{ "episodeId": "SLP385", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "nicolas_burtey": { "name": "Nicolas Burtey", "role": "guest", "tag": "NICOLAS" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.55, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. This show is brought to you by Swan Bitcoin, the easy way to buy Bitcoin and also learn about it. Swan Bitcoin launched Swan Private because we talked to so many people that had issues with the major exchanges. Some had their accounts locked and customer service wouldn't be able to help them, and many simply wanted to talk to an actual human being who could help them. Could answer their Bitcoin questions. Swan Private is a one-on-one Bitcoin advisory service for high net worth investors. 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So for the show today, episode three hundred and eighty-five, my guest is Nicholas Bertie from Gallo Money, and he rejoins me on the show to talk about his recent trip to Central African Republic. So as you might have seen, there was some news about this country adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. Now, some of the news articles maybe weren't giving a lot of clarity. Nicholas has actually been there on the ground, and we chat about his experience there as well as what's really going on. Nicolas, welcome back to the show. Hey," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "02:40", "start": 160.43, "text": "Stefan, thanks for having me back." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:43", "start": 162.73, "text": "So, Nicolas, I'm excited to chat with you and hear more about, some of your latest adventures in, Central African Republic, as well as, you know, the latest with Gelo and, you know, what's going on with that. So, do you wanna just tell us a little bit about this recent trip you did and what spurred it?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "03:01", "start": 180.7, "text": "Yeah, so a friend of mine, Sébastien Gospiaux, reached out to me maybe a month ago and said, \"Hey, I'm...\" So Sébastien Gospiaux is, miner, is based in France, but he's doing some mining in, countries that are, adjacent to Central African Republic. And so when the law was passed, he was very intrigued by it, and he said, \"We have to go there, and we have to, you know, see first like, is this law real? Like, is this a real thing?\" And then we said, okay, we have to, to check this out, right? Like, we are being supportive of El Salvador law, and so this is a second country, so as a Bitcoin community, we should see, okay, like, what, what can we do about it? And so this is how the trip gets," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:44", "start": 223.95, "text": "started. Yeah. And so let's contextualize Central African Republic a little bit in terms of population, GDP, what kind of situation are they in as a country?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "03:59", "start": 238.52, "text": "Yeah. So it's, As the name imply, I guess it's a country in, the middle of Africa. It's a landlocked country, so no access to sea. the country is about five million people, and something that strike me is the GDP per capita is quite low, it's about five hundred dollar per person, per year. I, I didn't, I mean, I, I knew El Salvador before the El Salvador law because I spent quite some time there before the law became, Affect you, but for Central African Republic, I didn't know how to, you know, to, to put this on a map if you were asking me. So I didn't know much before I traveled there about the country." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:43", "start": 283.26, "text": "Yeah, for sure. And so we're dealing with a country that is one of the poorer countries on Earth, and even poorer than El Salvador then. And so that obviously has various challenges and also opportunities too. and so maybe if you could tell us a little bit about what their economy is like, is it mostly, you know, from my reading, it seems to be mostly agrarian and agriculture. What was the sense of it that you got from when you were there and when you were talking to people and just understanding? Understanding how the country works and makes its money." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "05:16", "start": 316.09, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think one of the challenges they have is they don't make much money, right? so some of the context to know about the country, first, they use, currency called the CFA, They're, they're part of a group of sixteen countries in Africa, French Africa, that use this currency. It's, there's a lot of challenge around CFA, so there is a central bank that is managing this currency, and this central bank is, i-is really managed in France basically, and so there's a lot of fee attached to, so using this currency. so it's one thing that I guess prevent the country to use a lot of its natural resources effectively. So the country have access to gold and diamond and oil and gas and, and also uranium, I think. But so far it's very hard, for instance, for them to export it and to, to really use their natural resources. When I, so something that, was, I guess, not, not shocking, but, interesting to me when I- I land there, the, the first thing is that, so there is a, a word for the airport, you know, when the plane land, but like you just go outside the airport, you know, it's, it's already dirt, road, like there is no, no, no word in the country, right? Like with, with, concrete, and this is, you know, it was the first time I, I went to a country where like you just go outside the airport and, It, it, there is no longer a world, right? so it's something that I, I, I see. The electricity usage is fairly low, so I think if we compare to America, The average consumption in, Central African Republic is about zero point five percent of the average consumption in, in the US. What this means is effectively only a few percentage of the population have access to electricity. I think it's, yeah, I don't remember, I think, thirty percent or something along this line. And also something that, struck me quickly is like internet, so the country have- Sweedish internet, so there's no 4G, no 5G, but also the Swedish, when you get a subscription and you pay for a 5 gig or, or 10 gig, like you can't really use it efficiently just because the overall, overall bandwidth in the country is very low. I think it's along the line of 3 or 4 gigab, gigabit per second for the country, which is like Super, super, super low. and, and basically the stri-fi striking element when you go there is like there is no infrastructure, right? When you're talking about either it's electricity or internet or water or, like This really is, yeah, doesn't really exist. I, I think we can, ask about why that is. You know, one of the reason is there has been a lot of civil war, over the last, decades, and so it, it has been very hard for the country to, you know, build up, the infrastructure, like, because when you have civil war, this is not what you, you typically do. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:30", "start": 510.05, "text": "yeah, that's certainly sad and presents a lot of challenges there. So I'm Bitcoin legal tender law came up in this country because it just, I think for most, most of us, it just sort of seemed out of the blue, right?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "08:46", "start": 526.17, "text": "Yeah, yeah. It's funny, when, when the law came, I was like thinking, okay, this is what will be announced during Bitcoin twenty, twenty-two, we're, we're all expecting this type of announcement, and it came actually like a couple of weeks, after that, you know, like very- yeah, on, on the one day suddenly, oh, it's a, it's a second country on it, So, yes, I, I had a chance to, to learn about how the law came. So it's basically the president of Central African Republic, Mr. Toudoire, he has, background in mathematics, he have two PhD in mathematics, and I think he also want to change the situation in his country and he see the, the potential of Bitcoin Going to, you know, maybe similarly to El Salvador, you know, try to change the situation and, and make the country better, right? So the decision really came from the president and the president himself. now we are in the stage in this country where, like, there are the minister and there are like, you know, people under him that try to think about, okay, how, how do we go from this law to, you know, the, the fact that it became first effect? Effective, because something that I guess might not be clear for most people is that right now the law has been passed, but it's not effective yet. There is multiple steps that need to happen before the law be-come, become effective. And, and there are, especially, especially the central bank, is actively trying to make sure the law doesn't become effective. So, so it's, it's, it's one, one thing to implement. So there's some resistance in the country, even. There is significant resistance, not necessarily from the country, but from the central bank, right? That is not part of the country, but is part of this group of countries." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:37", "start": 636.81, "text": "Oh, I see. So from the, as in from the CFA, central bank, right? And, and you can also imagine that" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "10:42", "start": 641.81, "text": "France, you know, like, is not necessarily, help excited about this. They, they, they, they also if they, there is things they can do to make the law being delayed or, or, or ineffective, or, you know, as, as they would probably try to do it. Yeah, that's a good point." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:56", "start": 655.96, "text": "So it, it almost reminds me of how El Salvador did the Bitcoin law, and then the IMF came out" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "11:07", "start": 666.59, "text": "It's, it's similar, but I think the situation is a bit different because, El Salvador was using the US dollar, and they, they have El Salvador have a central bank, and the central bank was four miners standing, you know, on board with the law, like they weren't actively pushing against it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:22", "start": 682.1, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "11:22", "start": 682.36, "text": "Like here, you have some actor, whether it's in the country or in the region, that try to do everything they can to make sure the, there is no Bitcoin adoption in Central African Republic, because I, I think the central bank of, CFA, obviously they see the, the domino falling and they, they understand that if the CFA they get a Bitcoin adoption, you know, all the other country in the region will also might want to do the same thing, and then the money might, you know, disappear, and this is not something they want. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:55", "start": 714.64, "text": "And I guess the other big question, because obviously this was a factor with El Salvador, was the high percentage of remittance. And I know there are other countries in the world that have a similar thing, so Philippines and others. What's the situation with remittance in Central African Republic?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "12:10", "start": 729.57, "text": "So there is some remittance, but it's along the line of three to five percent, so compared to El Salvador, I think twenty-five percent. It's tiny then. It's, it's small. I mean, it's not insignificant, but it's, yeah, it's, it's Yeah, sure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:24", "start": 744.24, "text": "And so then w-we have this interesting dynamic where it looks like inside the country, as you said, the president is pro Bitcoin, but the CFA and the, you know, the central bank there is sort of trying to stop it. Do you know where it's going to shake out or is it still unclear at this point?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "12:42", "start": 761.67, "text": "It's still unclear. I, I, I just know that the law isn't effective as of now. it has been, and like, there need to be in, in France we call it a décret, I'm not sure the, the English word, but like, they, they need to be steps basically that need to go through before the law become effective, and I don't know how long it will take or, you know, if it will become effective. I, I believe it will, but, it's still in, in the process." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:06", "start": 786.5, "text": "I see, so it might be like they can get it through, but it might get delayed because there'll be a certain process that has to be followed to make it active. Yes. Yeah. So if you could tell us a little bit about what it was like for you visiting." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "13:19", "start": 798.76, "text": "So it was, it was a very interesting experience. i-it's the first time for me to go in Central Africa, so this particular region. So we were invited by the minister of, economy there, and he- Basically the idea that, you know, we were going to meet the, the different minister and the presidency really to talk about the, the law and talk about, there, there was part was about the education piece, so try to understand how much do they know about Bitcoin and do they, you know, how much need, do they help, how much, help do they need on, on one hand, and, and also, yeah, try to see the Bitcoin adoption in the ground, like how many people are using Bitcoin, is it fairly active or is it not active, something There isn't a lot of information, you know, online, today, so, you know, going there on the ground is the best way to, to figure it out. maybe I can start with, like, about the adoption of Bitcoin in the country actually, today. And there is currently pretty much no one using Bitcoin in the country, so it's, it, you know, despite the law being passed, a-and when I say truly come from the president, it truly, you know, come from him, because there was no, you know, economy" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "14:36", "start": 876.1, "text": "That, that would swap something like there was, there was no, no such thing there. And even the hotel where we stayed, which is one of the hotel where most tourists go in, in the country, when they are in Central African Republic, they didn't accept Bitcoin, despite the law being, being effective, being passed, not effective, for a couple of weeks. So we, we actually helped them to get a Bitcoin wallet, and, you know, we, we help also the, yeah, the, the different, whether it's, it's So it's a different company we met, you know, to donate some more lead and try to get an understanding about, yeah, about Bitcoin. on the education side, so the, the first thing is when the law passed, we saw two versions. We saw a version that was a crypto law, and we saw a version that was a Bitcoin law, and so this was very confusing, And the, the Bitcoin law is the one that's effectively passed, so there has been some, you know, like, version, and they understand that, you know, okay, if we adopt a, a currency, it should really be Bitcoin. But something interesting that we understood when we're there is that the, the president, you know, he have a background in mathematics, so he understand the, at least the technical side of, of Bitcoin, right? About the economic side, I, I don't know. But all the ministers that are charged to work on this law They don't necessarily have much background about, you know, Bitcoin or blockchain or crypto. Like, you, you have to imagine like maybe three months ago they, maybe they heard about Bitcoin, but like they never make a transaction, like they, they never really use it. And now they're in charge of like implementing this, and it's, it's, it's a hard job, right? Because like if you just go on, I, I don't know, on Google, and you look for, you know, Bitcoin or like, you, you know that you are You will be receiving a lot of information that are like about crypto that maybe, you know, are not, not very aligned with Bitcoin. and so part of the- I, I guess, so, our travel there was to spend some time with the company and the minister to explain to them that we, to, like, that, that Bitcoin is very unique and, you know, it, it have all this, properties that make it the best money, but, all the other currency, like, aren't good at money and they shouldn't really- Focus on that. And, and I think the trip there was helpful in the sense that they really understand that, you know, there is a difference. A few days before we went there, there was a white paper called Songo that they published. And this to us, like when we read the white paper, they talk about NFT, they talk about like a lot of different things, a-and so, okay, okay, the law is a Bitcoin law, but you know, why, why do they make a white paper where they talk about like, this? And it, it wasn't clear. And, and I think getting there, you know, we get a better understanding is like, okay, they're very new to this, and therefore, like, there are o-others, other delegations that probably reach out to them" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "17:43", "start": 1063.28, "text": "process of, of, trying to, to make sense of it," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:46", "start": 1066.12, "text": "right? Yeah, I can imagine a lot of, altcoiners are trying to get their claws in and try to say, \"Oh, look, we're doing a partnership or whatever,\" that's, something we've seen, I'm sure, in years gone by. So in terms of language, is the country French speaking? I, I also see online, there's, there's a language called Sango. As you said, there's a Sango white paper, but also the no," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "18:15", "start": 1095.2, "text": "French, everybody speak French, French is my native language, so no, no issue on my side. No issues there. I, I think very few people speak English, so like speaking French is probably, necessity to, like, to travel there. Songo is, yeah, their local languages, but, everybody speak French, so at least I didn't had any, you know, problem, talking with, with, With people, but at the same time I, I also stay in the capital city, which is called Bongi. I, I didn't go to the, you know, the, the rural area, maybe there. People may not be speaking French, I, I'm not too sure about it. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:00", "start": 1139.92, "text": "Yeah, sure. And how receptive were they to, obviously, the Bitcoin message as opposed to the altcoin message or that sort of coaching away from, oh, hey, you don't necessarily need a white paper, you need to look, think more about, you know, these other aspects of Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "19:15", "start": 1154.75, "text": "very receptive, I think. I think for them it was a, a great learning experience, like it was new information for them that, you know, they had to process. So you could see Three days, and, you know, there was like between day three and day one, like I, I think day three we, we did the orange peeling, was, you know, processing, and, and you can see, yeah, the, the, the shift over time. there is also like we met, you know, many people, different people have different understanding, so, you know, from the president to the minister to the head of, different companies. So yeah, so some people might be a lot more into crypto than others, some people are, I, I believe pa-part of them, you know, we, we, we could say they're crypto and part of them they're no coiners, and I think with no coiners, like the message maybe was resonating a bit more, you know, the people that were more looking at, the general crypto space, like, I, I think the message resonated also, but, m-maybe less, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:15", "start": 1215.11, "text": "Yeah. I think the other point that people Discuss and get your view as well is, it seems like with El Salvador and our friend Matt O'Dell spoke about this as well, is this idea that it came from a bottom-up approach because Bitcoin Beach was this successful project and then it was seen like, \"Hey, let's try to replicate that approach elsewhere in the country.\" Whereas obviously this seems a little more like a top-down approach, and I'm curious your thoughts on whether that will be successful." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "20:47", "start": 1246.56, "text": "Yeah, it's, it's, it's a good question. I think it's early to say. You know, one of the first, question I have at this stage is whether they will go for Bitcoin only adoption, you know, from the government perspective, or whether it will be, okay, you know, Bitcoin may be the currency, but, you know, we also invite every crypto project to the country that want to do, you know, something. I think that will be a, a key element because, for instance, El Salvador has been Really focus on Bitcoin and, and I think it's, has become a Bitcoin only places. A-and I think interestingly enough, like I'm not sure it was the case a year ago, I think it, you know, they go into like making sure it's Bitcoin only because they get an understanding that If this is a crypto space, there will be a lot of scam happening and people will have some distrust, you know, if they get scammed about, about everything, whether it's, it's a Bitcoin or crypto. And, and yeah, I, I'm not sure for South Africa Public yet, you know, how they will think about it, you know, the, the Songo White Paper give you some idea that they, they are thinking about Bitcoin, but also crypto. I hope that they understand that, you know, they should really focus on Bitcoin and Bitcoin only, because otherwise, Is very low about, about Bitcoin and, and, and crypto. And so if you start saying, hey, you know, you have all this option and, and like people will get lost, you know, like the paradox of choices also we trigger and people will not know, you know, where to focus on. Versus if you say, okay, it's really Bitcoin, we focus education on this, like we don't talk about the rest, we don't necessarily invite, you know, the, the crypto industry to, to come here, I think would be a, could be a key Maybe, maybe an interesting thing is to make parallel with El Salvador, yeah. El Salvador is a sm-a much smaller country in term of, land. Central African Republic have a lot of natural resources. And today they, they have a hard time to sell it and extract it. And it's part because of the CFA, right? The CFA, when they want to export, goods and, goods, not so much services, but goods outside, like the money is being the barrier, right? So, so, so the, the idea of like having, Bitcoin as a- Satoshi, Stephan Livera, Nicolas Burtey, Nicolas, Burtey, Central African Republic, Legal Tender, Tender, and if they can start selling their gold, if they can start selling their, diamond or oil for Bitcoin, like suddenly their GDP per capita could increase ten x, like, almost overnight. But today, the, the banking system and, and the, the CFS system, you know, make it very hard for them to do anything. One of the person I met, I explained, the story that I think he, he tried to buy some, tractor for like, agriculture purpose, and, like, basically the thing that make it almost impossible to, to do it was making international payment. A-a-and this is really causing a lot of issue for everybody that want to create a, a company in the country and, and buy things on site, because there is not any manufacturing in the country, I believe, or not much manufacturing, so you need to buy- Buy outside, but because there is this really barrier with, the currency, like it's, this is why it's really limiting the expansion of the country and adopting Bitcoin and making it possible to buy things, you know, without this, I guess, limitation on the currency could be a way for the country suddenly to, to really change, quickly." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:31", "start": 1471.29, "text": "Yeah, that's really interesting. And so maybe we could kind of, I'm, I'm being a bit loose in generalizing a bit, but I guess with El Salvador, part of the whole thing with Bitcoin is the tour- Tourism, and so that's been one of the angles, it's driven a lot more tourism. But with Central African Republic, it's a different case, it's not necessarily gonna drive all the tourism, but as you're saying, it maybe it could drive business into natural resources and using Bitcoin in it, in that way could help. So perhaps just to expand on that, just for listeners, could you just expand on what exactly are the difficulties for the Central African Republicans in terms of the CFA currency and where does Bitcoin fix that?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "25:12", "start": 1511.98, "text": "The, the first thing is CFA is pegged to the euro, before it was pegged to the franc, we said the franc CFA. And the first thing is that the currency has been debase massively over the last, fifty, fifty years, so it's, it's losing value a lot more than, you know, the, the euro, currently, so the inflation for the currency is high. It's not necessarily hyperinflation, but, it's, it's, still, there is a- The big debasement, ongoing. So it's one element where it's like, it's, it's the only currency that you have, and over time, you know, this currency lose value. Like, how do you, you know, make saving and how do you plan for the future when you are in this, and, and I think this is a, a, a key, key argument. An, another point is that there is some, for instance, arm, embargo, in arms embargo, in the country, and so because of all the" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "26:12", "start": 1571.5, "text": "Like international transfer, and this is more like the, you know, like if, if you want to start a company and like you can't buy things outside the country, basically you, you can't do much. And I've, I, I have been talking with some people, those, entrepreneurs that say like, \"We wanted to start a company, they're living in France, and they wanted to start a company in Central African Republic because this is where they were born,\" and they say like, \"We give up because we couldn't make a wire transfer to start the, the company, Outside the CFA, zone, that is why Bitcoin is can be so helpful, because really, you know, Bitcoin, if you have your own key and you can send money to whoever you want, right? You, you, you don't have to ask permission from banks and the central banks, and, and I think this is one of the key reason why- The, the country could benefit from Bitcoin is like, you know, freedom of, you know, buying what they want to buy with, with the money they have, and especially selling natural resources, I think is a, one of the key ways they could, yeah, they, they, they could grow as a country." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:15", "start": 1635.12, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. With various crypto service providers blocking withdrawals, it's never been more important to take control of our Bitcoin keys, and Unchained Capital can help you with this. Unchained offers concierge onboarding. This is a personalized service to help guide you from a Bitcoin security beginner to a pro. Over a video call, a member of Unchained's team will help you set up multisig cold storage, even if you have never held your own keys before. 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So you can just directly plug it into the computer and use it easily with wallets like Sparrow, Specter Desktop, Electrum or others. Now, if you're more intermediate or advanced, this is where you can take the An air-gapped setup or potentially even a multi-signature setup, and Coldcard is a really great tool for this because it has all kinds of features that help make this easy, such as PSBT and other ways of sharing that information back and forth, so you can get yours over at coincard dot com. And finally, for Bitcoin miners, check out brains dot com, that's brains with two eyes. Brains are a Bitcoin mining software and service provider in the space. They are the operators of Slush Pool, which is the first Bitcoin mining pool. From back in the day. Now with Brains, they've got Brains OS Plus. This is firmware that you can install on your Bitcoin ASIC and it will improve your efficiency so long as you've got a supported model, and it can improve your efficiency by as much as twenty five percent. You can point your hash rate to any pool, or if you use Brains OS Plus and you point your hash rate towards Slush Pool, you'll also get zero percent pool fees on Slush Pool. So the Brains OS Plus firmware is well worth a look, you've got to check it out, and don Their blog and also their analytics dashboard, which you can use with things like profitability calculators. That website is brains dot com, brains with two eyes. And now back to the show. Right, and as we think economically, if this country wants to be able to rise up and become more prosperous, part of that is, is being able to do importing, right? Because you need to be able to import, let's say, some capital infrastructure or some equipment, other things for the businesses to operate so that then they can start actually generating products and services, and probably in this case, more products. But nevertheless, you need to be able to get that economic engine started, and without being able to transact easily, I think that is This is an important point, and I'm sure, obviously, as, you're a deeply technical Bitcoin and Lightning guy, you were able to demonstrate for people in the Central African Republic. So what was their reaction when you showed them Lightning transactions?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "30:39", "start": 1838.87, "text": "I mean, it's eye-opening, right? You say, \"Hey, you know, I can show you one wallet to another wallet, it doesn't even have to be the same wallet, and it just works. It, it's instant. It's of course like, like a, an experience that you, you, you don't forget" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "30:56", "start": 1856.4, "text": "freedom of money, like, where you can send money wherever you want, so yeah, that was a, a very good, experience for them. You know, they obviously have the question about volatility, one of the main questions they have is like, okay, that's great, but what if the price, you know, drop? And, and you, you try to say to them, yes, sure the price can drop, but if you look on a long, long timeframe, you know, like the, the price will recover. But The people we met, were thinking also about, okay, how can I buy Bitcoin? because no, I, I, I want to buy it, right? A-and this is one of the challenge today that they have no really way to buy it, because there is- Like when you can't send money, you know, abroad. I don't, to my knowledge, there is no CFA, you know, to Bitcoin exchanges, and, and, and, and by the way, the Central Bank, managing the CFA, it's, illegal to do, or forbidden to do, CFA to Bitcoin. And so no, one of the, I guess, challenge of the country is how to, how do you bootstrap this Bitcoin economy, because the country have no Bitcoin, and so you need country right before you, you kind of people using it. A-and this is one of the main questions, like how do you inject Bitcoin to the economy? A-and I think the answer to this question is, there is two option. the first is you sell natural resources, you know, you sell gold, you sell, diamond in, in Bitcoin and, and, and then you, you have some Bitcoin you can inject in the local economy. The second option that is relevant is Developing electricity infrastructure with miner, initially you, with a, like, develop hydro potential, hydro power potential. You, I guess, bootstrap the grid by having miner as your first customer for your electricity infrastructure, and then o-over time, you know, you both connect the citizen to this new electricity grid, but you can also try to, use the miner, the, the Bitcoin miner to, to inject" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:05", "start": 1984.93, "text": "Yeah, it's, it sounds like those are probably the viable options. It also sounds to me like, at least in the Bitcoin Beach case, there was a, let's say, a wealthy donor who wanted to, let's say, seed the project with some Bitcoin, and that might have also helped get the wheel started, get that flywheel started at least. so yeah, it'll be interesting to see, if, if that happens. And I think part of that is if, before people can make an entrepreneurial investment into a country, they also wanna understand what's the regime certainty Uncertainty like in this country, right? As an example, if I-- if, if you were to go and put in all this money to set up a mining venture, will the government later rug pull you? And that uncertainty can be difficult for an entrepreneur to work with. And, I mean, of course, entrepreneurs deal with uncertainty, but that's part of the challenge that, you know, but potentially with this law, if, if it's accepted as Bitcoin is a normal thing and Bitcoin mining is a normal thing, then maybe the Bitcoin miner has more certainty or assurance that he's not just Things or he's gonna have his license to operate taken from him or have his machine, Bitcoin mining machines confiscated as has happened in other countries." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "34:12", "start": 2051.92, "text": "It's, it's why probably there isn't too much, investment, you know, infrastructure, just generally in the country. It's like if you have a, a past with civil war, then You know, obviously you don't want to invest in this country because you don't know what will happen to the infrastructure you're building. But what, what we, what we saw with El Salvador is like, no, there is a lot of, positive, there is a positive loop following the adoption of Bitcoin, right? We don't talk about El Salvador about the violence anymore, the gang, like we talk about El Salvador about financial innovation and a place where they use the best money and, and it completely changed the narrative, it, it make tourists- You know, grow and investment, grow significantly. I, I, I think, Central African Republic have some of the similar images where there has been a lot of violence. If they can also change the narrative and make it like so that it's a place, you know, where, it's going, in the right direction, because now, like, with Bitcoin, they can maybe, sell a lot more natural resources, and you know, the, the country is going in the right direction, then it could change the narrative and this is how, you know, I think we could go to right now the negative feedback loop to a positive feedback loop, right? And, and, and really start to, to go well in the country." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:31", "start": 2130.94, "text": "Right. And, I'm also curious as well. So as you mentioned earlier, some of the difficulties around internet, electricity, will that cause a, a barrier to Bitcoin adoption or do you see this like maybe the way it would start is, let's say, the wealthier businessmen who are coming in and doing business in the country using Bitcoin and maybe they can afford to pay and afford to- Get things started and eventually then maybe the infrastructure improves." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "35:57", "start": 2157.3, "text": "Yeah. So some interesting facts, so about half of the population use mobile money there, and mobile money is a way that you can send Money to another phone number, using like Orange Money, for instance. It's something that is very developed in Africa, but I think Africa is really leading the way for mob- mobile money. And so they have some, I guess, already usage of like, I, I use my phone to send some unit of money to another party in a way, for instance, that El Salvador doesn't necessarily have, right? El Salvador was cash based a lot more, I think than, Central African Republic. So typically they use both cash, but also, mobile money. And so they have this, notion of like, you know, I, I, I can pay, I can, I can-- It's not just, it's not I scan a QR code, but it's like I, I type a few command, and then I can send money like this. You know, that said So there is a habit about how you pay, but that said, I think the adoption will certainly come more in the capital, which is Bangui, which is where most people have internet, and also, you know, electricity there is, is, is working, much better than, than in the rural area. So I would expect, yes, you know, maybe, maybe a top-down approach where it will start by the company and the government that- Maybe for export and import, you know, they will start using Bitcoin this way, and then maybe it will flow down, you know, to, to the, to, to the more local people over time." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:30", "start": 2249.97, "text": "Yeah, and, it's interesting you said, you were making the point there about the different ways people pay in different countries, right? So if you go to China, they've got these super apps like the WeChat, and they've got all the money included inside of that. But in other countries around the world, maybe they're more cash-based, right? El Salvador," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:50", "start": 2269.85, "text": "In countries, they use these mobile money style of things, and some of them use kind of a system where you have like phone credit and you're sending credit to each other as the money. So in this case, you're using this mobile money, but it's more, it's not like a smartphone feature, it's more like a texting or feature phone feature, that they use to send money back and forth. So, yeah, but I, I suppose then, yeah, because obviously when we're thinking of Bitcoin and day-to-day stuff, you sort of, you basically need a smartphone if you So that is a barrier or that's kind of a hurdle, but as you said, if it's gonna start mainly in the main city where, let's say, most of the people there have, then it can sort of at least start and be an opp-opportunity there. So yeah, I guess kind of comparing back to El Salvador and El Salvador Bitcoin adoption, what are the kind of high-level ways of thinking about it then? So as, as I guess, as, as, as I understand, I mean, you've, you spent more time in El Salvador than I have, but as I understand" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:50", "start": 2329.81, "text": "That there'll be investment into the country because people might be, you know, wanting to get investment by residence or even potentially, residence by investment rather or potentially in the future, citizenship by residence, and You know, whereas in Central African Republic, it seems like it, it's going to be more of a story about natural resources and maybe Bitcoin mining that's, you know, coming to the country." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "39:11", "start": 2351.09, "text": "Yeah, thinking about the difference from with the Salvadoran Central African Republic, for me it's very interesting because I, I mean, I, I spent quite a bit of time in El Salvador, you know, only three days in Central African Republic, so like, I, I only have a very shallow view of what Central African Republic is, but, The, the difference to me, or, or first the, the same aspect is, in both cases there was a head of state that really decided to do it, and it's really drive by It's not a consortium of people, it's really like someone that says, \"You know, I see Bitcoin as something valuable, you know, I think it can help my, my country, it can help my people, and, and so I, I will adopt it.\" And in, in both cases, it's a, it's a bold decision. There may be country number twenty that will adopt Bitcoin as a legal currency, will be more like the norm at some point, but, whether it's for, for Boukéle or for Togo, they are like it's, it's, it's a viable decision to say, \"I will adopt Bitcoin as, as legal tender.\" Both country didn't have their own currency, which kind of makes sense, right? Like, when you don't have your own currency, like you're, you're using someone else's currency already, and so the shift to Bitcoin is, is much smaller. I, I think some of the difference is that, El Salvador is a bit more stable than Central African a-and also, Boukéla is a president who's, is very strong, like he's," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "40:37", "start": 2437.09, "text": "when you look at the polls, you know, like he has very high number," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "40:42", "start": 2442.22, "text": "Right now the country is, is, is very stable. In, in Central African Republic, currently there is still some, conflict, there is some, my understanding is there is two parties, like, and the other party, you know, is actively trying to see how to maybe get back the presidency, and so it's, yeah, it is a difference. we already touched about it, but the difference between natural resources, so El Salvador, I think want to become the next Singapore, right? Like in, in, South America, the idea is to say that, hey, we aren't small country, we don't have a lot of natural resources, but if you can Do financial innovation in the countries, and it's great because, like, you know, I mean, Singapore is obviously a g- a great example, many country want to follow, and I think this is, the idea of, of El Salvador. If I think about, Central African Republic here, it's more, I think, a much larger country, which much larger, natural resources is available, so, you know, the approach is, a bit different also." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:52", "start": 2512.32, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "41:54", "start": 2513.83, "text": "talking about maybe the internet usage, El Salvador like, internet is, is, very prevalent, like, most people have a cell phone, if not two, I, I think the average, subscription in El Salvador is hundred fifty percent, meaning, you know, on average, someone have one subscription plus, fifty percent more right? in, in Central African Republic, the internet penetration is more along the line of ten percent, so many people have, have feature phone and they can typically use mobile money, but people with a smartphone and, like, active subscription is, is much lower. So it's, it's a very stark difference. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:36", "start": 2556.32, "text": "Turning to Galloway then, are there any opportunities then for Galloway to work with the country or is it more like Galloway's efforts will be more around doing financial infrastructure in other countries?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "42:50", "start": 2569.75, "text": "Yeah, so the reason I've been there and I was with Snow on my team also is, to first by, I guess, curiosity to try to see, okay, like, there is a country, you know, French-speaking country, that adopt, Bitcoin, we have to go there, right? We have to see, how it is on the ground, and also to educate, you know, the, the government about, Bitcoin, and if there is any question that they have, we are happy to answer, and, and still today, right Which I think is, is, necessary. For Galloway, there is a question that we have currently at Galloway, which is, if we think about government, for instance, like El Salvador have took a bold step to say Bitcoin is key infrastructure, and so you have like road and water and electricity and, and Bitcoin, and this is why the, government decided to make the chivo wallet, because they really decide, they really think that, okay, you know, i-if Bitcoin is a legal tender, we have to provide the services As a government, you know, so that anyone can use Bitcoin. There is a question whether this will be as new country adopt Bitcoin, whether this will become the norm, like is Bitcoin core infrastructure or will it be, you know, government will not drive it and they will let, you know, the private sector basically, you know, create their own wallet and, and so it's, it's- Yeah, I, I, I don't know it about this, but it's a question we, we're thinking about. Assuming the Central African Republic, they might want to have their own wallet and help to do the integration, like of course we could help them to do so." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:26", "start": 2666.0, "text": "Fantastic. And so, yeah, it's interesting to see, the different approaches, as you said, whether they consider it key infrastructure. And I guess that sort of Bitcoin open source ethos, at some level, they could just say, \"Hey, just use whatever wallet, you know, you use whatever.\" In case it was maybe the argument or at least the way they were thinking, it seems to me, like they wanted to be able to have that easy way to flip between Bitcoin and USD to make it easy for the transition for, Salvadorans. So I guess in the Central African Republic case, then would they need an easy way to flip between Bitcoin and CFA? But as you said, the difficulty is you can't, you're not meant to be able to switch between Bitcoin and CFA easily. So it sounds like it's, it's, they are different countries with different approaches in terms of You know, fair to say?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "45:14", "start": 2714.18, "text": "Yeah, I mean, something the country definitely d-is a way for people to own to Bitcoin, because, for instance, in, in El Salvador The government have a strategy of deploying ATM around the country, and so even if you aren't banked, you can still buy Bitcoin. so ATM are, are subsidized. The fees are, I think, very small, around one percent, which is small for ATM. But, but, because El Salvador took this decision to like implement a lot of ATM, like it's, you can easily buy Bitcoin, like currently in Central African Republic, if you want to buy Bitcoin, you're in the country, unless you're, you know, a privileged few because you maybe you live outside the country, you have some, access to banking in, I don't know, in, in France, and you have, you have a euro account or something exception, you know, which is the top one percent or you know point one percent, the other part of the population, they can't really buy Bitcoin, because they, they use cash or they use mobile money. mobile money is really, you know, in the country, like it's typically not compatible even with other country, even if they use the same currency. And so, yeah, how do you-- Because there is no Bitcoin in the country, like, you, you cannot even have a peer-to-peer market at start, right? And so, there need to be a way for For people to, to buy Bitcoin, and, you know, whether it's, the government that will drive it or maybe the, the bank or some exchanges, I don't know, but that is a key, I guess, problem that need to be solved. Yeah, sure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:53", "start": 2812.7, "text": "So I guess just turning to Galloway just generally, what's, what's the latest, with Galloway money and, w-w-what's, going on, technologically and, project-wise there?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "47:06", "start": 2826.03, "text": "Yeah, I think, the biggest feature we are working on, that we talked about it a few months ago is, yeah, USD, integration into our wallet. So we, really focus on that. We have now, beta tester using it in the country, and we are getting feedback about how this works and trying to make sure like it's, every edge case, bugs are being nailed down before we, deploy it more globally. But the idea of basically people to do an on-ramp or an off-ramp, or at least just have a way to convert your Bitcoin to, into local fiat currency so that you aren't subject to the volatility of Bitcoin, I think, I think is number one Request feature for last year, and, yeah, it's, it's not necessarily straightforward to do, but we're, we're, we're getting there, and I'm, super excited about it. we are also working with other projects, That with wallet that will be announced in the next, couple of, weeks or months, one is in Panama, and I'm quite exciting about this one. But the idea is really we help different organizations that want to have their own wallet, you know, do their own wallet. This is, this is our mission. We are working on an open source basis, so like you can deploy your own wallet based on our code, you just have to go to our GitHub, which is, GitHub slash Callejone, and then you will see a list of repositories, and you can launch your own wallet, you know, on your own. But the assumption is that if you are not technical enough or you don't have the, even the, the technical team to do it, you can hire us to, to do the wallet for you. Right. So it's kind of like a Red Hat model. Yeah, yeah Also to the pipeline, we should have proof of reserve, done over the summer, so we have a summer of Bitcoin internship. The goal is to have proof of reserve. I think it's something that is, quite exciting. I, I know many people in the Bitcoin space want to get more usage of proof of reserve, and so this is coming." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:19", "start": 2959.23, "text": "Yeah, that's fantastic. and also I guess, the last area to chat about is obviously you spent a lot of time in El Salvador, and as, El- Salvador had this big delegation of, I think it was forty-four different, central bankers and other, country lead, government ministers who came, and, you were around there, so what, what can you just give us a bit of a flavor of what was that like, were they, were they accepting the orange pill or were they sort of more, not accepting?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "49:48", "start": 2987.89, "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was just a week before I went to Central African Republic, so a lot of travel, So 44 Satoshi, so more exactly, I believe 32 Santal Bank and 12, Superintendencia, or like Minister of Finance, you know, regulator. Came to El Salvador, they were really discussing about financial inclusion. they decided to go to El Salvador, you know, I guess we know why, because they were also very curious about Bitcoin. So it was a conference that lasts four days. The first day I did a presentation to the, to the group and there was a lot of question about, Bitcoin. but, I mean, there was interesting question like, okay, if, if the price go down, you know, how can we refund the user? because they really think about, as regulator about like consumer protection, and so, you know, this is from their perspective, like they want to make sure people don't lose money when they use their, their blockchain. When, when consumers work with banks, and so they, they're really trying to protect the, the, basically the consumer. And so this question makes sense, right? But the answer is also like, you know, you can't, but, but that's fine because, you know, over time the price will recover. And also, if you use fiat currency, over time the price will go down in perpetuity anyway, so like it's, you know, fiat currency are not silver either. But, the, the first day they went to Azonto And they have been experimenting with Lightning, and it was eye-opening for them. It, it was interesting because the, the first day was more like a theoretical presentation, and you would think that some Falbach, that they would really enjoy, you know, something more theoretic, but actually not really, like I think the really eye-opening experience for them was like using Lightning." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:40", "start": 3100.23, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "51:41", "start": 3100.75, "text": "Seeing is believing. Yeah, and, and so we went around the village of Fesonte, a bit basically every, every central bank, you know, a-a-as about whether it's a bottle of water or something, you know, like with lightning. And, and, and they were like, \"That's it? Like it's so fast? It's, I can use different type of wallet?\" And, and so, I think it will plant a lot of seed for the future. There was a lot of country from Africa in this delegation, or, or also from Latin America, but majority in Africa, I think. So, yeah, I think we can expect Lots more in, in Africa in the coming years." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:21", "start": 3141.04, "text": "Yeah, and I think this is one of those areas where I think some Bitcoiners are more, they're more about the bottom up, right? They don't really care that a government is coming out and, you know, they, they see that as like, oh, why you, you know, whatever. we care about the kind of everyday user. so, but I can, I can see a, a case there where if you can get a government politician or central banker to sort of help you in terms of at least Bitcoin, then that's a win, right? Because it's reducing the intervention of the state. Of course, I can understand where maybe the conflict will happen is if central banks and central bankers see that they are going to lose power, they're gonna lose certain influence and control that they have currently. so, you know, interesting to see where that lands, but as you said, I think the probably the best case is those countries who don't have their own currency or don't have control of their own currency, and perhaps they are the ones who- Who will see the, the orange pill first, take the orange pill first, compared to other ones. So interesting to see where all of that lands. Nicholas, any, any, anything else, any final thoughts for the listeners or things they, they should be thinking about?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "53:34", "start": 3214.09, "text": "yeah, I mean, if anyone have question about, Central African Republic, you know, happy to answer any question. I, I think it's, so El Salvador was a challenge, and I think, the adoption of Bitcoin there is going well." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_burtey", "time": "53:47", "start": 3227.1, "text": "A, a bigger challenge, because a country start from, from further away. But i-in my mind, like if we can get, this country to adopt Bitcoin, like it's, it, it will be certainly the proof that, e-every country should, should adopt Bitcoin, so Yeah, we're trying to think about how to make this, a success. so, I mean, i-it's, it's a French-speaking country, so this is maybe the challenge is how to help the country if you're not, speaking French. I mean, I'm, I'm not sure yet. there's definitely education needed. a lot of things may need to be translated to French, to French, the same way like maybe there's been a lot of push in helping, you know, Spanish languages, or Spanish translation with, So I think there should be simi-similar initiative maybe for, for French speaking country. but yeah, for me, like it's a, an interesting, definitely a project," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:47", "start": 3287.0, "text": "Yeah, so I, I'm, I'm curious to see where this goes. Of course, I can appreciate where maybe at some level it's difficult for a poor country and for poor people to adopt Bitcoin because you need to be able to weather some volatility with that. So, you know, let's see what happens with that. But as you said, there is also this idea of having USD representation Some of the different wallets and products, and listeners go and check out Galloimoney, so the website is galloimoney.io, and follow Nicholas Burtey on Twitter at nicholas burtey, and, I'll put all the links in the show notes. Nicholas, thanks for joining me. Thanks, Stefan. So get the show notes at stephanlivera dot com slash three eight five and I will see you in the citadels." } ] }