Straight, No Chaser
Understanding Freedom through Money, Technology, Economics and Philosophy
Straight, No Chaser
Monthly Round Up 3: Silent Rails, Loud Implications
The mood swings of the market don’t define the mission—and this roundtable proves it. We swap war stories from live demos and travel to Lugano with an update on a coastal Bitcoin hub in South Africa, then dive straight into the most charged question of the moment: what really happens when crypto dollars move on Bitcoin rails via Lightning and RGB? There’s clear utility for cross-border payments and the global south, but also a live risk of compliance creep, node capture, and cultural drift away from self-sovereign money. We unpack the geopolitics, from Washington’s embrace of Tether as an inflation export and Treasury buyer to the EU’s CBDC-first strategy, and ask what builders should assume about state incentives and surveillance.
Privacy gets a practical boost with Sparrow’s silent payments—clean, reusable addresses that still protect receivers on-chain. We compare use-cases with BTC Pay Server, celebrate how Shamrock and Aqua lower the bar for merchant setups, and share the simple tactics that convert sceptics: reimbursements over Blink at a Bootlegger meetup, real coffee paid with real sats, and the “green check” that beats any debate. On the flip side, we call out a local bank app’s contact-grab “feature” and talk about why spam thrives despite privacy laws. The fix we want to see? Pay-to-message and pay-to-call with sats—economic friction that stops bots without forcing IDs.
The highlight might be the momentum on the ground in South Africa: Money Badger’s integrations lighting up hundreds of thousands of merchant endpoints, community groups testing daily, and a treasure hunt that’s almost too easy because you can pay with Bitcoin nearly everywhere. It’s adoption the grassroots way—bottom-up, permissionless, and practical. We close with clear takeaways: stack sats, master your craft, and build tools that keep people private by default. If money routes shape power, then making Bitcoin the easiest way to move value—without gatekeepers—is how we win. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a sanity check after the selloff, and leave a review with your take on stablecoins over Lightning.
https://x.com/BitcoinEkasi
https://x.com/OKIN_17
https://x.com/OrangeSaaS
https://bitcoinonly.io/
https://www.useorange.com/
https://btcpayserver.org/
https://btcpay386617.lndyn.com/login?ReturnUrl=%2F
Links:
www.bitcoinforbusiness.io
X: @gavingre
X: @BTC_4_Biz
Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net
NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta
Welcome everybody to the Straight No Chaser Podcast. This is the show where we talk about human freedom through money, technology, economics, and philosophy. Today is episode three of our monthly roundtable. We have a full house today, everybody's on board, and we have a great chat. We do talk a bit more about the technology side of things in Bitcoin at the moment, and we cover topics such as Sparrow Wallet launching silent payments in their latest update. We talk about stable coins being sent over the Bitcoin or Lightning Network. We also chat a little bit about some interesting things in South Africa. Discovery Bank app has got some weird thing that it does with contacts. We also talk about Money Badger and the amazing work that they're doing, as well as the BTC Pay Server guys. So good chat all round. I know you guys will enjoy this one.
SPEAKER_01:It hasn't. Wait, it really hasn't. We've we've gotten twice uh warnings that it's going to be raining from central to northern Namibia. And everybody was like, bro, you said that last week and it was like a heat wave. Like you got it completely wrong.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, when last you guys have rain in Namibia, like 1932.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was the last time that like South African meat tasted good, right? Like when you guys had good bullet on around that time.
SPEAKER_02:That's a shame.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but yeah, Ricky, you want to go first with what's been going on? Uh we're gonna do it because on my screen you're like the clockwise person that should be talking.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, things are good, super busy with work. Um, Orange is going really well at the moment. Um, so we're really busy there. And then besides that, preparing for the Plan B Lugano conference that Harman and I are going to uh on Sunday, we fly out. So uh we got presentations there, so yeah, busy prepping all of that. Um yeah, otherwise life is good, man.
SPEAKER_04:Can you give us a quick highlight on your presentation? Just uh uh overview.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so um I'm gonna be presenting orange at Plan B in Logana. So we'll be just explaining you know what orange is, um, where we've come to since our last conference appearance, which was at adopting Bitcoin at Cape Town earlier in the year, in January. So we'll be presenting and doing live demos again. Um so yeah, that's gonna be that's gonna be fun. Hopefully things don't break while we do the live demo. Um, and we hope to showcase some new rails that we've been working on. Uh, we've got two new rails which we're hopeful to be able to show um at the conference for the first time. So that'll be exciting. Um, if those land and if if if if the live demos work well, then uh we should be aware of the races. If they don't, it could it could be bad. So fingers crossed.
SPEAKER_04:Your side, what's been happening?
SPEAKER_03:Um I mean I spent a bit of time with Oaken recently, not in Namibia or South Africa. We were in Nashville. Um and uh I landed landed back a couple of days ago, and I'll be flying again in a few days with Ricky to to Lugano. Um I won't be I won't be presenting that, I'll be on a panel. Um But I'll be I'll be hounding I'll be hounding people to try and um to try and drum up some support for our our big construction project that's starting in uh hopefully starting in February, March 2026, uh depending on on local government. Uh we've been coming closer and closer, small one small bureaucratic step at a time. Uh we've been coming closer to a point where we can actually purchase the land. Um and we'll probably be able to do that before the end of the year. And uh it's taken longer than anticipated, but uh we did get it for a very, very good price. Um we'll end up paying uh a hundred thousand Rand. Uh what's that? Uh six six thousand dollars um for a four thousand four four and a half thousand square meter uh plot um that has one of the best views I've ever seen. Um it's got uh it's got a 180-degree view of the ocean and um yeah, it's it's on, I mean there's there's photos of it on the website. So if you're curious, you can go look at it and hopefully hopefully we'll start start building early next year. We have we have the funding currently to build about a third of what we want to build. Um uh if we want to build the remaining two-thirds, we have to raise more funds. But even if we don't, that's fine. Uh if we only build a third, that's already two or three times bigger than what we have at the moment. So um it'll be a huge improvement even if we don't raise any additional funding. But obviously, we'd like to build the entire thing and ultimately uh ultimately turn this into a sort of a hub for people to use as an event space. Um it'll be quite a unique event space because it'll be it'll be in the midst of a Bitcoin circular economy. So you know, we won't be able to host huge events, um anything up to like a hundred people at a time maximum. Um but like for for companies, for summits, for whatever you want to do, it'll be it'll be a little different from going to a normal event space. You know, you'll you'll be able to to talk about Bitcoin and and uh and plan the revolution from within a sort of a revolutionary space, if if that makes sense, rather than going to some normal fiat venue where the people that run the venue don't know what the hell you're talking about when you when you're trying to uh talk to them about Bitcoin. So that's that's the long-term goal. We've been working on this for a year and a half, and it's getting to a point now where we're we're very close to taking taking that first big step, which is to purchase purchase the land from the local government. If it was a private purchase, it would have been a lot easier, but way more expensive. So we went through the extra hassle of dealing with the bureaucratic process so we can get the land at a at a steep, steep discount.
SPEAKER_04:That sounds incredible, man. Awesome. Good luck with that. And we'll certainly keep uh keep posting uh the social media feeds and updates on that, and we'll keep well, I'll certainly keep reposting and sharing as much as I can.
SPEAKER_01:Nicolai, so from my side, yeah, I was with Herman for like a great week of uh amazing food being overfed like continuously in Nashville. Um it was it was great to meet with the developers, the activists, you know, everybody again, and for meeting with new people for the first time. Um there's always the the one thing of these Bitcoin summits and and and conferences is you get the chance to actually meet some of these people that you've been speaking with for like five years, but you've never met in person. You know, you were just speaking to a numb, and now you met the numb, and then you're like, hey, what what can we do? And what what can be so um yeah, recently just came back, not going to Lugano with these guys. I don't know how Herman does it some of the times. It's like you know, I don't I don't have kids and and a wife and that I have to come back and leave again, you know. Like I just come back to my studio basically. So it's it's not uh it's not as taxing for me as it is for him, but um, yeah, we're we're back to full force in Namibia as per usual. Um everybody's been calling up asking when I'm back, and now that I'm back, it's just meetings. I'm actually right at 12, or like uh yeah, at the top of the hour, I have to go and um help a new place that wants to accept Bitcoin. They didn't know that they were allowed to. So I randomly got in there yesterday. A friend said, let's see if they have drinks here. And uh yeah, so we got places coming back online. Um, media houses are starting to call about Bitcoin. I think a lot of that also hinges off of uh some of the things that Trump has been saying and what happened last week Friday. Um yeah, so there's a lot of things in the space I think we we have time to discuss. Um a lot of new hodlers were invented or or birthed last weekend. So um I'm looking forward to the convert.
SPEAKER_04:Sweet, man. That sounds awesome. Um, yeah, last Friday, bloodbath, uh bloodbath in the streets or bloodbath in the interweb. So I I don't know how you describe it, but uh pretty interesting times uh ahead. Um uh anyone's phone start pinging a bit more on uh Friday morning and someone started saying what something's going on, what the hell?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so I am in a WhatsApp group that a friend of mine added me to with all his his degenerate trading mates. So I don't trade anymore for I don't know, eight years now. But um I'm in this group with these guys and they all got wrecked. Wrecked, wrecked, wrecked. There's a weeping and a wailing and a gnashing of teeth in that group. I was all trading on leverage, and they just all got margin called, their stop losses got knocked out, and they were just got absolutely wrecked. So in the group itself, I'm seeing guys being like, fuck this, I'm done. I'm DCA ing only at spot now. Money just DCAs Bitcoin, they're done with trading, it's manipulated, it's rigged. I was like, yeah, it is, idiots. That's exactly what happens. So yeah, funny. Oh, fire alarm.
SPEAKER_04:Hopefully, it's not a real fire, and hopefully it's not your house.
SPEAKER_05:No, just an office I ran, so it can burn down. But yeah, uh I'll see if I need to evacuate or not.
SPEAKER_04:So as far as my side goes, uh, I mean, I'm not uh a big Bitcoin OG, but I was in Stanenbosch uh like a week ago uh for that Stenenbosch Bitcoin Symposium. Uh Ricky, I got to meet your mate, uh your sidekick over there. Um embarrassingly now at my age, I've just forgotten his first name. So uh, dude with dark curly hair in a cap. That's as best as I can describe him. Um but yeah, it happens happens to the best of us. We forget things, it's all right. I think I forgot to take one of my 20 pills this morning, so I'm slipping names are slipping soon. Um, but no, seriously, um, yeah, he was super uh a great speaker. It was like super cool hearing him talk. Uh obviously clearly knowledgeable on the whole topic, payments, how they work, and he was fielding questions. Uh it was super cool. So very informative. Great to be there. Um, yeah, I'm uh I'm gonna try and get to my first uh adopting Bitcoin in Jan. Uh I've never been. Uh so this will be my first, and hopefully catch a beer with you guys while we're there. Um, any smoke there, Ricky, or any flames? Or you fine? Um, I just asked and they said we don't know.
SPEAKER_05:So very, very laissez-faire about their approach to fire alarms here at this building.
SPEAKER_04:It reminds me of those old uh weather app things that's like a rock on a chain. I don't know if you've seen them. They had one at Tiffendale Ski Resort, and they said when the rock is moving, then it's windy. Uh when the rock is wet, it's raining. So um when there's smoke and fire, then we have a problem.
SPEAKER_01:I like the way those guys were thinking. Practical, practical.
SPEAKER_04:Physics, man. You just can't beat it. You know, stuff the algorithm, just physics, man. Physics. But awesome guys, nice to have you here. Um, so uh just thought we'd quickly chat about some tech stuff. Uh, we we normally go politics, economics, and that sort of thing first. But Nikolai, I know you've been chomping at the bit. You you've got some tech in your head that you just need to talk about. Um, so uh I just punched a couple of things out here. Um something interesting that came up, uh, first RGB asset swap over Lightning Mainnet uh by someone called Collider Swap. Uh so it looks like it's the first real-world live test of an asset. I think they called it uh it was basically USDT. Uh they called it T USDT uh that went across. Um that's all I know. Um has anyone got a comment on this? Is this the next wave of um shit coinery or is this the next wave of mass adoption? Is this when the global south becomes like a superpower because the global south seems to run on USDT? What are your thoughts?
SPEAKER_03:Don't say that too quickly. TUSDT.
SPEAKER_05:So if I can jump in on this, so this is something that's super relevant to us at Orange, actually. Um, so what we're doing in Orange is we're building a lightning settlement system that connects to on and off ramps all around the world. So it's like fiat on and off ramps. So for example, Nigeria, South Africa, you've got an on-ramp in Nigeria and off-ramp in South Africa, so you can send Naira from Nigeria, it converts into SATS and then gets sent to South Africa and then off-ramps into Rams, right? So what we're doing is building all these on and off ramps into our into our system. And so stable coins are just another on-ramp, right? So it's just another mechanism for people to send money in. Um, and so lightning is like the settlement rail for us. So stable coins on lightning remove the need for us to dick around with other stablecoin chains like Solana and Polygon and Cardano and Ethereum and all that guy. So it's very interesting for us to see this happen um because it means that we will won't have to change our infrastructure and our lightning service providers won't have to change the infrastructure. It's still you're still running lightning nodes, etc. So that becomes super interesting um to see how that plays out. We've been watching this for about a year now, um, quite attentively to see what happens. Um, as far as I know, this is not the first test. It might be the first test with RGB, um, but there have been other tests happening. It's already live on on Mainnet um for the past two months or so. So there has been some testing going on. We're waiting to see robust testing before we we um look to integrate. But basically, the takeaway would be that someone could then uh you could then settle USD stablecoin on the Lightning Network, um, which is which is great. And it that kills all stablecoin chains because the main use case for stablecoin chains, the blockchains, is stablecoin settlements. I call them stablecoin chains. The main use case for Ethereum and Solana and Polygon and Tron is stablecoin settlement, right? That's their that's the thing they use for. Um so this will kill all of those because lightning is far more efficient than any of those chains. You got instant settlement and at essentially super, super low cost, right? Um, so you don't have to do proof of stake only that card. So that kills those chains, in my opinion. However, you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you. What happens aside from our business interest with orange, but like what happens when you put stable coins on lightning? Now you've let the abyss into your network. Um, so I'm not technically clued up enough to know like um if it can cause any real issues. From uh my base understanding is that like, look, you still settle SATS across the network, no problem. The concern you have with the stablecoin thing is it might they might gobble up a large amount of like um activity on the chain, and then you've got like let's say more activity settling stable coins than you have settling Bitcoin or SATS. How what does that do to your lightning network operations? Like, what does that do to your node operators? Um, do you end up with this weird system where node operators get get captured by like KYC requirements for stable coins? Because that's look, stable coins are CBDCs, you know, um, in my opinion. So what happens then to your lightning nodes? Uh yeah, question, many questions I have around that. I don't know, Nikolai, maybe you know a bit more about this stuff, but that's a potential issue I see on the road.
SPEAKER_01:I have opinions rather than let's not call it knowledge, let's call it opinions, right? In my opinion is uh firstly, why do why do we have stable coins? Why, why, why was Bitcoin created, right?
SPEAKER_05:We have said we can the US government needs to export the inflation. That's why we have stable coins.
SPEAKER_01:And and and and and we decided we want this to also exist on the system that was supposed to be separate from this entire thing, right? But my thing is this firstly, I don't like calling them stable coins because they are stable in what way, right? A lot of them have lost takings before. Um, and what happens? I've always said, what happens if the US dollar fails and you have people in this USDT stable coin instead of in Bitcoin? Did you help them? Did you get, you know, help them get sovereignty and all that? No. You just got them into another debt bubble that now is even worse. Um, and and but while that said, there's also a bit that we have to acknowledge or or or think about. Like the whole thing of Bitcoin was oh, don't worry about these shit coins and altcoins or whatever. Everything, Bitcoin will swallow everything, all roads lead back to Bitcoin. Now we're angry that people want to create shit coins on top of Bitcoin. When we said we all of that stuff's gonna come to Bitcoin, we've been saying it for years, right? So the thing is, what do we really want here? Do we want Bitcoin and 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 shit coins out there that people are gambling with and they're used as TOX tokens and gambling and they're in their own thing? Or are we saying, hey, here is a system that was created that you can literally use to do almost anything on? You can build anything on layers, right? Again, we're not saying you must do everything on layer one or layer two, which would be like you could build layer three, fours for all of these different things. And that's I think what's going to happen. But stable coins is a distraction, right? In the sense I agree with Ricky, it's a CBDC, it's a central bank digital currency where you have a central entity that is now moving its quote-unquote power um throughout the world further than what it would have maybe gone, right? Again, I cannot buy something with US dollars in the Mobile. If I hold US dollars and I try to purchase something that is illegal, I can go to jail for that. But all of a sudden I can use a USDT stable coin, right? For government's view, also, that's a bit of a what are you guys trying to do? This is not Bitcoin. Now, if we're also again saying, okay, we're gonna bring stable coins on top of Bitcoin itself or lightning bitcoin, that starts asking again, regulators start asking more questions. I would rather everybody do this on liquid, right? Whatever tokens you want to do, do it on the liquid chain, do it on the side chain. No problem with people. I don't understand why they don't want to. The blocks like confirm way faster, the fees are way less. Like, why not just move everything there and actually do it? Now, RGP is a different protocol, like it's it's like you know, another, I think it's another sidechain as well, uh, or a layer three. I can't remember exactly how they were building it out. But again, I would say we have tools to do some of these things in a non-obtrusive way, a way that doesn't invite more oversight, you know, um to Bitcoin in a certain sense. Um, and I think we're just not we're not looking at any of that.
SPEAKER_02:We're just playing around with all the other Ethereum-based and tether-based and woo-hoos based, and uh, I don't know if it's really worth it.
SPEAKER_04:Do you think that there's a likelihood that guys will people are used to stable coins? Uh, they want the stable coins, um, so they want to transact in that, and they want so once it starts running on Lightning or Bitcoin, um, do you think the penny will drop after a while that the guys will say, hey man, you know, this thing is actually running on Bitcoin, why don't I just skip the buy the stablecoin step and just buy the Bitcoin and send it instead of um extra layer of friction? Or do you think the fact that it's uh the user doesn't know it's on Bitcoin Rails actually obfuscates? Uh kind of twist a word there. Um, so they don't even know that it's on Bitcoin, they may not make the connection. I could just skip this um chitcoin step and just go straight to Bitcoin.
SPEAKER_01:In my opinion, the jump from somebody starting at something to move to something else all of a sudden, I don't see it happening for 99% of the people that you're introducing. Here's an example: get them to download one wallet, then try to get them to download a second wallet. They're like, why do I need a second wallet? I already have this wallet. Why didn't you just give me the second wallet from the beginning? Like all of that starts coming. Like, people want ease. They want, they don't want complicated, I gotta do 25 steps. They're like, just tell me where I buy the Bitcoin, where I put the Bitcoin. Now, if you're giving them USDT and saying, hey, we're gonna get to Bitcoin, but you should use this because it's easy to transact in, they're never gonna get to the step of actually saying, Let me go buy Bitcoin. Because they're like, oh, USDT is just as great. You've shown them that there's apparently a second best, where there is no second best, right? They're not getting to the actual Bitcoin. And this is the same thing as ETFs. It's people that have fiduciary media, right? The representation of money, things like credit cards, it's not actually money, but people think it's money, it's a representation of that. Now, what we're doing here is trying to show people a representation of Bitcoin. Instead of them owning the Bitcoin that they have the right to and today can do, we're telling them put that off and rather get this other asset, right, that makes things easy for you right now. Whereas lightning is easy, it's just people don't want to talk about lightning. They're like, again, they don't get paid. Like, what does Tether make out of talking about lightning? They don't make money. Then you why do you exist? Then I don't need you. You were talking about being fast and what why am I so? It's about why what do we want when we speak to people about orange pulling, so quote unquote, or whatever. Like, what is the goal here? Is it to give them financial freedom or is it to get them a new master? Because those are not the same thing, right? Just changing the king isn't like stopping the war or whatever.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think we should be calling them stable coins at all.
SPEAKER_03:Uh, they are crypto dollars. Um and I look forward to the day where the USDT market cap uh exceeds the market cap of the uh the the native token of the blockchain that it's that it's living on. It's going to be a glorious, a glorious, uh almost as glorious as what happened this past weekend. It's just amazing to see some of these shit coins uh tank by like 60% or 70% and uh to see the Bitcoin market cap dominance go up. Because at the end of the day, there's no there's no real there's no real demand for these things. It's people speculating, trying to make a quick buck at the end of the day. Um if there was a real demand for these things, they wouldn't have crashed by by 70% in some cases, even more than that. Um so yeah, they are stable, they are stable chains because the only reason the only reason they're there is because of stable coins. Um, but I I I completely agree with with what both of these guys said, and I I am I am wary of these things coming onto Bitcoin because it's it it is gonna it is gonna maybe, although then again, I mean I don't know, regulators and and governments are already paying so much attention, it's it's unlikely that you can attract more attention than what you already are attracting. But yeah, then again, I'm I'm very, very wary. I'm not uh I'm not I'm not in the camp of um of I don't know what a good name for this camp is, but I think it's summarized quite well by the the the the the Las Vegas uh uh uh conference vibe that I attended earlier this year, where it's kind of like to it it seems like everybody there is just like just cheering on the the uh the the sort of support that they're getting from from the Trump White House and all his um all these buddies. And I'm I'm very, very wary of this because I I don't I don't trust those people uh for for one minute. They'll say what you want them to say, um and as soon as it's no longer convenient for them, they'll change their tune. So I don't know, dollars on lightning, yeah, sure, I guess it's I guess it's useful. Um but I don't I don't think it's gonna actually bring more people into Bitcoin. People don't care how things work, they just want it to work. And if dollars go from point A to point B, they're not gonna care how it gets there. I don't know, not the average person. To me, it's interesting, and I'll pay attention to how it gets from point A to B, but 95% of people don't care how it gets from A to B.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I I agree with Aramra. 95% of people don't care, but it's the 5% of people that change the world. The 95% actually don't matter, you know, like the the the average Joe, you know, um who's not paying attention doesn't really change the world. Um the thing that I I would implore everyone to go listen to Whitney Webb and her view on Tether Um and what's happening there. I'm not necessarily saying I agree with everything she's saying, but it's very good to get here a dissenting opinion um on what on what uh she thinks is happening there. Um the other thing that I think is very interesting is that Tether is being embraced by the US government in a massive way. Um this was not the case under the Biden administration. And when Trump came into power, there was a massive, massive policy shift in terms of embracing Tether specifically. Um USDC to a lesser degree, but those are the two kind of USD stable coins that have been embraced big time by the by the government. And I see I was just on Tether's website, they have launched a thing called USAT. Tether unveils USAT, it's planned US regulated dollar-backed stable coin. Right. So this is probably some kind of domestic dollar that they're producing, a domestic crypto dollar. And tether might be the offshore dollar. And the reason why the personally, I think the US government is embracing tether so much and stablecoin so much is because they realize this is the best way for them to export their inflation. So there's two things that they need to they need to do in the in the US administration, regardless of who's president. The one thing they need to do is they need to export dollars so they can export the inflation. Because if the inflation stays at home, if all the dollars stay at home, the inflation rate in America will be like 100%, um, at least. And there will be blood on the streets and there'll be pitchforks and tired feathers, and everything will come crumbling down. And you've got 300 million guns in America. So they need to keep that inflation offshore as much as possible. So previously they've done that via you know um dollarizing other countries, um, collapsing their economies, whether it's on purpose or not. But then those countries end up becoming dollarized, but they don't have control of their monetary policy. So, like El Salvador, for example, is dollarized. They use the US dollar as their own currency, but they have no control of the monetary policy. It's set by America, right? So the new dollars that are created are in circulation affects them. So they experience inflation because of the monetary inflation, right? The amount of dollars that are floating around the whole world. Um, and so what they've done with Tether is they've made it much, much, much easier and more efficient to export those dollars now. And Tether is the number five buyer of US treasuries in the world, competing with nation states, like it owns it owns more US treasuries than most other countries combined. Um, and sure, there might be short-term treasuries, they're three-month uh T-bills, you know. So um, and then a lot of that's held in in Bitcoin as well. But the point being they are a buyer of US debt, and this is why the US government, the present um administration is so stoked about it. A, they can export their inflation, b, they have a buyer of their bonds because you might you guys might be aware China and Russia have been dumping US bonds massively. China specifically, Russia dumped them a long time ago, China is is offloading, and as the trade wars heat up and America, the American empire goes full turbo while it's in its death throes, um, you're gonna see more and more countries offloading US debt. So they need to find buyers, guaranteed buyers of debt. And so that, in my opinion, is what's going on. What's really interesting is that the Eurozone is not pursuing the same strategy, and that might be because the European politicians are functionally retarded, but you know, there might be other reasons for it too. But the in the Eurozone, they are not pursuing a Euro stable coin, they are pursuing a digital euro. Now they're going full C B D C. Whereas in America, they in classic American fashion they bring in a contractor to do it, whereas in classic communist fashion in Europe, they do it in House, right? So this is the two different approaches they're taking here. But the European Union is a geopolitical entity, it's not just a trading block, you know, it's become much, much more insidious than that. Um, and so they need buyers of European bonds as well. Um, but this is why I say they might be retarded because the way they're going about it is is terrible. Germany has removed their debt break, and that's the largest economy, the most stable economy in the Eurozone. Um, and they typically are the people, you know, if you're gonna buy, if you're gonna buy debt, you know, a grade European debt, you're gonna buy German debt. But now, yeah, Germany is coming apart at the seams, they remove the debt break, they're increasing their debt to GDP ratio. Bottom line, what does this mean for the Euro? Um, nothing good, right? Who's gonna who's gonna buy the euro? And the euro was brought in 20 years ago, however long it was, 25 years ago. Was brought in specifically to be a competitor to the US as a world reserve currency. That was the aim. And I think they're going about it in a in a terrible way. It was not working for them. So, long story short, like I think there's very, very, very high level government involvement in the US stablecoin market uh at the highest levels, um, and it is not an organic thing. Um, so I'm very wary of it because of that. But the other thing to tie back to what Hanron and Oaken were saying is that this is a permissionless system, Bitcoin's a permissionless system. So you can go and build your things on top of Bitcoin, right? No one can stop you. And as long as we may maintain small blocks that you can run your own nodes and you can decentralize the node runners are are still in charge of the network, you know, then it doesn't matter. They can they can build what they want to build on top of it. They can't stop Bitcoin. Uh ultimately we can't do anything about it. We've seen that with Opera Turn. There's nothing you can do, you know. You the the system is what it is. So I've gotten a bit of a ramble there, but uh, but um, I think there's intel agencies are at work. Uh, this is not like a totally organic thing. Um, and whenever there's an intel agency at work, you gotta assume there's large amounts of fuckery afoot. So, yeah, that's my take on it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, guys, certainly uh space, uh, watch this space, I think, remains to be seen how this thing unfolds. And I I suspect it's gonna be a pretty recurring topic uh every month as we do this thing, just to talk about what's actually happening. Uh last little bit of tech news, something in the local flavor. I see Sparrow Wallet has introduced silent payments in their latest release. Um yeah, uh, one more step towards. I'm gonna update right now. So uh yeah, I mean that's one more step in the freedom direction, I think. Uh it's awesome to hear that. Uh has anybody tried this or tested it? Any experience with uh silent payments? As far as I understand, it is a way uh it's uh a way to send a payment uh that is not an on-chain transaction that's visible. Um so you can send a payment through and no one can really see where it's going. Uh a bit like an L2, or maybe it uses L2.
SPEAKER_05:Um it's L1. It's it's layer one. It's layer one. Um it's it's it's on-chain. Um it is just a way of it's a it's a way of it's a bitcoin improvement protocol. It's a way of fustigating the uh details surrounding the transaction. So it gives you much more privacy at an on-chain level. It requires a server being online, etc., etc. So a few trade-offs there. Um but uh yeah, it's a big improvement in on-chain privacy without having to do coin joins, etc. And it means that any external observer, if you're an external observer of a coin join transaction, you can see it's being part of a coin join. Whereas with silent payment, you can't, um, because it's not being part of a coin join. So the on-chain privacy you get from it is is massive, and that the fact that Sparrow is incorporated is phenomenal because previously it was like some fringe wallets um that were using it, fringe wallets, but like cake wallets were like the first guys to to incorporate it. I know they had a couple of issues with it. Josie was actually here in our office space, he's the he's the core dev who is working on silent payments. Um, so I had a long chat with him about it earlier in the year. Um, and they were having issues with cake, but hats off to cake wallet for being the first guys to implement. Super, super cool that they did it. Um, and uh now that Sparrow is incorporated, that's fantastic news because you'll have way more users using it now in their day-to-day.
SPEAKER_03:I think uh Sparrow is only implemented for sending so far. I I chatted to Craig in Nashville. I don't think it's for receiving, so you can you can send sign-in payments to Sparrow, but you can't yet receive it. Um but I I just I I chatted with him and he's very he's very keen on keen on it. Um I'll embarrass myself if I try and explain how it works. Um, but uh maybe I should do that anyway. Uh the way the way I understand it, it's basically uh a reusable that it comes down to like a reusable on-chain address that that hides the actual address that the payments go to. And you as the sender can can verify that your payment was sent to the correct address on-chain, but you can't you can't associate other on-chain payments. Um, you can't link other on-chain addresses to that particular silent silent payment address. So you you you can keep using, it's it's like it's like using an on-chain uh on-chain address QR code over and over again, uh, but essentially generating a new a new address uh for for the receiving, for the recipient uh every time it does that. I'm not sure how it does that. Uh the way I understood uh Craig explaining it is that it combines it combines some of the transaction data to actually generate a new on-chain address every single time you send a payment to this to the silent payment address. But it's it's I'm particularly interested in this uh because there's believe it or not, um really believe it or not, um opening up a BDC pay server donation page is too much of a hassle for some people. Um and so you know a lot of people tend to put on-chain uh addresses on on their on their um websites uh for whatever project they're running. Um because a lot of people don't want to go through the hassle of having to click yet another link and make one or two extra clicks in order to finally get to a point where they have an on-chain donation address. And so, but obviously that's terrible for privacy because you you can see exactly how much money has been raised. Um so yeah, I'm I'm very curious to uh to start using it. But I but but Craig did say that that it's only for sending in Sparrow uh at the moment. I don't know when when it'll be for receiving. Um I wasn't aware that there needs to be a server needs to be online for you to to to receive these payments. Uh that's that's interesting.
SPEAKER_05:Um I'd love to I might be I might be speaking under correction here. Um like I said, I before we started this, I know enough about tech to be a danger to myself.
SPEAKER_03:Like likewise.
SPEAKER_04:Uh no, you guys are actually correct. Uh I did uh a quick little I asked AI um explain in simple terms for me, and the one thing that did say was that you do actually need an uh something to be online, and that's gonna be scanning consistently for uh payments made to those addresses. So there is some sort of online thing. Um yeah, so uh just to confirm what you're saying.
SPEAKER_05:And so this is Sparrow version 2.3.0, I just updated right now. Um, so I've actually got to do an on-chain transaction in about an hour or two. So I will do that by assignment payment and let you guys know how it goes. Um, but yeah, just to back to what Hammer is saying, it is you basically can put up a static address. So you don't have to replace with a new address every time. So for those who want to put up a static receiving address um for on-chain payments, you can then use it and people can't see all the payments that have come in effectively. Um, so it means that you don't have to spin up a BDC pay server, for example. And and as someone who runs a BDC Pay server um on both on the cloud and on my home server, um most people don't run it because they don't have a home server and therefore they have to pay cloud hosting fees, and that's like 300 bucks a month, you know. Um, and to set it up is a little bit of effort. So that's typically why people don't do it, you know. Um, but if anyone wants to use BDC Pay Server, they can get a hold of me. I've got a public facing instance where you can create a profile and do what you want on it. Um, so uh you can run BDC Pay Server for free using my my public facing instance. So hit me up if you want to do that. Uh BDC PayServer is the best thing ever. We ran, have run for the past three years all of our ticket sales and food sales through adopting Bitcoin conference on BDC PayServer flawlessly, no hiccups. I mean, how am I? I don't know what it is we've processed so far, but it's been it's over 2 million Rand if we add up all the conferences together. Um, and I think our total hosting costs, if you if you if I have to break it down for the conference, man, it's a few hundred Rand, you know, that it cost us in hosting fees because there's no processing fees. So yeah, now that we've got silent payments in there too, I I wonder if BTC Pay Server is going to implement this themselves. Um, but you kind of don't need to, right? If you've got silent payments through the Sparrow, you don't need to have a BTC Pay Server. Anyway, I'm rambling, but yeah, super cool.
SPEAKER_01:I would like to concur BTC Pay Server is one of the greatest things of all time. I've been using mine now to onboard a lot of merchants in Namibia and systems that we're building out. So there's so much you can do. Like literally, it's um if you haven't yet, give it give it a whirl. Uh jump on Ricky's, don't jump on my server yet, please. I'd like to keep it uh very, very clean and my neck.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I don't I don't think uh silent payments is going to replace BDC based server. I don't think you would use a silent yeah, it's it's it's it's it's a it's a totally different use case. Um yeah, but I mean we've we've been using BDC based server both for the conference, fundraising for our project. Um my I mean we've we've run most of our tourism business uh payments, about 70% of our tourism business has been running on BDC based server for the last uh three years. Um yeah, I mean it's just it's just fantastic. I the those guys, what an awesome project, man. Um and it's I mean it's like it's like it's not even it's not even like uh I mean obviously they do raise funding and stuff, but it's not it's not even a profit generating business, really. They just built this thing and basically gave it away for free. Um that's just incredible. That's something that's quite unique to the Bitcoin to the Bitcoin uh uh uh space. I I hate that word, but uh Bitcoin space if you want to call it that. It's quite it's quite unique.
SPEAKER_05:I think it started because Nicholas Doria, the the one of the chief maintainers on BDC Pay Server, said to the Bitcoin guys, he's like, We are gonna destroy you because they basically pissed him off. Because but it was like I will make you obsolete.
SPEAKER_01:Watch this.
SPEAKER_05:He has right, you know, absolutely like BDC Pay Server, it just doesn't break, it just it's so reliable, it works so well. Um it's yeah, it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_01:So Hats off an amazing project with the new with the new integration of the Shamrock protocol. I don't know if any of you have used that yet. So um I I had to as soon as it came out, I was like, wait, I gotta test this out. So literally what it does is when you go and you and you spin up your BTC, like let's say somebody logs in on yours, Ricky, or on mine, right? And they created an account, it will give you the on the on the first screen, it gives you the option to like set up your wallet, your lightning node, whatever. And then the last option is shamrack protocol. And if you click on there, you choose whether you want to use Bitcoin, Lightning, and Liquid, which one of the ones you want on. Then you hit generate uh QR code, and it literally gives you a QR code that you then take your aqua wallet, scan from your aqua wallet, and it sets up all of your um channels and stuff on the back end. So now you don't have to run your own lightning, you don't have to run a liquid, none of that. Every payment that you get actually comes through. So again, I'm not the one that's holding your funds, it's going through to your Equa Wallet. You're literally just using me as the platform to move through. And I think that's going to make it a lot easier to get people on boarded to say, hey, just download Aqua Wallet for yourself. That's literally the meeting I'm gonna go ahead just now. Download Aqua Wallet, scan on your own computer, just create your account. This is the link, and then go forward. Now you can create your point of sale machines, your crowdfunding, all of those things. So that's that's gonna be fun, I think.
SPEAKER_04:Definitely gonna add some links in the show notes to BTC Pay Server and all that. Yeah, there are legends, Uncle Rockstar and all that sort of thing. It's just uh it's a whole culture, it's awesome. Um, final uh, well, last bit of local news. Um, interesting thing that happened to me. I thought it might just be worth chatting about. Um, Discovery uh bank app. Um, yeah, I opened my app the other day, um, and it popped up with a screen that said, Hey, they've got this great new feature. Uh, they will just download all my contacts, and then I can pay any other Discovery app person uh directly at no fees or something weird. Uh so I said no thanks, I don't want that. But there was a no thanks option on there. So I closed the app, opened the app again, the same screen popped up. Uh I sort of hit the next button, then the app did an update, and um when the the app had updated, uh apparently like all my contacts were like now live on uh Discovery. So I was on Twitter in a flash, and they said no, no, there's an option where you can opt out of it and this and that. But basically, due to the way the up app upgrade worked, that option fell away, and then I had to go back into my phone after the fact, like the next day, and then disable that contact sharing feature in my phone's OS. It wasn't even anything to do with discovery. Um, so yeah, like totally unacceptable. Uh, this is the financial institution. I mean, the Poppy Act and all that I just jumped to mind. These guys have basically rigged my phone, taken all the contacts, and I'm pretty sure people are now going to start getting uh discovery messages, marketing stuff directly through to their phone. So uh just wasn't wasn't sure if any of you guys had experienced something, but yeah, uh flipping frightening, guys.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I don't bank with discovery, thankfully, but yes, it's uh I saw when you posted that in the in the chat group show notes beforehand. I was like, yes, they are taking liberties. The the Poppy act is ridiculous, though. Like it's like no one pays attention to it, it's just like it was a complete waste of time. Um, I recently got a um burner phone, um, got myself a burner sim, never called anyone, never texted anyone. I just installed it, and within an hour I got a phone call from like random spammers. So I can only assume that the service provider who I got the SIM card through is sharing that number with a list of people because no, I never texted anyone's brand new brand new number. So, like that's the like that kind of stuff is happening all the time, you know. Um, your details are out there, those numbers are out there, and like this this the spammers just have a feel there. Discovery included.
SPEAKER_04:I actually saw a headline um in the US where the feds or the CIA or one of these three-letter agencies raided a uh a multi-story data center in New York that was just wrapped full of these um SIM cards uh that they use for spam phone calls, spam messaging, uh like a whole warehouse full of the thing. And then about a week later, I saw someone on Twitter talking about the local uh economy in South Africa and saying that basically there's so much spam phone calls and messages going around on um cell phones that it's making voice call in this country almost uh unusable and people just don't do it. So now everyone's going on to WhatsApp calling and that's uh uh instead of just using you know MTN Vodacom. Um yeah, uh I don't know what more to say about that, but um yeah space to watch, I suppose.
SPEAKER_02:I mean think about it, like we how many of you guys accept calls from from random numbers, right?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, not at all, eh? I don't know who's I don't know who's jerky who can hear me or not. Yeah, no, no, like if if you see a random number phoning you, you don't answer it because you're like this is a spammer, obviously. And that's that's where we're at now. You know, like if 10 years ago, 15 years ago, people would answer if someone phones you have a number you don't have, you're like, okay, I assume this is someone trying to get a hold of me for some legitimate purpose, and you'd answer your phone. Now you're like, this is obviously a spammer trying to spam me, sell me some cac or or scam me, you know. And so this is why I said the poppy act is a joke, because like if the poppy act meant anything, this wouldn't be happening, but like we just inundated with spammers, and that's why everyone's moving to WhatsApp, and so like it's on the layer two now, which is WhatsApp, to try to like police that and keep those this the spam out. Um, but it's incessant, man. It's it's it's pull on. Can you imagine what it's gonna be like in 10 years' time? It's gonna be outrageous.
SPEAKER_03:I kind of uh I kind of feel sorry for the people on the other side of the line sometimes because every now and then it is a human being, more often than not, it's a robot, and then I just couldn't care less. But I I do I do feel because I just I I become so rude, man. Like I I can't help it. I try not to, but I just like I I I'm so tempted, but I know it's not obviously it's not their fault, but I mean fuck dude, it's so irritating. It's like, hello, am I speaking to so and so? How's it going? How are you? Like, no, what the fuck? This is they just I don't know. I I kind of I kind of feel and I don't I don't pick up those calls anymore if it's not if I if my phone doesn't recognize the number, I just so it's basically made phone calls almost unusable because they are obviously from time to time that there are people that that do get a hold of me via email or whatever, and they said, Hey, we try to call you and you didn't pick up. And like, yeah, well, I mean the reason I didn't pick up is because your call was lost in between a million other spam calls. Um, so it's it's kind of unfortunate how it's made how it's made regular phone calls almost unusable.
SPEAKER_05:Um guys, Bitcoin fixes this. It was a Jesse from um Kraken who built a tool, I think it was with on-chain, it was before Lightning, but he built a tool where like if you're trying to send him an email or call him, you have to pay like a nominal SAT fee to get hold of him because it stops the spammers, right? Um, and like that's I think where it's gonna get to, where like if you want to speak to me, you gotta pay because that'll stop like a spam, like put a spam filter. Because like these spammers can't afford to pay 10 sats per call because they'll go bankrupt, you know, very quickly.
SPEAKER_01:So dude, so like back back in the I think it was like in 2020, 2021, around there, like with Sphinx Chat. I remember on Sphinx Chat, you could. I was I literally was sending people there and be like, if you want to me to answer questions, go to Sphinx Chat and ask the question. I will answer the question to reveal the answer. You had to pay sets. That's how like you you could literally like put down how much per one of your messages each message was, and people would have to pay to reveal the messages. I had it in like one of his group chats, it was great, and that will come back, it but it will come back along AI agents that you will give a budget to in Bitcoin that'll go out and pay sets or eCash to get you into whatever getting your appointments done, all of that, because you're gonna have to prove you're a human, but we don't want to go digital ID ways, so it's going to have to be yo, pay for this. Like, because why else would you do it?
SPEAKER_05:Just think how high quality the spam is gonna be when they have to pay to reach you.
SPEAKER_01:Is that spam or is it just family trying to get a hold of you?
SPEAKER_05:But the thing is, like, I don't understand. Like, if there's a if someone needs to get a hold of me, send me a message on WhatsApp, right? And then phone me on WhatsApp. Like, if you just random number phony me, it's unknown number. Like, I'm not it you just go straight to block. You never call, you never speak to me again, straight to block, you know. Um, that's that's what it is. But so, like, clearly, we're all bitching about this. The market is ripe for disruption, disruption in South Africa. True caller was supposed to be the solution, but even true caller can't can't handle, you know. You I still get spam calls all the time. They're flagged as spam, at least on true caller, so you can see that. But like, who knows if true caller is sharing your details with everyone else? So, yeah, it's it's clearly a Bitcoin-based solution here. Um, and this is a good segue into the next point that South Africa, I think, guys, we can reliably say that South Africa is the number one place to be for spending and living on Bitcoin in the world right now. Like, so if there's any way we can build a solution, I think here's gonna be the place to do it because I mean Money Badger has been absolutely killing it. I spent a few days with them at a conference uh last month, and since then they've unboarded 600,000 merchants since since I was with them um through other integrations they're doing. Like, honestly, like you can live on Bitcoin in a very, very easy way in South Africa now, um, which is great to see. Uh, so I'm sure we're gonna we're gonna be chatting to a bunch of people about that in Lugano, but um yeah, it's good, love to see it, man. South Africa leading the way again. It's great.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I just uh I would like to shout out to Money Badger as well. Uh I think they were the guys, one of the sponsors behind the Stellenbosch Symposium recently. So it was actually good to see some of them down there. Uh and they actually uh they are sponsoring a thing with uh bootlegger. So uh if you have a Bitcoin meetup, you can just have it at your local bootlegger and they will actually pay you to go and have a coffee at Bootlegger with your meetup group. So we've been doing it with ours. It's actually super cool. Um, what we found that works really well is I think they give you 500 uh uh they give you 500 bucks towards the meetup. Um and uh when the guys come in, I actually say the first 10 people that pitch up get 50 bucks towards their drinks bill, and I send it to them via Blink Wallet. I get them if they don't have it, we have to download a blink wallet on their phone for them. I quickly send them the 50 bucks. Uh, and then at the end of the evening, uh Money Badger just do like a reimburse to me for that. So it's super cool. Most people are just blown away because they see Bitcoin in action for the first time. Like they actually see it appear on their phone, they scan their mate's barcode or QR code, they send the payment, they can't believe it's so simple and so easy. And uh, in most of the people I speak to, the using it is the the aha moment for a lot of people. Uh it's all theory until you scan that code and get that green check on your you know, money sent or sat sent or whatever.
SPEAKER_02:It's super cool. So, shout out to those guys for sure.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and if you're not on the money badger single group, you should be because what they've built there from like a community engagement perspective is like a sight to behold, someone running a business, like they are really going about it the right way. People join the group, and then there's just like dozens of people every day posting videos of how they're paying with money badger all over the country at like random new places, they can they can figure it out. There's guys who are like it's almost like a job to them every day, like five times a day, they're like, I paid here, I paid here, I paid here. Um, it just just and that's pushing like the user testing for money badger, you know. These are unpaid people, they give them some sats here and there, you know, to like as a prize, but like the way they've approached it is is great. They've got so much engagement from the community. Um, super, super cool to see. So it's made our life really easy for the conference in January for adopting Bitcoin Cape Town. Um we were planning a like a treasure hunt on one of the days leading up to the conference, and you got to go spend Bitcoin. And now it's like it's almost too easy with money badger. It's like, okay, cool. Every single shop you walk into you can spend, you know, basically. So we have to rethink our strategy there, but make it a bit harder. But yeah, they've they've they've uh they've made our treasure hunt far too easy. So now we're gonna have to put like treasure items on top of the mountain or something um to make it a bit harder.
SPEAKER_04:Awesome, guys. Um, we pretty much on time. Uh quick ground, Robin. Any closing comments from anybody uh before we wrap up? Uh maybe starting with the way we end with the way we began. Uh Ricky, over to you. Closing comments, man.
SPEAKER_05:Sure. Um, well, if I can tell anyone anything and sort of be saying to people for years, is just stack sats, you know, forget about trying to trade, don't forget about trying to time the market. Your local fiat peso is going to zero. So just accumulate Bitcoin. Um that's the best thing you can do for your your bloodline. Just accumulate Bitcoin and and don't look at price. Carry on with what you're gonna master your craft, add value for people, stack Bitcoin.
SPEAKER_03:Um yeah, I think closing closing thoughts is I've uh I've I've noticed a difference in the in the conversations I've been having the last couple of months, but particularly in the last uh last month or two. And um I just got off a call this morning with uh with with uh with a company that's uh they've got a national footprint, they don't have anything to do with Bitcoin whatsoever. Um they do have a charity that they that they operate as part of the company, they've got head offices in almost every province. And it's just fascinating to see the conversation shift. Um I'm very careful to say that that that things are accelerating because I tend to be a little bit pessimistic rather than too optimistic. Um I've learned that you know I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than be than be utterly disappointed. Um so I I tend to be but but but but but I think I think we're as far as I can tell, we we're definitely reaching a new new sort of phase. And it's not it's not evident at all when you look at the carnage that we saw in the in in the price of Bitcoin and in um in the wider crypto world this last sort of couple of days. Um it looks like it looks like the apocalypse apocalypse happened. Uh, but when it comes to the conversations that I'm having with with with just regular everyday people, there's definitely a shift in narrative. There's there's way more willingness to say, hey, this is this is interesting, let me let me try and give it a go. I've not I've not encountered this much enthusiasm ever before, and I've not encountered this little resistance uh ever before when talking to uh you know just regular people about about regular everyday adoption, completely outside of this the normal Bitcoin space. Um so yeah, that's it's fascinating. I'm just so happy to be alive at this point in time in history. It's gonna be one of the most interesting, interesting periods I can imagine. There's a lot of people who look back to the past and they're sort of nostalgic and sort of wish I could live in this time or that time. I wouldn't want to be alive at any other time other than this one because it's gonna be a fascinating transition uh going forward.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I have to agree with uh a lot of things that Herman said in there. Um especially just the time that we are alive and finding ourselves in in this age of like what is next. Um I think my final thoughts are there's a lot of work to be done. There's don't get complacent and think, oh, it's just there's a lot of work to be done. Um, as Money Badger has shown, you know, there's there's real work to be done in not just arguing on Twitter about this or that, but actually getting on the ground, speaking to the people, finding the touch points and their pain points, and showing them how Bitcoin and other Freedom Tech tools actually do solve those problems. Um, and then at the same time, I think we should acknowledge how far we've come in the last, you know, whenever you got into Bitcoin to now, it's it's been a hell of a journey for those that were shit coiners um over the weekend and then saw the light. A lot of people literally came and were like, bro, I should have listened. It's like, you know what? Today's the perfect day to start. Today's the perfect day to start. Get a Bitcoin wallet, start learning what Bitcoin is, start start buying or accepting Bitcoin for your goods and services because there are people willing to spend it. So you don't have to go through the whole thing of, and a lot of people just don't even know that there are people willing to spend Bitcoin, bro. Like, so go have the conversations with people, even if you're irritated, even if you've told them a million times, like sometimes I get irritated with some of my friends, but you know, they're ready now, and um, it's our job to help them, to help them see how how to do it easily, how not to need KYC, all of that, have the conversations, charge them if you have to. But yeah, that's my final thought is have the conversation.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, nice man. Um, I think uh just from my side, I just want to echo what was being said, and I think here in the southern tip of Africa, we are like so we are just blazing trails over here. Um, I mean, it's it seems to be coming. In from grassroots, we're doing stuff that no one else is doing. From top down, we're doing sort of stuff that no one else is doing from the retail space. I mean, maybe we don't have the institutional ETF adoption like they've got in the US, but we've got the retailers and we've got uh the end users and uh Bitcoin payments, uh, which people are starting to talk about a lot, starting to spend your Bitcoin now, uh, is certainly being spearheaded here. So South Africa and uh Namibia are just kicking ass. Absolutely. And um, it's it's going to be uh a whole chapter in the analytic of Bitcoin history will be uh the southern tip of Africa and and what we did here.
SPEAKER_05:Uh from a from the grassroots approach, right? The right way, the right way of doing it. Bitcoin is meant to be grassroots, it's being done from the grassroots here, bottom up. If we had to wait for institutions to do anything here, yeah, let's be waiting like for a pothole to be fixed in Joburg, where you can be waiting a long time. So that's not how it goes. So I I'm really, really stoked to see what's happening here. Um, and I mean, yeah, guys are putting in the work. It's amazing, it's amazing to see. One last thing I want to say is, guys, I think we're entering the phase of nation states the soft war. You know, Jason Lowry is like uh Bitcoin soft war happening now. Um I think the next five years are gonna be super, super interesting. I think the EU is gonna get absolutely rinsed, it's gonna turn into a third world well, kind of really is, but you know, they just they're asleep at the wheel. Um, and uh the Russians and the Chinese and the Americans are playing a game that Europeans have no idea what's going on. Uh so it's gonna be very interesting to see how that all that all plays out. Um has the most Bitcoin wins at the end of the day, so we'll see how that plays out. Um, but Germany sold all of theirs, and it's indicative of their general approach to being smart over the past 20 years. Just sad to see because the Germans are smart people in general, but they're terrible leaders.
SPEAKER_04:Cool, guys. It's a pleasure as always. Thanks for your time. Uh, it's been amazing. I'll get this sent out today and send links through to all of you as well. And uh see you next month. Have a good one. Cheers. Thanks, guys, have a good one. Cheers. Thank you. Bye-bye.