You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 59: Abubakar Nur Khalil - The Future of Africa’s CBDC & Bitcoin

Episode Date: December 28, 2024

My guest today is Abubakar Nur Khalil, a Nigerian Bitcoin Core contributor, CEO of the Bitcoin venture fund Recursive Capital, and one of only four board members of Btrust—a nonprofit supporting Bitcoin development in Africa. At just 25 years old, Abubakar is transforming the African Bitcoin ecosystem by training developers, advancing Bitcoin adoption, and supporting decentralized financial solutions. In this episode, we explore Nigeria’s CBDC rollout of the eNaira, why it failed, and accompanying cash shortages, as well as the growing Bitcoin adoption. Abubkar shares his journey from contributing to Bitcoin Core to leading Btrust's mission of decentralizing Bitcoin development in the Global South. He also shares about the challenges of scaling Bitcoin adoption in Africa, the revolutionary role of Bitcoin mining in electrifying rural communities, and the untapped potential of Bitcoin in empowering Africa’s youth and businesses.  ► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you! -- SPONSORS -- ►► Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn  -- SPECIAL OFFERS – ►► Enjoy the Little HODLer products, learn about sound money while having fun! use code EFRAT for 10% off on non-sale items: https://thelittlehodler.com/  ►► Get 10% off on all books, inc. “The Inverse of Clown World”, using the code EFRAT https://bitcoininfinitystore.com ►► Join me in any of these upcoming events:https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events  -- LINKS – Abubakar’s Twitter: https://x.com/ihate1999  Abubakar on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/abubakarnurkhalil/  BTrust’s Website: https://www.btrust.tech/  Abubakar’s Nostr npub: npub1sn0q3zptdcm8qh8ktyhwtrnr9htwpykav8qnryhusr9mcr9ustxqe4tr2x Efrat's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efenigson Efrat's Telegram: https://t.me/efenigson Watch/listen on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoice Support Efrat's work: ⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson   ⁠ Support Efrat with Bitcoin: https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson -- CHAPTERS – 00:00 Coming Up… 00:57 Introduction to Abubakar 03:48 The Journey to Becoming a Board Member of Btrust 09:08 Btrust’s Vision & Support for African Bitcoin Developers 12:58 Being Young & Successful 15:48 The eNaira - Nigeria’s CBDC 21:58 Cash Shortages in Nigeria 25:58 eNaira’s Failure & Speeding up Bitcoin Adoption 32:41 The CNGN - Nigeria's Stablecoin Initiative 35:01 Africa's Economic Landscape and Bitcoin Mining 40:15 Corruption and Governance Challenges in Africa 42:32 How Common Struggles Unify Africa 44:32 Non-Smartphones Can Use The Lightning Network 46:53 Ethiopia's Energy and Bitcoin Mining Potential 48:20 Why Are Most Bitcoin Transactions in Africa B2B 50:25 Regulatory Developments for Bitcoin Exchanges in Nigeria 52:54 Promising Future Projects in Bitcoin 56:58 Message of Hope

Did people even know what CBDC is, what the e-Naira is going to be? The main issue they had was they called it a digital currency. Yes. And the Naira already is a digital currency. Nobody knows till date exactly what the e-Naira is. The website is up. It's, trust me, even if you go there, it's pretty convoluted. Even I still don't know how it works.

What is this? Is there something really that unites a lot of people in Africa? The shared problem set is probably the number one thing I can point to. We've seen a lot of businesses having trouble with expatriating essentially USD out of the country or to the country. So a lot of the time, some of these transactions on the B2B side are just honestly impossible to settle outside of a network like Bitcoin. Do you have some numbers on the adoption levels of Bitcoin? So, I mean, a lot of it honestly is when we see adoption on the ground, it's mostly folks using Bitcoin as like a savings mechanism. Well, hello and welcome to another great episode of You're The Voice.

I'm Afrat, as always. Today I am in Amsterdam, one year after my first Bitcoin conference. It was a year ago here in Amsterdam. So I'm closing a loop now. And back then, I think I filmed five episodes. This time I'm going to also have like four or five. And my first guest today is Abel Bacar, Nur Khalil. Thank you so much for having me, Arthur.

Thank you for coming and for saying yes. I really appreciate it. Likewise. Huge pleasure. I'm looking forward for this conversation. It's going to be so much fun. I have so much to ask you. Happy to answer.

Okay, great. So we met first time in Prague a few months ago. And since then, I started following your work, reading your Forbes articles, just like looking at you saying, where did this guy come from with all these skills, with all the stuff that he's doing? This is insane. You look so young. You're going to tell me all about it. Oh, for sure. But wait, for my audience, I want to introduce you properly, and then you're going to expand

on that. So Abubakar is a Nigerian Bitcoin core contributor and CEO of the Bitcoin VC fund called Recursive Capital. I happen to know what recursive means because I used to be a programmer. Oh, yeah. And I actually wrote, I think, once or twice in my life, recursive function. oh yeah i can't believe i wrote them and i remember after writing a recursive function i went to my team leader i showed him what i wrote and he's like it's actually okay it works

and i'm like damn it has this ecstasy to it once you get it okay so um abu bakar is a board member and ceo of b trust which is a non-profit focus focused on training african bitcoin developers via B-Trust builders and growing the African Bitcoin ecosystem. B-Trust is a trust set up by Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z to increase Bitcoin adoption, education, and development in Africa. And Abubakar was selected as one of the four board members and explains the mission and accomplishments of B-Trust. And I would love to hear more about your background.

How did you get to doing that? How old are you? Where did you come from? Are you from this world or like another universe? Another universe. I'm on transit right now. Yes. Sometimes I feel that that's the case with some of us. Where did we land from? Where's the ship? It's coming, hopefully. Okay. Hopefully we don't need it, I guess. These things will get better.

Yeah, I'm 25 years old. I'm born and raised in Nigeria. And that's where I'm based as well. I mean, with features, it's interesting, like it wasn't something that I was like super eager to chase after because there was a call put out by Jack, literally a tweet saying that, oh, here's this entity essentially is going to be set up for Africa and India at the time for Bitcoin development. It's going to be 500 Bitcoin. Here's the application. We're going to select a board. I mean, I saw it. But then the first few replies were folks that were OGs in the space. yeah this is back in 2021 and i was like bro like where the hell am i from how can i compete and

then yeah my older brother told me to just give it a shot he dm'd me the link he was like what's the worst that could happen you won't get in right like yeah fair enough so i did it put in my info the only thing that was asked was like a name and then proof of work so i had no clue what to put in proof of work i just went on like yapping about working on core some of the focuses i have and things like where are you working on bitcoin oh yeah at the time yeah okay for how long uh probably a year a year a year because i opened my first pr in 2019 i got more in 2020 and then early 2021 i did the whole chain code study group which is where i met a lot more bitcoiners and then actually at the end of that year i started uh along with bernard carla and tim a development

program called kala q-a-l-a it means to start in swahili where we train african devs so right It was kind of like a full, full circle. But yeah, so I applied. And that is proof of work, dude. It is. It is. I mean, Kale came along afterward. So at the time of the application, the only thing I had was really just the core contributions slash at least the aspirations I had for helping out in the space.

And that's pretty much what I submitted. I completely forgot about it. I was like, you know, come on. What the hell? Nothing's going to come of it. And then a couple months go by and then I got an email saying, oh, you've been selected for the next round. I was like, okay, this is definitely probably a phishing attempt. So I went in, I filled in the form. The next subsequent questions were really around like, what are the key focuses on my end, things that I think should be priorities. And then I did that, submitted it, and then waited a bit, heard back again. I was like, okay, this is interesting.

It's actually moving along. It's moving along. So what I decided after at that point was, even if I don't get selected, at least let me document everything I'm saying and then put it out as an article. Whoever gets selected can at least take what's useful and leave what's not. So I started doing that, like writing up each response and then saving it in a draft. And then the final piece was actually an interview with Jack. and at that point even the idea of having to schedule a call with jack and like going through that was like okay this come on after this is definitely the last chance at least i get to meet jack and hear from him you're the voice is brought to you by trezor the original bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013 empowering individuals with an open source device enabling beginners and experts to easily and securely hold their coins i find my treasure super easy to use and recommend it to my friends

and family enjoy my five percent discount on treasure product by clicking the link in the show notes and using the code flat so that happened we had the call that was very surreal i was trying to stay composed i'm not gonna lie try my best not to yap so it went well like honestly a lot of the questions were really well thought out and i think having gone through that entire process was very useful like i'm kind of reaping all the benefits of thinking very methodically about what the vision is in the plan so yeah i finished the call and then i was like you know come on what the hell and then after the call i think maybe like 30 minutes afterwards i got an email from jack saying you selected i was like oh i was like really oh and it was like yeah

you know you can select it here are the other four board members gonna be announced blah blah i was like first of all i couldn't believe it and i remember what to do with yourself for that i didn't like i was so excited i was trying to play cool to my family like so they wouldn't know so all i did was i remember showing my my older sister and she was like bro come on that's a joke and then i showed my mom she was super emotional that got me emotional and then yeah from from then on we had the call with the wider team jay-z was on the call i was like oh my god hope i was trying my best to stay calm and then we enjoyed ourselves what was interesting is at that point I already knew Carla who was also selected because we did Thala and obviously

who doesn't know Carla like being in the lightning space ironically early in the year I did do the chain code study groups and part of the videos are actually videos of Carla presenting so it was kind of surreal as well to get to meet her and then yeah that's pretty much how it happened it was honestly even I don't believe how it happened and then the one thing I did after that was remember the notes I was taking I decided okay I might as well still publish so that was the first and i guess the last piece i published for bitcoin magazine it was this full ranch like folks can go and read up on it the good thing is most of it has materialized so i'm glad i stuck the script was like your vision oh yes for africa because my my thinking was five years from

the time of writing what should be in place right now for us to get to that point and that was 2019 uh 2021 okay so i had that up i mean a handful of people read it to be honest and i understand it's like 11 minutes long plus so but it's definitely been cool to see all of that kind of become reality especially on the dev side funding by the time we're a handful of developers and now we're like hundreds all due to the work of btrust and then hundreds in nigeria or in all of africa in all of africa okay so a lot of that work was last year we decided as btrust to kind of subsume the kala entity because essentially it's like internalizing the pipeline for devs merge it

so we essentially just put it in to Btrust so it came from Gala to Btrust Builders so that's essentially our single pipeline exclusively for

African devs and then every other thing is around like funding dev programs from outside of Africa as their pipeline

and then we have developer grants we give out two types one is a starter grant six months you get paid in Bitcoin

we essentially send off a proposal kind of work in a specific niche in Bitcoin and then after that six months you get to

attend in a proposal for a longer term grant for one year yes the idea is from the starter grant to graduate into a long-term grant it makes it a lot easier than just applying for a long-term grant because that way you have the proof of work right but we still do allow people to actually apply for the long-term grant regardless of having to go to a starter grant so right now we have three folks in the we call it the bitcoin the b-trust open source cohort the idea is to have them work together kind of have lots of community vibe have mentors same thing for the starter grant so what is it physically in a place

or are they all working from home? It's all virtual. Okay, from different countries? Yes. So right now we have two from Nigeria and one from South Africa. Right. So two are working on Bitcoin Core

and one is working on the Lightning Network. Okay, got it. Oh, wow. Anything else about the trust? Oh, yeah. So right now the main priority for us is setting the cadence for the grant announcements. We announced our two, three grants,

which was six folks. So three in the long term as well as three in the starter. We're going to announce the next round of Q4 grants in Nairobi at the Bitcoin Africa Conference, which if folks haven't heard about it, they should definitely make it out to Nairobi.

So other than that, I'd say next year, the expectations should be a lot more openness and transparency from B-Trust with regards to our operations so far, all the grants for conferences, developer educations, the templates we're applying, and earn exactly what it takes to get an approval really from our end,

like knowing from the application how the process is decision-making, so a lot more open work from our end. We're going to launch our website on Friday, I believe. So there'll be a lot more information around that, FOQs, applications. And when you give out a grant to someone,

this is like their full-time job and that covers their salary and they don't have to worry about working in anything else? Oh yeah, we pay really well. We don't disclose the amounts because of security reasons for a lot of these folks

because they are in Africa. We don't want to have a target on their back. But yeah, that's the aim. And again, the core focus for us at B-Trust is we're trying to decentralize Bitcoin development in the global South. So hence why we started with Africa. A lot of infrastructure is acquired, hence we trust builders.

And then now we're already involved in actually funding programs in India, to Bechala, as well as Liberia de Satoshi for Latin America. So slowly and gradually, we're trying to dip our toes into that ecosystem to get the pipeline going, have them funded as part of the grants too. And gradually, ease our way in from Africa to some of these other parts. Got it. And what about the education part? Do you also fund some educators in Africa? So on the education front, we don't fund individuals.

We fund projects. Yes. So the idea is… Like data? For example. We haven't funded… But yeah. Example-wise, yeah, like that.

Community of… Okay. Yeah. And the core focus is it has to be focused on developers, specifically Bitcoin developers, with an emphasis on FOSS. So if you're an open source. Because that's the main aim for us. We're not necessarily training Bitcoin developers more broadly.

We're training Bitcoin open source developers. Right. okay wow do you believe that that's what you do today i'll be honest sometimes it feels surreal sometimes especially when it gets to the point where you're like having calls with all these guys like getting all this work done and seeing actual meaningful change for developers on the ground i think that isn't the biggest honestly blessing and honor for me is just having been able to facilitate all these devs to get to the point where they're earning bitcoin working in bitcoin for all that so that's incredible that is awesome and you are so young and you're running

this show it's great i mean it's it's also interesting because africa is such a young continent yes and i mean 60 of our population mangera where i'm based is between the ages of 18 to 25 yes so like statistically i'm the average on the continent so a lot of the times you go there and you're like shocked that there are so many young folks that are involved in so many things because we have to it's not honestly a choice but it's one sacrifice i think that's very necessary and the easiest way i could contribute to like a better africa rather than like going through the route of politics and potentially getting killed or like serving in the military it was like the easiest way i could be productive can you choose by the way

not to go to the military oh yeah so we don't have a mandatory service so okay all we have is a national youth corporal service so one year you essentially work in any part of nigeria but you have to have like served in the country that's the closest we have but yeah it's not mandatory thank god thank god with me where i come from it is mandatory and it sucks um okay and you write in forbes you write in bitcoin magazine or not yeah i mean i can still post in bitcoin there yeah as a contributor um you write about kenya nigeria finance economics bitcoin like you cover a lot of grounds in your writing which is very useful because people can learn a lot so much is happening it's actually difficult to keep track it's also helpful for me personally

to know what's going on i i yes i know um when you were interviewed by president fish he said about you absurdly accomplished for his age i love it i quoted it and um you you also said i started actually using bitcoin before i even had a bank account okay and many people don't have bank accounts right yeah it's just it's either too difficult to get one and even if they do they're technically underbanked in the sense that they don't necessarily have the best type of services the only thing i would give credence to is we have instant payments for bank accounts so between banks you can actually send instant transfers the only challenge is like having your account shut down at no notice or having issues with the network but yeah in general most

the folks i know definitely have like a hybrid approach where yes they do have bank accounts but also engaging bitcoin or usdt okay let's talk a bit more about nigeria sure okay so it's a few years ago when the inaira was introduced there was some period of cash shortages right that were artificially created by the state by the government like this i see unintentionally to their so can you can you share a bit about what happened during that time of the introduction of cbdc and how it came about yeah for sure i mean so the cbdc's came in 2021 i think for early 2022 yep and with that it was i think a lot of it was formal for for the government they really wanted to show that they're at the forefront when it comes to i know so so i understand the form on

that end but then the problem is because of the formal they kind of rushed it so they didn't necessarily think through what's the best way to onboard people so what they ended up doing was outsourcing the entire building to i think a british firm or some other random firm essentially they were trying to do on hyperledger they scrapped that i think what they finally ended up building on is some private blockchain that's only god knows how it works no idea what specific chain it is but it's definitely something something rolled in homegrown so they tried to do that Now, the main problem, I think, with the e-Naira rollout was the Naira is not a great currency to begin with. And two, for average folks, having to re-KYC into the CBDC to get access to it,

not having to download separate apps before the bank rollouts, was just not a convincing argument. Hold on, but did people even know what CBDC is, what the e-Naira is going to be? Was there any market preparation, education? Did they communicate about that to the public? How did it come about? It's funny because they did try their best But they didn't do it in a way that made the most sense Because

You're very kind You really think that they tried their best I mean They tried their best in terms of educating folks But The main issue they had was They called it a digital currency Yes

And the NARA already is a digital currency Because they have them in banks So people are like How different is it? Is it a crypto? They're like No, it's not crypto It's digital

But it's not the same as the same NARA So They had a lot of issues with regards to framing it And couching kind of the value proposition What ended up happening was Essentially, not necessarily for us, but a lot of the banks, they made sure that they adopted eNaira as part of the service suits that they have. So it was weird. You had your Naira sitting in your bank account, but you had the option to get out of the Naira and go into the eNaira.

And most people just, one, didn't know it happened. Two, didn't even know it existed. And three, had no purpose for it. So they were stuck in this kind of quagmire that they created, to be honest, to a certain extent, where they have this piece of technology that no one is using. In fact, no one wants to use and no one thinks it's even useful to begin with because, again, it's not going to fix the double digits inflation. And a lot of it, honestly, is understandable on their end

because to curb some of the inflation is because they have so much extant cash in the system, a lot of the monetary policy that they had was technically ineffective. So that was kind of another avenue to soak up extant cash that didn't end up panning out. What was the official excuse for them to launch it? What did they say? We're doing it because it's faster and it's faster.

like they tried to essentially market this new vision of a greater Nigeria trying to get into the digital age like head first or I guess eyes first and part of that was there's this wave of you know crypto that's happening such digital currencies and to get ahead of that and be compliant with this brewing future we're also engaging in this new digital currency that's going to be the same now but even better is going to be digital as if you don't have digital version of our ranking.

But it's centralized and we will not tell you about it. Complete access to all kinds of info and again, that was another challenge for a lot

of people because again, we are heavily KYC to begin with to use bank accounts. Yes. Even when it comes to folks that were

using Bitcoin at the time of the rollout, they had this ban. I mean, it's still an argument yet to be settled whether the quasi-Bitcoin

ban happened because of the CBDs who were allowed to kind of reduce the effect of Bitcoin and like the adoption to increase their

adoption. What ended up happening was they boosted bitcoin adoption in nigeria because they forced it to p2p so ironically if i was to credit the reason why we have deep p2p markets is because of the government you reckon yes wow and they had to roll it back in 2020 so hold on so you think that because they pushed the in iris so badly and it was so bad and people didn't want to participate in this heavily kyc for my audience that don't know kyc's know your customer it's that lengthy process that you have to go through with the bank or the financial institution to introduce yourself, to identify

yourself and to prove that you are who you are so that they can start collecting data about you and knowing a lot of things about you under the excuse of anti-money laundering and, you know, you have to not be a terrorist or not a criminal. So they do a KYC process for you, but you're saying that because they did it so, you know, harshly and they force people in a way to start using this new system and they didn't want to, it pushed them to look for

another alternative? It's specific. Or it just educated them about... It's the combination of both the botched rollout as well as the quasi-ban they had.

Because the ban really was just saying bank accounts can't tie crypto transactions because previously exchanges could just open up an Indian bank account and then allow

for those flows to happen. So they essentially just allowed that happening. So a lot of people ended up going for P2P because it just made the most sense. So send me Bitcoin

You send me a bank transfer Or vice versa We don't need the bank So like And it's ironic Because they did that Under the guise of Increasing regulation

But then the problem is They forced everything Underground To a point where They couldn't regulate it And then over time It just became One of those obvious things

Where like the ban Was so irrelevant Because it had no effect And also it confused A lot of people Into thinking that Bitcoin was banned in Africa Specifically in Nigeria

Outside of Nigeria People thought that But not inside Inside everyone knew I mean, to be honest, there are a lot of people who still thought Bitcoin was banned, to be honest. But they didn't care. They didn't care. They didn't care because there's no real way for you to stop people from trying to live a better life,

trying to save, trying to protect themselves against inflation. They can't wait for the government to enact laws that help and then decide to live accordingly. So I think a lot of that had to do with people just trying to survive and Bitcoin serving that purpose. Sure. And what happened with the cash situation? So cash, all that happened in the span of last year. So in January, we had the election last year as well. January 23rd.

So we had the election for the presidency. Yes. Obviously, we are Africa's largest democracy. It has a lot of consequences on the ground. So typically, election cycles get pretty chaotic on the ground. So we are used to that period being very, very intense when it comes to trying to make a living, trying to just be a calm citizen. And so we had the election, and following the election, there were certain laws that were introduced because of the CBN. And what they were trying to do at the time was the Central Bank of Nigeria.

So they're trying to essentially, again, soak up all that extant cash that was in the system. And they figured the best way to do that is every eight years, according to the regulation at the CBN, they're required to kind of change from the old notes to new notes. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. So it's actually part of their charter or their mandate. So they figured We might as well do that Because we hadn't done it in a while

Okay So that was a good reason To kind of have Some of that cash soaked in But the problem was They didn't necessarily anticipate The demand for the new notes But I mean

To an extent They should have Given the fact that They had a small timeline For people to go from Old notes to new notes I think it was I think it was like

A month or so early on Okay And then the problem with that Is there was now a cash shortage Because so many people Were going to bands And changing from The old notes to the new notes

Yeah And then it got to the point where there were long queues, essentially people trying to go from old to new notes. And then that trickled into the ATMs as well. Because people were trying to get all the cash from their accounts that were old notes, then get them into new notes, have them physically. And the combination of that with the election cycle was just insane.

So we reached a point like mid-2023 where we had four different versions of the national currency. So we had the old and new notes. Mid-22 or 23? 23. So we had the old notes, the new notes. Yes. And we also had the eNaira as well as the Naira in the bank account.

So talk about fungibility. So it was super ironic. And I think the main issue that a lot of people had was they reduced a lot of the limits we could have for, sorry, they increased the limits actually on the ATM side. So they could only withdraw, I think, the equivalent of $20 a month, I think, at the time. And then that just increased into folks panicking to go withdraw as much as they can. And then because all the queues, I mean, I wrote a lot of this for the fourth piece I did last year as it was happening. because I knew it's one of those things

that unless you document it people don't really necessarily want to believe it or even understand how it could happen but I think it was kind of a combination of all the things

that could go wrong pretty much went wrong last year and the only way they could kind of weather the storm was to remove all the timelines

that they had for the limits on when you could go from old notes to new notes but they just kept extending and even that was a whole situation

on its own because a lot of people got to the point where they're like going to these queues going to the banks And then finding out that they could have just waited a bit more Because the time hasn't been extended

And then people get frustrated I kid you not It got to a point where Essentially We had a situation where people in markets Were going into Exchange from Nara to the Seifa And some alternative currencies

Apparently Reportedly in some markets in the north They went all the way from Nara to using Shells and cowries Just because of how broken the money was Seriously It got to yeah it was insane it was insane yes we went like full analog oh my god it was not bad but

everything is like a lot calmer now like we still have this extension period of going from old to new noise but last year was a mess okay wow so much to unpack there but you're saying that during this chaos during this time people started understanding bitcoin more and more And do you have some numbers on the adoption levels of Bitcoin? So here's the thing with numbers in general There isn't too much insight because most of it is P2P So the best you can lean into is some of the work that Chainalysis has done Going to some of these OTC desks

WhatsApp groups have a lot of volume But I would say roughly in terms of the numbers Most of the transaction volumes typically on the retail side Are around like less than $1,000 to $1,000 monthly And then on the B2B side is where the majority of the volumes are. It's like mostly like roughly 10,000 bucks a month. So, I mean, a lot of it honestly is when we see adoption on the ground, it's mostly folks using Bitcoin as like a savings mechanism. It means for like, especially after the Lightning Network came in through, you know, BitNob's integration back in 2022 or 23, I believe.

A lot of people now realize, okay, they can use Bitcoin not only locally, but also for remittances. And then USDT came into the mix, I see maybe in the last 13 to 18 months. as like a supplemental avenue for people to get cheap access to USD. Now they have a savings mechanism with Bitcoin and instant transfers with Lightning. And then they're able to kind of work with that realm and then exit as much as they can for the national currency when they need to. So the awareness to it is quite high.

Like if you ask someone in the street, do you know what Bitcoin is? They most likely know what Bitcoin is, but not for the reasons that we'd like. We're still at a point where people feel it's like this scam that young folks are involved with. So we definitely have a long way to go in terms of changing the public sentiment To understand that there's a lot more to Bitcoin than just money going up and down But they're aware Yes

I mean, the first foot is in the door already Like we just need to do work This is very interesting Okay, wow This is insane And the eNaira, I heard recently that it's still going, right? Oh, it still exists It still exists

They've been trying to re-brand it But like nobody cares Level of adoption Very very low Only I mean No one really knows the numbers Because

I don't think we've had Any official numbers published The closest we have is like Some study That was run by Bloomberg I think two years ago Which Only God knows

How they ran that as well Because it's just so much It's just so opaque Dude I just read Very recently A report by the IMF That 98% of the E-Naira wallets

In Nigeria Are inactive 98% So you don't need Any other numbers Nobody's using it Like Till date

I still haven't seen Anyone use Inera Like live Or accepted So my next question For you is If you take that Into consideration

And you also know That the Character of Governments And states Is that they have They have the patience And they have the means

And the resources To try things Again and again And again Until they succeed What is your understanding of how they're going to carry on with this idiotic system? Like, are they going to try again? Are they going to maybe try and coerce people?

Are they going to be using it for maybe taxes, salaries? Which are some of the things that the Bank of Israel, for example, is saying that they will do in order to create adoption in the market. They will coerce you in different ways. I mean, honestly, I think from the onset, the one mistake they made was bifurcating the NERA from eNERA and the digital NERA we have, it would have been a lot easier for them, given the central bank of Nigeria was in charge of this project,

to just convert all the existing digital NERA into the eNERA. That way you already have adoption from day one. And two, you would have at least gained all the reasons why they decided to do the eNERA in the first place, which is stricter monetary policy or more effective monetary policy. But now they're at a point where nobody knows till date exactly what the eNERA is. The website is up.

It's, trust me, even if you go there, it's pretty convoluted. Even I still don't know how it works. And right now what they've been doing is kind of rebranding it to say, you know, here's the V2, here's the V3, all of that. I think they're going to continue with that. But I think the best case scenario for them on the regulatory side is understanding that there's Bitcoin and there's everything else and then regulating accordingly. Other than that, honestly, they're just going to keep hitting their head at the wall and trying to regulate everything as one thing and then kind of forking the in-air in between. you're giving me a lot of hope dude i have to yeah it'll be doom and gloom yeah because you know where i come from when i see western democracies behaving the way they do in recent years i keep

thinking that they're gonna go at it again and again and again in very coercive modes and Obviously, I don't want that to happen. And so if there is a way for people to really not use it and the governments be so mediocre, so lame to not be able to really make it usable or make it sustainable, then it gives me hope. I really hope that that's what's going to happen in Nigeria and everywhere else. And I think for Nigeria, especially, we have an opportunity to set the landscape for Bitcoin regulation more generally, like globally, because we don't necessarily have a lot of the laws that are like on the MECA level in Europe or with the US or the OFAC list. So we have that avenue and that flexibility to set regulation from the bottom up, or at least from scratch. So looking at exactly what are the most effective ways to regulate Bitcoin, and then we can set essentially a blueprint for everyone else to regulate Bitcoin strictly from the lens of Bitcoin. Are there politicians today in Nigeria that are handling Bitcoin regulation at all?

I mean, I think most of the anti-Bitcoin politicians are just, honestly, they don't necessarily know how Bitcoin works to begin with, which is where kind of the angst comes from. And I can tell you, like, there's a lot more positive sentiment than people will realize in the government. Really? There are just certain barriers that prevent a lot of folks from getting at it more aggressively.

But I think that it's now incumbent on us as stakeholders in the space to, Be a lot more upfront with regulators, especially from the standpoint of saying this is Bitcoin and there's everything else. That's how you should approach regulation. So honestly, the bulk of the work is on our end, approaching them and being a lot more productive and constructive rather than like going, oh, you know, they're being chaotic. If they're being chaotic, then we're the source of essentially calm that should be tender towards them. So I think, yeah, a lot of the work from our end will be engaging them and hopefully putting in some regulation that makes a lot more sense. got it can you talk to me a bit about the uh new stablecoin the cngn if is it happening i heard that the banks are coming together to try and do it so from without getting into too

much detail because some of it is still under wraps yeah it seems that at a point where it's kind of stagnate is not the right word it's hasn't progressed beyond the initial set of announcements because i think the problem was hold on some of the for those that don't know so cngn is a declaration by some of the banks in nigeria that they're going to launch an official stable coin of nigeria right it's an attempt to have a nigerian stable coin okay i think the issue with that is like the way it was rolled out too wasn't super ideal because the messaging was also a bit mixed look i'm a marketeer dude i know that he's stuck in anything to do

with communications and marketing but they're I mean they're still working on it they are still working on it so right now the phase that they're in is

essentially even the even the announcement was just announced that they're a part of an incubation program so it's still a long time before we get to a point where it's like

widely adopted I agree a lot of people so but it's an interesting thing to watch it's an interesting thing because it's going to set the precedent for a lot

of the regulation for digital assets specifically in the stablecoin space correct so there isn't too much really on the books for that

Plus, I dare saying that there is not much difference between a stablecoin and a CBDC in terms of how they're regulated and in terms of what you can do with them. So in terms of like the technological features and capabilities. Oh yeah. It could be the new manifestation of the dying CBDC at one point. It is. They may go, oh, we tried it, Naira. It didn't work. Here, CNGN.

Welcome CNGN This is your brand The only challenge with that is It is in the hands of The private sector To a certain extent So it's supposed to be A collaborative effort

So it might be a lot more Challenging for them To kind of own it As their project But I wouldn't be shocked For them to With a private sector All the time

On everything They're useless on their own What do you think? I mean, hey Try to be as charitable As possible You're nice You're very polite

You're not like me Okay um africa million people 54 countries over 30 currencies let's talk a bit about the continent and and what's going on there in terms of money like i i you know from the little bit of research i've been doing and and reading and knowing getting to know africa a bit you know the fact that france is controlling some of the countries other empires are controlling other countries the fact that this is a heavily rich continent with natural resources, energy, like what can you tell me about the trajectory that this continent is taking? We know that it's been

abused for many, many years by many Western countries. How do you see Africa today from your point of view, from your eyes? I mean, I'm actually optimistic, to be honest with you, because we now have renewed hope in Bitcoin, as well as some of the demographics I think are very important like having a lot of the young folks take charge even at this level of some of the government agencies or some of these positions of power that traditionally were relegated to you know the older folks that essentially have a certain way in which they like to see things work so i say with specifically on the currency side like we're still not at a point where some of the francophone countries have seen the benefits of bitcoin and maybe using that as a

means of escape right some of the clutches of funds but i think the first avenue that a lot of people see change on the African continent is through Bitcoin mining. Specifically, the angle of one, using Bitcoin mining

as an efficient way to manage their green energy products and two, using Bitcoin mining to electrify rural communities. I think having the idea of going...

That is super interesting. It is. And it's happening at a scale that not a lot of people would believe, to be honest. Can you say a bit about that?

Yeah, for sure. Tell people what that is just to make them... A lot of the work started, I'd say, maybe roughly two years ago. Right. Some companies,

essentially, around, I think, probably one of the more public ones that happened at that point was through the Green Africa Mining Alliance that was spearheaded by, you know, Gridless, as well as some of the early miners. Now, what was interesting with their model is they realized, like, the most effective way

for you to engage in Bitcoin mining is through hydro. And not only that, they realized that they could co-locate themselves near these dams that have already existing communities and then be a means of actually electrifying some of these communities. Because the challenge with Africa is there's never been a buyer for this energy production that's coming from day one.

Well, the guys with Bitcoin mining, they already have a buyer from day one. So all they're having to do is like scale up or scale down on mining efforts with regards to local demand taking up. And for a lot of these energy concessionaires on the ground that are producing on the hydro level, it's a lot easier for them. All they have to do is like rev splits with some of these guys, whether it's on SPV level. But they understand that now that they can monetize this potential revenue stream,

They could actually engage in increasing their output or their capacity, probably looking at other things that maybe the local community wasn't able to explore, having a thriving ecosystem on the ground for small businesses, small, medium enterprises as well. So I think a lot of that, honestly, will be impossible without Bitcoin mining. And I think we're going to lead, one, the green revolution around the world as a result of that. And two, it's going to, for the first time, unlock a lot of really critical key metrics, whether it comes to healthcare, access to education. because at the base of all of those things, the necessity is energy. And once you're able to have that sorted out, everything else is kind of like an after effect.

And this is just early days? Like this is in the last couple of years that this has started? Oh, yeah. And this is based mostly with smaller communities, rural smaller communities today? We're still not at a stage where we have like maybe 5 megawatt mines

or 10 megawatt. Although recently we've seen some push from some of the existing miners to do a lot of that. And what's cool is Governments are a lot more on board With Bitcoin mining Than Bitcoin overall

Which will fascinate a lot of people Because they understand That it's going to They understand that The energy mix is more of a It's more of a compelling argument For them Right

As opposed to this is something That could compete With the local currency Sure So a lot of the work Has been in East Africa Where they're a lot more friendly Towards Bitcoin mining

I mean recently with Kenya as well They introduced Mara essentially To help manage collaboratively With the government Their green energy projects And then previously before that, Ethiopia was actually the first to kind of legalize Bitcoin mining, not necessarily upfront, but they legalized high efficiency computing, which mining falls under. So they

essentially allow for people to kind of explore energy projects through Bitcoin mining. So a lot of the, I guess the uptake will likely be from East Africa before it reaches parts in the West Africa. And then overall, honestly, I think there's going to be a flywheel effect where governments around Africa are going to see, oh, wow, this is a lot more sensible approach than like IMF loans and further indebting themselves. And truth be told, like without Bitcoin mining, there's really no way to solve the energy problem meaningfully. Right now we're at a point where we have 1% of the hash rate coming from Africa.

So 1% of the hash rate globally is from Africa. I predict I'll likely see closer to double digits in maybe the next 25 years because of all this work that's being done right now. Amazing. Okay. So a couple of questions. First of all, and sorry, forgive me if I'm wrong, I just know from my experience that in the past, many countries, many states in Africa were under a lot of corruption and crimes. You know, people would steal from each other. You know, there'd be a lot of violence and whatever.

Isn't that a concern that some of those projects will also be susceptible to corruption? No, I'm sorry. My question is. It's a great question. Is it? it's a challenge but like honestly I've

I just remember that there is like everything is so fragile like you can start things that you know you want to do good

there's no continuity yeah and someone will take over because of the wrong reasons and will make it honestly so I've kind of

changed my perspective on like the whole corruption angle yeah haven't seen some certain things I've seen in the last couple of years I think

it's not the direct issue that a lot of people think is responsible for a lot of the challenges I think it's a consequence of a lack of structure, a lack of political will to actually do the right thing for a lot of the elected officials. And again, just the lack of enabling existing structures that we have to function as they should is really the crux of Nigeria's problem, to be honest, and more broadly, a lot of African countries. And I think the best case scenario for us is we have seen some glimpse of hope across different states, specifically Nigeria, where you have a governor who comes in, is able to actually make a lot of effective change.

I think a good example of that is the state I'm in, Kaduna. Like the last governor, Governor Malam Nasser, a lot of what he did was around infrastructure development, attracting a lot of foreign investments. So we went from like 10th in terms of the World Bank ranking for ease of doing business to number one. and all of that was thought of as impossible and he didn't do anything like that was like rocket science or anything all he did was create structures that work make sure he puts in people that will do the work and honestly corruption was kind of it still was there because like it is endemic in the country but it wasn't as much of an issue because things work as they should right and i think that's the only way that africa can kind of progress and go outside of potential

and then to actualizing all this change. Wonderful. Okay. And my second follow-up is you speak sometimes about Africa in a way that makes me feel like there is such a, how would I say it? Like a network of like a connection between the countries. It's as if, I mean, I don't hear that

about any other continent in the world. And when you talk about Africa, sometimes it makes me feel like there is this symbiotic relationship between countries. you can relatively easily talk or represent like africa as a as an entity yeah and that's weird because there are so many states there are so many countries so many languages like you said so many currencies so what is this is is there something really that unites a lot of people in africa how i think the shared set the shared problem set is probably the the number one thing

i can point to right because you can pretty much go as an african to virtually any part of africa and still meet if it's not the same exact issues it's like similar different versions of the same issue okay so for a lot of us really whether we band together or we meet one another we already have like a set of problems that we're like oh you're also experiencing that you're experiencing that oh this is what we've been trying this hasn't worked and i think that just the general sense that we have for such a young continent is there's only one way in which Africa can change and as if I mean this is going to sound cliche is if we start to change like there's no other way we can actually do that so a lot of young folks like that's the one thing we've realized so

a lot of the times we're not necessarily looking at what previous generations have been doing which is complain complain complain and then wonder why nothing is changing so for us the most effective way to actually bring about this future that everyone keeps talking about that's so bright it's actually start from today yeah how can you practically make a difference on the ground and that's what we do and that's what gets me honestly excited to wake up every morning awesome dude love it okay um phones that aren't smartphones yeah operate lightning how does that work so it started with a project from a really really talented developer kothazo from south africa he started a project called machankura i think it was in 20 ending of 2022 to early 2023

if i recall where essentially what he figured out was first of all very genius he combined ussd codes which is already ubiquitous technology where essentially interact with the telcos through short codes you're able to use banking services yes so those are kind of the ways in which people that have not necessarily smartphones but not phones interact with like banking services okay Make transfer, receive money. Yes. So, he figured that is already an existing technology and infrastructure. And then he realized with Lightning, there are Lightning addresses.

So, all you have to do is set up essentially a Lightning server that's able to communicate with these inbound payment requests and then resolve that payment. So, what he did was combine the two. So, people can use USSD codes and then essentially send it to these Lightning addresses. So, you have a two-way peg. So, essentially go from Lightning to a local currency and then vice versa. And I think it's genius. Without going through any exchange or anything. No exchange, no internet.

Directly from Lightning. Directly. Wow. And people use it? People use it. And what's interesting is like, I think this is going to be one of... Because many places don't have internet.

They don't. Or smartphones. I think our internet penetration rate is like sub 50% or like roughly around there. So it's definitely not something to write home about. And smartphones too.

I think technologies like that is the only way you can actually bring people into Bitcoin. Because we keep saying like we're unbanking, we're banking the unbanked through Bitcoin.

And like, it's not really practical if you're doing it through smartphones only. So it's another avenue. And I think it's also a testament to the kind of innovation that people should expect from Africa. There's no other continent they could think of

that would likely pioneer this type of technology because they don't face that type of problem. That is unreal. And a shout out to Joseph Tedek, who's doing great work in Africa as well from Trezor. Trezor is my sponsor. Oh, thanks. Good plug.

I mean, the plug will be the advertisement in the episode, but this is just like Joseph. a lot of great work a lot of folks that are working day and night that a lot of folks aren't necessarily seeing especially with the circular economies that yes the next five ten years they're going to be like wow how do we get there because of that work amazing you were talking about ethiopia as a country to watch um due to the recent low allowing high efficiency computing why what's happening in in ethiopia why is it interesting to follow them ethiopia is an interesting one because i think on the government side they've they already understand that for them

to get to the capacity that they need really to serve the people on the ground, energy-wise, they have to lean into the Renaissance Dam, which has been a huge project

and I think probably the maiden project that will set them apart from maybe some of the other African countries or some of the other folks that want to engage

in maybe hydro mining or using hydro as a sustainable means for electrifying their communities. And I think the thing to watch with regards to how Ethiopia evolves

is one, the regulatory landscape, but two, what is the most effective way to manage that type of project at that scale so the other countries that are trying to either set up these dams or that have existing dams can have a productive blueprint that they could follow as opposed like having to figure it out from from scratch so i think yeah east africa is definitely to watch in

terms of anyone looking into how mining is evolving west africa is still coming up like we still have things around flared gas because nigeria ranks i think top five gas flares which is not a good stat to have but it's been a lot of apprehension from a variety of key stakeholders on the ground with regards to why we don't have that up and running. But I think in the next, maybe within the next five years, you'll likely see some more motion really at that stage with flared gas or even just hydro because they have quite a lot of hydro in Nigeria.

Amazing. Okay. How come the majority of Bitcoin transactions in Africa are still B2B? You mentioned that before. How come? Like why businesses transact between themselves? I mean, I know what B2B stands for, but they transact in Bitcoin? So, other than the fact that it's extremely difficult to send money between African countries.

Yes. And to a certain extent, in some African countries, sending it within is also difficult. Okay. We've seen a lot of businesses having trouble with expatriating, essentially, USD out of the country or to the country. So, a lot of the time, some of these transactions on the B2B side are just honestly impossible to settle outside of a network like Bitcoin. And increasingly with USDTN So think of it this way It's increased liquidity

Ease of settlement And then it helps increase A lot of the efficiencies for them Just running the businesses in Africa So honestly, without like a Bitcoin or USDT There's really no practical way for them To one, scale their business Two, penetrate the African market

Which is a huge market in a lot of these cases And then three, interact with wholesalers From parts like China I can tell you a lot of the trade that goes between A lot of the wholesalers from China and Nigeria to USDT as well as NGM. Well, BTC, I guess. Very interesting.

Oh, yeah. Very interesting. Like a whole underground ecosystem that's like really thriving. Dude, I think we're going to see some really fascinating stuff from Africa in the next few years, right? Oh, yeah.

100%. We already are seeing it. So I guess that's the hope we could have to see even more. But yeah, a ton of incredible talent, a ton of folks working in varying parts of the ecosystem. And I definitely think

it's going to be one of those things where Africa is going to lead the Bitcoin ecosystem both in terms of development on the VC side too, with the companies and all of that. And is Nigeria the most mature out of all countries? It definitely is because we already have a pretty mature fintech ecosystem and the Bitcoin ecosystem kind of evolved out of that ecosystem. So we'll likely continue to see Nigeria at the forefront, really.

Amazing. I saw you wrote just recently, you wrote a piece, I think it was in Forbes, That exchanges got approval In Nigeria Yeah To new exchanges Is that like Yeah so

It's an interesting So even with that Like again Back to the lack of Regulatory certainty Slash clarity The issue they had was There was no real way

To kind of regulate Some of these exchanges Because a lot of it was P2P So all they could do Is kind of sit back And hope that They exist within

The regulatory regimes That were already Kind of in the books And also It was just difficult For them to Regulate some of these entities Because they had no physical presence

In the country So there's nothing to really tax Which was the case with Binance as well Which is an ongoing case with You know Their executive still being held in custody Yes And I think

So they did two things One is They outright essentially Banned all exchanges As being illegal Pending them getting a license From the Securities and Exchange Commission So our SEC

So it was like Automatically All exchanges are now illegal Oh yeah That happened I think Late last year Slash early this year Yes

And what they did was Okay now you're banned you need to get a license how do you get a license you might ask they have an incubation program that's split into two

yeah the second one was kind of a consequence of the first one not necessarily being rolled out well so it was like a stopgap because they gave folks I think a month to register

which honestly that wasn't too realistic to get it's like pre-education exactly they put you in a program they'll teach you how you need to behave

the idea is fairly simple from their end they're saying come into this incubation program we'll work with you to kind of sort out regulation and then You have essentially a license in principle, and then outside of the incubation program, once it's done, you now have a full license to operate.

So everyone is incentivized to kind of get into that. So they shape regulation, but also are legal in that end. So the two that were announced is very interesting because they're two indigenous African exchanges. So they're actually both down in southern Nigeria. They operate. So what people should be looking forward to to watch is kind of how that affects regulation. because most of what we'll see on the other side is going to be a consequence of everything

that happens within the incubation program. So it is a positive in the sense that they are trying to regulate it more productively, but it's just going to take having a lot more Bitcoiners involved in that. And I think it's incumbent on us, again, like I mentioned in the beginning, to kind of approach these regulators,

maybe get one or two Bitcoin-only companies in there to shape up what the future is for that. But it's definitely going to have a lot of consequences, not just for Nigeria, but African countries in general. okay great um what project that you are either working on or aware of involved in or maybe the the fund is the trust is that makes you really excited or or gets you passionate or like when you look at that project you go wow this one's cool this one's promising i mean a lot like it It cuts across a lot of aspects.

Yeah, sure. In terms of just the general self-sovereignty, I think the project by KG, again, the developer responsible for Machin Kura, he's trying to work on... I don't know that. You tell me what it is. So he's essentially trying to work on

getting SIM cards to be Bitcoin hardware wallets. Oh, yeah. You mentioned it in your talk. And the idea is, first of all, very revolutionary. And second of all, if it definitely works, it would be a lot easier for people to roll out Bitcoin services because then the funds speak Bitcoin natively. natively so all you have to do is essentially integrate on that level so I think it's going

to have huge potential it's definitely still in it's still a work in progress so we'll see what happens but right if you want to watch in terms of sovereignty in terms of Nigeria no South Africa because KG is based in South Africa but it is intended to be an open source product so folks from all across could essentially contribute so with regards to I think on the country level two things one is hopefully we see a lot more countries adopt Bitcoin in terms of using that for debt servicing or as part of their foreign reserves to kind of be, to wean themselves away from the IMF or some reliance on the World Bank. But I think for that to happen, we'll need to see, again, the second part, which is what I'm most excited about on the nation level, is Bitcoin mining.

I think it's a very, very underrepresented aspect of the whole Bitcoin revolution that's happening on the continent. I think it's going to be responsible for why Bitcoin eventually gets fully embraced by the continent in terms of understanding that energy production is going to be a lot more productive to Bitcoin mining, electrification, and sort of, you know, a lot of these challenges.

So I'll watch closely with regards to how that evolves because I think it's going to set the precedent slash the landscape for everything else to evolve. And then more broadly, if we're talking more retail, some of the work

around the Lightning Network from some of the entrepreneurs on the ground all the way up to having instant payments, make payouts to my German bank accounts, which is an interesting thing

that's happening with MavaPay. I think those are kind of the three main things I see. And the one thing I would say that's probably the most promising if I'm being honest is on the developer landscape

slash the entrepreneur landscape. I think the human capital of it is probably the biggest thing I could be bullish around. So in the last 12 months, we've had like a huge uptake in hundreds of devs slash hundreds of circular economies

being spun up. And I think it's just a testament to the sheer grit that people have on the ground of grokking Bitcoin, grokking at a stage where they can contribute meaningfully and then innovating on top of that

to a point where the rest of the world is able to look at it and say wow you can do things like that with Bitcoin we had no clue so I think that's the most

I'm bullish on ah that's amazing I love ending on that note and the stuff the innovation you're talking about with the South African guy developing the SIM cards

while it's on the SIM cards agree with you that this is genius next step would be to just have that integrated directly into phones like chips that are

oh yeah so your phone will be able to just be a wallet without any interest. It's interesting actually to mention

on this note is on the NFC side like the BCPay server guys have been at the forefront of trying to make spending Bitcoin as normal

feeling as possible. So they have these NFC powered cars essentially where you have lightning on it so you're able to actually spend sats and

they've debuted that at a couple of conferences. They started the product in Baltic last year and that has cascaded into Nashville doing it

as well, Baltic doing it again. So I think that's another angle to watch for people that are interested in just payments in general and seeing how that evolves. Abu Bakr,

do you like your life? Honestly, I definitely do. I think it's, first of all, a blessing, a huge honor to get to work

at this level, at this age, obviously, and get to work with incredible people. Like, I'm only hopeful for the future

because of the work I'm doing. I would have otherwise been a lot more, less optimistic. That's optimistic. So yeah, it's definitely a good, it's also one of those things where, you know,

I didn't go to college or anything. So this is the only way I could have actually gotten a job and things like that. So I'm definitely grateful for the Bitcoin space. Amazing. We're grateful to have you. Thank you so much for doing the work you're doing. Keep us updated on what's happening in Africa

and in Nigeria. Keep writing, keep talking. I love it. I love your content. I'm going to continue following you. And keep up the great work too. I mean, he's fun of the show. Thanks again for having me.

Thank you. My pleasure. Where should people follow you? Generally, X slash Twitter. And if you're a developer, I'm pretty active on GitHub as well. So you could take that. But the primary place is definitely my X. And then if you're interested in reading the Forbes. OK, great. And when are you opening your Nostor account? Oh, I already have my Nostor account. Good call out. I realize I should be so ashamed. But I'm also on Nostor. Same handle. So I hate 1999 on Nostor and X. So good luck as well.

Wonderful. Thanks for being with me. It was a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.