Femi Longe is the Global Bitcoin Development Lead at the Human Rights Foundation. The HRF has been supporting bitcoin developers, designers, and educators with grants and assistance for over five years with a focus on expanding bitcoin's usage as freedom money.
Femi on Nostr: https://primal.net/p/nprofile1qqsrjp40qtt73860r6ptfgr0ejwgl58s499egfvlvs49zszy4u2unaq6k0ry9
Femi on X: https://x.com/femilonge
HRF Dev Fund: https://hrf.org/devfund
Five Year Report: https://hrf.org/latest/bitcoin-development-fund-5-year-report/
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(00:00:00) AlJazeera Intro Clip
(00:03:19) Happy Bitcoin Monday
(00:04:26) Guest Introduction: Femi from HRF
(00:05:13) Oslo Freedom Forum and Bitcoin's Role
(00:09:04) HRF's Bitcoin Development Fund
(00:14:15) Bitcoin's Global Impact and Challenges
(00:21:15) Funding and Supporting Bitcoin Projects
(00:31:29) Earning and Spending Bitcoin Globally
(00:39:02) Innovations in Bitcoin Transactions
(00:50:43) Investment and Support for Global Bitcoin Projects
(01:00:09) The Importance of the Africa Bitcoin Conference
(01:07:09) Final Thoughts and Call to Action
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[00:00:02]
Unknown:
Wandering around the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas can feel a bit like entering a different country, full of unfamiliar concepts, difficult to describe customs, and a vocabulary all its own. Politically, the cryptocurrency investors here lean to the right. They gave a warm welcome to vice president JD Vance who, before entering politics, worked for a Silicon Valley tech company. He called crypto a symbol of personal liberty. I'm here today to say loud and clear, with president Trump, crypto finally has a champion and an ally in the White House. The rise of crypto raises questions about the state of the US dollar.
For more than eighty years, the dollar has been the world's reserve currency. The value of items traded internationally from soybeans to diamonds to oil are all denominated in dollars. And the dollar has always been a safe haven in times of financial panics for both governments and individual investors. But now the Trump administration's have shaken that faith in the dollar like never before. Trump's trade war caused the value of both the dollar and US Government bonds to fall. The prospect of burgeoning debt led credit ratings agency Moody's to downgrade The US's creditworthiness rating.
[00:01:27] Femi Longe:
If the US government, federal government keeps raking up this high deficit and and high debt, at some point, the risk, right, the risk of of US dollar defaulting will increase.
[00:01:45] Unknown:
Crypto investors see their digital currency as the potential replacement for the dollar over time. More people today are asking what is money than ever before, and that is largely because of Bitcoin. Despite the enthusiasm, crypto is still seen as risky, subject to wild peaks and crashes, and not as flexible as traditional currencies, which can be managed by central banks to smooth out instabilities.
[00:02:12] Femi Longe:
Solution is not necessarily to abandon the dollar dollar and invest, you know, your eggs, a lot of your eggs, in crypto assets. So just be very careful.
[00:02:25] Unknown:
Mainstream economists are betting that despite the turmoil caused by Trump's policies, the dollar will endure, at least for now. Rob Reynolds, Al Jazeera, Las Vegas.
[00:03:19] ODELL:
Happy Bitcoin Monday, freaks. It's your host, Odell, here for another Citadel Dispatch, the interactive live show focused on actual Bitcoin and Freedom Tech discussion. That intro clip was Al Jazeera's coverage of the recent Bitcoin Vegas conference. It felt timely. Before we get started, I wanted to thank all the freaks for continuing to support the show. Dispatch is purely audience funded with Bitcoin donations. We have no ads or sponsors. You can either zap the show in our Nostril live chat, which you can find at silldispatch.com/stream, or you can zap the show through podcasting two point o apps like Fountain Podcasts.
Our top zap from last week's podcasting two point o power zaps was JCB, ride or die freak, sent 20,000 sats. He said great conversation. Love the backs and forths. If you haven't listened to that one, consider going back and listening. Anyway, freaks, I have a great show lined up today for us. We have Femi here who's the global Bitcoin development lead for HRF and their Bitcoin development fund. Good friend. First time on the show. How's it going, Femi?
[00:04:37] Femi Longe:
I'm brilliant. Really, really great to be here.
[00:04:41] ODELL:
The feeling is mutual. So I thought that intro clip was, kind of fun because, you guys held your, Hallmark event at the same time, your annual Oslo Freedom Forum. And you specifically had a Freedom Tech and AI track that, I watched from afar because I could not make it. That seemed, was just fantastic. You guys always do a great job with content. So how how let's start with that. How did how did that event go? What were some takeaways? How do you think about it?
[00:05:13] Femi Longe:
It was a brilliant I mean, it was a Oslo is always a a a great event. It was my third one, my first one as a member of the team. So it felt it felt different in its own way. But, I mean, I think what's beautiful about the Oslo Freedom Firm is the possibility to actually meet people who are using Bitcoin, not, as a as as an investment asset like we saw in Luckly, but as a life or death tool to help them in their fight against some of the worst, hardest, baddest people on the planet. I I say Oslo is a gathering of some of the bravest people in the world because if you if you're standing up to the might of the Russian government or the Chinese government or the Saudi Arabian government or any other dictator in the world with just your belief and conviction that you're standing for truth.
That's brave. Having one one of the speakers at our, on the financial freedom stage, the week before, she was abducted, a Ugandan activist. She was abducted by the government of Tanzania while trying to attend the trial of the opposition leader in Tanzania. Abducted, tortured, and dumped on the border of Tanzania and Uganda. And she still made made it to to us, though, with the bruises on her legs and could still stand on stage and tell her story. Like, that's immense bravery. And in the middle of that, having people working Bitcoiners, people working on freedom money, working on freedom communication, master, dare to engage these people.
I think in many ways, it puts the work of the builders in context that you're not just building the technology in the abstract. There are actually people who rely on it for their survival, for the survival of the truth to be able to actually push back against autocracy that is trying to rise and being able to interact in that space. Like someone said, it's both depressing and exciting in equal measures. It's depressing when you hear all the horror stories of what's going on in the world. But I think the excitement is seeing that the human spirit is still alive and that and that Bitcoin is is being actively used as a tool in that fight. It just it makes the whole work worth it.
[00:07:52] ODELL:
Love it. Yeah. I, so I think I've been volunteering and working alongside Gladstein and his work with the HRF training activists how to use Bitcoin for almost seven years now. This week marks the five year anniversary of your Bitcoin development fund supporting, developers working on Bitcoin as freedom money. And, you know, that that's always the vibe that I've gotten from HRF events and and working with activists. It's twofold. Right? It helps combat the burnout because you're like, okay. This is why the work is so important. It's inspiring. I mean, these people are up against odds that I fortunately have never had to to go up against in my life. But then also you go hit with this opposite side, which is you just feel like we're not doing enough. We're not doing quick enough.
And everyone else is in this little bubble where they think, like, everything's going great. And there's just so much work to be done. And so I I've taken that as a a source of inspiration. It's also part of the the reason OpenSats exists in the first place was was through that work and and realizing that so much more needed to be done. I'm curious from your perspective, now that you are a global development lead at HRF, how do you think about it? How do you think about where we are in Bitcoin today, and how how we can improve and and and where the successes are.
[00:09:38] Femi Longe:
So, I mean, I I I always like to go back to the beginning and literally beginning of Bitcoin. I mean, not the free history now, but Bitcoin itself started without white paper. It paid to it's a a system for pay to pay electronic cash. And and I think, Satoshi, whoever he or they are, were very visionary, but also understanding of the need of a of a lot of the world when the intention was this creates a means for people to move value from one part of the planet to the other part of the planet without going through intermediaries. I think somewhere along the line, while people were trying to get into that system, we realized that alongside the existing fiat system, the fiat system was going to zero against Bitcoin.
And, of course, the whole interest in Bitcoin as an investment asset then took off on the back of that. But the intention of the original creation wasn't necessarily as a hedge against inflation or a or a hedge against fiat. It was supposed to be a way for us to actually move value across the world without relying on existing systems. And in the work we do at human at HRF, we we work with people who are desperately in need of a way to move value without relying on the traditional system because there are people who the traditional system actively considers as enemies. And so while while it's easy for a lot of conversation to get an a lot of the hype to be around or which country now has a Bitcoin reserve, which bank has, which business has Bitcoin on its, balance sheet, which ETF is now being launched, how much are people putting ETFs. While while all those conversations are exciting, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that a vast majority of this planet live under authoritarianism.
Vast majority of this planet live in places where moving value seamlessly from one place to the other is a nightmare. On the one hand, there's the friction of the system, but on the other, it's the possibility of the system to use your money flows as a weapon against you when you decide to call out authoritarianism. And so the system itself is a cage. The existing financial system, fiat system is not just a drain of your value. It's a cage on your freedom. It stops you from being able to demand for rights and justices that people, like us living in the West, take for granted.
And so helping people escape from that system is as much helping them achieve their human rights as it is helping them, escape the devaluation of the fiat system. And being able to enable that work through the work we do at Human Rights Foundation, for us, it's a in many ways, it's us helping ourselves. So we're an organization that helps and works with, people defending human rights, fighting for democracy, and under authoritarian regimes across the world. Right? But we know that those people, for them to be able to do their work effectively, the fiat system is being recognized against them.
So also investing in Bitcoin is a way for us to actually enable the people that we exist to support. So it's we're we're each we're scratching our own itch in many ways. If Bitcoin works, if Bitcoin is is able to be used for those values that that are important for the activists, for the security, for the decentralization, for the privacy, If that works, it also enables us to be effective in the work we do to to help the activists in the first place. And so because of that, it became it was a no brainer for us. Well, we got to it, if I if I'll be fair. We evolved to it.
We it started with us getting donations in Bitcoin. Us seeing the human rights activists we're working with, being situations where Bitcoin was the only lifeline. Early early on, I think our earliest interaction with Bitcoin in this regards came with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and and seeing how he was debunked, seeing that Bitcoin was the only way he could get donation for the works that was they were doing at WikiLeaks. Fast forward a few years later, HR received his own donation, I think 2014. So eleven years ago, we received our first Bitcoin donations.
And and continue to see more of the activists in Ukraine, in Afghanistan, people depending more on the technology for that value as peer to peer electronic cash that either allowed aids to go into those countries when the banking system it was just impossible to use any other means to get value in there or to get people out when the systems the place was too difficult and they needed to relocate, or whether it is for medical aid or whether it's for legal aid for people who are confronting dictators. Increasingly, we realized that the technology itself, was was being a lifeline for us in the work we're doing with people we're working with. And we realized it made no sense for us not to or, well, we realized that this the Bitcoin is not perfect.
It needs continuous investment to improve the technology, but also to preserve the values that makes it perfect on sensible money. And and so we, courtesy of Alex Gladstein, who our chief strategy officer, maybe our chief Bitcoin officer. We decided we need to put we need to put our money where our mouth is, And in our initial support was to develop us in the space, a few Bitcoin core developers, a few application developers. But gradually, I think we realized that, what's needed to for Bitcoin to be useful and to be usable by activists requires more than just developers.
And so over the years, I I like to say our fund, the Bitcoin Development Fund is the innovation kickstarter in the Bitcoin space. For most people in the Bitcoin space, we are the first ever institutional institutional funder. The tons of people in the space whose first ever grant came from HRF, then they got the grant from OpenSats. I I and that's a trend that we we see. We take very risky bets. We take bets on projects at the fringes, where most people in the space most funders in the space are funding technical projects and developers. We we go beyond.
Our fund focus is on technical projects that that help us preserve the features of Bitcoin we like, that makes it perfect on Sensory Woman. So decentralization, we support projects that decentralize every layer of Bitcoin. Decentralizing the mining, decentralizing the development, decentralizing where the developers are are from. Projects that help us secure the network, but also enable people transact with Bitcoin securely. Projects that help us preserve the privacy features of Bitcoin, that helps people be able to engage and interact with it without the chances that they their identity can be discovered through chain analysis.
We fund we also fund projects that helps us get Bitcoin into the hands of activists and helps them use Bitcoin easily. So we fund user experience projects. We fund translation projects. We fund education strategic education projects. We fund, application projects that gets that that helps us with connecting that last mile of now I have this Bitcoin. What do I do with it? How do I do my everyday transactions in an environment where there are not many merchants that are already accepting Bitcoin? We found those kind of projects. But we also realized that the transfer of money is important, but oftentimes, what doxes the financial transactions is the communications that happens across. But also communication, the communication platform, and and, infrastructure also has a role in whether the activism happens more effectively or not.
And so on the back of that, again, in recognition of the broken the central air communication system, we also fund a lot of projects around Nasdaq and sell insularized communications. Both projects that help us prove the utility of Nasdaq, but projects that go beyond and make the Nasdaq protocol more, useful and usable by activists. We also fund we also now fund beyond Bitcoin, beyond we also fund, Internet freedom projects, because we also realize as a last resort to end the dictators realize that they can't stop you, then they go after the Internet.
So we found projects that help, keep the Internet on, projects that help with decentralizing the way information is relayed over the Internet. So things like Tor. We've we've we've funded one of one of our grantees, which, they were also at Oslo. They're called Tollgate. They allow anybody become an ISP by selling your excess Internet off your router for e cash. Basically, just connect the software on your router, and you become an ISP, an Internet service provider. That for us helps both privacy, but also helps re remove the the the Internet service provider, which often is a bottleneck and one of the tools that government uses for surveilling how people interact on the Internet. So yeah. Where the funds grown. The funds evolved. But what's critical is we support Bitcoin, and we support Bitcoin in a way that makes it usable and useful for the activists that we support because that's the primary objective of the organization.
And what's interesting is even with that mandate, we we we it's still wide enough and broad enough. Now we're then able to support very innovative, interesting things that people are building in the space. Awesome.
[00:21:35] ODELL:
So I I'm pretty sure the first HRF Bitcoin education event, which is held in San Francisco at Block's offices. At that point, it was Square, specifically at Cash App's offices, was January 2019. And I was there with Alex Gladstein, Miles Souter. I think Lopf called in, and a few other people. And we had, like, maybe 12 activists. And I think it's then why do I bring this up? I think it's it's important context because it's easy to get lost in the minutia and the day to day and be like, we're not doing enough. We're not doing quick enough. But we've come a really, really long way since then. I mean, I remember the tools we were using. Lightning Network was brand new.
Most of the wallets people rely on on mobile didn't exist yet. We had a lot of trouble with the training. Maybe cold card existed, but it was still very, very early. I remember, like, Ledger gift gifted a bunch of wallets. The point was was it was very much trial by fire. We just kinda did it Right. And saw where the pain points were and where where improvements could be made. And since then, we've come a long way, but there's still a lot more work to be done. I see Victor, who is, the lead maintainer of the Amethyst Noster client in our live chat.
And he's asking me a he's asking you a question that I personally, as one of the leads at OpenSats, don't love the question because it feels like picking your favorite child. So we're not gonna ask you to pick your favorite child. But just in your mind, over the last five years or maybe even a subset since you started working with HRF, what do you think is some of the biggest achievements that you guys have have found both through the educate because it's twofold. Right? It's you're sending out Bitcoin to all these developers and educators and designers and translators.
But then there's also the actual education element, the direct education element with the activists and the training that goes into that. So how do you feel how do you think about some of the biggest achievements that you guys have made? Where and then and then on top of that, I would add, you know, where where do you think we could do better? Where can we improve? Where where do you want more focus to be?
[00:24:18] Femi Longe:
So it it it it'd be hard for me to isolate and pick one one specific grant and see this is a close-up grant. I mean, we funded more than 219 grants in the with Megan. Impressive. Direct through the through the quarterly grants program, we've given, $8,200,000. Right now, we've we've we've doubled the numbers every year. Right now, we're giving a a million dollars every quarter. I also didn't mention we also fund conferences, communities, and gatherings. I I I I'd say what I think is has been the the success of the fund is their few the is the amount of human stories and the people in the space and the projects in the space that probably won't have had their start if they didn't get that initial grant to get them off the ground.
I was at the African Bitcoin conference in December in Kenya. And I'll talk about the African Bitcoin conference as a success story on it soon. But when a panel on funding in Bitcoin and there were five of us on the panel, Myself, Abubakar from Beatrust, Dread from OpenStarts, Moe from Bitcoin Design Foundation, and it's a Porsche. What was interesting was even though each of us represented different organizations that was giving funding, Anita giving funding to educators, Bitcoin government fund giving funding to designers, Every single one of us as individuals had been a grantee of HRF at one point or the other.
Abubakar for his wallet and for color, Dread for Flash, Anita for her work, Bitcoin Design Foundation, me for Carla in the past. That's how that's how pivotal HRFs and the big Bitcoin development fund has been. I got into the Bitcoin space three and a half years ago, when Kala was being formed the program to train software engineers from Africa to get them into Bitcoin development. The first grant that, Kala got was from the Bitcoin Development Fund. The following year, we had a larger grant from the Bitcoin Development Fund. Right?
I met Alex Glasson for the first time, which kind of led to me getting into this role at the African the first African Bitcoin conference in twenty twenty three, December. That conference was kick started by Farida, a human rights activist. Probably, she was at that training that you guys did at Block's office. But human rights activist who first came into this space through a connection with Human Rights Foundation ended up becoming the convener of, the biggest Bitcoin conference in the global South and the major Bitcoin conference in Africa. Right? It was at that conference that I met Miles and and Gladstein.
So and lots of lots of interactions that led to lots even more projects from that space. The Bitcoin government fund has funded every major conference in Bitcoin. Every major conference in Bitcoin since the phone phone was founded. Each one of these an opportunity to find people working on interesting things, but also to connect people together so that they can collaborate so that new interesting ideas, new interesting projects come out from there. But we get new new ideas, new insights of what else is happening around the horizon that we should be funding. So it's hard to isolate one thing.
I I said the fund's been a catalyst. It's been a it's been a kickstarter for innovation. And and the getting the recognition enough from the innovators that we exist and that we're there to enable them. So that that makes them apply to us for funding is the success of the fund. We could be a fund that that exists but is not getting that's struggling for, pipeline. We have way more pipeline than we have funding right now because people recognize that we take best take bets. We take bets on risky things that move the space forward. And and and that's the culture that we want to continue.
And that's the that's the positioning that we we still want to have in the space. There's there's lots of the if most of the funders in the space primarily fund developers. We think developers are important for Bitcoin, but we think Bitcoin is going to be adopted as money, as currency, as peer to peer electronic cash. We need more than developers in that conversation. And and we're willing to keep betting on more than developers to actually make this more human and more used by humans. So I don't know if that answers Vito's question. It's a it's a good answer.
[00:29:52] ODELL:
I that was a great answer. It was a great answer for me. I so, I mean, I feel like we've known each other for quite a bit, at this point measured in the years. I don't you know, it all kind of blends together. And, you know, I always enjoy having conversations with you because we I I we're aligned on 95%, ninety eight %. But we obviously come from two completely different world views and perspectives. And you never bite your tongue. I also never bite my tongue. You just say how you think, which I respect and and appreciate. To
[00:30:35] Femi Longe:
bite your tongue.
[00:30:37] ODELL:
It's it's a waste it's a waste of our short lives to to self censor yourself. But I remember, a presentation you gave maybe a little over a year ago, and it was about, you know, the lack of focus on the right things in the space or at least from your perspective. And I think particularly you had a controversial statement was, like, everyone's trying to build wallets. We don't need more wallets. From your position now, where where do we need more focus? Like, where where where is the pain points? Where is the where is where is the points where we can have real tangible improvements in the wider ecosystem in the short to medium term?
[00:31:29] Femi Longe:
So, so I remember the presentation you you referenced. And and in that presentation, I had a chat. And on that chat, I had at both ends, one end, human beings, all the things that they do to end their living, which in this case is mostly in fiat. Whether it's a job, whether you're selling stuff, whether you whatever you do, whether it's investment, all the things human beings used to end is mostly in fiat. And on the other end, the far end is the things that human beings spend money on to enjoy their lives for quality of life. And, again, it's mostly in fiat.
And so the assumption is that human beings earn fiat, then we want them to convert that fiat into Bitcoin for storage. But then when they need to live out their lives, they have to convert that Bitcoin back to fiat so that they can pay for school fees, get an Uber, do all the things that they need. And we assume that in that system, Bitcoin is at the center because that's where people are saving. And for me, I think that paradigm actually centralizes fiat. Because for the vast majority of people on this planet, how do I end my living and how do I spend from my living to have a good quality of life?
And if they are doing those things predominantly in fiat, then the fiat system stays. And so for me, I think that where our paradigm needs to be in this space is how do we eliminate fiat from that picture. And what that means for me is how do we create a million and one ways for people to earn Bitcoin and a million and which would contra create a million and one places where people can spend their Bitcoin. And, yes, you will save your you will save some of your Bitcoin, but people have needs. Money is one thing that's one commodity, one man made good that everybody on this planet interacts with every day of their life.
From when you wake up in the morning till you go to bed at night, there's several touch points in your day where you have to commerce and trade for things that you can produce that you need to for your quality of life. How do we make Bitcoin a critical option at each of those stages? For as long as we treat this thing as digital goods, something you Huddl and stack somewhere and don't touch forever, then we Bitcoin loses its ability as actual money. And so for me, if if if I think about where we need to be thinking about directing our energies when it comes to building, It's creating a million and one opportunities for people to earn Bitcoin, and a million and one opportunities for people to be able to spend Bitcoin.
If I want to learn a new skill and I go on a website that I would usually go to that has maybe 10,000,000 people on it, do I have the option to actually buy a course there and pay in Bitcoin? And if I'm the course creator on that platform, do I have the the choice to denominate my course in Bitcoin as well as in Fiat? And can I withdraw my earnings on the plat platform in Bitcoin and or Fiat? If I if I have to go from one place to the other and I have to take an Uber Or what about variation of Uber it is I'm taking to take me from point a to point b? Do I have the choice to pay with my Bitcoin wallet? And if I'm the driver, do I have the choice to actually get paid in Bitcoin? My argument is Bitcoin that you earn.
You're less worried about volatility of price of Bitcoin to the US dollars when you earn your Bitcoin versus when you have to purchase it with fiat. Because if you purchase it with fiat, you're thinking about how much was it when I bought it versus how much is it when I have to convert it back. So if we wanna remove that volatility curve, which seems to be in many people's mind the barrier for adoption of Bitcoin as currency, then more and more people should be earning Bitcoin. And innovators should be thinking about how do we create ways for people to for more ways for people to earn KYC free Bitcoin through the skills they have, through the things they have, through the services that they can deliver, as opposed to assuming that everybody will convert their fiat to Bitcoin.
The problem with the convert fiat to Bitcoin is that the closer you are to the money printer, the more Bitcoin you accumulate. And we're already seeing it right now. We're companies that are creating fiat US dollar debts and using it to accumulate Bitcoin. And that wall basically means that the people who won in the fiat world end up being the winners in the Bitcoin world, and that's not the kind of wall I I I'm interested in. I want everyone to have a fair shot at getting Bitcoin for the things that they can do, for the skills that they have, and have let them have access to money that has not been eroded by governments. I think that's that's where I'd love to see more building.
[00:36:50] ODELL:
So I cosign that perspective, and and and agree with the hope. I mean, so my so two things. First of all, my family, we just we hold our savings and we hold our savings all in Bitcoin. Like, real Bitcoin, self custody Bitcoin. I earn a mix of Bitcoin and dollars. And when I get dollars, I convert it into Bitcoin. And that's a short gap. You know, a a current place we are in in the adoption cycle. It is what it is. And we prefer to spend Bitcoin wherever we can spend Bitcoin. I always say that, you know, there's a meme and every good meme is has a basis in reality of we're still early. Bitcoin is still early. And I I think the the pivotal point where that flips is where most people are earning Bitcoin rather than buying Bitcoin, and most people are spending Bitcoin rather than selling Bitcoin.
I think at that point is when Bitcoin is starting to really become the standard and we're past the quote, unquote, you are early phase. Now where I have trouble with is I I keep thinking we're, like, about to hit the precipice where I'm gonna be able to spend Bitcoin everywhere. But we we just haven't gotten there. I I I'm curious on your opinion. Like, how do we how do how do you actually bootstrap that? Like, how do we I I think maybe it happens eventually, probably not with, you know, real work being put in by people. But I think we can accelerate it. I'm just not sure how the best way to accelerate it. Do you have any opinions on how we can accelerate that process to to where we get to a point where most things in life I can just spend Bitcoin on?
[00:38:46] Femi Longe:
So I think it's it's the acceleration, and it's it's kinda what we it also ties to what we do at at HRF and the PDF. The acceleration, this is one of those things that will start in the places where the need is acute. I I say at the moment, if you wanted to send money to someone in Australia from whereby from somewhere in The US where you are, it's very easy. It's extremely easy. If a person uses if if you wanted to send fiat, if the person uses PayPal or one of the platforms like that, the person sends you a link, you whip out a card, you send it, case closed.
Not there's no part of your your thinking where you think about what is the exchange rate between the US dollars and the Australian dollars. If I wanted to do the same thing from Nigeria, it's a nightmare and a half. It's like six nightmares in one because I'm thinking about how do I convert the naira to the US dollars. Where am I going to do the conversion? The banks if I go to the bank, banks tell me we don't have enough US dollar to come back for you. Right? So I go on the streets. And in every African country, you have people on the streets that do the exchange for you, except they are gonna give you physical cash. So now I have the physical cash I need to get to the guy in Australia.
Am I gonna pop it in the post? Am I gonna rely on the banking system? So you already already you have places in the world where the need exists and it is real, where getting the bank is not a theoretical event. It's people's everyday reality. Where trying to move legitimately move value across borders is a nightmare. When, legitimately, the government is like, my my colleague, Anna, who used to be CFO who is the CFO of, Anti Corruption Foundation, woke up one day and the Russian government had gone in their fiat bank account and had put them in the red to the tune of minus $17,000,000,000.
Right? Or is looking at their bank account to see who is donating to them so that we can declare them enemy of the state. Right? For those people, this is not abstract. It is their lived reality. For the human rights defenders that we work with, it's not abstract that the government is surveilling your transactions. And it's and and and the governments now with their moves to try and, like, what's the word? Institutionalize central bank digital currencies Want to even take this thing to next level on steroids. So if we're looking at how do we bootstrap a system where people are not transacting in fiat, then let's go to the places where transacting in fiat already has so much friction, and it's already so dangerous that it becomes a no brainer that they adopt solutions that enable them transact out of the outside the system.
And we've seen that in Nigeria where I'm from. It's one of the reasons why Nigeria is is top 10 in Bitcoin and crypto adoption. People who are legitimate transactions, things didn't have to do with money for life and for life and death in some instances, but they just couldn't do it through traditional systems. So when I say builders should stop building wallets and exchanges with that, which are means to either convert your Bitcoin to fiat or fiat to Bitcoin or means to store your Bitcoin. It means they need to go to where people are facing real transaction challenges, understand the people, understand the context, and build solutions that that build on that, to to solve the problem. I was in I was in Kenya A Couple Of Months ago.
I spent a week in Kenya. I didn't use I didn't whip up my card once because one of our grantees, Tandu, had built an application that basically interfaces Bitcoin with the mobile money system in Pesa, which means I get in a taxi, I get to the other end of my ride, the taxi driver gives me his mobile number. I go on the Tando app, I type in his mobile number. I type in how much I want to send to him. Instantly, Tandu generates a lightning invoice. I go to my lightning app of choice. I send an instant payment. The guy gets it in Kenyan shillings in his phone instantly.
Right? That's last mile solution. That's it. That's that's so so that what that means is literally literally every merchant in Kenya accepts M Pesa. So you don't have to go to the merchants to convince them to accept Bitcoin. Literally, you can spend your Bitcoin with every merchant in Kenya. Those are the kind of solutions that we need to be building if we want this technology to reach the kind of scale that it needs to. In the in the intervening, it's going to seamlessly integrate with the fiat system. Since we founded Tandu, we've seen, similar applications being built in Costa Rica, in Brazil, in Senegal, in Ghana, all across the world.
We're now seeing more of those applications and conversations about interfacing those applications across the countries. So that we have in a whole network of last mile Bitcoin solutions that connect with the existing fiat system that helps us bring the next hundred million, five hundred million, billion people into the ecosystem. Eventually, at some point, they'll turn on the option for the merchants to decide, do I want to actually receive my payment in fiat or do I want to receive it in Bitcoin? Right? And that's how we start reaching out to people. But the starting point is we need to move beyond the West.
We need to move to the rest of the world. We need to go to the places where people have lots of friction with the financial systems, and we need to go there with the listing ears, with asking ears, with observing our eyes open to observe, to understand how people interacting with money now, and how can Bitcoin help make their life easier and more seamless. Also, in the last few years, with with people like Carla, which is now Beatrice Builders or Liberta Satoshi in in South America or Vincium in Brazil, Beachala in India, We're starting to Bob's space in Thailand. We're starting to onboard software developers, product builders from the rest of the world into Bitcoin because a situation a decentralized ecosystem of builders strengthens Bitcoin when government starts criminalizing writing code.
And Bitcoin Bitcoin developers in the West become afraid to be identified as Bitcoin developers. We need to be sure that there are people in places across the world that are still contributing to the technology that are not facing the same risks. As you get more developers from those parts of the world, understanding Bitcoin as technology, being able to build on Bitcoin and building Bitcoin, but also being steeped in the nuances of the rest of the world where moving money is still filled with friction. Then you're going to be getting more of those people triggering new interesting applications in the Bitcoin space.
The challenge we have right now with that group and that cater are starting to build, but the challenge they're finding right now is that most of the investors in the space and and I'm mentioning this because I can see ten thirty one on your head. Most of the investors in the space still come at this from the mindset of the way we know this technology in the West. And they're still finding it developers, people building products in the global South are still finding it hard to communicate the their unique value with investors from the West. And and that's creating that's putting them in a funding blind spot.
So they're too Bitcoin y for the typical crypto investor who want them to do every other coin. They're too crypto y for traditional fintech VCs who are afraid of anything that touches crypto. And they're not Bitcoin enough for their they're not Western Bitcoin enough for Bitcoin VCs, but we need more funding for those kind of people. There's, Jodom, one of our grantees in Kenya is building BitSaco. In lots of countries in in Africa, cooperatives, groups group savings is a big way is a big part of the financial system and experience for people.
It has different names in different parts of Africa. In in where I'm from, they call it Esusu. In in Kenya, they call it Chalmers. So in in in many of these countries, even people who don't have traditional bank accounts are involved in cooperatives. This guy is building on Fedimint on Fedimint protocol. He's building, a a first Bitcoin native, cooperative payment system. And it's not just building that. They're also making this the the source code open so that anyone anywhere else in the world where they have a culture of cooperatives can actually build something similar on the Fedimint's protocol.
One of our grantees in no. Not a grantee, but one of the one of my former students at CALA, they're building a platform in Nigeria called Mavapie, which basically, I wanna send money to my dad. I wanna I'm here right now. I can't send him Bitcoin. I mean, he's very old. He needs actual fiat. I send Bitcoin to a lightning address. It appears in his Fiat bank account instantly. And they're building APIs for merchants to be able to integrate that into the products that they're building. The applications like that that are that are being built that need support. So so I'd say Bitcoin VCs also need to expand their mind and realize that, if we want if we want this technology to truly scale, we need to start looking at and maybe even getting LPs or even looking for people on the front that also are steeped in in other realities beyond the West who can also help with both deal sourcing as well as deal vetting to see, and and to also understand the context of what's happening in the rest of the world as far as Bitcoin adoption is concerned. Because this is critical for scaling technology for sure.
[00:50:43] ODELL:
Awesome. I mean, I agree with you there. I mean, just a couple of highlights, things I would pull out is, first of all, I I I'm aware of Tondo. I haven't used it yet.
[00:50:55] Femi Longe:
We need to get you to Kenya to use it. Yeah. Because I I haven't been to Africa yet,
[00:51:00] ODELL:
and I I'm well aware that I I owe you a trip. But I have used Bitcoin Jungle in Costa Rica, which has an integration with SimPay, which is their mobile payment system based on phone numbers. And it's a similar situation where you pay with Bitcoin. The recipient just receives it to mobile pay. So, basically, every every merchant almost every person in Costa Rica can receive, money from you and you pay with Bitcoin. And the cool aspect there, because Bitcoin's an open protocol and Lightning's an open protocol, is is the developers, of Tondo don't need to talk to the developers of Bitcoin jungle.
They are cross compatible just by by the mere fact that they both support Bitcoin, which I think is incredibly empowering, that people do not realize. Another piece that I would highlight here, mostly through my work with the Human Rights Foundation, is it's it's quite refreshing working with people, in the developing world, working with activists because you don't have to explain the need for Bitcoin. Like, they they understand the need for better money. They understand the need for something that they can spend and save without permission. They just wanna know, okay. So how do I use it? Like, what are the tools available to me? How how can I make this a reality in my life? While in America, it's very much even at this point still, you know, you you talk to the average American and you're explaining to them why they would need Bitcoin in the first place. You just skip that whole step Yep. When you talk to these people because they have a a real need. Now I would say on the venture side, I mean, we just, first of all, Bitcoin focused venture specifically is a drop in the bucket compared to the wider venture ecosystem. Like, ten thirty one is by far the largest, and we've deployed over a hundred $50,000,000 into the ecosystem. But there is if you look at funds like a 16 z, Sequoia, like, they're raising billion dollar funds on a one off.
So, like, we're still there's a lot of room to grow there. Obviously, we have a mandate to return value to investors and and and to and with Bitcoin being the opportunity cost, which is, like, the most difficult opportunity cost in the world to beat. So we have to be very balanced and deliberate about how we deploy funds. We can't be as risky. And we try and find a balance there. Like, we have funded Bitnub, which is based in Africa. We have funded IBEX that's based in Latin America. We have given a smaller check to FETI, and I like to think I was a big part of incubating the Fetterman project in general. But then you balance it out with something like Strike, which just has a very obvious business model that just mince cash and makes a lot of money. And you try and find that balance. Now the beautiful thing about something like OpenSats or the HRF development fund is the mandate is freedom.
And and and you're so you're not necessarily trying to make a profit. So I think, ideally, the world is you have HRF, you have OpenSats, and they're kind of, like, incubating these ideas and getting them to a non dilutive point in their business model where then they can start taking actual equity investments. And then the last piece I would add there is there are very few investors that are willing to invest in free and open source projects because they they believe that the moat is closed source and proprietary. And I'm very proud that ten thirty one is is is unique in that regard. That not only do we invest in open source projects, but, we actually advocate for we do the opposite of what most investors do. So I try and encourage sometimes even slightly bully investors founders into open sourcing their code.
So
[00:54:46] Femi Longe:
those are the pieces yeah. Go on, Femi. I will say, though. So so beyond the institutional investors, so one of the things I say is it it makes no sense to be working on money and be struggling for money. I know. That's brutal. The we need more angel investors in Bitcoin. A lot of the a lot of people's Bitcoin stock, There's certain portions of it that could easily that will wave a very long way. It may not go a long way in the West, but will go a very long way in Africa, in places in Latin America, and places in Asia as angel investment for people building interesting solutions that that advance Bitcoin and that solve local problems that help to show the utility of Bitcoin.
And we need more people in the space potentially putting some of their stack as angel investments in Bitcoin companies. So rather than give and it's it's it's tough for me to say that working for a charity. But sometimes the way you can actually help projects and help grow the space in the global South is to actually find impact driven businesses in the global South that you can support and not just support that you can actually invest in for equity. So you have hundreds Bitcoin. 5 Bitcoin is half a million dollars, just above half a million dollars.
Right? That will go a huge way with a lot of companies that are being built. And and I think that's something that people in Bitcoin who are sitting on lots of Bitcoin potentially should be looking at doing. Don't just keep it don't just keep it in cold storage. Let some of it actually be catalysts in helping us grow the space.
[00:57:05] ODELL:
That makes sense to me. I mean, it's a weird it's a weird dynamic. I will say that, I've I've I mean, I've seen a lot of, I've the ten thirty one investor group is almost all Bitcoiners that want to give back and be part of the community and be more involved with individual founders. And, and and and and it's this kind of beautiful circular feedback loop. Right? Positive feedback loop where you make the Bitcoin ecosystem more robust, so then your remaining Bitcoin is also more valuable and more powerful. But then also at the same time, like, you know, when you can just sit there and hold Bitcoin and get, you know, 50% compound annual growth rate, it's really hard to justify taking risky investments. So so there's naturally at least at this point in the adoption cycle, there's naturally a lot of resistance to, you know, invest a portion of a Bitcoin stack into Bitcoin and, but I think that will get better over time. Like, I I think we're in a positive direction there also with donating to HRF or OpenStax or stuff. Like, a lot of Bitcoiners are very gracious.
[00:58:26] Femi Longe:
Absolutely. I really really appreciate that for sure.
[00:58:29] ODELL:
But I do agree. There's a bit of there's a bit of frustration there. And also, I would say that I mean, I'm at the it's funny too because I think we're aligned on this, you know, you, being a major part of of the HRF development grant and me with the open stats. But we're capitalists. Like, I I think if you have a profitable business, like, that's sustainable, that can scale. That that that takes it to the next level. And so I would love to see I would love to see more investment in the space. Like it like I said, if you look at it globally, it's a drop in the bucket. FEMI.
Yes. We I know we have time constraints here. I know we have time constraints here. And you highlighted the Bitcoin Africa conference.
[00:59:09] Femi Longe:
Yes.
[00:59:10] ODELL:
Farida is one of the most inspirational people I've ever met. So why don't you just talk a little bit about the Africa Bitcoin conference? Why is it important? Why people should consider going? You know, how do you think about that?
[00:59:25] Femi Longe:
So I I mean, I my first ever conference in this space was the first ever become African Beacon Conference in Ghana in 2023. We still had it we since then had it once more in Ghana. Last year was in Kenya. This year, it's happening in Mauritius in the December. Farida is a powerhouse. In her late teens, early twenties, she led a protest movement to go after the oldest dictatorship in Africa, which is multigenerational. And even out of in exile, she's still fighting them, but in very with concrete, practical, pragmatic ways. And she she organized the first ever African Bitcoin conference, which was the first opportunity that Bitcoiners in Africa actually had to converge, get to know each other, build community, realize the interesting things that were happening across.
One of the challenges, we have as a continent, unfortunately, because of our history and colonization, Africans hardly convey without an external power bringing them together. The African Bitcoin conference is a convening for Africans by Africans. It's going strong. It's going stronger than ever. It's evolved to it's now community owned and community supported. Farida still leads the organizing team, but with lots of input from other parts of the African Bitcoin ecosystem. It's a it's probably the highest signal conference in Bitcoin because we don't have time for number go up conversations.
The focus is is very practical, how people are using Bitcoin in different countries across Africa, as a hedge against inflation, as a way to solve the problem of the banking, as a way to prevent oneself from censorship and surveillance by, in many cases, terror states, as a way to seamlessly connect with global trade, because Africa is Africa is, in many ways, systematically excluded from global trade. Once you create excessive friction from being able to trade with the rest of the world, The resultant effect is that you won't get enough trade. You won't get enough trade means that you will not generate enough wealth, which means you'd be the continent that everyone is sending aid donations to.
That said, even even with the aid donations, more money goes to Africa through the diaspora, actually, than VC investments, than international aid combined. Right? But that's not part of the popular narrative. What the African Bitcoin conference is doing is creating a way to actually diffuse interesting ideas across the continent, but also change and challenge the narrative about how Africans are solving Africa's problem using Bitcoin as a tool to do that. HRF has been a sponsor of the conference from the beginning. We are spot we are a continuous sponsor of the of the event.
It's a big part of our own calendar too as a team, as a financial freedom team, at HRF. Last year, we had five members of staff at the conference. Probably more than any other conference. Okay. Outside the ones that we organize ourself. The same event this year, we're also actively involved in there. Again, because a lot of the activists that we support, many of them are in, authoritarian regimes in the African continent. And so it's it's it's again scratching our own itch. The African Bitcoin ecosystem grows strong. It means more solutions locally that the activists that we're supporting in Africa can leverage in their fight for democracy and, human rights. And, yeah, we're we're very proud of the conference. It's also been a very big convener, because we we we we we're one continent, but we barely meet.
Flights are expensive across the continent. It's there there are too many frictions for us to integrate, but that conference enables us to eat in the Bitcoin space. And a lot of great things have come out of that and yeah. Really, really excited about it this year. It's in the beautiful island nation of Mauritius. I think it's the the third to the fifth, if I'm not wrong, or second to the fifth of December. So very early in December. So anyone who's listening, who's interested, afrobitcoin.org, I believe, is the website. We'll be very happy. We it's it's not just for Africans.
We welcome people from all across the world that want to be part of the experience.
[01:05:00] ODELL:
I love it. Yeah. I really need to I really need to make it to that conference. I've always said good things. Femi, this has been a great chat. I I will just echo family statement even as someone who hasn't been to the conference yet, but as someone who has heard much about it and is fortunate enough to be I've I once again, I love Fareeda. Fareeda's awesome. And a lot of I'm I'm fortunate to call a lot of people in the African Bitcoin community friends. People should can really consider going if you can make it work.
[01:05:43] Femi Longe:
It's it's a I've heard it's a very special event. And if you're going if you're going to anyone who's coming, make sure you take at least the week extra
[01:05:51] ODELL:
because you It's a long trip too.
[01:05:54] Femi Longe:
It's a beautiful country. It's a long trip. So you want you want to see the country.
[01:06:00] ODELL:
I think in general, like, if you're gonna if you're gonna do conferences, like, don't go to every conference. Yep. Don't, like, do the traveling roadshow where you're, like, the same people are flying from conference to conference the whole year, like, away from your family. Do, like, a good two weeks somewhere. Like, get to under you know, like, learn be with the community, learn with the community, ex experience the experience, and and do it the right way. But Africa, particularly, like, I didn't really appreciate how far away it was. It's quite far away, and Africa is freaking huge as a in terms of size. Like, people do not appreciate how big of a continent it is.
Femi, we're at the end of, I'm I'm very cautious of your time here. I know your time is is scarce, and I don't wanna take too much more of your time. Do you that this is a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on. I would love to have you back on more frequently. I think that would be great as as new developments, happen. But, before we wrap here, what are your final thoughts for, the listeners?
[01:07:09] Femi Longe:
So two on two fronts. So I've talked about the Beacon Development Fund. We're giving a million dollars every quarter to twenty twenty five projects, that either help us advance the the the technically, the the the features of Bitcoin we want or that help us get Bitcoin in the hands of activists. So I want people to apply. We have a backlog, but I'm constantly looking for what interesting thing is are people building in the space. So if you're building a Bitcoin project, an eCash project, a nonstop project, an Internet freedom project, or an education project for targeted demographic, or a translation project, a user experience project, please apply.
Please apply. I I have a brilliant job, which is to give away money. Well, at least money to the right projects, and and so yours might be the right project. And and then I guess the second thing I'll also say is, if you're sitting on a lot of Bitcoin and you wanna support projects in the space, we are a good channel for you to do that. So again, if you go to, humanrightshrf.org, slash donate, I believe, or / dev fund, and you'll find a donation button there. Please feel free to donate some of your Bitcoin to us at the Bitcoin, development fund.
We put it to good use, for to projects that actually help us, advance, Bitcoin, advance human rights, and and and generally advance the world. And, we're very, very happy to work with you, to do that. Yep. That's it.
[01:08:56] ODELL:
Love it. Yeah. That's hrf.org/devfund. There's buttons there to donate. There's a button there to apply depending on which side you are, or you could be the rare unicorn that both donates and applies. Great. I, I will put those links in the show notes. I will just reiterate that from my experience, your whole team is fantastic. Super high integrity individuals. You guys are doing amazing work. It's an honor and a privilege to to to know you all and and work alongside you guys. Freaks, I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you support the show, thank you for supporting the show.
I couldn't do without you guys, particularly, like, people who join us for the live chats. I know it's hard to take some time from your busy day to participate, but, it is what makes this show unique. Then on Friday, I have Alex Gleeson joining us at sixteen hundred UTC. Alex is one of the guys who helped build truth social for Trump. And now he's focused on Nasr, Bitcoin, and AI. So that should be a really good conversation. So keep an eye out for that. As always, every link for dispatch is at cildispatch.com. Sharing the show really helps.
So share with friends and family. We're on every major platform. Femi, thank you. This is a great conversation. I wish you well, and, we'll talk soon.
[01:10:24] Femi Longe:
Talk soon. Bye. Bye, everyone.
[01:10:26] ODELL:
Love you, freaks. Stay on the stack sets. Peace.
Wandering around the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas can feel a bit like entering a different country, full of unfamiliar concepts, difficult to describe customs, and a vocabulary all its own. Politically, the cryptocurrency investors here lean to the right. They gave a warm welcome to vice president JD Vance who, before entering politics, worked for a Silicon Valley tech company. He called crypto a symbol of personal liberty. I'm here today to say loud and clear, with president Trump, crypto finally has a champion and an ally in the White House. The rise of crypto raises questions about the state of the US dollar.
For more than eighty years, the dollar has been the world's reserve currency. The value of items traded internationally from soybeans to diamonds to oil are all denominated in dollars. And the dollar has always been a safe haven in times of financial panics for both governments and individual investors. But now the Trump administration's have shaken that faith in the dollar like never before. Trump's trade war caused the value of both the dollar and US Government bonds to fall. The prospect of burgeoning debt led credit ratings agency Moody's to downgrade The US's creditworthiness rating.
[00:01:27] Femi Longe:
If the US government, federal government keeps raking up this high deficit and and high debt, at some point, the risk, right, the risk of of US dollar defaulting will increase.
[00:01:45] Unknown:
Crypto investors see their digital currency as the potential replacement for the dollar over time. More people today are asking what is money than ever before, and that is largely because of Bitcoin. Despite the enthusiasm, crypto is still seen as risky, subject to wild peaks and crashes, and not as flexible as traditional currencies, which can be managed by central banks to smooth out instabilities.
[00:02:12] Femi Longe:
Solution is not necessarily to abandon the dollar dollar and invest, you know, your eggs, a lot of your eggs, in crypto assets. So just be very careful.
[00:02:25] Unknown:
Mainstream economists are betting that despite the turmoil caused by Trump's policies, the dollar will endure, at least for now. Rob Reynolds, Al Jazeera, Las Vegas.
[00:03:19] ODELL:
Happy Bitcoin Monday, freaks. It's your host, Odell, here for another Citadel Dispatch, the interactive live show focused on actual Bitcoin and Freedom Tech discussion. That intro clip was Al Jazeera's coverage of the recent Bitcoin Vegas conference. It felt timely. Before we get started, I wanted to thank all the freaks for continuing to support the show. Dispatch is purely audience funded with Bitcoin donations. We have no ads or sponsors. You can either zap the show in our Nostril live chat, which you can find at silldispatch.com/stream, or you can zap the show through podcasting two point o apps like Fountain Podcasts.
Our top zap from last week's podcasting two point o power zaps was JCB, ride or die freak, sent 20,000 sats. He said great conversation. Love the backs and forths. If you haven't listened to that one, consider going back and listening. Anyway, freaks, I have a great show lined up today for us. We have Femi here who's the global Bitcoin development lead for HRF and their Bitcoin development fund. Good friend. First time on the show. How's it going, Femi?
[00:04:37] Femi Longe:
I'm brilliant. Really, really great to be here.
[00:04:41] ODELL:
The feeling is mutual. So I thought that intro clip was, kind of fun because, you guys held your, Hallmark event at the same time, your annual Oslo Freedom Forum. And you specifically had a Freedom Tech and AI track that, I watched from afar because I could not make it. That seemed, was just fantastic. You guys always do a great job with content. So how how let's start with that. How did how did that event go? What were some takeaways? How do you think about it?
[00:05:13] Femi Longe:
It was a brilliant I mean, it was a Oslo is always a a a great event. It was my third one, my first one as a member of the team. So it felt it felt different in its own way. But, I mean, I think what's beautiful about the Oslo Freedom Firm is the possibility to actually meet people who are using Bitcoin, not, as a as as an investment asset like we saw in Luckly, but as a life or death tool to help them in their fight against some of the worst, hardest, baddest people on the planet. I I say Oslo is a gathering of some of the bravest people in the world because if you if you're standing up to the might of the Russian government or the Chinese government or the Saudi Arabian government or any other dictator in the world with just your belief and conviction that you're standing for truth.
That's brave. Having one one of the speakers at our, on the financial freedom stage, the week before, she was abducted, a Ugandan activist. She was abducted by the government of Tanzania while trying to attend the trial of the opposition leader in Tanzania. Abducted, tortured, and dumped on the border of Tanzania and Uganda. And she still made made it to to us, though, with the bruises on her legs and could still stand on stage and tell her story. Like, that's immense bravery. And in the middle of that, having people working Bitcoiners, people working on freedom money, working on freedom communication, master, dare to engage these people.
I think in many ways, it puts the work of the builders in context that you're not just building the technology in the abstract. There are actually people who rely on it for their survival, for the survival of the truth to be able to actually push back against autocracy that is trying to rise and being able to interact in that space. Like someone said, it's both depressing and exciting in equal measures. It's depressing when you hear all the horror stories of what's going on in the world. But I think the excitement is seeing that the human spirit is still alive and that and that Bitcoin is is being actively used as a tool in that fight. It just it makes the whole work worth it.
[00:07:52] ODELL:
Love it. Yeah. I, so I think I've been volunteering and working alongside Gladstein and his work with the HRF training activists how to use Bitcoin for almost seven years now. This week marks the five year anniversary of your Bitcoin development fund supporting, developers working on Bitcoin as freedom money. And, you know, that that's always the vibe that I've gotten from HRF events and and working with activists. It's twofold. Right? It helps combat the burnout because you're like, okay. This is why the work is so important. It's inspiring. I mean, these people are up against odds that I fortunately have never had to to go up against in my life. But then also you go hit with this opposite side, which is you just feel like we're not doing enough. We're not doing quick enough.
And everyone else is in this little bubble where they think, like, everything's going great. And there's just so much work to be done. And so I I've taken that as a a source of inspiration. It's also part of the the reason OpenSats exists in the first place was was through that work and and realizing that so much more needed to be done. I'm curious from your perspective, now that you are a global development lead at HRF, how do you think about it? How do you think about where we are in Bitcoin today, and how how we can improve and and and where the successes are.
[00:09:38] Femi Longe:
So, I mean, I I I always like to go back to the beginning and literally beginning of Bitcoin. I mean, not the free history now, but Bitcoin itself started without white paper. It paid to it's a a system for pay to pay electronic cash. And and I think, Satoshi, whoever he or they are, were very visionary, but also understanding of the need of a of a lot of the world when the intention was this creates a means for people to move value from one part of the planet to the other part of the planet without going through intermediaries. I think somewhere along the line, while people were trying to get into that system, we realized that alongside the existing fiat system, the fiat system was going to zero against Bitcoin.
And, of course, the whole interest in Bitcoin as an investment asset then took off on the back of that. But the intention of the original creation wasn't necessarily as a hedge against inflation or a or a hedge against fiat. It was supposed to be a way for us to actually move value across the world without relying on existing systems. And in the work we do at human at HRF, we we work with people who are desperately in need of a way to move value without relying on the traditional system because there are people who the traditional system actively considers as enemies. And so while while it's easy for a lot of conversation to get an a lot of the hype to be around or which country now has a Bitcoin reserve, which bank has, which business has Bitcoin on its, balance sheet, which ETF is now being launched, how much are people putting ETFs. While while all those conversations are exciting, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that a vast majority of this planet live under authoritarianism.
Vast majority of this planet live in places where moving value seamlessly from one place to the other is a nightmare. On the one hand, there's the friction of the system, but on the other, it's the possibility of the system to use your money flows as a weapon against you when you decide to call out authoritarianism. And so the system itself is a cage. The existing financial system, fiat system is not just a drain of your value. It's a cage on your freedom. It stops you from being able to demand for rights and justices that people, like us living in the West, take for granted.
And so helping people escape from that system is as much helping them achieve their human rights as it is helping them, escape the devaluation of the fiat system. And being able to enable that work through the work we do at Human Rights Foundation, for us, it's a in many ways, it's us helping ourselves. So we're an organization that helps and works with, people defending human rights, fighting for democracy, and under authoritarian regimes across the world. Right? But we know that those people, for them to be able to do their work effectively, the fiat system is being recognized against them.
So also investing in Bitcoin is a way for us to actually enable the people that we exist to support. So it's we're we're each we're scratching our own itch in many ways. If Bitcoin works, if Bitcoin is is able to be used for those values that that are important for the activists, for the security, for the decentralization, for the privacy, If that works, it also enables us to be effective in the work we do to to help the activists in the first place. And so because of that, it became it was a no brainer for us. Well, we got to it, if I if I'll be fair. We evolved to it.
We it started with us getting donations in Bitcoin. Us seeing the human rights activists we're working with, being situations where Bitcoin was the only lifeline. Early early on, I think our earliest interaction with Bitcoin in this regards came with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and and seeing how he was debunked, seeing that Bitcoin was the only way he could get donation for the works that was they were doing at WikiLeaks. Fast forward a few years later, HR received his own donation, I think 2014. So eleven years ago, we received our first Bitcoin donations.
And and continue to see more of the activists in Ukraine, in Afghanistan, people depending more on the technology for that value as peer to peer electronic cash that either allowed aids to go into those countries when the banking system it was just impossible to use any other means to get value in there or to get people out when the systems the place was too difficult and they needed to relocate, or whether it is for medical aid or whether it's for legal aid for people who are confronting dictators. Increasingly, we realized that the technology itself, was was being a lifeline for us in the work we're doing with people we're working with. And we realized it made no sense for us not to or, well, we realized that this the Bitcoin is not perfect.
It needs continuous investment to improve the technology, but also to preserve the values that makes it perfect on sensible money. And and so we, courtesy of Alex Gladstein, who our chief strategy officer, maybe our chief Bitcoin officer. We decided we need to put we need to put our money where our mouth is, And in our initial support was to develop us in the space, a few Bitcoin core developers, a few application developers. But gradually, I think we realized that, what's needed to for Bitcoin to be useful and to be usable by activists requires more than just developers.
And so over the years, I I like to say our fund, the Bitcoin Development Fund is the innovation kickstarter in the Bitcoin space. For most people in the Bitcoin space, we are the first ever institutional institutional funder. The tons of people in the space whose first ever grant came from HRF, then they got the grant from OpenSats. I I and that's a trend that we we see. We take very risky bets. We take bets on projects at the fringes, where most people in the space most funders in the space are funding technical projects and developers. We we go beyond.
Our fund focus is on technical projects that that help us preserve the features of Bitcoin we like, that makes it perfect on Sensory Woman. So decentralization, we support projects that decentralize every layer of Bitcoin. Decentralizing the mining, decentralizing the development, decentralizing where the developers are are from. Projects that help us secure the network, but also enable people transact with Bitcoin securely. Projects that help us preserve the privacy features of Bitcoin, that helps people be able to engage and interact with it without the chances that they their identity can be discovered through chain analysis.
We fund we also fund projects that helps us get Bitcoin into the hands of activists and helps them use Bitcoin easily. So we fund user experience projects. We fund translation projects. We fund education strategic education projects. We fund, application projects that gets that that helps us with connecting that last mile of now I have this Bitcoin. What do I do with it? How do I do my everyday transactions in an environment where there are not many merchants that are already accepting Bitcoin? We found those kind of projects. But we also realized that the transfer of money is important, but oftentimes, what doxes the financial transactions is the communications that happens across. But also communication, the communication platform, and and, infrastructure also has a role in whether the activism happens more effectively or not.
And so on the back of that, again, in recognition of the broken the central air communication system, we also fund a lot of projects around Nasdaq and sell insularized communications. Both projects that help us prove the utility of Nasdaq, but projects that go beyond and make the Nasdaq protocol more, useful and usable by activists. We also fund we also now fund beyond Bitcoin, beyond we also fund, Internet freedom projects, because we also realize as a last resort to end the dictators realize that they can't stop you, then they go after the Internet.
So we found projects that help, keep the Internet on, projects that help with decentralizing the way information is relayed over the Internet. So things like Tor. We've we've we've funded one of one of our grantees, which, they were also at Oslo. They're called Tollgate. They allow anybody become an ISP by selling your excess Internet off your router for e cash. Basically, just connect the software on your router, and you become an ISP, an Internet service provider. That for us helps both privacy, but also helps re remove the the the Internet service provider, which often is a bottleneck and one of the tools that government uses for surveilling how people interact on the Internet. So yeah. Where the funds grown. The funds evolved. But what's critical is we support Bitcoin, and we support Bitcoin in a way that makes it usable and useful for the activists that we support because that's the primary objective of the organization.
And what's interesting is even with that mandate, we we we it's still wide enough and broad enough. Now we're then able to support very innovative, interesting things that people are building in the space. Awesome.
[00:21:35] ODELL:
So I I'm pretty sure the first HRF Bitcoin education event, which is held in San Francisco at Block's offices. At that point, it was Square, specifically at Cash App's offices, was January 2019. And I was there with Alex Gladstein, Miles Souter. I think Lopf called in, and a few other people. And we had, like, maybe 12 activists. And I think it's then why do I bring this up? I think it's it's important context because it's easy to get lost in the minutia and the day to day and be like, we're not doing enough. We're not doing quick enough. But we've come a really, really long way since then. I mean, I remember the tools we were using. Lightning Network was brand new.
Most of the wallets people rely on on mobile didn't exist yet. We had a lot of trouble with the training. Maybe cold card existed, but it was still very, very early. I remember, like, Ledger gift gifted a bunch of wallets. The point was was it was very much trial by fire. We just kinda did it Right. And saw where the pain points were and where where improvements could be made. And since then, we've come a long way, but there's still a lot more work to be done. I see Victor, who is, the lead maintainer of the Amethyst Noster client in our live chat.
And he's asking me a he's asking you a question that I personally, as one of the leads at OpenSats, don't love the question because it feels like picking your favorite child. So we're not gonna ask you to pick your favorite child. But just in your mind, over the last five years or maybe even a subset since you started working with HRF, what do you think is some of the biggest achievements that you guys have have found both through the educate because it's twofold. Right? It's you're sending out Bitcoin to all these developers and educators and designers and translators.
But then there's also the actual education element, the direct education element with the activists and the training that goes into that. So how do you feel how do you think about some of the biggest achievements that you guys have made? Where and then and then on top of that, I would add, you know, where where do you think we could do better? Where can we improve? Where where do you want more focus to be?
[00:24:18] Femi Longe:
So it it it it'd be hard for me to isolate and pick one one specific grant and see this is a close-up grant. I mean, we funded more than 219 grants in the with Megan. Impressive. Direct through the through the quarterly grants program, we've given, $8,200,000. Right now, we've we've we've doubled the numbers every year. Right now, we're giving a a million dollars every quarter. I also didn't mention we also fund conferences, communities, and gatherings. I I I I'd say what I think is has been the the success of the fund is their few the is the amount of human stories and the people in the space and the projects in the space that probably won't have had their start if they didn't get that initial grant to get them off the ground.
I was at the African Bitcoin conference in December in Kenya. And I'll talk about the African Bitcoin conference as a success story on it soon. But when a panel on funding in Bitcoin and there were five of us on the panel, Myself, Abubakar from Beatrust, Dread from OpenStarts, Moe from Bitcoin Design Foundation, and it's a Porsche. What was interesting was even though each of us represented different organizations that was giving funding, Anita giving funding to educators, Bitcoin government fund giving funding to designers, Every single one of us as individuals had been a grantee of HRF at one point or the other.
Abubakar for his wallet and for color, Dread for Flash, Anita for her work, Bitcoin Design Foundation, me for Carla in the past. That's how that's how pivotal HRFs and the big Bitcoin development fund has been. I got into the Bitcoin space three and a half years ago, when Kala was being formed the program to train software engineers from Africa to get them into Bitcoin development. The first grant that, Kala got was from the Bitcoin Development Fund. The following year, we had a larger grant from the Bitcoin Development Fund. Right?
I met Alex Glasson for the first time, which kind of led to me getting into this role at the African the first African Bitcoin conference in twenty twenty three, December. That conference was kick started by Farida, a human rights activist. Probably, she was at that training that you guys did at Block's office. But human rights activist who first came into this space through a connection with Human Rights Foundation ended up becoming the convener of, the biggest Bitcoin conference in the global South and the major Bitcoin conference in Africa. Right? It was at that conference that I met Miles and and Gladstein.
So and lots of lots of interactions that led to lots even more projects from that space. The Bitcoin government fund has funded every major conference in Bitcoin. Every major conference in Bitcoin since the phone phone was founded. Each one of these an opportunity to find people working on interesting things, but also to connect people together so that they can collaborate so that new interesting ideas, new interesting projects come out from there. But we get new new ideas, new insights of what else is happening around the horizon that we should be funding. So it's hard to isolate one thing.
I I said the fund's been a catalyst. It's been a it's been a kickstarter for innovation. And and the getting the recognition enough from the innovators that we exist and that we're there to enable them. So that that makes them apply to us for funding is the success of the fund. We could be a fund that that exists but is not getting that's struggling for, pipeline. We have way more pipeline than we have funding right now because people recognize that we take best take bets. We take bets on risky things that move the space forward. And and and that's the culture that we want to continue.
And that's the that's the positioning that we we still want to have in the space. There's there's lots of the if most of the funders in the space primarily fund developers. We think developers are important for Bitcoin, but we think Bitcoin is going to be adopted as money, as currency, as peer to peer electronic cash. We need more than developers in that conversation. And and we're willing to keep betting on more than developers to actually make this more human and more used by humans. So I don't know if that answers Vito's question. It's a it's a good answer.
[00:29:52] ODELL:
I that was a great answer. It was a great answer for me. I so, I mean, I feel like we've known each other for quite a bit, at this point measured in the years. I don't you know, it all kind of blends together. And, you know, I always enjoy having conversations with you because we I I we're aligned on 95%, ninety eight %. But we obviously come from two completely different world views and perspectives. And you never bite your tongue. I also never bite my tongue. You just say how you think, which I respect and and appreciate. To
[00:30:35] Femi Longe:
bite your tongue.
[00:30:37] ODELL:
It's it's a waste it's a waste of our short lives to to self censor yourself. But I remember, a presentation you gave maybe a little over a year ago, and it was about, you know, the lack of focus on the right things in the space or at least from your perspective. And I think particularly you had a controversial statement was, like, everyone's trying to build wallets. We don't need more wallets. From your position now, where where do we need more focus? Like, where where where is the pain points? Where is the where is where is the points where we can have real tangible improvements in the wider ecosystem in the short to medium term?
[00:31:29] Femi Longe:
So, so I remember the presentation you you referenced. And and in that presentation, I had a chat. And on that chat, I had at both ends, one end, human beings, all the things that they do to end their living, which in this case is mostly in fiat. Whether it's a job, whether you're selling stuff, whether you whatever you do, whether it's investment, all the things human beings used to end is mostly in fiat. And on the other end, the far end is the things that human beings spend money on to enjoy their lives for quality of life. And, again, it's mostly in fiat.
And so the assumption is that human beings earn fiat, then we want them to convert that fiat into Bitcoin for storage. But then when they need to live out their lives, they have to convert that Bitcoin back to fiat so that they can pay for school fees, get an Uber, do all the things that they need. And we assume that in that system, Bitcoin is at the center because that's where people are saving. And for me, I think that paradigm actually centralizes fiat. Because for the vast majority of people on this planet, how do I end my living and how do I spend from my living to have a good quality of life?
And if they are doing those things predominantly in fiat, then the fiat system stays. And so for me, I think that where our paradigm needs to be in this space is how do we eliminate fiat from that picture. And what that means for me is how do we create a million and one ways for people to earn Bitcoin and a million and which would contra create a million and one places where people can spend their Bitcoin. And, yes, you will save your you will save some of your Bitcoin, but people have needs. Money is one thing that's one commodity, one man made good that everybody on this planet interacts with every day of their life.
From when you wake up in the morning till you go to bed at night, there's several touch points in your day where you have to commerce and trade for things that you can produce that you need to for your quality of life. How do we make Bitcoin a critical option at each of those stages? For as long as we treat this thing as digital goods, something you Huddl and stack somewhere and don't touch forever, then we Bitcoin loses its ability as actual money. And so for me, if if if I think about where we need to be thinking about directing our energies when it comes to building, It's creating a million and one opportunities for people to earn Bitcoin, and a million and one opportunities for people to be able to spend Bitcoin.
If I want to learn a new skill and I go on a website that I would usually go to that has maybe 10,000,000 people on it, do I have the option to actually buy a course there and pay in Bitcoin? And if I'm the course creator on that platform, do I have the the choice to denominate my course in Bitcoin as well as in Fiat? And can I withdraw my earnings on the plat platform in Bitcoin and or Fiat? If I if I have to go from one place to the other and I have to take an Uber Or what about variation of Uber it is I'm taking to take me from point a to point b? Do I have the choice to pay with my Bitcoin wallet? And if I'm the driver, do I have the choice to actually get paid in Bitcoin? My argument is Bitcoin that you earn.
You're less worried about volatility of price of Bitcoin to the US dollars when you earn your Bitcoin versus when you have to purchase it with fiat. Because if you purchase it with fiat, you're thinking about how much was it when I bought it versus how much is it when I have to convert it back. So if we wanna remove that volatility curve, which seems to be in many people's mind the barrier for adoption of Bitcoin as currency, then more and more people should be earning Bitcoin. And innovators should be thinking about how do we create ways for people to for more ways for people to earn KYC free Bitcoin through the skills they have, through the things they have, through the services that they can deliver, as opposed to assuming that everybody will convert their fiat to Bitcoin.
The problem with the convert fiat to Bitcoin is that the closer you are to the money printer, the more Bitcoin you accumulate. And we're already seeing it right now. We're companies that are creating fiat US dollar debts and using it to accumulate Bitcoin. And that wall basically means that the people who won in the fiat world end up being the winners in the Bitcoin world, and that's not the kind of wall I I I'm interested in. I want everyone to have a fair shot at getting Bitcoin for the things that they can do, for the skills that they have, and have let them have access to money that has not been eroded by governments. I think that's that's where I'd love to see more building.
[00:36:50] ODELL:
So I cosign that perspective, and and and agree with the hope. I mean, so my so two things. First of all, my family, we just we hold our savings and we hold our savings all in Bitcoin. Like, real Bitcoin, self custody Bitcoin. I earn a mix of Bitcoin and dollars. And when I get dollars, I convert it into Bitcoin. And that's a short gap. You know, a a current place we are in in the adoption cycle. It is what it is. And we prefer to spend Bitcoin wherever we can spend Bitcoin. I always say that, you know, there's a meme and every good meme is has a basis in reality of we're still early. Bitcoin is still early. And I I think the the pivotal point where that flips is where most people are earning Bitcoin rather than buying Bitcoin, and most people are spending Bitcoin rather than selling Bitcoin.
I think at that point is when Bitcoin is starting to really become the standard and we're past the quote, unquote, you are early phase. Now where I have trouble with is I I keep thinking we're, like, about to hit the precipice where I'm gonna be able to spend Bitcoin everywhere. But we we just haven't gotten there. I I I'm curious on your opinion. Like, how do we how do how do you actually bootstrap that? Like, how do we I I think maybe it happens eventually, probably not with, you know, real work being put in by people. But I think we can accelerate it. I'm just not sure how the best way to accelerate it. Do you have any opinions on how we can accelerate that process to to where we get to a point where most things in life I can just spend Bitcoin on?
[00:38:46] Femi Longe:
So I think it's it's the acceleration, and it's it's kinda what we it also ties to what we do at at HRF and the PDF. The acceleration, this is one of those things that will start in the places where the need is acute. I I say at the moment, if you wanted to send money to someone in Australia from whereby from somewhere in The US where you are, it's very easy. It's extremely easy. If a person uses if if you wanted to send fiat, if the person uses PayPal or one of the platforms like that, the person sends you a link, you whip out a card, you send it, case closed.
Not there's no part of your your thinking where you think about what is the exchange rate between the US dollars and the Australian dollars. If I wanted to do the same thing from Nigeria, it's a nightmare and a half. It's like six nightmares in one because I'm thinking about how do I convert the naira to the US dollars. Where am I going to do the conversion? The banks if I go to the bank, banks tell me we don't have enough US dollar to come back for you. Right? So I go on the streets. And in every African country, you have people on the streets that do the exchange for you, except they are gonna give you physical cash. So now I have the physical cash I need to get to the guy in Australia.
Am I gonna pop it in the post? Am I gonna rely on the banking system? So you already already you have places in the world where the need exists and it is real, where getting the bank is not a theoretical event. It's people's everyday reality. Where trying to move legitimately move value across borders is a nightmare. When, legitimately, the government is like, my my colleague, Anna, who used to be CFO who is the CFO of, Anti Corruption Foundation, woke up one day and the Russian government had gone in their fiat bank account and had put them in the red to the tune of minus $17,000,000,000.
Right? Or is looking at their bank account to see who is donating to them so that we can declare them enemy of the state. Right? For those people, this is not abstract. It is their lived reality. For the human rights defenders that we work with, it's not abstract that the government is surveilling your transactions. And it's and and and the governments now with their moves to try and, like, what's the word? Institutionalize central bank digital currencies Want to even take this thing to next level on steroids. So if we're looking at how do we bootstrap a system where people are not transacting in fiat, then let's go to the places where transacting in fiat already has so much friction, and it's already so dangerous that it becomes a no brainer that they adopt solutions that enable them transact out of the outside the system.
And we've seen that in Nigeria where I'm from. It's one of the reasons why Nigeria is is top 10 in Bitcoin and crypto adoption. People who are legitimate transactions, things didn't have to do with money for life and for life and death in some instances, but they just couldn't do it through traditional systems. So when I say builders should stop building wallets and exchanges with that, which are means to either convert your Bitcoin to fiat or fiat to Bitcoin or means to store your Bitcoin. It means they need to go to where people are facing real transaction challenges, understand the people, understand the context, and build solutions that that build on that, to to solve the problem. I was in I was in Kenya A Couple Of Months ago.
I spent a week in Kenya. I didn't use I didn't whip up my card once because one of our grantees, Tandu, had built an application that basically interfaces Bitcoin with the mobile money system in Pesa, which means I get in a taxi, I get to the other end of my ride, the taxi driver gives me his mobile number. I go on the Tando app, I type in his mobile number. I type in how much I want to send to him. Instantly, Tandu generates a lightning invoice. I go to my lightning app of choice. I send an instant payment. The guy gets it in Kenyan shillings in his phone instantly.
Right? That's last mile solution. That's it. That's that's so so that what that means is literally literally every merchant in Kenya accepts M Pesa. So you don't have to go to the merchants to convince them to accept Bitcoin. Literally, you can spend your Bitcoin with every merchant in Kenya. Those are the kind of solutions that we need to be building if we want this technology to reach the kind of scale that it needs to. In the in the intervening, it's going to seamlessly integrate with the fiat system. Since we founded Tandu, we've seen, similar applications being built in Costa Rica, in Brazil, in Senegal, in Ghana, all across the world.
We're now seeing more of those applications and conversations about interfacing those applications across the countries. So that we have in a whole network of last mile Bitcoin solutions that connect with the existing fiat system that helps us bring the next hundred million, five hundred million, billion people into the ecosystem. Eventually, at some point, they'll turn on the option for the merchants to decide, do I want to actually receive my payment in fiat or do I want to receive it in Bitcoin? Right? And that's how we start reaching out to people. But the starting point is we need to move beyond the West.
We need to move to the rest of the world. We need to go to the places where people have lots of friction with the financial systems, and we need to go there with the listing ears, with asking ears, with observing our eyes open to observe, to understand how people interacting with money now, and how can Bitcoin help make their life easier and more seamless. Also, in the last few years, with with people like Carla, which is now Beatrice Builders or Liberta Satoshi in in South America or Vincium in Brazil, Beachala in India, We're starting to Bob's space in Thailand. We're starting to onboard software developers, product builders from the rest of the world into Bitcoin because a situation a decentralized ecosystem of builders strengthens Bitcoin when government starts criminalizing writing code.
And Bitcoin Bitcoin developers in the West become afraid to be identified as Bitcoin developers. We need to be sure that there are people in places across the world that are still contributing to the technology that are not facing the same risks. As you get more developers from those parts of the world, understanding Bitcoin as technology, being able to build on Bitcoin and building Bitcoin, but also being steeped in the nuances of the rest of the world where moving money is still filled with friction. Then you're going to be getting more of those people triggering new interesting applications in the Bitcoin space.
The challenge we have right now with that group and that cater are starting to build, but the challenge they're finding right now is that most of the investors in the space and and I'm mentioning this because I can see ten thirty one on your head. Most of the investors in the space still come at this from the mindset of the way we know this technology in the West. And they're still finding it developers, people building products in the global South are still finding it hard to communicate the their unique value with investors from the West. And and that's creating that's putting them in a funding blind spot.
So they're too Bitcoin y for the typical crypto investor who want them to do every other coin. They're too crypto y for traditional fintech VCs who are afraid of anything that touches crypto. And they're not Bitcoin enough for their they're not Western Bitcoin enough for Bitcoin VCs, but we need more funding for those kind of people. There's, Jodom, one of our grantees in Kenya is building BitSaco. In lots of countries in in Africa, cooperatives, groups group savings is a big way is a big part of the financial system and experience for people.
It has different names in different parts of Africa. In in where I'm from, they call it Esusu. In in Kenya, they call it Chalmers. So in in in many of these countries, even people who don't have traditional bank accounts are involved in cooperatives. This guy is building on Fedimint on Fedimint protocol. He's building, a a first Bitcoin native, cooperative payment system. And it's not just building that. They're also making this the the source code open so that anyone anywhere else in the world where they have a culture of cooperatives can actually build something similar on the Fedimint's protocol.
One of our grantees in no. Not a grantee, but one of the one of my former students at CALA, they're building a platform in Nigeria called Mavapie, which basically, I wanna send money to my dad. I wanna I'm here right now. I can't send him Bitcoin. I mean, he's very old. He needs actual fiat. I send Bitcoin to a lightning address. It appears in his Fiat bank account instantly. And they're building APIs for merchants to be able to integrate that into the products that they're building. The applications like that that are that are being built that need support. So so I'd say Bitcoin VCs also need to expand their mind and realize that, if we want if we want this technology to truly scale, we need to start looking at and maybe even getting LPs or even looking for people on the front that also are steeped in in other realities beyond the West who can also help with both deal sourcing as well as deal vetting to see, and and to also understand the context of what's happening in the rest of the world as far as Bitcoin adoption is concerned. Because this is critical for scaling technology for sure.
[00:50:43] ODELL:
Awesome. I mean, I agree with you there. I mean, just a couple of highlights, things I would pull out is, first of all, I I I'm aware of Tondo. I haven't used it yet.
[00:50:55] Femi Longe:
We need to get you to Kenya to use it. Yeah. Because I I haven't been to Africa yet,
[00:51:00] ODELL:
and I I'm well aware that I I owe you a trip. But I have used Bitcoin Jungle in Costa Rica, which has an integration with SimPay, which is their mobile payment system based on phone numbers. And it's a similar situation where you pay with Bitcoin. The recipient just receives it to mobile pay. So, basically, every every merchant almost every person in Costa Rica can receive, money from you and you pay with Bitcoin. And the cool aspect there, because Bitcoin's an open protocol and Lightning's an open protocol, is is the developers, of Tondo don't need to talk to the developers of Bitcoin jungle.
They are cross compatible just by by the mere fact that they both support Bitcoin, which I think is incredibly empowering, that people do not realize. Another piece that I would highlight here, mostly through my work with the Human Rights Foundation, is it's it's quite refreshing working with people, in the developing world, working with activists because you don't have to explain the need for Bitcoin. Like, they they understand the need for better money. They understand the need for something that they can spend and save without permission. They just wanna know, okay. So how do I use it? Like, what are the tools available to me? How how can I make this a reality in my life? While in America, it's very much even at this point still, you know, you you talk to the average American and you're explaining to them why they would need Bitcoin in the first place. You just skip that whole step Yep. When you talk to these people because they have a a real need. Now I would say on the venture side, I mean, we just, first of all, Bitcoin focused venture specifically is a drop in the bucket compared to the wider venture ecosystem. Like, ten thirty one is by far the largest, and we've deployed over a hundred $50,000,000 into the ecosystem. But there is if you look at funds like a 16 z, Sequoia, like, they're raising billion dollar funds on a one off.
So, like, we're still there's a lot of room to grow there. Obviously, we have a mandate to return value to investors and and and to and with Bitcoin being the opportunity cost, which is, like, the most difficult opportunity cost in the world to beat. So we have to be very balanced and deliberate about how we deploy funds. We can't be as risky. And we try and find a balance there. Like, we have funded Bitnub, which is based in Africa. We have funded IBEX that's based in Latin America. We have given a smaller check to FETI, and I like to think I was a big part of incubating the Fetterman project in general. But then you balance it out with something like Strike, which just has a very obvious business model that just mince cash and makes a lot of money. And you try and find that balance. Now the beautiful thing about something like OpenSats or the HRF development fund is the mandate is freedom.
And and and you're so you're not necessarily trying to make a profit. So I think, ideally, the world is you have HRF, you have OpenSats, and they're kind of, like, incubating these ideas and getting them to a non dilutive point in their business model where then they can start taking actual equity investments. And then the last piece I would add there is there are very few investors that are willing to invest in free and open source projects because they they believe that the moat is closed source and proprietary. And I'm very proud that ten thirty one is is is unique in that regard. That not only do we invest in open source projects, but, we actually advocate for we do the opposite of what most investors do. So I try and encourage sometimes even slightly bully investors founders into open sourcing their code.
So
[00:54:46] Femi Longe:
those are the pieces yeah. Go on, Femi. I will say, though. So so beyond the institutional investors, so one of the things I say is it it makes no sense to be working on money and be struggling for money. I know. That's brutal. The we need more angel investors in Bitcoin. A lot of the a lot of people's Bitcoin stock, There's certain portions of it that could easily that will wave a very long way. It may not go a long way in the West, but will go a very long way in Africa, in places in Latin America, and places in Asia as angel investment for people building interesting solutions that that advance Bitcoin and that solve local problems that help to show the utility of Bitcoin.
And we need more people in the space potentially putting some of their stack as angel investments in Bitcoin companies. So rather than give and it's it's it's tough for me to say that working for a charity. But sometimes the way you can actually help projects and help grow the space in the global South is to actually find impact driven businesses in the global South that you can support and not just support that you can actually invest in for equity. So you have hundreds Bitcoin. 5 Bitcoin is half a million dollars, just above half a million dollars.
Right? That will go a huge way with a lot of companies that are being built. And and I think that's something that people in Bitcoin who are sitting on lots of Bitcoin potentially should be looking at doing. Don't just keep it don't just keep it in cold storage. Let some of it actually be catalysts in helping us grow the space.
[00:57:05] ODELL:
That makes sense to me. I mean, it's a weird it's a weird dynamic. I will say that, I've I've I mean, I've seen a lot of, I've the ten thirty one investor group is almost all Bitcoiners that want to give back and be part of the community and be more involved with individual founders. And, and and and and it's this kind of beautiful circular feedback loop. Right? Positive feedback loop where you make the Bitcoin ecosystem more robust, so then your remaining Bitcoin is also more valuable and more powerful. But then also at the same time, like, you know, when you can just sit there and hold Bitcoin and get, you know, 50% compound annual growth rate, it's really hard to justify taking risky investments. So so there's naturally at least at this point in the adoption cycle, there's naturally a lot of resistance to, you know, invest a portion of a Bitcoin stack into Bitcoin and, but I think that will get better over time. Like, I I think we're in a positive direction there also with donating to HRF or OpenStax or stuff. Like, a lot of Bitcoiners are very gracious.
[00:58:26] Femi Longe:
Absolutely. I really really appreciate that for sure.
[00:58:29] ODELL:
But I do agree. There's a bit of there's a bit of frustration there. And also, I would say that I mean, I'm at the it's funny too because I think we're aligned on this, you know, you, being a major part of of the HRF development grant and me with the open stats. But we're capitalists. Like, I I think if you have a profitable business, like, that's sustainable, that can scale. That that that takes it to the next level. And so I would love to see I would love to see more investment in the space. Like it like I said, if you look at it globally, it's a drop in the bucket. FEMI.
Yes. We I know we have time constraints here. I know we have time constraints here. And you highlighted the Bitcoin Africa conference.
[00:59:09] Femi Longe:
Yes.
[00:59:10] ODELL:
Farida is one of the most inspirational people I've ever met. So why don't you just talk a little bit about the Africa Bitcoin conference? Why is it important? Why people should consider going? You know, how do you think about that?
[00:59:25] Femi Longe:
So I I mean, I my first ever conference in this space was the first ever become African Beacon Conference in Ghana in 2023. We still had it we since then had it once more in Ghana. Last year was in Kenya. This year, it's happening in Mauritius in the December. Farida is a powerhouse. In her late teens, early twenties, she led a protest movement to go after the oldest dictatorship in Africa, which is multigenerational. And even out of in exile, she's still fighting them, but in very with concrete, practical, pragmatic ways. And she she organized the first ever African Bitcoin conference, which was the first opportunity that Bitcoiners in Africa actually had to converge, get to know each other, build community, realize the interesting things that were happening across.
One of the challenges, we have as a continent, unfortunately, because of our history and colonization, Africans hardly convey without an external power bringing them together. The African Bitcoin conference is a convening for Africans by Africans. It's going strong. It's going stronger than ever. It's evolved to it's now community owned and community supported. Farida still leads the organizing team, but with lots of input from other parts of the African Bitcoin ecosystem. It's a it's probably the highest signal conference in Bitcoin because we don't have time for number go up conversations.
The focus is is very practical, how people are using Bitcoin in different countries across Africa, as a hedge against inflation, as a way to solve the problem of the banking, as a way to prevent oneself from censorship and surveillance by, in many cases, terror states, as a way to seamlessly connect with global trade, because Africa is Africa is, in many ways, systematically excluded from global trade. Once you create excessive friction from being able to trade with the rest of the world, The resultant effect is that you won't get enough trade. You won't get enough trade means that you will not generate enough wealth, which means you'd be the continent that everyone is sending aid donations to.
That said, even even with the aid donations, more money goes to Africa through the diaspora, actually, than VC investments, than international aid combined. Right? But that's not part of the popular narrative. What the African Bitcoin conference is doing is creating a way to actually diffuse interesting ideas across the continent, but also change and challenge the narrative about how Africans are solving Africa's problem using Bitcoin as a tool to do that. HRF has been a sponsor of the conference from the beginning. We are spot we are a continuous sponsor of the of the event.
It's a big part of our own calendar too as a team, as a financial freedom team, at HRF. Last year, we had five members of staff at the conference. Probably more than any other conference. Okay. Outside the ones that we organize ourself. The same event this year, we're also actively involved in there. Again, because a lot of the activists that we support, many of them are in, authoritarian regimes in the African continent. And so it's it's it's again scratching our own itch. The African Bitcoin ecosystem grows strong. It means more solutions locally that the activists that we're supporting in Africa can leverage in their fight for democracy and, human rights. And, yeah, we're we're very proud of the conference. It's also been a very big convener, because we we we we we're one continent, but we barely meet.
Flights are expensive across the continent. It's there there are too many frictions for us to integrate, but that conference enables us to eat in the Bitcoin space. And a lot of great things have come out of that and yeah. Really, really excited about it this year. It's in the beautiful island nation of Mauritius. I think it's the the third to the fifth, if I'm not wrong, or second to the fifth of December. So very early in December. So anyone who's listening, who's interested, afrobitcoin.org, I believe, is the website. We'll be very happy. We it's it's not just for Africans.
We welcome people from all across the world that want to be part of the experience.
[01:05:00] ODELL:
I love it. Yeah. I really need to I really need to make it to that conference. I've always said good things. Femi, this has been a great chat. I I will just echo family statement even as someone who hasn't been to the conference yet, but as someone who has heard much about it and is fortunate enough to be I've I once again, I love Fareeda. Fareeda's awesome. And a lot of I'm I'm fortunate to call a lot of people in the African Bitcoin community friends. People should can really consider going if you can make it work.
[01:05:43] Femi Longe:
It's it's a I've heard it's a very special event. And if you're going if you're going to anyone who's coming, make sure you take at least the week extra
[01:05:51] ODELL:
because you It's a long trip too.
[01:05:54] Femi Longe:
It's a beautiful country. It's a long trip. So you want you want to see the country.
[01:06:00] ODELL:
I think in general, like, if you're gonna if you're gonna do conferences, like, don't go to every conference. Yep. Don't, like, do the traveling roadshow where you're, like, the same people are flying from conference to conference the whole year, like, away from your family. Do, like, a good two weeks somewhere. Like, get to under you know, like, learn be with the community, learn with the community, ex experience the experience, and and do it the right way. But Africa, particularly, like, I didn't really appreciate how far away it was. It's quite far away, and Africa is freaking huge as a in terms of size. Like, people do not appreciate how big of a continent it is.
Femi, we're at the end of, I'm I'm very cautious of your time here. I know your time is is scarce, and I don't wanna take too much more of your time. Do you that this is a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on. I would love to have you back on more frequently. I think that would be great as as new developments, happen. But, before we wrap here, what are your final thoughts for, the listeners?
[01:07:09] Femi Longe:
So two on two fronts. So I've talked about the Beacon Development Fund. We're giving a million dollars every quarter to twenty twenty five projects, that either help us advance the the the technically, the the the features of Bitcoin we want or that help us get Bitcoin in the hands of activists. So I want people to apply. We have a backlog, but I'm constantly looking for what interesting thing is are people building in the space. So if you're building a Bitcoin project, an eCash project, a nonstop project, an Internet freedom project, or an education project for targeted demographic, or a translation project, a user experience project, please apply.
Please apply. I I have a brilliant job, which is to give away money. Well, at least money to the right projects, and and so yours might be the right project. And and then I guess the second thing I'll also say is, if you're sitting on a lot of Bitcoin and you wanna support projects in the space, we are a good channel for you to do that. So again, if you go to, humanrightshrf.org, slash donate, I believe, or / dev fund, and you'll find a donation button there. Please feel free to donate some of your Bitcoin to us at the Bitcoin, development fund.
We put it to good use, for to projects that actually help us, advance, Bitcoin, advance human rights, and and and generally advance the world. And, we're very, very happy to work with you, to do that. Yep. That's it.
[01:08:56] ODELL:
Love it. Yeah. That's hrf.org/devfund. There's buttons there to donate. There's a button there to apply depending on which side you are, or you could be the rare unicorn that both donates and applies. Great. I, I will put those links in the show notes. I will just reiterate that from my experience, your whole team is fantastic. Super high integrity individuals. You guys are doing amazing work. It's an honor and a privilege to to to know you all and and work alongside you guys. Freaks, I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you support the show, thank you for supporting the show.
I couldn't do without you guys, particularly, like, people who join us for the live chats. I know it's hard to take some time from your busy day to participate, but, it is what makes this show unique. Then on Friday, I have Alex Gleeson joining us at sixteen hundred UTC. Alex is one of the guys who helped build truth social for Trump. And now he's focused on Nasr, Bitcoin, and AI. So that should be a really good conversation. So keep an eye out for that. As always, every link for dispatch is at cildispatch.com. Sharing the show really helps.
So share with friends and family. We're on every major platform. Femi, thank you. This is a great conversation. I wish you well, and, we'll talk soon.
[01:10:24] Femi Longe:
Talk soon. Bye. Bye, everyone.
[01:10:26] ODELL:
Love you, freaks. Stay on the stack sets. Peace.
AlJazeera Intro Clip
Happy Bitcoin Monday
Guest Introduction: Femi from HRF
Oslo Freedom Forum and Bitcoin's Role
HRF's Bitcoin Development Fund
Bitcoin's Global Impact and Challenges
Funding and Supporting Bitcoin Projects
Earning and Spending Bitcoin Globally
Innovations in Bitcoin Transactions
Investment and Support for Global Bitcoin Projects
The Importance of the Africa Bitcoin Conference
Final Thoughts and Call to Action
