing to run the core business and it's it's interesting the number one concern was really cannibalization and you know as i look at the founding 100 so far like you know you like what we're doing but you aren't gonna go write me a forty thousand dollar check and put it in the mail or go on charitywater.org and drop 40 Gs with your Amex, right? But you're willing to contribute to this trust. If I think of, and I don't want to drop names, but 30 of the

founding 100 are not interested in funding Charity Water Fiat, but they're really interested in this idea of watching their donation. Charity Water Fiat, such a bad name. But they're interested in the idea of watching their Bitcoin get doubled and then appreciate over time. Also, the website we built is cool. It's tracking at any moment how many people will get clean water, how much we're holding in the trust, and we're pegging that against a bunch of currencies, against the pound and the dollar, the euro, the yen. So people can kind of see in real time. We're trying to build a really transparent flow. In 2025, when it starts going out, we'll be incredibly transparent. And I think we'll have a great story for people who gave one

bitcoin or 50 bitcoin or 0.001 bitcoin of how that appreciated over time and the people that are being helped so we're even pricing now on the website you'll see we're pricing the communities and the people served in bitcoin not in dollars i think you're on to something for those that are for those that are listening how can they go figure out if they want to donate where do they go sure well uh just charitywater.org bitcoin so we made that simple Charitywater.org slash Bitcoin. People can go literally just connect the wallets and ready to go. And you can donate with a tax receipt or anonymously or pseudonymously.

So you can use your real name. You can make up a name or you can be completely anonymous. You know, there's a real tax benefit for giving Bitcoin. I think a lot of people don't know that. But we, you know, we've got some of that on the website as well for people to just want to understand. And I guess, you know, the last thing I'd say is the great thing about clean water is that everybody thinks this is a good idea. It's not political. It's not

religious, right? It's the most basic need in life. And, you know, that strikes me every once in a while when I'm sitting in a panel and like, I don't know what the heck some of these people are talking about because it's just beyond me. You know, and you're sitting here and all of the opulence and the, you know, the open bars and the parties and you're like, but 10% of the world is drinking dirty water. So I really hope and believe that Bitcoin can be used as a force for good in the world, that Bitcoin can directly provide human beings

on this planet with the most basic, you could say useful utility of clean water. You know, a lot of people have been, there's an argument out there. Well, people don't think it's useful at all. Oh, it's just funny money. It's just, what is the point? what is the use of Bitcoin, right?

Well, I'd like to say, I think we can use it to give 20 million human beings the most basic need in life, clean water. So that's a use, that's a use, right? And I would hope that other non-profits could start looking at this as a vehicle, maybe not just to grow their incremental core business, but to take a big swing and to go out to a donor.

I mean, I've heard from so many of these whales and like, yeah, I don't give to these donor advice funds. They're just going to turn it. So I'm holding it all. I'm holding it all. Well, is that donor going to give to you in five years? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they've moved on.

Maybe they found another passion. Maybe they found another cause. So I think that's what we're trying to do here is both honor the intent and the long-term appreciating value view while also saying, please give it to us now. Please make this donation now. Let us custody it.

and we'll create a really big impact story. I'm in. I appreciate it. I know. I think this is a no-brainer. I think that you're not going to get enough credit for how hard this has been. I also don't think people understand how impactful,

if it works, right? If. I think it will. But if it works, what is today, you know, whatever, uh be about a hundred million no actually it would be uh what less than 50 million dollars donated in becomes a billion dollars it's a pretty big deal yeah right you know what 40 50 million bucks that goes in and then in five years you hand out a billion seems to me like uh that's

a a pretty good upside downside trade yeah i i think so and i think you know charities don't take enough risks and that's just another thing that you know we just want to encourage people know what risks are taking we were talking right before we started about you know we we know people that were billionaires and then they lost it all and then they became billionaires again and then they lost it all right and and i told you i know somebody who did it three times and you know certainly like charities have like stewardship is is so so important to us and transparency and and being great stewards. And none of those values should go away. But charities need to think big. I mean, we just, we need to get tired of the incremental complacency. And these problems

are so big. Like, we're the largest water charity in the country, and I'm going to help 1.7 million people out of 785 this year. That's not enough. It's not enough with all the abundance in the world with all the capital that is out there. So I think it's up to us to be creative, to be bold, to ask people to move it from their Coinbase and their Gemini wallets or their, you know, from cold storage to the, I mean, to the mouths of people with clean drinking water. Like to all, you know, you pick the cause, but there's so much suffering going on right now that does not need to be. And it is our job, I think, as nonprofits to encourage people to be generous. We talked on the phone once about kind of having enough. I mean, one of the struggles with this whole project is

nobody wants to give up their Bitcoin. So we have to make the issue of human beings getting clean drinking water, Trump, everybody's desire just to accumulate more, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And I think that's, I don't even know exactly how to do that yet except telling the story, being as passionate as I can about just helping people, helping people thrive and flourish through the most basic need, clean water, and trying to use Bitcoin as a force to enable that. As you've seen, Bitcoiners are relentless in their pursuit of acquiring more Bitcoin. But when they understand a cause is important or they see some way that they can help some of the most generous people in the world as

well and i think it's a really unique kind of balance between those two things so you're doing a great job and the philanthropists of the future i believe will come from this community the greatest philanthropists in the future uh i think the most radical acts of generosity maybe even impulsive and i think that's okay you know right some sometimes like people build these huge foundations and layers and layers of bureaucracy and grant writing. I think there are extraordinary people in this community that can go see a problem and say, not on my watch. I'm going to solve that. I'm going to make an extraordinarily radical, generous gift, and I am going to just change a million lives, change 10 million lives, whether it's our issue

or whether it's others that people come across. So that's what really excites me about all the people that i've met and um there's a little wariness there's a little scent you know cynicism and skepticism i think when it comes to anything institutional but we believe we can bring a highly effective highly transparent vehicle to the community um you know we can we can really make an exponential dent in in the global water crisis i think you are on to something my friend where can we send people to find you on the internet uh i'm just scott harrison at scott harrison on twitter twitter's best place yeah what's bigger for you twitter or instagram twitter twitter all right and then charity water instagram is family stuff that's nobody nobody cares about

my kids charitywater.org slash bitcoin slash bitcoin all right if you're listening charity water.org slash bitcoin 0.005 or so bitcoin gets you on the leaderboard uh bitcoin's been good to you go check it out see what it's about when you see the website you're gonna be god damn it's pretty cool it's pretty cool it's pretty cool and then you will uh your team put the website together in two weeks too wow so it's you know that's another thing we believe in it's just agility and we've got a great team at charity water they work really hard and uh 100 goes directly to help people so there's no overhead um every single bitcoin every single fractional bitcoin will go straight to help people get access to clean water well i appreciate all the effort

and I think Bitcoiners will come through. Cool, thanks for joining us. You've been a big encouragement and a big help to me. That means a lot. You're doing a great job. All right, thank you so much for doing this. We'll do it again in the future.

See you, man.