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TOPICS: using the financial system to oppress people, bitcoin provides hope, difficulty when using bitcoin
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Anna on twitter: https://twitter.com/AnyaChekhovich
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(00:00:00) CNBC Intro
(00:02:45) Challenges faced by an organization in using Bitcoin for financial transactions
(00:56:18) Benefits of Accepting Lightning Donations
(00:57:03) Privacy Concerns with Coinjoin and Encrypted Messaging
(00:57:39) Educational Challenges in Bitcoin Adoption
(00:58:28) Importance of Multilingual Support in Bitcoin Products
(01:00:13) Role of Education in Bitcoin Adoption
(01:05:00) Bitcoin Adoption Efforts in Nonprofit Organizations
(01:10:33) Challenges with Bitcoin Tools and Wallets
(01:15:31) Bitcoin Adoption and Freedom Advocacy
[00:00:00]
Unknown:
Your
[00:00:05] Unknown:
your anxiety, if you have it, about inflation versus employment, where would it be? And I say that because we're just talking before with Joe Livornyan. I've been, monitoring a lot of the Jason Furman comments even over past week, and he made one, which was that he thinks that if in fact the Fed were to lower interest rates, in this calendar year, that it would be a function of a weak employment situation, not necessarily, the inflation picture?
[00:00:34] Unknown:
So it's a good point, and I I think this is the tension right now for policymakers. They have to weigh the risk around, loosening this policy too soon or keeping it too tight and risking employment. And, of course, as you know, they have a dual mandate. They care about both of these things very much. But the one they control most directly is gonna be that inflation number, and they must gain their confidence to get back to 2% in a fairly timely way if they're gonna retain credibility and keep inflation expectations
[00:01:13] Unknown:
anchored around that 2% When you say timely way, you're not in the camp that says, you know what? They've they've gotten through the hard part. They can get to 2% eventually, and they can take their time to do it. You think that there's actually an urgency to it?
[00:01:27] Unknown:
I think there's always an urgency to it, Andrea, and that doesn't mean, that you have to double down and get there tomorrow. But I do think as they look at their forecast, and this has always been true, they are they have allowed inflation to drift down, and it's it's done that. But as they look to see their confidence in that 2%, those forecasts have been pushing out. And so far, I think with inflation expectations anchored, that has been appropriate. What I'd be watching for is and I think the committee is too. They don't wanna see those expectations change. That's what allows them to be patient.
That's what allows them to take their time to look at the data right now.
[00:02:45] ODELL:
Happy bitcoin Wednesday freaks. It's your host Odell here for another Citadel dispatch The interactive live show focused on actionable bitcoin and freedom tech discussion. That intro clip, was CNBC still in denial about inflation. We'll see how the suits decide to handle our economic matters going forward, but I think, that clip will probably age quite poorly. We're here today to talk about something completely different than the clip in classic dispatch fashion. I have my good friend Anna here. Anna has done a a lot of work with the Anti Corruption Foundation. She's the financial director or the CFO over there, depending on how you wanna call it. And she recently joined, the Human Rights Foundation.
How's it going, Anna?
[00:03:39] Unknown:
Hi, Matt. Thank you for inviting me. Everything is just great. Thank you for, having me here because, you know, it's not very often when activists using Bitcoin have an an opportunity to speak, for the big audience. I think it's very important to highlight our use cases. And, yeah, you're right. I work for the Anti Corruption Foundation. It's been already 7 years. And, around 1 months ago, I joined, Human Rights Foundation as well, where I work as nonprofit Bitcoin adoption lead, because I have a lot of experience of, non profit, at the, Anti Corruption Foundation of using Bitcoin in our work.
And now I'm very excited about sharing my experience with those non profits, freedom fighters, activists, human rights defenders all over the world to to help them implement Bitcoin in their work.
[00:04:42] ODELL:
Awesome. Yeah. I've had the the privilege of knowing you for quite some years now. I think, and and I I think a great place to start would be, what is the Anticorruption Foundation, and when did you guys start using Bitcoin in your operations?
[00:05:07] Unknown:
The Anti Corruption Foundation is a Russian organization. It was, created by the leader of Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny, in Moscow back in 2011. And, it's the main opposition power of the country and we've been fighting against Putin for many many years already. We fight against Putin, against his regime, against their corruption, against all the crimes they do for more than 24 years already. It's almost 25 years already. Yeah. So our goal is to make Russia a free democratic country, and we have many, many opposition projects, related to this big goal of defeating, finally, Putin's regime.
And I personally joined the Anti Corruption Foundation in 2017, but, we started using Bitcoin in our work in 2016th before I joined the organization, and, it's been a long way already. And we, began using Bitcoin, while working in Russia because, Russian banking system is fully controlled by the government, is fully transparent to the regime, and Russian government very quickly realized that, they can use the banking system as a tool of oppression against us. And, they used it against us so many times. While we were working in Russia, they constantly were blocking our bank accounts, bank accounts of our organizations, bank accounts of our employees. My personal bank account is arrested.
Bank accounts of Alexei Navalny and his family members were arrested. So the government realizes that when they deprive us of access to money to our bank accounts, they basically deprive us of oxygen because we cannot keep operating. We cannot pay salaries. We cannot pay rent. We cannot pay cleaning services or literally anything. And, when we had a presidential campaign in 2018 when Alexei Navalny decided to run for president of Russia, and we had a crowdfunding campaign. It was very hard to main maintain our network because we had more than 300 employees, more than 40 offices. We had to cover financially all of those. And every time when they blocked our bank account on the basis of a new fabricated criminal case every time, we always had a question, like, how are we gonna pay for everything? What we're gonna do? And in 2016th, we realized already at that time that we better have a plan b, and we better keep our savings somewhere else. That is why we started using Bitcoin back then. And also because there were some donors who wanted to donate to us secretly, privately, because it was clear that if you go against Putin, if you support those organizations that go against Putin, you can be in danger.
And this is actually what happens. In 2021, we were labeled as an extremist organization on the territory of Russia, and we were forced to leave the country. And all of our donors who were donating to us for many years, now they're all at risk due to banks sharing their personal data with the government. So they basically provide all the information about all transactions to the government, and now all of those fiat donors are vulnerable for donating to us. And today, if you donate to so called extremist organization, if you donate with Fiat, if they catch you, and, of course, they will catch you because the banking system is transparent, You simply go to jail up to 8 years for donating to such an organization.
So, yeah, we, we started using Bitcoin long ago and many times that literally saved our lives. Every time we lost when we lost access to our bank accounts, we could always use Bitcoin. We could always continue operating thanks to Bitcoin.
[00:09:28] ODELL:
So, I mean, this all makes a lot of sense to me. This is it it's there's 2 sides here. Right? There is there is the side of, and in both cases, it's about the financial system being weaponized on people, weaponized against people. And on one side, it's it's an organization like your own trying to operate, and it requires money to operate. And, having funds seized, having funds blocked, obviously makes that incredibly difficult, and Bitcoin provides a solution there. And then there is the opposite side of the equation where donors are are put at risk, if they donate through a surveilled, financial network.
To the point where, I I mean, you mentioned they could get jail time, but also they could get, you know, less obvious, punishment measures, against their family, against their business interests. You know, quite frankly, I we we saw on the in the Western Hemisphere, we saw with the Canadian Truckers, which was an opposition movement, led by truckers in Canada, that people that donated to the to the to those protesters were put on lists. And, like, so then the question is afterwards is, like, okay. What what does it mean to be on the list? And that's always a little bit more vague, and you you don't necessarily know exactly what what the repercussions are, but it's usually not a good thing.
I will say, and we're gonna dive deep here particularly on the Bitcoin side of things because I think it's fascinating that you guys, understood the need for Bitcoin and and and used it incredibly early on. Bitcoin is obviously not without its faults. And I think there was a case I mean, you mentioned that banks were giving up donor information. I think back in 2021, Binance also gave, donation information to people who donated to, Bitcoin addresses or or Altcoin addresses, to the opposition as well. This is not something that is necessarily isolate unfortunately isolated to the traditional financial system. We're also seeing large Bitcoin exchanges, comply with these type of measures.
[00:11:51] Unknown:
Yeah. You're right. So it's a big problem. And actually, I don't know very well what exactly happened back then with Binance, but I never recommend anyone using this kind of platforms, and especially Binance, because they kept playing some weird games and they kept saying that they don't collude with Russian regime and then they started, like, kicking out Russian users, then they onboarded them again, then they, kicked everyone out again. And in the end, they, told all of Russian users to, switch from Binance to other platform. And many of Russian users who really didn't know what platform, like, what is the new platform they were offering, they switched to that one. But I made some research and I found out that the new platform for Russian users of Binance, the new platform is registered in Russia. Probably they had servers in Russia. And they just recommend everyone to switch to that one. And it means that all the personal data that Russian users, kept at the Binance platform, all this personal data is gonna be transferred to some random platform that is registered on the territory of Russia, which means that all their data can easily leak to the Russian government finally anyway, and all the information about their transactions can leak. So my point is that I never recommend using this kind of centralized KYC platforms.
It's, like, the worst choice for Russian users today, especially if they use it to support organizations like us. Today, we work in exile. Today, we're we are located in Lithuania in Europe. And our organization is a non profit organization. We live we like, we donations is our main source of income, and donations from Russians is our main source of income because our target audience is Russian Russians. And, we encourage everyone to donate to us, but the only option to donate safely to us is with Bitcoin. We rely on Bitcoin a lot, but at the same time, if we don't educate our donors how to use Bitcoin properly, what tools are the safest, Anyway, they of course, they are at risk. If they use wrong platform, if they provide their personal data to wrong platform, if they leak their data anywhere, it can cause big problems for supporting, an extremist organization.
So, it's a it's a big challenge for us, because there are, like, thousands 100 of thousands of donors and we really need their support, but at the same time we have to teach them how to do it properly. And a couple of years ago, we started thinking about it, like, how can we make the nations from Russia safer. And we implemented a special tool on our website. If you go to the website to the the donate page, you will see that there is a special button that generates a new Bitcoin address every single time for each donation for each donor. So, the we after that, we mix the coins.
So it is way harder or even not possible for the Russian government to track the donor. And, yeah, it's it's very important to do that. And the problem is that it's not only us. There are 100 of organizations like us who leave who left the country, who now work in exile. And the majority don't know that there are these options, that there are such tools that can be used to provide safety for the donors. And I think that it is very, very important to educate not only donors, but all those organizations. So we protect those who support us from Russia.
[00:15:56] ODELL:
Yes. I mean, so you mentioned, there's a lot to unpack there. You mentioned, this idea of of the fixed address. For a while, you guys were using I guess I guess to pull it back even further, this is something that our audience here at dispatch is intimately aware of, this this fact that Bitcoin is not private by default. Bitcoin actually, if you use it, naively, if you if you use it without thinking, can be relatively easily tracked and traced. And I I think I recall our original conversation that when I first met you, which might have been 2021.
[00:16:45] Unknown:
20 22.
[00:16:47] ODELL:
Yeah. And I I I said I was like, you got you gotta you gotta leave the fixed address. Right? Yeah. And it's it's it's funny because it's it's I mean, it's not funny because people are at risk. But it's hard to comprehend. I remember what the answer was. The answer was, look, this is simple. It works for us, and Putin can't take the money. And that's true. Like, he can't take regardless if how you use Bitcoin, it's very difficult for the money to be taken, which is one of the key features of Bitcoin. But what people often fail to realize is that we live in a physical world, and there are many levers that bad people can pull, to to pressure us into to doing certain things.
And privacy is a key aspect of that. If if if people are able to track the transactions, then they can use that information against you in external ways, in ways that are not directly related to Bitcoin. Whether that's seizing businesses, whether that's pressuring family members, whether that's just arresting you and putting you in jail. So privacy plays a key part here, and Bitcoin privacy tools, and Bitcoin privacy best practices have gotten a lot easier to use, but historically have been the much more difficult path. When WikiLeaks first started accepting Bitcoin, they used a fixed address that everyone could see. When you guys first started using Bitcoin, you guys used a fixed address. It's the easiest way to do it because you literally just copy and paste a single address and you're able to receive the Bitcoin, but it it is it is incredibly easy to track.
Go on.
[00:18:27] Unknown:
Yeah. I will comment that, that you said that 2 years ago, I I gave you that answer, and I'm not proud of that. But, you know, we've been using Bitcoin since 2016th. But I will be honest with you. Till the 2022, I didn't know anything about Bitcoin. We were using it, and, I personally I was taking it for granted. Like, okay, we use Bitcoin. It's one of the tools, one of the currencies we operate with, and I didn't know it was a big deal. I was like, okay. It's like, I never even tried to analyze this until the moment when I met Alex Gladstein from HRF, and I read his book, Check Your Financial Privilege.
I found out that there are, like, many activists from all over the world. They are all in the same situation. They all use Bitcoin, in their fight against dictatorships or if they are the private of access to traditional currencies. And I realized that there are so many people, and they use different tools. And there are different tools, and they didn't know about it. So if you, like, to to know about it, you should start, like, learning about it. You should start, like, thinking that maybe there are different tools. But at that point, I didn't even think about that. Fortunately, I met Alex Gladstein.
He introduced me to the community of Bitcoiners. I met many great people, many great developers. I learned about, non KYC wallets, non custodial wallets, different platforms where I can do it, when I where I can operate with Bitcoin really, in a safe way. And after that, of course, I brought this knowledge to my team, and we started thinking about that. And in my team, no one knew about that as well. So, yeah, it's, yeah, it's a very important thing to to educate, to spread this because people don't even know that there are options to to do it, safely.
[00:20:35] ODELL:
Yeah. And, I mean, it's been it's been amazing watching you along that journey. But the the scary part the scary part to me is is, you know, Bitcoin the Bitcoin blockchain, this ledger of transactions, that list every Bitcoin transaction that ever happened. If we're right about Bitcoin, which I strongly believe we are, it will last forever. It will last longer than all of us. And and the scary thing is is once you realize that once you realize that fact and once you realize that if you use Bitcoin in certain ways, it's incredibly easy to track. You come to this really frightening conclusion that people, that are not thinking about it today, it could be used against them in the future because those transactions are there forever.
So one of the arguments, you know, I'm I'm good friends with Alex. But one of the arguments I heard from him very early on was, look, Matt. We're not talking about the US government. We're not talking about, you know, sophisticated state actors. They don't have the means to track these things right now. And the the scary thing is, like, okay. Like, maybe you're an activist in in Belarus or in Venezuela, and those governments aren't sophisticated enough to track it right now. They might be in 2 years. They might be in 3 years, and that's when you start to see the repercussions there. Obviously, Russia is a more sophisticated actor than a lot of the other authoritarian governments around the world, but the point remains. And then the second point I wanna make clear here because I do have one one of the cool things about this show is it is a a very global audience, but it's still American dominated. The the majority of listeners come from America.
And and something that I've been talking about for years is the concerns over KYC, and the concerns over this idea that we have Bitcoin companies that are mandated by law to keep lists of Bitcoiners and our transaction history. And I think, that in these cases in these cases when we see freedom freedom focus activists around the world fighting against authoritarian regimes, it becomes quite obvious to people how dangerous these lists can be. If you talk to an American, they might look the other way when they hear that Coinbase or Strike is keeping list of Bitcoiners in the transaction history, and they're giving it to the American government. But when you say that Binance gave that information to Putin, they're like, oh, that's fucked up.
And this it it's it's the same issue. The issue No. Uh-huh. And the danger is the same regardless of where you live and regardless of which government is requiring it. And a lot of times, it's US government policy that is creating this financial hegemony around the world that mandates it on on on companies like Binance that are operating, you know, in, like, a hundred different countries and no one knows where their headquarters is.
[00:23:42] Unknown:
And, you know, it's not, it's not even necessary that Russian government asks for this data from the platform. They can do it in a very sophisticated way. They can do it through friendly countries, through third countries. And, for example, when European platforms or even European banks, like usual banks, require this AML and KYC procedures, and we explain to them how dangerous it is to provide this type of data, data of, people we work with, our donors. And some some people ask me, like, what's the problem if you provide it to European, European organizations, European banks, European platforms?
They are not gonna collude with Russia. They are not gonna give it to Russian regime. But, Russian regime can ask friendly countries to ask for this data. And then Europe can collaborate with, Putin's friendly countries, and they can leak the data to the Russian government. And this is very dangerous. And, actually, you know, it was it was so hard, for us when we we left Russia in 2021 because we were labeled as an extremist organization. We moved to Lithuania, to Europe. It's a European country. And when we moved, we were thinking like, okay, now we're not gonna have any banking problems anymore as we had in Russia. In Russia, it was a huge struggle. You know, in Russia, eventually, we couldn't it was hard for us to find a person willing to accept money from us. It was hard for us to pay for any services.
For example, we want to organize a protest rally in Moscow. We we need to pay for, equipment, for a stage, for speakers, microphones just to, have a protest rally. But the problem is that that contractors didn't want to accept payment from us because paying for any services, would put their bank accounts at risk of being blocked for collaborating with us because, everything is transparent. The banking system is transparent. So it was so hard to work with Russia from financial side. It was really hard. But when we left the country, we moved to Europe, and we were thinking like, okay. Now we're not gonna face financial problems because here, no one is gonna block our bank accounts or whatever.
But, in the first place, we couldn't even open a bank account because European banks, they, have, anti money laundering regulations, and they just automatically see that we are Russians. We have Russian passport. So they de bank us just because of that. And, we rely on Bitcoin also because of that because we are in a gray zone for European banks, anti money laundering procedures, they just kick us out from from the banking system. Eventually, we managed to open a bank account in Europe. We keep working, and we receive fiat donations to our usual banking account in Europe. But we need to have Bitcoin.
We need Bitcoin more than Fiat. So we cannot as an NGO, we're a nonprofit organization. We have a legal entity in European country, and the money that we collect from our donors to our bank account, we cannot buy Bitcoin with this money. And this is a huge struggle we're having right now, because we need Bitcoin for many, many, many reasons. We do so many payments in Bitcoin. All the payments to Russia, we do in Bitcoin because the country is completely cut off from the global financial system because of the sanctions. We but we need to make payments to pay, to to help activists who fight against the regime inside the country. We do payments to help, political prisoners and their family members.
We had to pay for Alexander Vali's funeral services in Moscow. And I personally need to make payments, transactions to support my family who's who live in Russia. And there is no way to do it with fiat. No chance. We need Bitcoin to do that. And so we have, fiat savings on our bank account in Europe, but banks do not allow us to buy Bitcoin with this money. And, we say but we need to make transactions to Russia. And, they say Russia is under sanctions, and we are we will not allow you in the first place to make transactions to Russia. We say, okay. We just want to buy Bitcoin, and, that's it. We want to keep the money in Bitcoin.
And they say, if you okay. Maybe we can try. But if you take the money from the bank account and you go to any platform to exchange it into Bitcoin, we need to see all the, like, all the operations you do with Bitcoin after that. You will have to provide us with all the data about operations and all the personal data of the final recipients of Bitcoin funds. So even if you convert it into Bitcoin, then we will need passports of the recipients. We see, but we need Bitcoin to make safe transactions. So we don't we don't want to provide passports, but banks say no. It's, KYC and AML measures, and you have to. And in the end, we are completely stuck. We cannot use Fiat. They don't allow us to buy Bitcoin, and it's a it's a big problem for us. So today, we actually encourage our donors to, donate more Bitcoin to us than Fiat because it's not possible in Europe to convert fiat into Bitcoin, but we need Bitcoin.
And we encourage, like, please donate more Bitcoin to us because we need for for example, right now, we investigate Navalny's murder. He was killed in prison, and we pay with Bitcoin to those who help us investigate it inside Russia. And those payments must be very secure, very safe because those people who help us investigate, they will be in great danger for receiving money from us. So we use Bitcoin to pay them, and we ask our donors, please donate more Bitcoin than fiat.
[00:29:58] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, it makes sense to me that Bitcoin is way more useful to an organization like yours. I mean, my my my my hope and a lot of work that I have done in this space has been to make Bitcoin as as useful as a tool for freedom as possible. And, unfortunately, at least in America, a lot of the focus has been more on the investment side, which is still a key piece of the whole equation because you want your savings to increase in value over time. But I do think a lot of Americans don't realize the real need people have around the world, for freedom money, for money that can be used without permission, that can be spent or saved without permission.
I'm kinda curious. I mean, it's a really I like the hard topics, which is one of the reasons why dispatch exists, which is one of the reasons why people even know I'm a person, was because people were just not having the hard conversations, and I felt like someone had to have the hard conversations. But it is, like, it is super taboo. It is, like, it is it is sensitive from a criminal point of view, in the United States. But I'm I'm kind of I'm kind of curious on your opinion on general, like, and you can just tell me I'm not gonna answer this question. On general sanction policy of the United States. Because I mean, the whole idea, the the the idea that's sold to the general public about Russian sanctions is that it hurts Putin, and that that it's it's a key tool in in fighting, fighting against authoritarianism around the world is to sanction whole countries.
Obviously, Russian sanctions have hit a whole another level. I mean, it's it's it's probably the the largest global sanction policy that we've ever seen enacted, since the modern financial system existed. But, obviously, you have your own issues that that stem from this policy. I'm curious. Like, do you think it like, do you think it's a net benefit? Do you think it's a good thing? Do you think it's, I yeah.
[00:32:18] Unknown:
Yeah. I get it. I think that those global sanctions and especially as a financial director of, such an organization, I believe that financial sanctions, global financial sanctions against the entire country, it's a very poor decision. And it's first of all, it damages it hits people like us, because we are the first who suffer from sanctions, suffer a lot, and we have no no other options. We have no other ways. We don't have any plans b when actually Putin and his regime, his oligarchs, they immediately found solution how to avoid the sanctions.
They don't need Bitcoin for that. You know? There is that narrative that, what if Putin Putin's regime is gonna use Bitcoin? We need to ban it because of that. But I'm sorry, but it's it's so not true, because Putin and his regime, they to avoid sanctions, they use friendly countries. There are so many investigations proving that, that there are so many countries who collaborate with Putin, who collude with Russian regime. They still provides Russia with all necessary products and everything, and they still trade with Russia. So, and Putin, he and his, his circle, they keep their assets abroad.
So it's like those sanctions, they don't hit them at all. But usual Russians, they lost an opportunity to just to make money transfers. I don't know how I would how I could support my family if I didn't have Bitcoin today. I have my sister in Russia. She is, she she's sick, and I help her to buy medications. And I do just I go to Huddl Huddl, my favorite platform. I exchange my Bitcoin to rubles for the p to p trading, and, she receives rubles from the trader with whom I had the contract. So this is how I send money to to my sister, for example. And, those who don't know how to use Bitcoin for those who's they haven't learned yet, They they're just stuck. They they, they cannot, get money from the country. They cannot send money to the country. And actually, when Putin started the war, he started to recruit Russian men, like usual men. He takes men from their families and sends them to the war. He there is a mobilization in the country.
And, more than 1,000,000 of Russian men left the country since the war started. They want to avoid the war. So it's a huge amount of people who are now abroad being deprived of access to the banking system. So some of them, they had, remote jobs in Russia. They work for, for example, for Russian companies. They move abroad and they cannot receive their salaries. And, they cannot, help their families. So, like, any any financial transfers are not possible to the country and from the country. And especially it hits hard, human rights defenders in these organizations like us, because as I mentioned before, banks in Europe don't want to have us.
They don't allow us to operate with Bitcoin as well, and we are we we have to fight not only against Russian dictatorship, but we also have to fight for our existence, abroad. We have to fight for our right to fight. And it's it's it's such a nonsense. Instead of, like, helping us, they really, like, deprive us of, operating freely. And this is all the result of sanctions, global sanctions, against the entire country. And I think that these sanctions failed really badly. And, I I read a lot of articles saying that Russian economical level recovered to the level of pre COVID situation.
So it's like it's it's not that bad right now. So I don't think that sanctions work really well if Russia keeps keeps, making weapons and sending weapons to Ukraine. They keep on getting support from other countries, and that's that's the problem. Yeah. What we at the Anti Corruption Foundation, what we promote is personal sanctions against Putin and his circle, targeted sanctions against those who really fuel this war, against those who really support the regime. Those people we created a list of 6,000 names. It's one of our biggest projects. But, actually, now there is more than 7,000 names. Those names of people who support the regime, who support the war. So we we provide all the proofs, all the evidence why those people must be sanctioned personally.
But sanctioning the entire country just like that without thinking, about what's gonna happen next to people like us, I think it's it wasn't the smartest decision.
[00:37:50] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, to me, I see a lot of similarities with, KYC AML policies, which is the argument is always, like, it's to stop criminals. But criminals always seem to find a way around it. They use bought or stolen ID documents, And it's the average it's the average people that tend to get to to tend to tend to get hurt by it when all this information leaks or governments use it against them. And I I unfortunately, I don't think that's really a compelling argument for our corrupt political class because I think the real goal is of KYC AML is control. And it's control over over all the average individuals Yes. Of course. That are not doing anything wrong.
[00:38:39] Unknown:
And I I hear, like, it's, very traditional point of everyone when they try to argue with me and they say, criminals use Bitcoin. And I say, I am a criminal. I'm officially a criminal in Russia. I'm an extremist. I'm a money launderer. I have a criminal case for money laundering. Of course, it's fabricated, but still You're a terrorist according to Putin. Yeah. Exactly. And, yes, I'm a, I'm a criminal using Bitcoin. So, like, this this this narrative doesn't work. Actually, Bitcoin is, is bad for moving big amounts of money. It's it's it's transparent. And, it's like every time when, some, like, real criminals try to use it or Putin's friends, Every time it leaked this information, every time leaked.
So it's they very quickly realized that Bitcoin is not the best option for them. But when I tell you about us using Bitcoin in our work, I'm talking about small amounts. It's like, it's up to €1,000, even less. When we talk about donations we receive, it's like $50 or $100 maximum. So it's it's only small amounts, that we operate with. Or if we pay salaries in Bitcoin, we actually pay salaries for around 76 of our employees in Bitcoin today for different reasons. Most of them work remotely, and for some of them, it's not safe to receive money from us. So we pay with Bitcoin. And here, we don't talk about big amounts. It's still, like, small amounts. But for criminals, it's, it's not, convenient to use Bitcoin for huge amounts because you can always see it in the Blockchain that a big amount of money is moving somewhere. It's really easy to track.
[00:40:35] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, I don't know if that's necessarily a compelling argument either because I think if we're being honest, that will probably change. I think I think one of the interesting things about Bitcoin is is that it could be useful for authoritarians, and then it can also be useful for the people that protest against them, which means, like, everyone kind of needs it. But, yeah, I I I do agree that I do agree that if if if in larger amounts, particularly, it's harder to use Bitcoin privately. I'm kinda curious. I think this is a good moment to kind of dovetail or or discuss, how you guys actually use Bitcoin and some of the troubles you've had, in terms of, trying to use it more privately. I mean, I know we've had many discussions about using CoinJoin, using collaborative transactions, obviously, using fresh addresses every time.
How has that how how have you guys used it effectively? What kind of issues have you had? You know, where where are we at in this process from your point of view?
[00:41:50] Unknown:
Yeah. So as I mentioned before, I learned a couple of years ago that there are solutions to make, the flow of of the nations, to make it safer, to provide privacy for our donors. And we implemented that button that generates new Bitcoin addresses every time for each donation, and we use CoinJoin. We use Wasabi Wallet to receive donations, so coins are mixed. And then, like, it's it's not possible to track the donors. And we thought that it was a great solution that is 100%, like, working for us. But at some point, we we faced difficulties. We faced challenges, because, sometimes we need to use, cash or sometimes we need to use, fiat for some reasons to pay for some services or whatever.
And once we had a problem, we we didn't have enough, Fiat, and we needed to convert Bitcoin that we receive from our donors into Fiat. And, for that, we used the platform. Unfortunately, I wasn't there. My colleagues were responsible for that transaction. And if I knew about that, of course, I would have stopped that. Unfortunately, I wasn't there at that moment. And, they used the platform that I really I I wouldn't trust, and it's a KYC platform and, AML platform. So they sent, bigger money amount of money there, and the platform stopped the transaction.
Because today, all platforms, they check transactions through some anti money laundering services, some bots or, I don't know, some some tools, that show you what amount like, what this transaction consists of. If there is, mixers involved, if there are stolen coins involved, And, they they checked our transaction, and, they told us that there is, like, 60% of coins are from the mixer, which is technically true because we use coin joints. So we mix the coins, but we only do So it's actually like a 100%. Right? Sorry?
[00:44:10] ODELL:
I mean, they said 60%, but I thought you were you you use CoinJoin for all of it. No?
[00:44:16] Unknown:
I don't know how it works. Why it shows that? It's, like, not the entire thing. Bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how it works technically, but Okay. It's, yeah, the fact is that they didn't like the, the coins that we send them. And, they said that they are not going to accept our coins, and they froze the transaction. So we asked for refund. It was at that moment, it was a Bitcoin, worth of around €10,000, but today, it's already, like, 19,000. So it's it keeps growing. So today It's gonna go higher. Yeah. Exactly. And but even there then it was 10,000. It was a lot. And they just froze. They stopped our transaction.
And we asked for refund, and they refused to make a refund because they they said, you are Russians, and we don't make transactions to people from sanctioned countries. You have Russian passports. And it's still I think it's been already 3 months that we communicate with them. They just refused to send money back, and, this is the result of anti money laundering requirements at this kind of platforms. But I don't know, like, if we had clean coins, if we if we were gonna have the same the same situation or not. But I explained to them that we are we do this to provide safety for our donors. We mix them on a purpose so the government, Russian government, is not gonna attract the donors. And we do a good thing for the people, and, we really rely on this money. It's a huge amount of money. And if you're not gonna give it back to us, we're gonna have, financial problems.
But they just they refused to send it back, and, yeah, this is the result of the situation. And I'm curious, how we can avoid these situations in the future if we keep using this, money if we if we keep mixing the money, how we can avoid this kind of situations? And I talked to some people. I just came, here to New York from, Bedford. I was at the conference in in Bedford. Yes. And, the cheat code. And there, I had an opportunity to speak with amazing people to discuss the situation. And, I I got some ideas that we I can use these coins. I can send them to Lightning Wallet and then but, you know, I received some money from these mixed coins from the ACF Mixed coins. I received some money to my personal lightning wallet.
And then, I I received the salary from this money. And then I wanted to send some money to my family. So I went to Huddl Huddl platform, and I tried to do p to p trading with these coins. And the trader there checked my transaction. Now it's a trend. All trader, it doesn't matter what, what's the amount of money. They all check all the, all transactions. And it was, like, around €300 I wanted to send to my sister. And they checked, he checked the transaction, and he said that there are mixed coins. And he's not gonna accept it, or he wants some fee from my transaction. And I'm curious, like, how it works if I keep, let's say, clean coins, and then I get some coins, like, from the ACF salary.
If they are get mixed or not because, my my Lightning Wallet, Phoenix Wallet, it provides new addresses every time every time when I when I receive money to the wallet. Every time I use different addresses. Right? And, but still money gets mixed inside. Because when I try to make a transaction, when I was doing p to p trading, they rejected my coins. So I'm like, how how does it even work? I don't get it. So, yeah, now there are so many, like, technical problems, and I tried to find solution how to do it so we don't face this kind of situations anymore.
[00:48:35] ODELL:
I mean, first of all, to the audience, my other show, Rabbit Hole Recap, which we do every week, sometimes I'm, like, grumpy or frustrated. A lot of times that's because I've had conversations like this behind the scenes. And it's good that we're having this conversation out in the open, because it is frustrating. Like, I'm the whole concept of, clean coins versus unclean coins It's a horrible concept. Like, that's ridiculous. There's Bitcoin and then there's no Bitcoin. First of all, the the larger transaction you guys had frozen and taken from you, that sounds like that was with a centralized exchange, right, not a p to p instance. You don't wanna mention which exchange that was. Right?
[00:49:32] Unknown:
Not yet. I'm thinking, I'm gonna wait for a while because we're still in the process of You're hoping you get the money back. Yeah. Yeah. But but if we don't get the money back, I'll start mentioning them, I guess, somewhere on Twitter. Fair enough.
[00:49:49] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, that is that is that is brutal. And, I mean, it just shows how little humanity is involved in the process. Yeah. To to claim to claim that, they can't refund the money because of Russian sanctions when you literally run a Russian opposition Russian government opposition organization Exactly. Just shows that that there's no humanity in the process. It's just, like, point to the rule. Done. We're taking your money.
[00:50:18] Unknown:
Yeah. I know. And we went we live in exile, and we have residence permits of, Lithuania. So it it doesn't make any sense from this point of view.
[00:50:31] ODELL:
And then on the p to p side, this is incredibly troubling, is that there are I have seen many reports of increased p to p flagging activity. I the first thing is from a vocabulary point of view, and as someone who I know English is is not your first language. It sounds, well, I mean, I'm gonna say semantic, but it it it it sounds it sounds like bullshit. Yeah. But, I don't like calling CoinJoin mixing. Mixing to me, historically, has been you send a centralized entity Bitcoin and they send you different Bitcoin. With CoinJoin CoinJoin is a fundamentally different process. It's a it's a collaborative Bitcoin transaction.
You never actually give up access to your Bitcoin. You're just doing a Bitcoin transaction with other people that that takes privacy best practices into account. Now that is almost more like legal vernacular. That is gonna matter more in in future legal cases, I think. But it's important to differentiate here. Is is Yeah. Is is is the Bitcoin the Bitcoin that you owned has never actually changed hands. The probability of tracking it through the blockchain has become more difficult, which should not fundamentally make a Bitcoin dirty or unclean.
Yeah. It just it just means that it's, oh, that that that probability analysis that we're you're using to track me without consent in the first place has become more difficult, which I think is insane. I think it's insanity. I think it's pure insanity. But, fundamentally, at the end of the day, for people on the ground that need to use Bitcoin, that doesn't really necessarily help. You were asking about
[00:52:46] Unknown:
Yeah. I will just comment on that. I apologize. Yeah. Right. You're right. There are some English You don't apologize. With yeah. But I mean that, it's not only that. It's also that maybe I'm not very good at technical moments, but you you get what I mean? That's, we try to provide safety and we try to do it for good reasons and but the thing is that they see on those centralized platforms, they see it as a mixed coins or it's dirty. They call it like dirty They call it that. Yes. I know. And you know you know, it it makes no sense because today, like, you if you receive Bitcoin from anywhere, you don't know where it comes from. It's like, so many, like, people send it to each other, and in the end, you receive something. We receive money from our donors.
So we cannot control where donors
[00:53:39] ODELL:
get got that Bitcoin. Right? But the but that's yeah. I mean, that's that's that's the slippery slope. Right? Like, that is that is that is why that is how you end up in a situation where individual p to p, person to person traders are checking the history of Bitcoin. Exactly. Because because you just it goes all the way down. It's like they're afraid that they're not gonna be able to to essentially sell it wherever they wanna sell it. Right? Like, that's that's what they're doing. That's their business Right. Presumably. You know, Lightning does help.
My understanding with Huddl Huddl is it's on chain only. I don't think they have a Lightning component.
[00:54:27] Unknown:
No. They don't. I mean, that I I keep the money on my, wallet that has a lightning option, but it also has transactions. So So they're checking the on chain history. Like, if you were to spend it to a lightning wallet,
[00:54:43] ODELL:
lightning like everything with Bitcoin, unfortunately, requires, a lot of technical, understanding to to figure out where your exposure is. But if you send someone a lightning transaction, they it's actually worse for the receiver in terms of privacy. But, it's better for the sender. So, like, if you send if you send a lightning transaction to someone, they can't they can't look back and see what UTX like, what Bitcoin, funded that lightning transaction or what the history of that big it breaks. It does break that that history analysis. So, like, I mean and there's a whole another discussion to be had here, which is you've said that a lot of your donations are, like, in the $50, $100 range.
And as Bitcoin fees go up, Right. That be that becomes more and more expensive from a percentage point of view. Because Bitcoin on chain fees are based are based on absolute amount, or or or they're they're they're they're based on the data sent, not the amount of money sent. So for lower lower amount transactions, the fees get pretty high percentage wise, while Lightning is just strictly based on percentage. And so, I mean, I think there is a question, and we can have this conversation offline. Sure. But there is a there I I think there's there's a lot of benefits to accepting lightning donations and then paying out via lightning.
But, of course, at the end of the day, if if if what you want is dollars or rubles, there are just not many I I don't know of any real p to p platforms except for Robosats, that support Lightning. And that that's really what it comes I think what it comes down to. And it's yeah. It's with CoinJoin, it's it's an interesting it's an interesting trade off balance because you get better privacy, but that privacy is known to people. So people know that you try to achieve privacy. And I actually think there's there's a similarity with encrypted messaging. Because if you send an encrypted message to someone over signal or something, if you're doing data analysis, you can tell an encrypted message was sent. You just can't tell what the message was. So you know the participants want privacy.
You just don't you don't you're not able to track the transaction. You're not able to track the mess figure out what the message is. And I don't think that's necessarily a deal breaker, but it's something that people need to keep in mind.
[00:57:38] Unknown:
Right.
[00:57:39] ODELL:
But yeah. I mean, these are the real these are the real concerns that we battle with on a daily basis.
[00:57:47] Unknown:
Yeah. You know, it also requires a lot of, educational process. Yep. I think that's, there must be more of educational platforms, because it's, like, it's easy to say that, like, switch to Lightning. You should start using Lightning or start receiving Lightning donations. Yeah. But, at first, we had to educate people, about Bitcoin, what it is, how to use it. And, many many are still scared to to use it because it's it sounds complicated. And now we have to explain what Lightning is and that there are special, wallets and, like, how how to use it. And by the way, a big issue of all the products, and many developers don't think about that, And I want to highlight it, that many of the products are not they don't support different languages.
And, for example, people in Russia mostly don't speak English. And when they open a wallet that I recommend them to download, they open the wallet and it's entirely in English. And, also, it's like it's it's complicated for them even when it's about a seed phrase. It's like 12 English words for for those especially for older people. It's they of course, they will immediately give up. So if, I encourage people to use Bitcoin and they download the wallet I recommend and they see that there is no Russian interface, where they will go? They will go to a centralized platform which supports different languages.
They will go somewhere where it is more simple to use, to Binance or whatever else just because there is Russian language. And this is a really big issue because just imagine if you, for example, don't speak Chinese or whatever and you download a wallet that is only in Chinese, are you gonna try to to translate it, like, the entire, wallet, or you will just go somewhere else? Of course, you will go somewhere else, and it's a big issue. And when I talk about, educating people, it's one of the main issues that should be solved because it's hard to educate people how to about the Bitcoin itself. We should also educate about every platform, every wallet additionally.
So teaching about, Lightning is very important, but, unfortunately, it goes really slow. And I wish there were more educational platforms. Because for now, for example, at the Anti Corruption Foundation, we don't have so much time to teach people about Bitcoin. You know, we have our focus, our projects are very different. We are, aimed at, political projects. But we have to we have to educate our donors. So we created a Bitcoin instruction for our donors, and, you can find it on our website. And in the beginning, I wrote a huge instruction. It was, like, 21 pages explaining the difference between custodial and noncustodial wallets, the difference between platforms, why it is important not to leave your personal data, and blah blah blah.
But my team, they told me, like, no. It's too much. It's gonna scare people. It's gonna scare your donors. You should make it shorter and easier. So I had to remove a lot of very important information from our Bitcoin instruction. And I wish that there were more educational sources, Russian speaking, for for for the people inside the country. Yeah.
[01:01:43] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, that is definitely it's it's definitely a pain point that we have, and it's it's gonna take time. It's a it's a time thing. I do wonder, like, how much AI can help with some of this stuff or, like, basic basic AI tools?
[01:02:14] Unknown:
I don't know what people trust more. What if they trust, like, a real human being talking on YouTube about different tools or just translated information. I think that there must be real educators. And, actually, not many people know about lightning. When I was searching for some good educational sources in Russian, I don't find a lot about lightning. It's,
[01:02:43] ODELL:
it's a big issue. Not a lot there's not a lot of lot in the west either.
[01:02:48] Unknown:
Exactly.
[01:02:49] ODELL:
I think, but where I was going with that is, like, for instance, like, I refuse to use chat gpt, or anything Sam Altman makes at OpenAI because I think, he's a force of evil for the world. But my understanding right now is, like, if I if I were to use his tools, I could take this show, and I could take every episode, and I can translate into any language I want. And it looks like we are speaking it in the language. And and, you know, obviously, it's not better it's it's it's it's strictly worse than having an authentic Russian speaker or an authentic Chinese speaker, an authentic Spanish speaker trying to, to talk to their audience and and try and and help with education. But I I do think it will help at least it helps the beginning phases. It's like it it could help early on. But I I will say, like, from a wallet point of view I mean, look. Even in English English speaking languages, like, we've made a lot of progress on the tools, on the wallets. When I first started working with HRF and the activists, that the Human Rights Foundation supports, was was over 5 years ago.
And I remember the tools that we were trying to use with them, and it was very diff in English. Mhmm. It was very difficult. And we've come a really long way in 5 years, And it's it's really hard to you know, it it feels like it's not enough. It feels like it's not enough that time is of the essence when you talk to people who need it today. They need it today. They need they need better tools. They need better education. They need it today. Otherwise, you know, how are they gonna eat this week? Or how are they gonna support their family this week? It's it's actually a a problem that needs to be solved ASAP. Right. But it it's a time thing. It's a time thing, and it's super frustrating to watch on watch unfold.
[01:04:55] Unknown:
Right. And, that is why I decided to join HRF, actually. 1 month ago, I joined, as I mentioned already, as a nonprofit Bitcoin adoption lead, because I believe that education is important, and I have a lot of valuable experience in this field of nonprofits using Bitcoin. And I think that I can share it with the other nonprofits who who are facing the same problems globally, all over the world. There are so many who fight against dictatorships or who are just deprived of access to the banking system, to traditional currencies. And, at least this way, I can help someone. I can educate someone.
I'm not ready to start any, like, big educational project like, YouTube channel or something like that. But I I want to invest my time and efforts into teaching other, human rights defenders and freedom fighters how to use Bitcoin. And, right now, we have, withdrawn a webinar. It's 5 days webinar at the HRF for NGOs. Today was the 3rd day already, and many many people joined us actually. And we we teach them we explain how to, use Bitcoin, and also we're gonna teach them how to use BTCPA server to collect donations in a safe way. So, yeah, I just wanted to link it to the educational, topic that's I I believe it's crucial. And that is why I joined the organization.
[01:06:38] ODELL:
Yeah. That's wonderful. I mean, just an example, right, is is when I first started working with activists through the Human Rights Foundation, training them how to use Bitcoin, BTC Pacer did not exist. Yeah. Which is crazy. It's such an important project, and I'm so grateful for the contributors over there. I would say, Anna, you have always been an inspiration to me. I your I your work speaks for itself. You put yourself and your family at great risk doing what you do. And, yes, I agree with you that we always feel like we can do more. But you you have you have done amazing work, and and you should be proud you should be proud of the work you've done.
[01:07:26] Unknown:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
[01:07:30] ODELL:
Yeah. Go. All you.
[01:07:33] Unknown:
Okay. Yeah. I would like as many people, as many as I can, to inform about these use cases, and I'm very happy that, Alex Gladstein is doing that and that he really, like, expanded this community and that he brings all of, you know, this, human rights activist together and shows to the world that we really need Bitcoin. We really use it in our work and that we really fight against dictatorships with the help of Bitcoin. And it's so great that, with, your help for, like, going to, being at your podcast, going to some events, speaking at different conferences. And, over the past 2 years, I already gave a talk about this, our about our use case at so many Bitcoin conferences, and I made so many great contacts contacts, with the developers.
And, I use many tools that I learned about at this kind of events. So, yeah, I'm very thankful. I appreciated that you invited me here to to the podcast. So maybe, with your help, some people will reach out to me to share their ideas. I already see some of them, in the chat. Some some say for example, I see the message about BISC that we should start start using BISC, And it's it's, about that, tools that are not very easy to use. It's a great tool and I use the platform, but it's really hard to explain this tool, for example, to my mom or to to someone else.
So yeah. But, anyway, any ideas are appreciated, and, I I think you will leave my contact somewhere, and maybe someone can reach Yes. Out to me and share the ideas.
[01:09:41] ODELL:
I will put your contact information in the show notes. I will also put links to the Anti Corruption Foundation in the show notes and HRF. Yeah. We're working on the tools. I mean, I know I I just saw you recently at a Human Rights Foundation retreat that we did. I had Cali recently on the podcast of Cashew, who you you had the privilege to meet at that most recent retreat. I think what his work is doing on the on the privacy side is absolutely massive. I think that could be completely, very useful. Bisc is an awesome project. I will say Bisc is still on chain.
There there is I we can talk about this offline, but I I really like Robosats. Yeah. Robosats is a lightning first, exchange for smaller amounts for smaller amounts interacting with, fiat currencies,
[01:10:43] Unknown:
it can be very helpful. Actually actually, I know that Go on. Sorry. I just wanted to say that I know that there is a huge Russian community that using Robosets. It's very popular in Russia. So I should consider, learning more about that.
[01:10:59] ODELL:
Yeah. Robosets is but it it's interesting. Right? Because, like, BISC is, BISC is a is a little bit more, it's a little bit more censorship resistant. It's it's it's it tries to be as decentralized as possible, while while Robosats kinda took a user, user interface first approach. And the founders are completely anonymous, and it all runs through Tor. And that that has worked for them, and it has worked for them really well. I, am by the way, am I gonna see you in Oslo?
[01:11:38] Unknown:
Yes.
[01:11:39] ODELL:
Awesome. Okay. I'm I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. To all the Bitcoiners out there, by the way, Like, the Oslo Freedom Forum, is open to public. There there is a financial freedom track that is focused heavily on Bitcoin. It is probably one of, the most inspiring, fulfilling, Bitcoin events of the year. And it's because it's not specifically a Bitcoin event. It's a freedom event.
[01:12:09] Unknown:
Yeah. Right. And I'm gonna I'm I'm I'm gonna do a workshop there together with Ben Perin.
[01:12:17] ODELL:
We're gonna help sessions.
[01:12:18] Unknown:
BTC sessions. Right? And we're gonna, I'm gonna answer the questions of activists actually on our Bitcoin use case, and I'm gonna help them to implement it in their work. Yeah.
[01:12:33] ODELL:
I see before we wrap, I see a comment, from rider die freak wide, asking, are you aware of Bitcoin censorship actions that are happening to just, like, average people in Russia that are not necessarily donating to charities? They're just, like, using it on a day to day basis.
[01:12:55] Unknown:
Bitcoin censorship?
[01:12:56] ODELL:
Yeah. Like, is is is the Russian regime are they are they besides, like, specific entities like yourself, like, are they actually are they, like, cracking down on Bitcoin over there? Or, like, what are you familiar or no?
[01:13:12] Unknown:
Not yet. I mean, they haven't banned it, but they, there is a law that says that Bitcoin, is illegal for as a payment tool. You cannot pay with Bitcoin, but, it's not illegal. You can I mean, you can you can use it, you can, make transactions, you can exchange it? It's still legal, fortunately, because I know that there are some countries where you cannot do anything with Bitcoin. But, fortunately, in Russia, we can still operate with Bitcoin. But, Russian banks, when, for example, we make a transaction in Bitcoin and then the recipient of funds try to exchange it into fiat.
And, if the recipient mentions that this is money from a Bitcoin transaction, so the bank will freeze the bank account, will just block it. So the problem is mostly with the banks today. So I recommend not to mention that this money is from Bitcoin, transactions.
[01:14:19] ODELL:
Fair enough. To answer your question, ride or die freak, mother from Australia, Pringle Stacks, what is the date of Oslo Freedom Forum this year? It's June 3rd through 5th. It's the 1st week of June. Right. Consider it. Oslo is also, Norway is a a a an incredible country. The people are are are very nice. The city of Oslo is a beautiful city. I will give you the one caveat that it is one of the most expensive places I've ever visited in the world. So just keep that in mind. But it's it'd be well worth your time if you make it out there.
[01:15:03] Unknown:
Yeah. The the Winners Day will be on the 5th. The 5th June will be full day. Yes. In the end. And, the list of speakers is very impressive this year. I recommend to check the list of headliners.
[01:15:19] ODELL:
And, yeah, last 2 years, it was amazing. So I highly recommend it. Signal. It's really good. And but don't come just for the Bitcoin part. Like, it's important to be there for the for the Yeah. It's true. 2 days before that as well because, the stories you hear, the the conversations you have is, in my opinion, why I focus so much time on this movement. And it's about freedom for people. It's about freedom for individuals around the world. And it's it's it's the fact of the matter that people are living their life, in a way that requires permission from other people that they do not know, and they shouldn't have to live that way. They should be able to live their life without permission.
[01:16:04] Unknown:
You know, I heard from many Bitcoiners that they special like this event because it's not Bitcoin only, and that they prefer to come for the entire thing to listen to all of those stories. Because, it's mind blowing to learn what's happening in different regions in the world. Yeah. Some stories are really insane.
[01:16:24] ODELL:
Yeah. I don't travel for Bitcoin events anymore, but I'll be in Oslo.
[01:16:29] Unknown:
Great. Okay.
[01:16:31] ODELL:
I, Anna, this has been fantastic. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for talking about the very hard topics. Do you have anything you have any final thoughts for the audience before we wrap?
[01:16:45] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, as I mentioned before, I would love any feedback, any ideas, or if you want to learn more, I'm very open to share about our work. I would appreciate any support and, yeah, just you can reach out to me anytime and keep keep promoting ideas of Bitcoin and keep boosting adoption of it. As you can see, we really use it in a fight, for freedom. We really use it in a fight against dictatorships. So your contribution is very important, and if you create some tools in the, in this field, it's very important that you remember about people like us. And, yeah. Generally, if you spread ideas of Bitcoin, you already boost the adoption of Bitcoin. And it's it's cool, and I appreciate it a lot. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
[01:17:44] ODELL:
Wonderful. Thank you, Anna. I hope to see you soon. Thanks, Fries, for joining us.
[01:17:50] Unknown:
Bye.
[01:20:39] Unknown:
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain. You don't like my point of view. You do a lot of insane. It's not sane. It's not saying.
[01:21:59] ODELL:
Love you, freaks. I hope you enjoyed that rip, and as a fucking legend. That track, was no rain by Blood Melon. I like to just mix it up for you, and I was feeling it today. Next week. Big week. We're just gonna keep the big weeks coming. Well, until we don't. And then I'll take a break for a little bit. But next week, we got Tuesday, 1500 UTC, so 2 hours earlier than usual. We have Kieran from ZapStream joining us, and Snort, prolific developer. If you listen to the livestream, it would not be possible, and you participate in the live chat. It would not be possible without Karen. What a fucking boss. So I'm pretty excited about that. And then Wednesday, at our usual time, 1700 UTC, I have Ben Arc, one of the legends of Bitcoin and Noster, joining us to talk Alan Bits, talk Bitcoin, talk Noster.
It'd be a really great conversation. I'm I'm really excited about it. Yeah. And, the top supporters of the week have barely changed since yesterday, which is fair on the back to back rips. Boston Wine has joined the party with 21,000 sets that he contributed last week. Huge shout out to all the freaks who continue to support the show. Thank you. I try and practice what I preach. I wanna make value for value a thing. And the easiest way to support the show is through podcasting 2 point o apps like Fountain or Breeze or joining us in the live chat. Yeah.
I think, ultimately, that's where we're going. Neighbors helping neighbors, people helping people, supporting each other without centralized entities in between. But I think there is obviously a place for centralized entities to kinda bootstrap the process and speed it up because I have low time preference, but I'm tired of fucking waiting, which is why open sets exist, which is why 1031 exists. And if you support the show through podcasting 2 point o apps, 5% go directly to open sats, and a 100% of that goes directly to open source contributors to try and speed up the movement. I love you all.
I know sats are scarce, the only thing more scarce than our time. So as always, if you can't support the show with sats, if you can't spare any sats, just subscribing on your favorite platform, sharing it with friends and family, leaving a review. It really does help, and it keeps me going because I'm just a fucking person. Not like a not a magician. Not, you know, just a random person. Anyway, freaks, I love you all. I'll see you next week. Well, tomorrow's Robert Hill recap if you wanna join for that. We're doing that that usual time, 1800 UTC. But I love you all, and I'll see you next week.
And stay humble, Stack Sats. Peace.
Your
[00:00:05] Unknown:
your anxiety, if you have it, about inflation versus employment, where would it be? And I say that because we're just talking before with Joe Livornyan. I've been, monitoring a lot of the Jason Furman comments even over past week, and he made one, which was that he thinks that if in fact the Fed were to lower interest rates, in this calendar year, that it would be a function of a weak employment situation, not necessarily, the inflation picture?
[00:00:34] Unknown:
So it's a good point, and I I think this is the tension right now for policymakers. They have to weigh the risk around, loosening this policy too soon or keeping it too tight and risking employment. And, of course, as you know, they have a dual mandate. They care about both of these things very much. But the one they control most directly is gonna be that inflation number, and they must gain their confidence to get back to 2% in a fairly timely way if they're gonna retain credibility and keep inflation expectations
[00:01:13] Unknown:
anchored around that 2% When you say timely way, you're not in the camp that says, you know what? They've they've gotten through the hard part. They can get to 2% eventually, and they can take their time to do it. You think that there's actually an urgency to it?
[00:01:27] Unknown:
I think there's always an urgency to it, Andrea, and that doesn't mean, that you have to double down and get there tomorrow. But I do think as they look at their forecast, and this has always been true, they are they have allowed inflation to drift down, and it's it's done that. But as they look to see their confidence in that 2%, those forecasts have been pushing out. And so far, I think with inflation expectations anchored, that has been appropriate. What I'd be watching for is and I think the committee is too. They don't wanna see those expectations change. That's what allows them to be patient.
That's what allows them to take their time to look at the data right now.
[00:02:45] ODELL:
Happy bitcoin Wednesday freaks. It's your host Odell here for another Citadel dispatch The interactive live show focused on actionable bitcoin and freedom tech discussion. That intro clip, was CNBC still in denial about inflation. We'll see how the suits decide to handle our economic matters going forward, but I think, that clip will probably age quite poorly. We're here today to talk about something completely different than the clip in classic dispatch fashion. I have my good friend Anna here. Anna has done a a lot of work with the Anti Corruption Foundation. She's the financial director or the CFO over there, depending on how you wanna call it. And she recently joined, the Human Rights Foundation.
How's it going, Anna?
[00:03:39] Unknown:
Hi, Matt. Thank you for inviting me. Everything is just great. Thank you for, having me here because, you know, it's not very often when activists using Bitcoin have an an opportunity to speak, for the big audience. I think it's very important to highlight our use cases. And, yeah, you're right. I work for the Anti Corruption Foundation. It's been already 7 years. And, around 1 months ago, I joined, Human Rights Foundation as well, where I work as nonprofit Bitcoin adoption lead, because I have a lot of experience of, non profit, at the, Anti Corruption Foundation of using Bitcoin in our work.
And now I'm very excited about sharing my experience with those non profits, freedom fighters, activists, human rights defenders all over the world to to help them implement Bitcoin in their work.
[00:04:42] ODELL:
Awesome. Yeah. I've had the the privilege of knowing you for quite some years now. I think, and and I I think a great place to start would be, what is the Anticorruption Foundation, and when did you guys start using Bitcoin in your operations?
[00:05:07] Unknown:
The Anti Corruption Foundation is a Russian organization. It was, created by the leader of Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny, in Moscow back in 2011. And, it's the main opposition power of the country and we've been fighting against Putin for many many years already. We fight against Putin, against his regime, against their corruption, against all the crimes they do for more than 24 years already. It's almost 25 years already. Yeah. So our goal is to make Russia a free democratic country, and we have many, many opposition projects, related to this big goal of defeating, finally, Putin's regime.
And I personally joined the Anti Corruption Foundation in 2017, but, we started using Bitcoin in our work in 2016th before I joined the organization, and, it's been a long way already. And we, began using Bitcoin, while working in Russia because, Russian banking system is fully controlled by the government, is fully transparent to the regime, and Russian government very quickly realized that, they can use the banking system as a tool of oppression against us. And, they used it against us so many times. While we were working in Russia, they constantly were blocking our bank accounts, bank accounts of our organizations, bank accounts of our employees. My personal bank account is arrested.
Bank accounts of Alexei Navalny and his family members were arrested. So the government realizes that when they deprive us of access to money to our bank accounts, they basically deprive us of oxygen because we cannot keep operating. We cannot pay salaries. We cannot pay rent. We cannot pay cleaning services or literally anything. And, when we had a presidential campaign in 2018 when Alexei Navalny decided to run for president of Russia, and we had a crowdfunding campaign. It was very hard to main maintain our network because we had more than 300 employees, more than 40 offices. We had to cover financially all of those. And every time when they blocked our bank account on the basis of a new fabricated criminal case every time, we always had a question, like, how are we gonna pay for everything? What we're gonna do? And in 2016th, we realized already at that time that we better have a plan b, and we better keep our savings somewhere else. That is why we started using Bitcoin back then. And also because there were some donors who wanted to donate to us secretly, privately, because it was clear that if you go against Putin, if you support those organizations that go against Putin, you can be in danger.
And this is actually what happens. In 2021, we were labeled as an extremist organization on the territory of Russia, and we were forced to leave the country. And all of our donors who were donating to us for many years, now they're all at risk due to banks sharing their personal data with the government. So they basically provide all the information about all transactions to the government, and now all of those fiat donors are vulnerable for donating to us. And today, if you donate to so called extremist organization, if you donate with Fiat, if they catch you, and, of course, they will catch you because the banking system is transparent, You simply go to jail up to 8 years for donating to such an organization.
So, yeah, we, we started using Bitcoin long ago and many times that literally saved our lives. Every time we lost when we lost access to our bank accounts, we could always use Bitcoin. We could always continue operating thanks to Bitcoin.
[00:09:28] ODELL:
So, I mean, this all makes a lot of sense to me. This is it it's there's 2 sides here. Right? There is there is the side of, and in both cases, it's about the financial system being weaponized on people, weaponized against people. And on one side, it's it's an organization like your own trying to operate, and it requires money to operate. And, having funds seized, having funds blocked, obviously makes that incredibly difficult, and Bitcoin provides a solution there. And then there is the opposite side of the equation where donors are are put at risk, if they donate through a surveilled, financial network.
To the point where, I I mean, you mentioned they could get jail time, but also they could get, you know, less obvious, punishment measures, against their family, against their business interests. You know, quite frankly, I we we saw on the in the Western Hemisphere, we saw with the Canadian Truckers, which was an opposition movement, led by truckers in Canada, that people that donated to the to the to those protesters were put on lists. And, like, so then the question is afterwards is, like, okay. What what does it mean to be on the list? And that's always a little bit more vague, and you you don't necessarily know exactly what what the repercussions are, but it's usually not a good thing.
I will say, and we're gonna dive deep here particularly on the Bitcoin side of things because I think it's fascinating that you guys, understood the need for Bitcoin and and and used it incredibly early on. Bitcoin is obviously not without its faults. And I think there was a case I mean, you mentioned that banks were giving up donor information. I think back in 2021, Binance also gave, donation information to people who donated to, Bitcoin addresses or or Altcoin addresses, to the opposition as well. This is not something that is necessarily isolate unfortunately isolated to the traditional financial system. We're also seeing large Bitcoin exchanges, comply with these type of measures.
[00:11:51] Unknown:
Yeah. You're right. So it's a big problem. And actually, I don't know very well what exactly happened back then with Binance, but I never recommend anyone using this kind of platforms, and especially Binance, because they kept playing some weird games and they kept saying that they don't collude with Russian regime and then they started, like, kicking out Russian users, then they onboarded them again, then they, kicked everyone out again. And in the end, they, told all of Russian users to, switch from Binance to other platform. And many of Russian users who really didn't know what platform, like, what is the new platform they were offering, they switched to that one. But I made some research and I found out that the new platform for Russian users of Binance, the new platform is registered in Russia. Probably they had servers in Russia. And they just recommend everyone to switch to that one. And it means that all the personal data that Russian users, kept at the Binance platform, all this personal data is gonna be transferred to some random platform that is registered on the territory of Russia, which means that all their data can easily leak to the Russian government finally anyway, and all the information about their transactions can leak. So my point is that I never recommend using this kind of centralized KYC platforms.
It's, like, the worst choice for Russian users today, especially if they use it to support organizations like us. Today, we work in exile. Today, we're we are located in Lithuania in Europe. And our organization is a non profit organization. We live we like, we donations is our main source of income, and donations from Russians is our main source of income because our target audience is Russian Russians. And, we encourage everyone to donate to us, but the only option to donate safely to us is with Bitcoin. We rely on Bitcoin a lot, but at the same time, if we don't educate our donors how to use Bitcoin properly, what tools are the safest, Anyway, they of course, they are at risk. If they use wrong platform, if they provide their personal data to wrong platform, if they leak their data anywhere, it can cause big problems for supporting, an extremist organization.
So, it's a it's a big challenge for us, because there are, like, thousands 100 of thousands of donors and we really need their support, but at the same time we have to teach them how to do it properly. And a couple of years ago, we started thinking about it, like, how can we make the nations from Russia safer. And we implemented a special tool on our website. If you go to the website to the the donate page, you will see that there is a special button that generates a new Bitcoin address every single time for each donation for each donor. So, the we after that, we mix the coins.
So it is way harder or even not possible for the Russian government to track the donor. And, yeah, it's it's very important to do that. And the problem is that it's not only us. There are 100 of organizations like us who leave who left the country, who now work in exile. And the majority don't know that there are these options, that there are such tools that can be used to provide safety for the donors. And I think that it is very, very important to educate not only donors, but all those organizations. So we protect those who support us from Russia.
[00:15:56] ODELL:
Yes. I mean, so you mentioned, there's a lot to unpack there. You mentioned, this idea of of the fixed address. For a while, you guys were using I guess I guess to pull it back even further, this is something that our audience here at dispatch is intimately aware of, this this fact that Bitcoin is not private by default. Bitcoin actually, if you use it, naively, if you if you use it without thinking, can be relatively easily tracked and traced. And I I think I recall our original conversation that when I first met you, which might have been 2021.
[00:16:45] Unknown:
20 22.
[00:16:47] ODELL:
Yeah. And I I I said I was like, you got you gotta you gotta leave the fixed address. Right? Yeah. And it's it's it's funny because it's it's I mean, it's not funny because people are at risk. But it's hard to comprehend. I remember what the answer was. The answer was, look, this is simple. It works for us, and Putin can't take the money. And that's true. Like, he can't take regardless if how you use Bitcoin, it's very difficult for the money to be taken, which is one of the key features of Bitcoin. But what people often fail to realize is that we live in a physical world, and there are many levers that bad people can pull, to to pressure us into to doing certain things.
And privacy is a key aspect of that. If if if people are able to track the transactions, then they can use that information against you in external ways, in ways that are not directly related to Bitcoin. Whether that's seizing businesses, whether that's pressuring family members, whether that's just arresting you and putting you in jail. So privacy plays a key part here, and Bitcoin privacy tools, and Bitcoin privacy best practices have gotten a lot easier to use, but historically have been the much more difficult path. When WikiLeaks first started accepting Bitcoin, they used a fixed address that everyone could see. When you guys first started using Bitcoin, you guys used a fixed address. It's the easiest way to do it because you literally just copy and paste a single address and you're able to receive the Bitcoin, but it it is it is incredibly easy to track.
Go on.
[00:18:27] Unknown:
Yeah. I will comment that, that you said that 2 years ago, I I gave you that answer, and I'm not proud of that. But, you know, we've been using Bitcoin since 2016th. But I will be honest with you. Till the 2022, I didn't know anything about Bitcoin. We were using it, and, I personally I was taking it for granted. Like, okay, we use Bitcoin. It's one of the tools, one of the currencies we operate with, and I didn't know it was a big deal. I was like, okay. It's like, I never even tried to analyze this until the moment when I met Alex Gladstein from HRF, and I read his book, Check Your Financial Privilege.
I found out that there are, like, many activists from all over the world. They are all in the same situation. They all use Bitcoin, in their fight against dictatorships or if they are the private of access to traditional currencies. And I realized that there are so many people, and they use different tools. And there are different tools, and they didn't know about it. So if you, like, to to know about it, you should start, like, learning about it. You should start, like, thinking that maybe there are different tools. But at that point, I didn't even think about that. Fortunately, I met Alex Gladstein.
He introduced me to the community of Bitcoiners. I met many great people, many great developers. I learned about, non KYC wallets, non custodial wallets, different platforms where I can do it, when I where I can operate with Bitcoin really, in a safe way. And after that, of course, I brought this knowledge to my team, and we started thinking about that. And in my team, no one knew about that as well. So, yeah, it's, yeah, it's a very important thing to to educate, to spread this because people don't even know that there are options to to do it, safely.
[00:20:35] ODELL:
Yeah. And, I mean, it's been it's been amazing watching you along that journey. But the the scary part the scary part to me is is, you know, Bitcoin the Bitcoin blockchain, this ledger of transactions, that list every Bitcoin transaction that ever happened. If we're right about Bitcoin, which I strongly believe we are, it will last forever. It will last longer than all of us. And and the scary thing is is once you realize that once you realize that fact and once you realize that if you use Bitcoin in certain ways, it's incredibly easy to track. You come to this really frightening conclusion that people, that are not thinking about it today, it could be used against them in the future because those transactions are there forever.
So one of the arguments, you know, I'm I'm good friends with Alex. But one of the arguments I heard from him very early on was, look, Matt. We're not talking about the US government. We're not talking about, you know, sophisticated state actors. They don't have the means to track these things right now. And the the scary thing is, like, okay. Like, maybe you're an activist in in Belarus or in Venezuela, and those governments aren't sophisticated enough to track it right now. They might be in 2 years. They might be in 3 years, and that's when you start to see the repercussions there. Obviously, Russia is a more sophisticated actor than a lot of the other authoritarian governments around the world, but the point remains. And then the second point I wanna make clear here because I do have one one of the cool things about this show is it is a a very global audience, but it's still American dominated. The the majority of listeners come from America.
And and something that I've been talking about for years is the concerns over KYC, and the concerns over this idea that we have Bitcoin companies that are mandated by law to keep lists of Bitcoiners and our transaction history. And I think, that in these cases in these cases when we see freedom freedom focus activists around the world fighting against authoritarian regimes, it becomes quite obvious to people how dangerous these lists can be. If you talk to an American, they might look the other way when they hear that Coinbase or Strike is keeping list of Bitcoiners in the transaction history, and they're giving it to the American government. But when you say that Binance gave that information to Putin, they're like, oh, that's fucked up.
And this it it's it's the same issue. The issue No. Uh-huh. And the danger is the same regardless of where you live and regardless of which government is requiring it. And a lot of times, it's US government policy that is creating this financial hegemony around the world that mandates it on on on companies like Binance that are operating, you know, in, like, a hundred different countries and no one knows where their headquarters is.
[00:23:42] Unknown:
And, you know, it's not, it's not even necessary that Russian government asks for this data from the platform. They can do it in a very sophisticated way. They can do it through friendly countries, through third countries. And, for example, when European platforms or even European banks, like usual banks, require this AML and KYC procedures, and we explain to them how dangerous it is to provide this type of data, data of, people we work with, our donors. And some some people ask me, like, what's the problem if you provide it to European, European organizations, European banks, European platforms?
They are not gonna collude with Russia. They are not gonna give it to Russian regime. But, Russian regime can ask friendly countries to ask for this data. And then Europe can collaborate with, Putin's friendly countries, and they can leak the data to the Russian government. And this is very dangerous. And, actually, you know, it was it was so hard, for us when we we left Russia in 2021 because we were labeled as an extremist organization. We moved to Lithuania, to Europe. It's a European country. And when we moved, we were thinking like, okay, now we're not gonna have any banking problems anymore as we had in Russia. In Russia, it was a huge struggle. You know, in Russia, eventually, we couldn't it was hard for us to find a person willing to accept money from us. It was hard for us to pay for any services.
For example, we want to organize a protest rally in Moscow. We we need to pay for, equipment, for a stage, for speakers, microphones just to, have a protest rally. But the problem is that that contractors didn't want to accept payment from us because paying for any services, would put their bank accounts at risk of being blocked for collaborating with us because, everything is transparent. The banking system is transparent. So it was so hard to work with Russia from financial side. It was really hard. But when we left the country, we moved to Europe, and we were thinking like, okay. Now we're not gonna face financial problems because here, no one is gonna block our bank accounts or whatever.
But, in the first place, we couldn't even open a bank account because European banks, they, have, anti money laundering regulations, and they just automatically see that we are Russians. We have Russian passport. So they de bank us just because of that. And, we rely on Bitcoin also because of that because we are in a gray zone for European banks, anti money laundering procedures, they just kick us out from from the banking system. Eventually, we managed to open a bank account in Europe. We keep working, and we receive fiat donations to our usual banking account in Europe. But we need to have Bitcoin.
We need Bitcoin more than Fiat. So we cannot as an NGO, we're a nonprofit organization. We have a legal entity in European country, and the money that we collect from our donors to our bank account, we cannot buy Bitcoin with this money. And this is a huge struggle we're having right now, because we need Bitcoin for many, many, many reasons. We do so many payments in Bitcoin. All the payments to Russia, we do in Bitcoin because the country is completely cut off from the global financial system because of the sanctions. We but we need to make payments to pay, to to help activists who fight against the regime inside the country. We do payments to help, political prisoners and their family members.
We had to pay for Alexander Vali's funeral services in Moscow. And I personally need to make payments, transactions to support my family who's who live in Russia. And there is no way to do it with fiat. No chance. We need Bitcoin to do that. And so we have, fiat savings on our bank account in Europe, but banks do not allow us to buy Bitcoin with this money. And, we say but we need to make transactions to Russia. And, they say Russia is under sanctions, and we are we will not allow you in the first place to make transactions to Russia. We say, okay. We just want to buy Bitcoin, and, that's it. We want to keep the money in Bitcoin.
And they say, if you okay. Maybe we can try. But if you take the money from the bank account and you go to any platform to exchange it into Bitcoin, we need to see all the, like, all the operations you do with Bitcoin after that. You will have to provide us with all the data about operations and all the personal data of the final recipients of Bitcoin funds. So even if you convert it into Bitcoin, then we will need passports of the recipients. We see, but we need Bitcoin to make safe transactions. So we don't we don't want to provide passports, but banks say no. It's, KYC and AML measures, and you have to. And in the end, we are completely stuck. We cannot use Fiat. They don't allow us to buy Bitcoin, and it's a it's a big problem for us. So today, we actually encourage our donors to, donate more Bitcoin to us than Fiat because it's not possible in Europe to convert fiat into Bitcoin, but we need Bitcoin.
And we encourage, like, please donate more Bitcoin to us because we need for for example, right now, we investigate Navalny's murder. He was killed in prison, and we pay with Bitcoin to those who help us investigate it inside Russia. And those payments must be very secure, very safe because those people who help us investigate, they will be in great danger for receiving money from us. So we use Bitcoin to pay them, and we ask our donors, please donate more Bitcoin than fiat.
[00:29:58] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, it makes sense to me that Bitcoin is way more useful to an organization like yours. I mean, my my my my hope and a lot of work that I have done in this space has been to make Bitcoin as as useful as a tool for freedom as possible. And, unfortunately, at least in America, a lot of the focus has been more on the investment side, which is still a key piece of the whole equation because you want your savings to increase in value over time. But I do think a lot of Americans don't realize the real need people have around the world, for freedom money, for money that can be used without permission, that can be spent or saved without permission.
I'm kinda curious. I mean, it's a really I like the hard topics, which is one of the reasons why dispatch exists, which is one of the reasons why people even know I'm a person, was because people were just not having the hard conversations, and I felt like someone had to have the hard conversations. But it is, like, it is super taboo. It is, like, it is it is sensitive from a criminal point of view, in the United States. But I'm I'm kind of I'm kind of curious on your opinion on general, like, and you can just tell me I'm not gonna answer this question. On general sanction policy of the United States. Because I mean, the whole idea, the the the idea that's sold to the general public about Russian sanctions is that it hurts Putin, and that that it's it's a key tool in in fighting, fighting against authoritarianism around the world is to sanction whole countries.
Obviously, Russian sanctions have hit a whole another level. I mean, it's it's it's probably the the largest global sanction policy that we've ever seen enacted, since the modern financial system existed. But, obviously, you have your own issues that that stem from this policy. I'm curious. Like, do you think it like, do you think it's a net benefit? Do you think it's a good thing? Do you think it's, I yeah.
[00:32:18] Unknown:
Yeah. I get it. I think that those global sanctions and especially as a financial director of, such an organization, I believe that financial sanctions, global financial sanctions against the entire country, it's a very poor decision. And it's first of all, it damages it hits people like us, because we are the first who suffer from sanctions, suffer a lot, and we have no no other options. We have no other ways. We don't have any plans b when actually Putin and his regime, his oligarchs, they immediately found solution how to avoid the sanctions.
They don't need Bitcoin for that. You know? There is that narrative that, what if Putin Putin's regime is gonna use Bitcoin? We need to ban it because of that. But I'm sorry, but it's it's so not true, because Putin and his regime, they to avoid sanctions, they use friendly countries. There are so many investigations proving that, that there are so many countries who collaborate with Putin, who collude with Russian regime. They still provides Russia with all necessary products and everything, and they still trade with Russia. So, and Putin, he and his, his circle, they keep their assets abroad.
So it's like those sanctions, they don't hit them at all. But usual Russians, they lost an opportunity to just to make money transfers. I don't know how I would how I could support my family if I didn't have Bitcoin today. I have my sister in Russia. She is, she she's sick, and I help her to buy medications. And I do just I go to Huddl Huddl, my favorite platform. I exchange my Bitcoin to rubles for the p to p trading, and, she receives rubles from the trader with whom I had the contract. So this is how I send money to to my sister, for example. And, those who don't know how to use Bitcoin for those who's they haven't learned yet, They they're just stuck. They they, they cannot, get money from the country. They cannot send money to the country. And actually, when Putin started the war, he started to recruit Russian men, like usual men. He takes men from their families and sends them to the war. He there is a mobilization in the country.
And, more than 1,000,000 of Russian men left the country since the war started. They want to avoid the war. So it's a huge amount of people who are now abroad being deprived of access to the banking system. So some of them, they had, remote jobs in Russia. They work for, for example, for Russian companies. They move abroad and they cannot receive their salaries. And, they cannot, help their families. So, like, any any financial transfers are not possible to the country and from the country. And especially it hits hard, human rights defenders in these organizations like us, because as I mentioned before, banks in Europe don't want to have us.
They don't allow us to operate with Bitcoin as well, and we are we we have to fight not only against Russian dictatorship, but we also have to fight for our existence, abroad. We have to fight for our right to fight. And it's it's it's such a nonsense. Instead of, like, helping us, they really, like, deprive us of, operating freely. And this is all the result of sanctions, global sanctions, against the entire country. And I think that these sanctions failed really badly. And, I I read a lot of articles saying that Russian economical level recovered to the level of pre COVID situation.
So it's like it's it's not that bad right now. So I don't think that sanctions work really well if Russia keeps keeps, making weapons and sending weapons to Ukraine. They keep on getting support from other countries, and that's that's the problem. Yeah. What we at the Anti Corruption Foundation, what we promote is personal sanctions against Putin and his circle, targeted sanctions against those who really fuel this war, against those who really support the regime. Those people we created a list of 6,000 names. It's one of our biggest projects. But, actually, now there is more than 7,000 names. Those names of people who support the regime, who support the war. So we we provide all the proofs, all the evidence why those people must be sanctioned personally.
But sanctioning the entire country just like that without thinking, about what's gonna happen next to people like us, I think it's it wasn't the smartest decision.
[00:37:50] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, to me, I see a lot of similarities with, KYC AML policies, which is the argument is always, like, it's to stop criminals. But criminals always seem to find a way around it. They use bought or stolen ID documents, And it's the average it's the average people that tend to get to to tend to tend to get hurt by it when all this information leaks or governments use it against them. And I I unfortunately, I don't think that's really a compelling argument for our corrupt political class because I think the real goal is of KYC AML is control. And it's control over over all the average individuals Yes. Of course. That are not doing anything wrong.
[00:38:39] Unknown:
And I I hear, like, it's, very traditional point of everyone when they try to argue with me and they say, criminals use Bitcoin. And I say, I am a criminal. I'm officially a criminal in Russia. I'm an extremist. I'm a money launderer. I have a criminal case for money laundering. Of course, it's fabricated, but still You're a terrorist according to Putin. Yeah. Exactly. And, yes, I'm a, I'm a criminal using Bitcoin. So, like, this this this narrative doesn't work. Actually, Bitcoin is, is bad for moving big amounts of money. It's it's it's transparent. And, it's like every time when, some, like, real criminals try to use it or Putin's friends, Every time it leaked this information, every time leaked.
So it's they very quickly realized that Bitcoin is not the best option for them. But when I tell you about us using Bitcoin in our work, I'm talking about small amounts. It's like, it's up to €1,000, even less. When we talk about donations we receive, it's like $50 or $100 maximum. So it's it's only small amounts, that we operate with. Or if we pay salaries in Bitcoin, we actually pay salaries for around 76 of our employees in Bitcoin today for different reasons. Most of them work remotely, and for some of them, it's not safe to receive money from us. So we pay with Bitcoin. And here, we don't talk about big amounts. It's still, like, small amounts. But for criminals, it's, it's not, convenient to use Bitcoin for huge amounts because you can always see it in the Blockchain that a big amount of money is moving somewhere. It's really easy to track.
[00:40:35] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, I don't know if that's necessarily a compelling argument either because I think if we're being honest, that will probably change. I think I think one of the interesting things about Bitcoin is is that it could be useful for authoritarians, and then it can also be useful for the people that protest against them, which means, like, everyone kind of needs it. But, yeah, I I I do agree that I do agree that if if if in larger amounts, particularly, it's harder to use Bitcoin privately. I'm kinda curious. I think this is a good moment to kind of dovetail or or discuss, how you guys actually use Bitcoin and some of the troubles you've had, in terms of, trying to use it more privately. I mean, I know we've had many discussions about using CoinJoin, using collaborative transactions, obviously, using fresh addresses every time.
How has that how how have you guys used it effectively? What kind of issues have you had? You know, where where are we at in this process from your point of view?
[00:41:50] Unknown:
Yeah. So as I mentioned before, I learned a couple of years ago that there are solutions to make, the flow of of the nations, to make it safer, to provide privacy for our donors. And we implemented that button that generates new Bitcoin addresses every time for each donation, and we use CoinJoin. We use Wasabi Wallet to receive donations, so coins are mixed. And then, like, it's it's not possible to track the donors. And we thought that it was a great solution that is 100%, like, working for us. But at some point, we we faced difficulties. We faced challenges, because, sometimes we need to use, cash or sometimes we need to use, fiat for some reasons to pay for some services or whatever.
And once we had a problem, we we didn't have enough, Fiat, and we needed to convert Bitcoin that we receive from our donors into Fiat. And, for that, we used the platform. Unfortunately, I wasn't there. My colleagues were responsible for that transaction. And if I knew about that, of course, I would have stopped that. Unfortunately, I wasn't there at that moment. And, they used the platform that I really I I wouldn't trust, and it's a KYC platform and, AML platform. So they sent, bigger money amount of money there, and the platform stopped the transaction.
Because today, all platforms, they check transactions through some anti money laundering services, some bots or, I don't know, some some tools, that show you what amount like, what this transaction consists of. If there is, mixers involved, if there are stolen coins involved, And, they they checked our transaction, and, they told us that there is, like, 60% of coins are from the mixer, which is technically true because we use coin joints. So we mix the coins, but we only do So it's actually like a 100%. Right? Sorry?
[00:44:10] ODELL:
I mean, they said 60%, but I thought you were you you use CoinJoin for all of it. No?
[00:44:16] Unknown:
I don't know how it works. Why it shows that? It's, like, not the entire thing. Bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how it works technically, but Okay. It's, yeah, the fact is that they didn't like the, the coins that we send them. And, they said that they are not going to accept our coins, and they froze the transaction. So we asked for refund. It was at that moment, it was a Bitcoin, worth of around €10,000, but today, it's already, like, 19,000. So it's it keeps growing. So today It's gonna go higher. Yeah. Exactly. And but even there then it was 10,000. It was a lot. And they just froze. They stopped our transaction.
And we asked for refund, and they refused to make a refund because they they said, you are Russians, and we don't make transactions to people from sanctioned countries. You have Russian passports. And it's still I think it's been already 3 months that we communicate with them. They just refused to send money back, and, this is the result of anti money laundering requirements at this kind of platforms. But I don't know, like, if we had clean coins, if we if we were gonna have the same the same situation or not. But I explained to them that we are we do this to provide safety for our donors. We mix them on a purpose so the government, Russian government, is not gonna attract the donors. And we do a good thing for the people, and, we really rely on this money. It's a huge amount of money. And if you're not gonna give it back to us, we're gonna have, financial problems.
But they just they refused to send it back, and, yeah, this is the result of the situation. And I'm curious, how we can avoid these situations in the future if we keep using this, money if we if we keep mixing the money, how we can avoid this kind of situations? And I talked to some people. I just came, here to New York from, Bedford. I was at the conference in in Bedford. Yes. And, the cheat code. And there, I had an opportunity to speak with amazing people to discuss the situation. And, I I got some ideas that we I can use these coins. I can send them to Lightning Wallet and then but, you know, I received some money from these mixed coins from the ACF Mixed coins. I received some money to my personal lightning wallet.
And then, I I received the salary from this money. And then I wanted to send some money to my family. So I went to Huddl Huddl platform, and I tried to do p to p trading with these coins. And the trader there checked my transaction. Now it's a trend. All trader, it doesn't matter what, what's the amount of money. They all check all the, all transactions. And it was, like, around €300 I wanted to send to my sister. And they checked, he checked the transaction, and he said that there are mixed coins. And he's not gonna accept it, or he wants some fee from my transaction. And I'm curious, like, how it works if I keep, let's say, clean coins, and then I get some coins, like, from the ACF salary.
If they are get mixed or not because, my my Lightning Wallet, Phoenix Wallet, it provides new addresses every time every time when I when I receive money to the wallet. Every time I use different addresses. Right? And, but still money gets mixed inside. Because when I try to make a transaction, when I was doing p to p trading, they rejected my coins. So I'm like, how how does it even work? I don't get it. So, yeah, now there are so many, like, technical problems, and I tried to find solution how to do it so we don't face this kind of situations anymore.
[00:48:35] ODELL:
I mean, first of all, to the audience, my other show, Rabbit Hole Recap, which we do every week, sometimes I'm, like, grumpy or frustrated. A lot of times that's because I've had conversations like this behind the scenes. And it's good that we're having this conversation out in the open, because it is frustrating. Like, I'm the whole concept of, clean coins versus unclean coins It's a horrible concept. Like, that's ridiculous. There's Bitcoin and then there's no Bitcoin. First of all, the the larger transaction you guys had frozen and taken from you, that sounds like that was with a centralized exchange, right, not a p to p instance. You don't wanna mention which exchange that was. Right?
[00:49:32] Unknown:
Not yet. I'm thinking, I'm gonna wait for a while because we're still in the process of You're hoping you get the money back. Yeah. Yeah. But but if we don't get the money back, I'll start mentioning them, I guess, somewhere on Twitter. Fair enough.
[00:49:49] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, that is that is that is brutal. And, I mean, it just shows how little humanity is involved in the process. Yeah. To to claim to claim that, they can't refund the money because of Russian sanctions when you literally run a Russian opposition Russian government opposition organization Exactly. Just shows that that there's no humanity in the process. It's just, like, point to the rule. Done. We're taking your money.
[00:50:18] Unknown:
Yeah. I know. And we went we live in exile, and we have residence permits of, Lithuania. So it it doesn't make any sense from this point of view.
[00:50:31] ODELL:
And then on the p to p side, this is incredibly troubling, is that there are I have seen many reports of increased p to p flagging activity. I the first thing is from a vocabulary point of view, and as someone who I know English is is not your first language. It sounds, well, I mean, I'm gonna say semantic, but it it it it sounds it sounds like bullshit. Yeah. But, I don't like calling CoinJoin mixing. Mixing to me, historically, has been you send a centralized entity Bitcoin and they send you different Bitcoin. With CoinJoin CoinJoin is a fundamentally different process. It's a it's a collaborative Bitcoin transaction.
You never actually give up access to your Bitcoin. You're just doing a Bitcoin transaction with other people that that takes privacy best practices into account. Now that is almost more like legal vernacular. That is gonna matter more in in future legal cases, I think. But it's important to differentiate here. Is is Yeah. Is is is the Bitcoin the Bitcoin that you owned has never actually changed hands. The probability of tracking it through the blockchain has become more difficult, which should not fundamentally make a Bitcoin dirty or unclean.
Yeah. It just it just means that it's, oh, that that that probability analysis that we're you're using to track me without consent in the first place has become more difficult, which I think is insane. I think it's insanity. I think it's pure insanity. But, fundamentally, at the end of the day, for people on the ground that need to use Bitcoin, that doesn't really necessarily help. You were asking about
[00:52:46] Unknown:
Yeah. I will just comment on that. I apologize. Yeah. Right. You're right. There are some English You don't apologize. With yeah. But I mean that, it's not only that. It's also that maybe I'm not very good at technical moments, but you you get what I mean? That's, we try to provide safety and we try to do it for good reasons and but the thing is that they see on those centralized platforms, they see it as a mixed coins or it's dirty. They call it like dirty They call it that. Yes. I know. And you know you know, it it makes no sense because today, like, you if you receive Bitcoin from anywhere, you don't know where it comes from. It's like, so many, like, people send it to each other, and in the end, you receive something. We receive money from our donors.
So we cannot control where donors
[00:53:39] ODELL:
get got that Bitcoin. Right? But the but that's yeah. I mean, that's that's that's the slippery slope. Right? Like, that is that is that is why that is how you end up in a situation where individual p to p, person to person traders are checking the history of Bitcoin. Exactly. Because because you just it goes all the way down. It's like they're afraid that they're not gonna be able to to essentially sell it wherever they wanna sell it. Right? Like, that's that's what they're doing. That's their business Right. Presumably. You know, Lightning does help.
My understanding with Huddl Huddl is it's on chain only. I don't think they have a Lightning component.
[00:54:27] Unknown:
No. They don't. I mean, that I I keep the money on my, wallet that has a lightning option, but it also has transactions. So So they're checking the on chain history. Like, if you were to spend it to a lightning wallet,
[00:54:43] ODELL:
lightning like everything with Bitcoin, unfortunately, requires, a lot of technical, understanding to to figure out where your exposure is. But if you send someone a lightning transaction, they it's actually worse for the receiver in terms of privacy. But, it's better for the sender. So, like, if you send if you send a lightning transaction to someone, they can't they can't look back and see what UTX like, what Bitcoin, funded that lightning transaction or what the history of that big it breaks. It does break that that history analysis. So, like, I mean and there's a whole another discussion to be had here, which is you've said that a lot of your donations are, like, in the $50, $100 range.
And as Bitcoin fees go up, Right. That be that becomes more and more expensive from a percentage point of view. Because Bitcoin on chain fees are based are based on absolute amount, or or or they're they're they're they're based on the data sent, not the amount of money sent. So for lower lower amount transactions, the fees get pretty high percentage wise, while Lightning is just strictly based on percentage. And so, I mean, I think there is a question, and we can have this conversation offline. Sure. But there is a there I I think there's there's a lot of benefits to accepting lightning donations and then paying out via lightning.
But, of course, at the end of the day, if if if what you want is dollars or rubles, there are just not many I I don't know of any real p to p platforms except for Robosats, that support Lightning. And that that's really what it comes I think what it comes down to. And it's yeah. It's with CoinJoin, it's it's an interesting it's an interesting trade off balance because you get better privacy, but that privacy is known to people. So people know that you try to achieve privacy. And I actually think there's there's a similarity with encrypted messaging. Because if you send an encrypted message to someone over signal or something, if you're doing data analysis, you can tell an encrypted message was sent. You just can't tell what the message was. So you know the participants want privacy.
You just don't you don't you're not able to track the transaction. You're not able to track the mess figure out what the message is. And I don't think that's necessarily a deal breaker, but it's something that people need to keep in mind.
[00:57:38] Unknown:
Right.
[00:57:39] ODELL:
But yeah. I mean, these are the real these are the real concerns that we battle with on a daily basis.
[00:57:47] Unknown:
Yeah. You know, it also requires a lot of, educational process. Yep. I think that's, there must be more of educational platforms, because it's, like, it's easy to say that, like, switch to Lightning. You should start using Lightning or start receiving Lightning donations. Yeah. But, at first, we had to educate people, about Bitcoin, what it is, how to use it. And, many many are still scared to to use it because it's it sounds complicated. And now we have to explain what Lightning is and that there are special, wallets and, like, how how to use it. And by the way, a big issue of all the products, and many developers don't think about that, And I want to highlight it, that many of the products are not they don't support different languages.
And, for example, people in Russia mostly don't speak English. And when they open a wallet that I recommend them to download, they open the wallet and it's entirely in English. And, also, it's like it's it's complicated for them even when it's about a seed phrase. It's like 12 English words for for those especially for older people. It's they of course, they will immediately give up. So if, I encourage people to use Bitcoin and they download the wallet I recommend and they see that there is no Russian interface, where they will go? They will go to a centralized platform which supports different languages.
They will go somewhere where it is more simple to use, to Binance or whatever else just because there is Russian language. And this is a really big issue because just imagine if you, for example, don't speak Chinese or whatever and you download a wallet that is only in Chinese, are you gonna try to to translate it, like, the entire, wallet, or you will just go somewhere else? Of course, you will go somewhere else, and it's a big issue. And when I talk about, educating people, it's one of the main issues that should be solved because it's hard to educate people how to about the Bitcoin itself. We should also educate about every platform, every wallet additionally.
So teaching about, Lightning is very important, but, unfortunately, it goes really slow. And I wish there were more educational platforms. Because for now, for example, at the Anti Corruption Foundation, we don't have so much time to teach people about Bitcoin. You know, we have our focus, our projects are very different. We are, aimed at, political projects. But we have to we have to educate our donors. So we created a Bitcoin instruction for our donors, and, you can find it on our website. And in the beginning, I wrote a huge instruction. It was, like, 21 pages explaining the difference between custodial and noncustodial wallets, the difference between platforms, why it is important not to leave your personal data, and blah blah blah.
But my team, they told me, like, no. It's too much. It's gonna scare people. It's gonna scare your donors. You should make it shorter and easier. So I had to remove a lot of very important information from our Bitcoin instruction. And I wish that there were more educational sources, Russian speaking, for for for the people inside the country. Yeah.
[01:01:43] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, that is definitely it's it's definitely a pain point that we have, and it's it's gonna take time. It's a it's a time thing. I do wonder, like, how much AI can help with some of this stuff or, like, basic basic AI tools?
[01:02:14] Unknown:
I don't know what people trust more. What if they trust, like, a real human being talking on YouTube about different tools or just translated information. I think that there must be real educators. And, actually, not many people know about lightning. When I was searching for some good educational sources in Russian, I don't find a lot about lightning. It's,
[01:02:43] ODELL:
it's a big issue. Not a lot there's not a lot of lot in the west either.
[01:02:48] Unknown:
Exactly.
[01:02:49] ODELL:
I think, but where I was going with that is, like, for instance, like, I refuse to use chat gpt, or anything Sam Altman makes at OpenAI because I think, he's a force of evil for the world. But my understanding right now is, like, if I if I were to use his tools, I could take this show, and I could take every episode, and I can translate into any language I want. And it looks like we are speaking it in the language. And and, you know, obviously, it's not better it's it's it's it's strictly worse than having an authentic Russian speaker or an authentic Chinese speaker, an authentic Spanish speaker trying to, to talk to their audience and and try and and help with education. But I I do think it will help at least it helps the beginning phases. It's like it it could help early on. But I I will say, like, from a wallet point of view I mean, look. Even in English English speaking languages, like, we've made a lot of progress on the tools, on the wallets. When I first started working with HRF and the activists, that the Human Rights Foundation supports, was was over 5 years ago.
And I remember the tools that we were trying to use with them, and it was very diff in English. Mhmm. It was very difficult. And we've come a really long way in 5 years, And it's it's really hard to you know, it it feels like it's not enough. It feels like it's not enough that time is of the essence when you talk to people who need it today. They need it today. They need they need better tools. They need better education. They need it today. Otherwise, you know, how are they gonna eat this week? Or how are they gonna support their family this week? It's it's actually a a problem that needs to be solved ASAP. Right. But it it's a time thing. It's a time thing, and it's super frustrating to watch on watch unfold.
[01:04:55] Unknown:
Right. And, that is why I decided to join HRF, actually. 1 month ago, I joined, as I mentioned already, as a nonprofit Bitcoin adoption lead, because I believe that education is important, and I have a lot of valuable experience in this field of nonprofits using Bitcoin. And I think that I can share it with the other nonprofits who who are facing the same problems globally, all over the world. There are so many who fight against dictatorships or who are just deprived of access to the banking system, to traditional currencies. And, at least this way, I can help someone. I can educate someone.
I'm not ready to start any, like, big educational project like, YouTube channel or something like that. But I I want to invest my time and efforts into teaching other, human rights defenders and freedom fighters how to use Bitcoin. And, right now, we have, withdrawn a webinar. It's 5 days webinar at the HRF for NGOs. Today was the 3rd day already, and many many people joined us actually. And we we teach them we explain how to, use Bitcoin, and also we're gonna teach them how to use BTCPA server to collect donations in a safe way. So, yeah, I just wanted to link it to the educational, topic that's I I believe it's crucial. And that is why I joined the organization.
[01:06:38] ODELL:
Yeah. That's wonderful. I mean, just an example, right, is is when I first started working with activists through the Human Rights Foundation, training them how to use Bitcoin, BTC Pacer did not exist. Yeah. Which is crazy. It's such an important project, and I'm so grateful for the contributors over there. I would say, Anna, you have always been an inspiration to me. I your I your work speaks for itself. You put yourself and your family at great risk doing what you do. And, yes, I agree with you that we always feel like we can do more. But you you have you have done amazing work, and and you should be proud you should be proud of the work you've done.
[01:07:26] Unknown:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
[01:07:30] ODELL:
Yeah. Go. All you.
[01:07:33] Unknown:
Okay. Yeah. I would like as many people, as many as I can, to inform about these use cases, and I'm very happy that, Alex Gladstein is doing that and that he really, like, expanded this community and that he brings all of, you know, this, human rights activist together and shows to the world that we really need Bitcoin. We really use it in our work and that we really fight against dictatorships with the help of Bitcoin. And it's so great that, with, your help for, like, going to, being at your podcast, going to some events, speaking at different conferences. And, over the past 2 years, I already gave a talk about this, our about our use case at so many Bitcoin conferences, and I made so many great contacts contacts, with the developers.
And, I use many tools that I learned about at this kind of events. So, yeah, I'm very thankful. I appreciated that you invited me here to to the podcast. So maybe, with your help, some people will reach out to me to share their ideas. I already see some of them, in the chat. Some some say for example, I see the message about BISC that we should start start using BISC, And it's it's, about that, tools that are not very easy to use. It's a great tool and I use the platform, but it's really hard to explain this tool, for example, to my mom or to to someone else.
So yeah. But, anyway, any ideas are appreciated, and, I I think you will leave my contact somewhere, and maybe someone can reach Yes. Out to me and share the ideas.
[01:09:41] ODELL:
I will put your contact information in the show notes. I will also put links to the Anti Corruption Foundation in the show notes and HRF. Yeah. We're working on the tools. I mean, I know I I just saw you recently at a Human Rights Foundation retreat that we did. I had Cali recently on the podcast of Cashew, who you you had the privilege to meet at that most recent retreat. I think what his work is doing on the on the privacy side is absolutely massive. I think that could be completely, very useful. Bisc is an awesome project. I will say Bisc is still on chain.
There there is I we can talk about this offline, but I I really like Robosats. Yeah. Robosats is a lightning first, exchange for smaller amounts for smaller amounts interacting with, fiat currencies,
[01:10:43] Unknown:
it can be very helpful. Actually actually, I know that Go on. Sorry. I just wanted to say that I know that there is a huge Russian community that using Robosets. It's very popular in Russia. So I should consider, learning more about that.
[01:10:59] ODELL:
Yeah. Robosets is but it it's interesting. Right? Because, like, BISC is, BISC is a is a little bit more, it's a little bit more censorship resistant. It's it's it's it tries to be as decentralized as possible, while while Robosats kinda took a user, user interface first approach. And the founders are completely anonymous, and it all runs through Tor. And that that has worked for them, and it has worked for them really well. I, am by the way, am I gonna see you in Oslo?
[01:11:38] Unknown:
Yes.
[01:11:39] ODELL:
Awesome. Okay. I'm I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. To all the Bitcoiners out there, by the way, Like, the Oslo Freedom Forum, is open to public. There there is a financial freedom track that is focused heavily on Bitcoin. It is probably one of, the most inspiring, fulfilling, Bitcoin events of the year. And it's because it's not specifically a Bitcoin event. It's a freedom event.
[01:12:09] Unknown:
Yeah. Right. And I'm gonna I'm I'm I'm gonna do a workshop there together with Ben Perin.
[01:12:17] ODELL:
We're gonna help sessions.
[01:12:18] Unknown:
BTC sessions. Right? And we're gonna, I'm gonna answer the questions of activists actually on our Bitcoin use case, and I'm gonna help them to implement it in their work. Yeah.
[01:12:33] ODELL:
I see before we wrap, I see a comment, from rider die freak wide, asking, are you aware of Bitcoin censorship actions that are happening to just, like, average people in Russia that are not necessarily donating to charities? They're just, like, using it on a day to day basis.
[01:12:55] Unknown:
Bitcoin censorship?
[01:12:56] ODELL:
Yeah. Like, is is is the Russian regime are they are they besides, like, specific entities like yourself, like, are they actually are they, like, cracking down on Bitcoin over there? Or, like, what are you familiar or no?
[01:13:12] Unknown:
Not yet. I mean, they haven't banned it, but they, there is a law that says that Bitcoin, is illegal for as a payment tool. You cannot pay with Bitcoin, but, it's not illegal. You can I mean, you can you can use it, you can, make transactions, you can exchange it? It's still legal, fortunately, because I know that there are some countries where you cannot do anything with Bitcoin. But, fortunately, in Russia, we can still operate with Bitcoin. But, Russian banks, when, for example, we make a transaction in Bitcoin and then the recipient of funds try to exchange it into fiat.
And, if the recipient mentions that this is money from a Bitcoin transaction, so the bank will freeze the bank account, will just block it. So the problem is mostly with the banks today. So I recommend not to mention that this money is from Bitcoin, transactions.
[01:14:19] ODELL:
Fair enough. To answer your question, ride or die freak, mother from Australia, Pringle Stacks, what is the date of Oslo Freedom Forum this year? It's June 3rd through 5th. It's the 1st week of June. Right. Consider it. Oslo is also, Norway is a a a an incredible country. The people are are are very nice. The city of Oslo is a beautiful city. I will give you the one caveat that it is one of the most expensive places I've ever visited in the world. So just keep that in mind. But it's it'd be well worth your time if you make it out there.
[01:15:03] Unknown:
Yeah. The the Winners Day will be on the 5th. The 5th June will be full day. Yes. In the end. And, the list of speakers is very impressive this year. I recommend to check the list of headliners.
[01:15:19] ODELL:
And, yeah, last 2 years, it was amazing. So I highly recommend it. Signal. It's really good. And but don't come just for the Bitcoin part. Like, it's important to be there for the for the Yeah. It's true. 2 days before that as well because, the stories you hear, the the conversations you have is, in my opinion, why I focus so much time on this movement. And it's about freedom for people. It's about freedom for individuals around the world. And it's it's it's the fact of the matter that people are living their life, in a way that requires permission from other people that they do not know, and they shouldn't have to live that way. They should be able to live their life without permission.
[01:16:04] Unknown:
You know, I heard from many Bitcoiners that they special like this event because it's not Bitcoin only, and that they prefer to come for the entire thing to listen to all of those stories. Because, it's mind blowing to learn what's happening in different regions in the world. Yeah. Some stories are really insane.
[01:16:24] ODELL:
Yeah. I don't travel for Bitcoin events anymore, but I'll be in Oslo.
[01:16:29] Unknown:
Great. Okay.
[01:16:31] ODELL:
I, Anna, this has been fantastic. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for talking about the very hard topics. Do you have anything you have any final thoughts for the audience before we wrap?
[01:16:45] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, as I mentioned before, I would love any feedback, any ideas, or if you want to learn more, I'm very open to share about our work. I would appreciate any support and, yeah, just you can reach out to me anytime and keep keep promoting ideas of Bitcoin and keep boosting adoption of it. As you can see, we really use it in a fight, for freedom. We really use it in a fight against dictatorships. So your contribution is very important, and if you create some tools in the, in this field, it's very important that you remember about people like us. And, yeah. Generally, if you spread ideas of Bitcoin, you already boost the adoption of Bitcoin. And it's it's cool, and I appreciate it a lot. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
[01:17:44] ODELL:
Wonderful. Thank you, Anna. I hope to see you soon. Thanks, Fries, for joining us.
[01:17:50] Unknown:
Bye.
[01:20:39] Unknown:
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain. You don't like my point of view. You do a lot of insane. It's not sane. It's not saying.
[01:21:59] ODELL:
Love you, freaks. I hope you enjoyed that rip, and as a fucking legend. That track, was no rain by Blood Melon. I like to just mix it up for you, and I was feeling it today. Next week. Big week. We're just gonna keep the big weeks coming. Well, until we don't. And then I'll take a break for a little bit. But next week, we got Tuesday, 1500 UTC, so 2 hours earlier than usual. We have Kieran from ZapStream joining us, and Snort, prolific developer. If you listen to the livestream, it would not be possible, and you participate in the live chat. It would not be possible without Karen. What a fucking boss. So I'm pretty excited about that. And then Wednesday, at our usual time, 1700 UTC, I have Ben Arc, one of the legends of Bitcoin and Noster, joining us to talk Alan Bits, talk Bitcoin, talk Noster.
It'd be a really great conversation. I'm I'm really excited about it. Yeah. And, the top supporters of the week have barely changed since yesterday, which is fair on the back to back rips. Boston Wine has joined the party with 21,000 sets that he contributed last week. Huge shout out to all the freaks who continue to support the show. Thank you. I try and practice what I preach. I wanna make value for value a thing. And the easiest way to support the show is through podcasting 2 point o apps like Fountain or Breeze or joining us in the live chat. Yeah.
I think, ultimately, that's where we're going. Neighbors helping neighbors, people helping people, supporting each other without centralized entities in between. But I think there is obviously a place for centralized entities to kinda bootstrap the process and speed it up because I have low time preference, but I'm tired of fucking waiting, which is why open sets exist, which is why 1031 exists. And if you support the show through podcasting 2 point o apps, 5% go directly to open sats, and a 100% of that goes directly to open source contributors to try and speed up the movement. I love you all.
I know sats are scarce, the only thing more scarce than our time. So as always, if you can't support the show with sats, if you can't spare any sats, just subscribing on your favorite platform, sharing it with friends and family, leaving a review. It really does help, and it keeps me going because I'm just a fucking person. Not like a not a magician. Not, you know, just a random person. Anyway, freaks, I love you all. I'll see you next week. Well, tomorrow's Robert Hill recap if you wanna join for that. We're doing that that usual time, 1800 UTC. But I love you all, and I'll see you next week.
And stay humble, Stack Sats. Peace.
CNBC Intro
Challenges faced by an organization in using Bitcoin for financial transactions
Benefits of Accepting Lightning Donations
Privacy Concerns with Coinjoin and Encrypted Messaging
Educational Challenges in Bitcoin Adoption
Importance of Multilingual Support in Bitcoin Products
Role of Education in Bitcoin Adoption
Bitcoin Adoption Efforts in Nonprofit Organizations
Challenges with Bitcoin Tools and Wallets
Bitcoin Adoption and Freedom Advocacy
