Straight, No Chaser
Understanding Freedom through Money, Technology, Economics and Philosophy
Straight, No Chaser
Carl Kritzinger - If money is freedom, what happens when 600,000 stores switch on Bitcoin?
Ever scanned a supermarket QR and paid with Bitcoin? That quiet click is a big story. We sit with Carl from Money Badger to trace how South Africa’s retailers—led by Pick n Pay—went from a scrappy Lightning experiment to nationwide Bitcoin payments across hundreds of thousands of tills. It’s a tale of timing, grit, and a country that loves to leapfrog: COVID-era QR infrastructure met Lightning’s instant, low-fee settlements, and suddenly sats bought bread.
Carl shares the builder’s journey—early doubts in 2014 and 2018, the rough-but-working Crypto QR bridge, and the wallet integrations that turned a clunky flow into something you barely notice. We go inside the pilot strategy (Stellenbosch, Sedgefield, Mossel Bay, and an on-campus Cape Town store) and how communities like Bitcoin Ekasi created real demand: shop owners restocking with sats, locals moving value seamlessly, and traction that convinced decision-makers to scale. We also unpack the name change from Crypto Convert to Money Badger, the reason language matters with banks and Bitcoiners, and why the mission stays simple: Bitcoin should work as money—every day, everywhere.
The conversation moves into the real-world frictions: exchange wallets vs self-custody, why stablecoins appear at the till, and how Lightning’s custodial convenience rubs against decentralisation. Carl explains the lingering “scar tissue” from 2017’s on-chain pilots and why the past six to eight months mark a shift—retailers who once said “you’re crazy” are now asking “how soon?” We explore the evolving protocol landscape and why open competition, not committee rules, keeps Bitcoin resilient. If you’ve ever wondered how a medium of exchange emerges from a store of value—and what it takes to get there in practice—this is your front-row seat at the checkout.
Enjoyed the conversation? Follow us, share with a friend who spends sats, and leave a review so more South Africans discover how to pay with Bitcoin tomorrow.
X: @MoneyBadgerPay
https://www.moneybadger.co.za
Links:
www.bitcoinforbusiness.io
X: @gavingre
X: @BTC_4_Biz
Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net
NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta
Welcome to the Straits No Chaser Podcast. This is the show where we talk about human freedom through money, technology, philosophy, and economics. In today's show, we're talking to Carl from Money Badger. In case you have missed it, Money Badger has enabled over 600,000 stores in South Africa to accept Bitcoin payments. This goes from small corner coffee shops all the way through to national and international retailers such as pick and pay, checkers, and big other big retail chains as well. South Africa must honestly be at the forefront of Bitcoin payments. We have grassroots circular economies such as Bitcoin ECASI that are dealing on with people really in informal settlements all the way through to some of the biggest companies in the country. It is truly an amazing time in South Africa. Many people talk about Bitcoin, not so many people actually do something about Bitcoin. And this is a fantastic chance to talk to some people that are really doing amazing things. For those who don't know who Carl is, uh he's the guy behind Pick and Pay. Uh or him and his team are behind the pick and pay implementing Bitcoin payments in their system and a whole lot more. So Carl, great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us today.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks, Kevin. Nice to be here. Appreciate the invitation.
SPEAKER_00:Excellent, man. Always good to speak to a fellow South African entrepreneur in the space. Um, I think we are a different breed. So looking forward to the conversation. Um, Carl, before we get into sort of the nitty-gritties and current affairs and that, um, for listeners that aren't that familiar with your backstory, uh, why don't you just tell us a bit about yourself? You know, born and where were you born and bred, and and you know, how did you end up where you are today?
SPEAKER_01:I've been I was born in South Africa and I've I've stuck here um despite despite the odds. Um I I'm an engineer and a programmer. Um and about five years ago I had the opportunity of of working with someone who was uh instrumental in co-founding Luno. Um and he uh he kind of opened my mind to to the possibilities of of Bitcoin um as a as a mechanism of payment. So what happened was he he present actually, I mean my my journey with Bitcoin comes comes back a long way. Um and it has basically comes from getting excited about it multiple times, and then on repeatedly by being told by smart people that it's never gonna work, and um basically trusting their judgment over my own, which in each case the first time was in about 2014, and the second time was in about 2018. Uh, in each case, turned out to be bad, bad judgment on my part. Um, but um my co-founder Carl, who's um basically was the person who who I think finally and and forever convinced me that that this thing is is going to work, um, or at least convinced me to do the do the hard work myself and understand it properly. Um so we were working together, um and we had this opportunity as a little side project. Someone Carl had been involved a long time ago with with Pick and Pay, doing a an on-chain Bitcoin proof of concept um in about 2017. And I'm sure you can imagine how well that worked. Um, I mean it worked technically, um, but it was really expensive, and there was some, you know, slow, so kind of it never made it past the proof of concept stage. And so um Carl convinced the the some news still knew some of the picking pay guys, and and he'd after kind of opening my mind about the possibilities of lightning, I think he did the same to them. And so it started off as a very much a little technical experiment to see can can this thing even even be done. Um yeah, so so pick and pay had had QR payments at the time, um, mainly thanks to thanks to COVID. They implemented this contactless QR payment option so that people didn't have to physically touch touch keypads, they could they could perform a payment on their phone. Um so they had this cumin QR payment rail, and and the question was could we somehow graph that onto the lightning network? Um and and so the answer turned out to be well, yes. Um, we built this bridging app called Crypto QR. Um, and there's a story about the name that we can talk about later. And um it was really bad, but it but it worked. And I think that the rest of it sort of played out one step at a time after that.
SPEAKER_00:I actually used that uh crypto QR app. Um, I think I was in Pretoria at the time and I saw some news headline thing, probably on Twitter or something like that, that came through that said, hey, pick and pay have now enabled um Bitcoin payments, and they were doing it at a few test sites. And I think one of them was Minland Park Shopping Center, which was just down the road from where I lived. So I remember the first day I walked in there and I said to the person, how do I pay in Bitcoin for my groceries? And they looked at me like they had no idea. Um, and then I started digging around and eventually I I tried to I couldn't figure out how to pay. And then I I got hold of somebody at at your firm at Crypto Converts, and I it might have even been you, who knows? But I got this message to say, hey man, you got to download this app and then it'll kind of work fine. So I did my first payment. It was like kind of tingling, like you know, nerves on fire watching this little payment go through. It was quite quite amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it does, it does feel. I mean, the first it still sometimes feels like you're getting away with a bit of a crime when you walk into walk into pick and pay and you you pay with Bitcoin and you walk out with with real value with with goods. Um, it it does feel like you've done something that you that you somehow shouldn't have. Um so I think that's definitely part of the appeal. So the the crypto QR, the name of the app comes from, we didn't know what to call it. The first iteration was called Bolt. And um obviously once it got like any, you know, once it sort of saw the light of day, we realized Bolt was never going to work because that that name is trade blocked by so many other people. And so we were we're looking around for a name, and for some reason that we we still don't know to this day, we don't know who who in Pick and Pay did this, but someone made it so that when the till slip printed out, the tender, the payment tender was shown as crypto QR. So we thought, okay, well, I think we got our we've got our app name now. Yeah. Um I mean the app was the app was a good means to an end, um uh at the time. Um it's still it's still around and still it still actually serves a purpose for for a large variety. I mean, this is the this is the thing about lightning, right? Is is there's such an enormous ecosystem of different wallets and different um and some of the wallets, Blink, Aqua, the Breeze wallets, Albi, they've integrated our our scanner directly. So it's really nice now. You walk in and you scan the pick and pay QR code with that scanner directly. Um for the rest of the wallets, you can still use the bridging app. Hasn't seen an update for an embarrassingly long time now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, yeah, that I mean that integration is amazing. Uh so I've used um when I came back to South Africa recently, I I immediately spun up uh a Blink wallet and went running off to pick and pay. And it was so cool. It just yeah, I didn't have to open up the separate app and then scan and then you know connect my wallet or whatever I had to do. So it certainly like massively improved the uh user experience, just uh cutting out that one middle step and having it uh it programmed in there. So that is that is awesome to see. And I'm glad people are uh tying that in, especially in South Africa, um, to just make that user experience easier. I mean, none of those companies are head office in SA as far as I know, those wallets uh uh guards.
SPEAKER_01:No, I think it's you know it's it's indicative of maybe just what a big leap pick and pay took and just how how forward-thinking they were with with enabling this. I mean, this thing started as a little proof of concept. Can they do it technically? Um then they said, okay, sure, we can we can launch it in four stores. So we launched four stores initially. And the one was Stalinbosch, another one was Sedgefield, and the other one was Mossel Bay, and the last one was the on on-campus store in Cape Town. And so we ran it with these four stores for a while. Um and and I think we got we got surprisingly good traction there. Some of it was was fairly calculated. I mean, we we explicitly asked for Mossel Bay because of because of Ikazi, because of Bitcoin Ikazi, and we knew there was a community there. And I think there was a massive latent need in that community to be able to spend outside of their circular economy. They've got this nice circular economy going, but at the end of the day, being able to being able to um for the spaster shops to be able to go and restock with their Bitcoin and things like that was really useful. Um and in Sedgefield, there's actually a little like interesting little grassroots community of Bitcoiners here. Um and I also ended up basically just signing up a whole lot of of the of the local sort of Malawian community here for Bitcoin wallets and getting them set up and sending them some free sats. And so they all went and spent it at uh at the Sedgefield Pick and Pay. So we ended up getting pretty pretty decent traction just off those off those little stores. And then, yeah, I think you know, Pick and Pay really kind of committed to something special when they when they took it from from those that little that little niche group to okay, we're gonna round it out nationwide, we're gonna put our name behind this. Um, and I think that you know it really attracted a lot of its attention internationally. You know, now a year later, two years later, two years later, you see big headlines because Spar in Switzerland is enabling Bitcoin payments. And we go, oh, South Africa, South Africa's had that for two years at our second biggest retailer.
SPEAKER_00:That's yeah, there's an interesting thing about South Africa that we're a third world country, but sometimes we just leaprog um a few other of the more established, you know, sort of first world guys. Um I think you know, thinking back to it, I remember when cell phones first came out to South Africa, um, and and we had really great networks. I mean, they were put up almost overnight, MTN and Vodacom. Uh, and we had cutting-edge cell phone connectivity or the cellular towers were top-end. Um, I remember people from the US saying, wow man, you know, the signal quality here is great, and they couldn't believe it was so good. Uh, so I know mobile phones was one. Um, I think we also were the first country to do pay as you go for phones. Up until then, it was contract only. And uh some clever guy at one of the cell phone companies said, you know, obviously figured out there's a need for this. Let's not tie people to contracts that probably wouldn't qualify for them.
SPEAKER_01:So doing Vodacom at the moment around around the patent rights to that, if I remember correctly. I saw a thing recently about a a lawsuit between an ex-Vodacom employee who claims he invented prepaid airtime. Um, so yeah, there is definitely, I mean, there's this there's this thing that that Africa by basically just not just South Africa, but Africa kind of jumped over the whole fixed-line telephony era. We just went straight from nothing to cell phones. Um, and I've heard people say that maybe there's there's a similar analogy to how we use sort of what is our mechanism of digital payments. Do we go straight straight from, you know, instead of instead of going like cash, okay, banking apps, and then and then moving on beyond that, maybe we just deep straight over that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh, I mean, I've been in the US for a couple of years, and um man, their banking system is the strangest thing I've ever come across. I'm sure anyone that's traveled to the US has found the same thing. Um, but uh I just actually cannot understand how it's evolved the way it has, and they do seem to focus on completely the wrong thing. Like a great example is um I've got my local bank credit card loaded on my mobile phone, Apple Pay. So I go to tap and it gets declined. Um, so I have to pull out my physical card and use my card for the transaction. And this happens two or three times. Then eventually I get a call from the bank to say, hey, they're just doing a fraud check, make sure that it is, in fact, me and there's no issues. Um and what they don't seem to realize is for me to unlock the app on my phone to pay, it's a face lock, fingerprint, uh there's security around that. But they're declining that and they're letting a physical card payment go through. But in the US, there's no PIN number on any of your credit cards. So if I lose my credit card, anybody can do anything with it, but I can't pay on tap to pay. And I I think maybe credit cards have been around for a long time. So they think, oh, well, we know how to deal with credit cards, but this tap-to-pay thing is brand new. What are all the risks? How do we shut it down so it can't be abused? So there's this like strange disconnect. And I think you're right, South Africa has leapfrogged a lot of that stuff. It's amazing to see that.
SPEAKER_01:Um, there's there's this a friend of mine's a biologist, and he did a lot of research into what they call the the range-edge hypothesis, which is this idea that um uh evolution and adaptation happens the fastest at the edges of the habitable range. And I think you see a same this a similar thing with technology where the kind of the adoption curves of things are most rapid in the places where people are kind of pushing pushing the boundaries of of survival. As soon as you're too comfortable, then there's then there's no there's no pressure to to to change and to to embrace change. And I think embracing embracing new things like embracing taxpay or whatever is it's um it's scary and it's difficult. Like in this case, it's scary and difficult for the banks. Um but the and there but there's similarly there's no there's not enough sort of it's called a intrinsic pressure for that for that change to happen.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think you're right. It it works well enough, so why change it? Just leave it alone and we just keep on you know, off we go. Um so South Africa is great for that. Um so Cole, tell me um convert changing the name to Money Badger. What was the idea there? And there must be something more just behind the name change. So can you speak to speak to me about that?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it was just mostly a name change. Really? Um, a few other things that happened around the same time, but I think they were they were unrelated or not, you know, only coincidentally related. Um I mean the reality is you know that the initial name of our company was Crypto Convert, and the name, the app name was Crypto QR, and I've explained to you why. Um and the reality is um too many people have very strong emotionals, emotions about that that word crypto. Um, and interesting from both ends of the spectrum, banks hate the name. So try and get a bank account when your company is called crypto convert. Uh it's just it just triggers every red flag. I mean, we used to get um emails blocked by by companies just because our email address domains have got crypto in the in the in the domain. Um so yeah, sort of the the traditional side hates the name. Um bitcoiners hate that name, and we got called out about that quite hard on on many occasions. Um the reality is, you know, to be honest, we made that name up with not a lot of thought at a time when we thought, uh, we're doing this little experiment and let's see where it goes. So and like, oh, we need I guess we need a name. Okay, and she pulled something out of a hat. Um so yeah, that that was that was sort of the name change. We just got to a point where the the the pressure, the pain of not changing our name was greater than than the pain of of changing it. So um, I mean we having said that, we we really like the new the new name. Um I think it's it's uh it'd say more more indicative of of our philosophical alignment and and what we want to be than than the the previous one was. We did give this one a little bit a lot more thought. Um yeah, but I mean our our core ambition hasn't hasn't changed, right? We've always set out to this idea of um Bitcoin should be more than just a store of value, bitcoin should be money, bitcoin should be used every day um to make payments, to trade, to transact. Um being able to transact is being able to live. That's those two things are so so inherently coupled. So it it's great being able to store your money in a in an anti-inflationary, self-custodial, free, free environment. But if you can't use that in your everyday life, then how much how sound would that be?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 100%. Um, you know, those sort of the the three uses of money come to mind store of value, unit of account, meaning of exchange. Um and uh I mean the unit of account is still a ways out. Uh no one is yet selling their car for you know 0.5 bitcoin or whatever. But um the store of value, I think that's where the US is focused at the moment with their institutional stuff. All the big guys, the big money, they just hoovering up as much as they can because they know it's an appreciating asset. But the medium of exchange, I think that's where South Africa is heading. Uh, all these grassroots uh communities popping up. Obviously, pick and pay is not exactly a, I mean, they're like a major player. Um, but it comes down to you and I in the street looking to buy something, we can go into pick and pay and do that. Um, and I've always found that an interesting dynamic between um store of value units of accounts, this theory about, you know, commodity theory of money and emergent money. And there seems to be a debate what came first. Was it a was it something valuable first, or did it have value because somebody else would accept it? And I'm kind of in the latter camp a bit. Um nobody's nobody's gonna take this emergent money if they can't pass it on to the next person. And once people start realizing that they can pass this thing around and people want to accept it, they go, hey, well, I can actually start saving in this because if I have a lot of it, I can always find somebody to pass the excess on to. So I think I'm in your camp on that one that Bitcoin is money and it needs to be spent. And I think that's how we we get the the value. People will realize it's a store of value because so many other people want to use it as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you could I guess you could you could turn that you could turn that around equally because uh Yval Harari says says all these things arise because we have these common myths that we that we all believe in. And so and so I sometimes think, well, I mean, the reason the reason why I can't transact is also because someone else believes that they can use this thing to to store value. So I I'm I haven't I haven't made up my mind as to which side of that or that debate I want to jump into. But yeah, I mean you talked you know again, I think South Africa is pushing very hard on the on the transaction side. We're doing we're doing great leaps there. As you said, you know, in the US institutional adoption is focused very much around the it is an appreciating appreciating asset. Um but I think for the majority of South Africans that's that's the problem that they have is not how to how to store how to store their money, but how to get rid, I think, of of cash. We don't have a nice alternative to cash here. That's that's commonly accepted. And I think people yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so something you mentioned uh about the crypto name in your previous app, Crypto Convert, and uh getting some flack for that. Um you mentioned earlier offline, we were just quickly chatting about crypto versus Bitcoin payments and you know how that is happening. What are your thoughts there?
SPEAKER_01:Look, I think we are seeing a lot of okay. Let me go, let me go back to when we when we first enabled lightning at pick and pay. We got and got got I think roughly four categories of response from people when we told them, okay, we do lightning payments. And and the one was like, uh uh what? Uh how many bitcoins do you charge for a loaf of bread? type of question. So so there was that category, and then there was the well that that's nice, but I'm not gonna spend my Bitcoin, which is which is fairly common. Um and then we had the people who got it were going, okay, wow, this is this is a step change. This is this is something something special. So there was that. But then there was a big category of people who came to us and said, like, oh, why don't you accept Solana or Doge or Ripple or whatever, whatever, whatever. Um so so as as you know, we've we've now, I mean Lightning in South Africa is is very much a niche store. It's too small to sustain to sustain a a business, I think the kind of business we want to build. So and it's too small to attract retailers. So so you know, to get this thing going, you have you've got this chicken and egg. You need merchants accepting Bitcoin, you need people who are willing to spend Bitcoin. And so to get those merchants accepting Bitcoin, particularly the larger ones, you need to bring a big audience. And the reality is in South Africa, that big audience is Luna, Valor, Binance, it's kind of exchanges, exchange wallets, and it's it's a basket of currencies. So we've enabled that audience. Um and the good thing is the majority of people are still spending Bitcoin. Like so, so I think that that that side of Bitcoin is Bitcoin is definitely winning at the moment. Um but the other currencies are are non non-negligible. They they're still they're still there. Um so I think that I mean there's two things that drive this, right? So number one, where people keep their money, and the other one where and what is practical to spend. Like what can you easily spend? Um and so I think what we're seeing is we're seeing a lot of a lot of the first factor. Like there's a lot of people with keeping their money still in and and I'm you know having very strong beliefs around around their their coin or their their thing that they believe in. Um really I've had a few interesting, very interesting conversations with people about that sort of thing. Um I do think though that where where Bitcoin seems to be really doing super well is in terms of the kind of the the tech technology side of things, in terms of the mechanisms that it's enabling. And my personal belief for it around that is that all the other currencies tend to compromise in terms of some form of centralization. There's just less of a decentralized meritocracy around what you can build on top of it. Um and and I think you can see that if you look at the at the number of numbers at the at the rate of innovation that's happening on Bitcoin around like technology like Lightning emerging and LNURL and the massive explosion of different Lightning wallets that's that's emerged. So it's quite a long thread, but um crypto payments are happening, and um I do I personally believe it's it's a relatively transient phenomenon. I think the the thing that where where there is still some value is is in in stable coins, and I think I think people will see a lot of value in stable coins over the over the next while. I think there you there you're making this compromise, right? Of well, I'm willing to give up some um some autonomy, and I'm willing to give up some some centralization in favor of price stability. And so there's a there's a use case where I think that makes sense. Um yeah, I like the the rate rate of of change in technology is just is is difficult to compare. I mean I can't compare the the rate of innovation in the Bitcoin ecosystem versus versus almost any other.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that is, I mean, you said so much there, uh, and we could probably talk for hours just on that. But you know, I recently saw a tweet from um Vitalik uh talking about if he said the beauty about Bitcoin is in its simplicity and they need to bring more of that to Ethereum. And this tweet was, I mean, it was probably two weeks ago, maybe, and it was just doing the absolute rounds because there was a time when Bitcoin was seen as this old stodgy dinosaur that doesn't really do anything. So let's go build these other uh ecosystems where we can do cool stuff. Um, but the cool stuff hasn't seemed too materialized and you know things get complicated, and now there's this view hey, maybe Bitcoin was onto something. Um it's money, it's simple, it's easy to go. Um so I f I mean that sort of ties in with what you were saying. But I wanted to ask you, if you know, you're obviously working with the the bigger exchanges in the country and enabling their wallets. Um, are you finding that a lot of their clients still keep their money on exchanges? Is the idea of self-custody? Uh I how do your exchanges see that with their clients? Do they promote it? Like what's happening there?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I don't think I don't I don't want to speculate too much about how they how they view their clients and and that. I mean, I think in South Africa there there's legislation like the travel rule that's that's come into place now that that does make it more difficult or it adds some friction towards moving money from from an exchange. into a self-cust into self-custody. I think that what what what you see there is is indicative maybe of of how how early the sort of grassroots initiatives still are and and how how much education, how much work there is still is still to be done in this in this realm. I mean it's it it is amazing to me once you go outside of the this sort of hardcore Bitcoin communities how many people think that well Luna is where you keep your Bitcoin. And I don't I don't I wouldn't I wouldn't ascribe any blame to Luna around that. That's just humanity. Yeah so so I do think you know we we've spoken a lot about money badger but I do think the real story here is is guys like like the guys at VitSunce the guys at Ikazi the guys that are that are building these these grassroots communities and I think that what we're doing really is just in a way trying to play a supporting role by legitimizing Bitcoin and making it easier for them to go to to to coach someone and tell them like look you can you can trust this because you can go and spend it at pick and pay so so for us that's that's really how I see us playing in in that role that's the role we're playing in terms of in enabling that transition.
SPEAKER_00:So you've I mean you obviously pioneered the stuff with pick and pay that was fantastic.
SPEAKER_01:You've mentioned as we've all seen I think spa uh announcing that they're going to start accepting that uh has the spa message um has that raised any interest with you guys are you seeing an uptick in uh in in local retailers uh has the has the pick and pay experiments um shown anything to local retailers uh you obviously talk to retailers a lot uh because that's the service you offer you integrate into their point of sale system or you offer you know they can just do it standalone on a smartphone or a uh a tablet on that so so you're kind of in the call face as far as uh uh retail store adoption um how is that trend going um I think the last the last six months there's been a bit of a a definite shift for me and and I'm not sure whether the the origins of that are political or what what it's hard for me to pinpoint particular drivers there um but I mean we spent roughly the first year of of Money Badger having everyone tell us that that we're crazy um we spent roughly the second year having lots of people tell us that that um we're sort of naive um and now the conference conversation is is changing in the sense of we are we are now having quite serious conversations with um and and seeing a lot of interest at at many levels everything from like absolute grassroots retailers through to through to big enterprise so there's been a there's been a very distinct shift in the past past six or eight months which is very gratifying that is awesome um I mean that's so good to hear because sometimes you hear a big announcement and then it's sort of it raises interest and then it sort of goes quiet after a while and you don't know is the interest still there or is just the news cycle moved on and it's the next thing.
SPEAKER_00:You know here in the US uh there's a national franchise restaurant called the Steak and Shake and they've just enabled Bitcoin payments and they've done a great job. It's integrated into their point of sale um so you just stand there and you tap the screen place your order and they have a pay with Bitcoin button. And that has made such a wave in the local Bitcoin community here in Atlanta. And when I sort of mentioned to them hey we've got pick and pay in South Africa that have done it and that's cool and you know there's over 2000 pick and pay stores well this American franchise is so I think they're just under 500. So um but the level of interest here is like amazing. People are loving this. I mean one guy said he's going to fly anywhere as long as he can land and get a stake and shake you know that's uh how excited they are to spend their Bitcoin. And I've always believed that you have two stacks. One is your savings stack and the other one is your spending stack the money that you would have spent at pick and pay buying your groceries anyway had you swiped your card. Well now you just buy some Bitcoin and you go and spend that um so I I'm in I'm in you know we spoke earlier about store of value or medium of exchange uh I do both chicken or egg I just take care of both of those areas and I think that's that's a great way to see it.
SPEAKER_01:Um Carl in terms of um missed opportunities uh is there something you think showed great promise and has faded that you wish was still around um that's a good question I think I think maybe the the the missed opportunity was was in a way um around 20 2017 with the first the first great bitcoin hype I was thinking that that era that was the first that was the first time when people asked me whether they should be you know like random people ask you like do you think I should buy Bitcoin? And and around that time a lot of people sort of jumped onto that onto that hype and we saw in South Africa we saw a few a few people implementing payments or testing out Bitcoin payments um and using on-chain payments for it and and the the technology simply wasn't ready right because everyone was doing it like on-chain it was all they want uh um and and so they caused either they didn't go to pilot or they would go to production or they went to production kind of caused themselves a lot of operational pain. And unfortunately I think that sort of poisoned the well a little bit in terms of there's a lot of people with with scar tissue out there around this idea that like oh Bitcoin payments equals support calls. And so so a very big part of what we're doing right now is to is to reassure is to actually demonstrate the fact that well you know the technology has just moved on completely from from where it was five years ago. So I think that's I wouldn't say I don't know if it's a missed opportunity but it it is in a way right because there's a missed opportunity to to do those things for the first time and do them well.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Um so then leading on from that in terms of the next big opportunity um you know you were saying how lightning just really made Bitcoin payments feasible at least as far as a commercial use case goes um do you think lightning payments is is it or do you think that there is something else I don't know if you want to call it a a layer three or you know there's where people talk about ARC which is I think a proof of concept stage at the moment as well but do you think there's something else that's coming that's going to now maybe not leapfrog but just really open things up or do you think lightning is doing a fantastic job right now so it's a it's a very good question.
SPEAKER_01:I mean I think lightning works extremely well when it works um what you do see though is that at the moment the nature of lightning and and sort of the inherent underlying technology means that there's a there's a bit of a dynamic tension between lightning and self-custody and anyone who's ever set up their own lightning node and run it will will be aware of just how how much effort goes into that. And so what you see is that a lot of the lightning wallets that are successful are doing that in a in a custodial in a custodial um model. And so unfortunately the reality is then that lightning is pushing many people towards towards custodial solutions again just because it's such a it is quite a lot of effort putting setting up a proper self-custody lightning wallet. So I mean going back to your your point about money earlier right and it's like you've got a you've got a saving stack and you've got a spending stack but I mean that's that's how you work with money right you don't you don't have your your investments even in a in a fiat sense you wouldn't conflate your investments with your with your credit card and well I know some people connect their credit card to their home loan it sounds like a horrendous idea.
SPEAKER_00:What could possibly go wrong?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah um so so even even that model I think is is is probably fine in the sense of you move things to to a custodial thing where it's convenient to spend but I personally would would love to see someone come up with with a solution to that particular particular problem.
SPEAKER_00:I think that that will be a a big change for the for the community like an easy to onboard self-custody solution that's also easy to spend from yeah I think that is uh you know you think about things like fediments uh I think popularized by Feddy the app that's uh uh going out there and there is also that that level of trust that they rely on uh with the the guardians of the the fedament um and I kind of do understand the the I mean the rationale there is almost based on your rural community collective bank or stock fail or whatever the case may be um so you know it's it seems to work and it works well um in places that are using it but I suppose it is you are now trusting again and that whole Bitcoin uh you know uh don't trust verify uh is still strong. So I suppose the the ultimate would be when you can get these convenient solutions at full custody yourself, uh how we get there I suppose is still going to take a lot of thinking. In terms of updates to Bitcoin itself, you know there's always these uh Bitcoin improvements proposals, um covenants and CTV and all these things. As someone who is working with the existing stack that we have at the moment how do you feel about changes to to the Bitcoin protocol and how that would affect your your products that you've built within the existing rules if the rules change or do you see it as not the rules changing but maybe just an add-on or do you feel it's like a rule change now?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah I I think I I'd be weary to use the word Bitcoin and rules in in the same in the same sentence right because ultimately there is there's no one making and that's that's what I love about this thing is no one's no one's making the rules I mean you do have in in the reality you do have guys like Bitcoin core that probably have disproportional um influence in the community but ultimately they only have that influence because because the community it allows them to do so. So so I think that that is both you know that that to me is is Bitcoin's greatest strength is the fact that it it can just evolve and it can involve it evolve in multiple competing directions at the same time and and the best the best solution will typically win out. I mean it's happened multiple times in the past in the past um and and I think it will it will continue to happen you know it mimics it mimics evolution right yeah and I think we sorry I interrupted you there go for it no so so for me it's um this is this is the way it it should be um and maybe I mean if it does seem it seems implausible that Bitcoin will will evolve in a direction that makes us you know makes it difficult for us or makes makes us obsolete I mean certainly um you know things things like ordinals pop up and like chain act on-chain activity gets really expensive and that does have some downstream impact on us um but but I think there's not not many things that that will that will hurt us a lot um and I'm I'm I mean I'm just sort of really interested to see where this where this thing goes. But and and and frankly if if that happens and if something makes us completely obsolete then as far as I'm concerned well then probably our job is done then.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah I mean that's that's a a a great way to see it. I think you mentioned earlier about this uh organic uh the activity in organisms happens in the fringe cases and I mean Bitcoin is really a fringe case at the right now and lightning probably more so and retail adoption even further out on the edge and uh so I mean it's it's an exciting space exciting times and things are changing uh quite rapidly um and coming back to the tension between and when I said rules earlier I just meant within the guidelines of the protocol at the moment you know how it's how the code is written you know it's either valid transaction or it's not um but we see something like the up return debate going on at the moment about uh uh and that's affecting uh Bitcoin core as you said earlier you know they they're quite successful because what they're doing most people seem to like and now there's a some people are saying well I don't quite like what you're doing and the great thing is they have an alternative you know they can just use a different client and off they go. So that is amazing. I don't really think there's much else I can think of where you have that level of use it, don't use it, but you can continue to operate without taking on anything else that someone's trying to not say that they're forcing it down but someone thinks this is a good idea and you disagree and and it's not going to affect you to to not implement their idea. I think it's super cool. Carl I the one question I always want to ask everybody is there aha moments and I do try and do that at the beginning but I felt we've covered so much right now it's almost a wasted question but I still wanted to ask it because you mentioned you had a 2014 looked at Bitcoin and some smart guy said no and then 20 I think 17 or 2018 again. So you've obviously looked at it you you had made up or you were deciding um someone convinced you otherwise rightly wrongly and um what finally flicked the switch in your mind um yeah I can thank I can thank Carl for that my my partner um he he gave a little Petra Kusha presentation that I that I watched about where he showed how how you can buy use Bitcoin to buy coffee now.
SPEAKER_01:And I mean I think that goes that goes back to you read you read the Bitcoin white paper for the first time you go oh this is an electronic peer-to-peer cash and you think that's fantastic ultimately I'm I'm more interested in transacting than in than in storing um you know as as a as the thing that I want to drive so when I got when we got to the point where everyone was just storing Bitcoin I thought this is the most successful failure in history because of trillion dollar market cap or whatever but no one was doing what was what it says on the box.
SPEAKER_00:And then Carl said well actually guess what it's it's evolved and and so that for me was was probably the the aha moment it's like okay it's it has it has kind of gone full circle back to back to what it was designed to do in the initially yeah that's that's amazing uh and I you echo what so many people I've spoken to have said and it's it's always some combination of seeing their very first Bitcoin transaction or or seeing it in action um it's one thing to read something it's something else to see it play with it it actually works and then suddenly that light bulb moment goes on. Cole we are basically we are sort of up on time at the moment um how do people stay in touch with you your company money badger where do they stay up to date with what you guys are doing? Twitter's probably the best best place where um money badger's at a cool um have you got anything on uh on nostr at all um I know it's uh not as popular as Twitter but um is that you you don't have a presence there no not really okay so Twitter is the place to see you and hear what you guys are up to.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome man. Carl thank you for your time uh this has been great. I loved hearing the story and I'm really interested in in where you think things are going and thanks to all the work you guys do. I mean the the pick and pay thing is it still puts a smile on my face every time I walk into a pick and pay store and uh that's thanks to you guys.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks Kevin. It's glad glad to hear people are using it.
SPEAKER_00:It is awesome. Thank you man have a great day and I look forward to seeing you again soon yes thanks Kevin have a good day