[00:01:19] So guys, welcome to the show. So recently, I think like what, two weeks ago, there was an ABC conference, Africa, Bitcoin conference. I think it was in Kenya and you guys were both in attendance. Tell us about what this was like.

[00:01:35] Erik Hersman: Yeah, it feels like two weeks ago, but it was actually just last week. I mean, it was, yeah, I finished up, I think on Wednesday last week. So what’s it been? Yeah, a week. It’s been here in Kenya. So we had, I don’t know, about 600 plus people attending.

[00:01:48] It was sold out, and it was just full of really good people. I think they said, Charlene, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I heard like over 40 countries were represented there.

[00:01:56] Charlene Fadirepo: Yeah, easily. I agree. It was, so this was year three, right? So this is the third time we’ve had Africa Bitcoin Conference, and it has gotten better and better.

[00:02:04] Every year, I think one of the highlights for me was just to see the number of entrepreneurs starting ventures. Just one story. I met a gentleman named Jotam. He is a Kenyan entrepreneur. I met him three years ago at Africa Bitcoin Conference in Ghana. He was a new developer, a new Bitcoin Core developer.

[00:02:22] And today or last week in Nairobi, he launched a new venture called BitSacker. He’s the founder of Bitsoco, which is a Kenyan savings tool for people to save in Bitcoin. So in three years time, he became, he was a student of Bitcoin and now he’s a founder. And that the pace of that innovation is what we actually saw at the African conference.

[00:02:45] And it was phenomenal, just phenomenal.

[00:02:47] Erik Hersman: Yeah. Bitsoco real quick on that one too. Jotam, I think both Charlene and I saw Jotam come from, Just being a software engineer to building stuff, but that, so SACOs here are savings companies, which are basically a group of people who come together, band together, and they share their savings with each other.

[00:03:03] And so it’s a very African way of doing savings outside of banks and traditional lenders. So what he’s, but before he built that, he’d Fetiment. for the past couple of years. So he was very familiar with it. So he uses the Fetiman technology to, to build BISAC on top of. And so it’s kind of anybody can come on board and build their own little Chama, that’s what we call them here.

[00:03:25] And, and do something, but it was just one of really two cool apps that launched at the event. The other one was Tondo. And Tondo is just a really easy way to pay any merchant in Kenya with M Pesa. So they have, M Pesa here is our mobile payment system that’s been around for, I don’t know, I guess it’s like almost 20 years, but everybody has it.

[00:03:44] And so, if you want to pay with Bitcoin, you can, and you just pull up the Tondo app, you send money to the person in M Pesa, so they don’t even realize that you’re paying with Bitcoin. But it’s a really easy way to start getting people to understand that it’s money. so that’s got a huge amount of usage this last week.

[00:04:00] Preston Pysh: This idea of community custody, I think is lost on a lot of people from call it the U. S. or Europe. Explain this in a lot more detail on how prevalent is this? if I went to Kenya for the ABC conference. And I was just talking to any random person off the street. Would this be an idea, this idea of community custody?

[00:04:19] Would this be something that most people intuitively understand or are used to? Help us just kind of understand the lay of the land and how common something like this is, I guess.

[00:04:29] Erik Hersman: Yeah, sure. It’s so, Charlene, feel free to dip in here too, but like all over Africa, it’s actually usually a lot of women’s groups, at least in East Africa, that’s where it started.

[00:04:38] We call them merry go rounds or SACOs or CHAMAS, so there’s different terminology for it. The main idea is that a group of five, 10, 12 women might come together and each of them will put in 200 shillings each month. They’ll meet every week or once a month or something like that. They’ll put, they’ll each put their money and then one person gets to take that money and use it for whatever they want that month.

[00:04:58] And, that’s kind of where the idea started. It’s, it’s of course, evolved since then into different structures and it’s used differently and there’s different names for it, whether you’re in Southern Africa or in West Africa versus East Africa, but it’s really all over the place. So the idea of shared custody of savings has already been here and it’s been here for decades.

[00:05:15] The idea of doing this on Bitcoin is what’s new. And I think that’s what makes BitSaco so interesting and so exciting for so many of us who have grown up in Africa, I’ve seen it used and we can, we can see the potential of giving people. Sucked into that space and saving in Bitcoin and using in Bitcoin.

[00:05:32] Charlene Fadirepo: And so what’s so interesting is that not only is it in Africa, it’s in the Caribbean, it’s in Latin America. It’s a very culturally steeped type practice. I have family members that have them, but it’s called a susu. Right, so this idea of kind of the collective savings, depending on other family members or some sort of a collective financial goal, it is a cultural practice that is very common around the world.

[00:05:55] And I think that’s what is really great about Bitsako. They’re building on practices that people already do, right? So they’re not learning something new. They’re not learning to trust each other. They’re just, they’re using Bitcoin as a technology, but also saving in Bitcoin, so that they have kind of a better, longer term financial result.

[00:06:14] And then the other thing I wanted to point out is that, so I’m a banker by trade. So when I was talking to Jodham about SACOs, I said, that’s just a credit union. It sounds crazy. There’s an acronym for it, but it’s literally just a credit union. It’s a member owned structure that typically, and in the United States, credit unions are known to be safer.

[00:06:33] They have better interest rates. They have more favorable terms and they’re a friendlier baking experience. And so that’s what they’re leaning on as they think about big taco. So I I’m just, I’m super excited about that. And I just think that whenever you can create a technology that’s That highlights cultural practices and traditions that are already in place that and use technology to accelerate that.

[00:06:56] That’s going to be a game changer. So, I’m excited. And again, that’s kind of what we saw ABC just in a culturally relevant innovation that was unique to the country region or space.

[00:07:08] Preston Pysh: Hey, so I’m going to embarrass you a little bit, Charlene. So Charlene has a new book out and I just happened to be on Twitter, kind of scrolling around and I see this tweet of Charlene there with Jack Dorsey, he’s looking at your book.

[00:07:23] How fun is this? And, I just shared it for people that are watching the video version of this. I just showed the tweet and there Erik has the book, the Bitcoin leap, how Bitcoin is transforming Africa. And I’ve gone through the book, Charlene. It’s fantastic. I want to talk about a couple of different things throughout the show, but talk to us about writing this book.

[00:07:41] Cause I mean, this is not a, no easy endeavor to write a book and then to market the book and all that other stuff that goes with it. And it’s fantastic. It’s fantastic. So what’s your key takeaway with the book? Give us the so what.

[00:07:54] Charlene Fadirepo: Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate you mentioned that. So to me, this book is a celebration of African innovation.

[00:08:00] I mean, hands down. The stories that you hear in this book highlight the incredible transformational change that Bitcoin is having in Africa. And I felt like So there’s so many amazing Bitcoin books and I love them all, but there is not one Bitcoin book that focuses on the Africa Bitcoin story. And this was very important to me.

[00:08:19] And I got, I mean, I started off as a Bitcoin educator and I always struggled because, it was easy to tell the story to make Bitcoin relevant for people in the West.

[00:08:27] Preston Pysh: Yeah.

[00:08:28] Charlene Fadirepo: But when I talked to my friends in Nigeria, they’re like, well, what about us?

[00:08:32] You know, although Nigeria is one of the African countries that was on Bitcoin well before certain pockets of the United States.

[00:08:39] And so I felt like the space, the Bitcoin ecosystem needed a collection of stories, a canon, a piece of literature that actually highlighted the incredible entrepreneurs that were building on Bitcoin in Africa that actually talked about the practical utility of Bitcoin, right? The broad and practical utility, and then focus on the social good.

[00:08:59] So that’s why I wrote the book and I’m very thankful that it has been well received. I did have a chance to talk to Jack Dorsey about the book.

[00:09:06] Preston Pysh: What did Jack say?

[00:09:08] Charlene Fadirepo: He was excited. So I met him. I met him the first Africa Bitcoin conference and interviewed him. We had a great conversation and I’d like to think we stayed in touch, but.

[00:09:18] But no, but he, I think has always been, he would like retweet some of my tweets every now and then, because I think even three years ago, we were very much aligned in the thought that Africa was the most compelling use case for that one. That was kind of my hypothesis three years ago. So reconnecting with him in Nairobi, it was wonderful because it was a full circle moment.

[00:09:40] I gave him the book. He said, I’ll read it. And I said, let me know what you think. He said he would.

[00:09:44] Preston Pysh: And he has put his money where his mouth is standing up the BTrust nonprofit that’s over there and investing in startups. And he’s on record saying he believes Africa is the future and where everything’s going to be moving here in the coming decades.

[00:09:58] So, yeah, very, very interesting and awesome that you were able to get in front of them and you got the book out there. One of the chapters in the book is titled Bitcoin mining Africa’s ultimate problem solver. And here, here we have Erik, who is on the ground, literally doing this. And so I want to get into this idea.

[00:10:17] I think this is super important for the listeners. Talk to us about Gridless. Talk to us about when I look at what you’re doing, Erik, you’re solving the chicken and egg problem in Africa with getting communities powered. But there has to be some buyer of last resort to consume this energy. And so you’re solving this chicken and egg problem.

[00:10:37] At least that’s how I’m describing it, but take it away. Tell us in your own words, how you kind of view the problem that you’re solving there and how Bitcoin really is this ultimate problem solver in Africa.

[00:10:48] Erik Hersman: Yeah. Well, before we get into that, though, I mean, we should talk about how a year and a bit ago we had that first Africa Bitcoin mining summit where we’re trying to get together.

[00:10:56] The African Bitcoin miners from across the continent, we learn from each other, make connections, help with everything from suppliers to how to, how to fix things, tricks and tips that we know so that we can share them with each other and people get better at what they do. And along comes this, well put together lady from West Africa who it’s all of a sudden interviewing all of us about what’s going on with Bitcoin mining.

[00:11:18] And I’m like, Charlene, what are you doing here? I mean, do you mind? Well, I, I play with minors a little bit. I think it all to, to tell the story. And she started to, did a small video on her, her trip here. Did a bunch of interviews with different people and

[00:11:32] Preston Pysh: Erik, she’s an electrical engineer from Virginia.

[00:11:35] She’s got an MBA from Duke. Like she doesn’t tell anybody this kind of stuff, but yeah, she comes in and she’s like interviewing people on minors, I’m sure. And just like smarter than keep going. Sorry to interrupt, but these are the things that would never be said than the rest of us who actually do the mining.

[00:11:49] Erik Hersman: Right. And so we get there and she could say, she’s like running around doing all this stuff. And I’m like, what’s she doing all this for us? Maybe it’s for the podcast. Maybe it’s for this, little film she’s doing. I had no idea that, at least at that point, that she was writing the book. And so it was cool that when I finally got the book, like two days ago, I looked into it.

[00:12:06] I went straight to the mining section, of course, and, just read up on the different stuff. And I was like, I think she got a lot of this, as she came and met the people at the conference. So yeah, yeah. Shoot. And mining, just generally speaking, has gone a long way. So like last year in September at the African Bitcoin Mining Summit, there was like, call it like seven or eight miners there from across the continent.

[00:12:27] This year, we had it a year later in Ethiopia and, at the point we had it in Nairobi in 2023, I’d say there’s a couple megawatts under use, right? Like, definitely under 50 megawatts under use in most of the continent. And by the time it had passed one year, we were at 600 megawatts in just Ethiopia and then added.

[00:12:51] Not counting what had been added in Nigeria and in Kenya and in other places. So where we’re seeing a massive increase in energy being used and monetized by Bitcoin mining And I think we’re just at the beginning of it If I look at kind of broad space I see the demand for energy increasing in europe in the us and other kind of more advanced countries in the world And what I think that’s going to do is it’s going to increase the price For energy and that means that bitcoin mining will will go to places like africa You And I think we’re going to have a larger and larger footprint of that Bitcoin mining, globally as the years progress.

[00:13:25] Yeah. So, real quick on Gridless, it’s like we’ve been, I think a number of people have heard of what we do in the past now, which is we, we’ve been looking for people who built stranded power, which basically means you’re, you’re running in some off grid energy site. Maybe it’s biomass, maybe it’s hydro or geothermal.

[00:13:41] Solar tends to not be very good, by the way for mining, but the others are great and we, and they built it, but the, the community around that site only uses 30 percent of the power. So you build a hundred kilowatts and 30 kilowatts is used. That means there’s 70 kilowatts left over. And so we’ll, we’ll bump along into that, into that little community.

[00:13:59] We’ll talk to the energy guy who built it and we’ll say, so what are you doing with the rest of that power? And he’s like, well, nothing. And, I said, well, how about we take it off you? Right. And he’s like, okay, well it’ll be, I want to charge 7 cents for this. Like, well, we can’t pay for it directly, but we can do something like a revenue share.

[00:14:16] Can we tell you about Bitcoin? And they’ve never heard about Bitcoin and so, or they’ve heard about it, but they really don’t know what it is. Then we’ll walk around the site, we’ll look at it, and they’ll be like, and we’ll come back to the room that they’re in, and we’ll say, okay, so what do you think, we can take, we can bring a mining container here, or maybe just a couple of shelves of miners.

[00:14:33] We can put them in there. We can monetize this energy. And when your community turns on a new maze mill, or they turn on their lights in the evening, we’ll power down miners automatically. It’s this perfect kind of demand response. It’s like, Oh, that sounds amazing. Amazing. Will you pay 5 cents? And we’re like, what?

[00:14:48] No, no, we don’t. We can’t pay you cash for this, but you can make, you can make a revenue share. You’ll earn part of this Bitcoin and that gets paid to you every day. And they’re like, well, how much is that Bitcoin worth? Well, it changes now that, you’ve got all these complications you’ve got to use.

[00:15:02] And at the end, I say, listen, how much are you getting paid today? It was nothing. Would you like something more than nothing? And they like, Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s just try it. We often show up and we say, let’s just set something up for a few months and see how it goes. And we set up, we, we’ve got a mining container there.

[00:15:19] It’s on in three days. And all of a sudden they’re earning money and they’re like, oh man, this is amazing. And then we usually tell them to sit on it, but this is the beginning of the orange pilling of that energy producer. And we’ve now gone on to where there’s one of our partners. We’ve done two sites with now, and we’re looking at a couple more with them.

[00:15:37] So it’s worked so well as coming in as a buyer of last resort that they want to bring us on as they build new sites so that we become an anchor tenant from the beginning. And then, there’s two new sites down in Malawi that we’re looking at that will also be coming in with a partner that we’ve already had before.

[00:15:52] So yeah, that’s what we do. Good list comes in and helps kind of make off grid energy profitable.

[00:15:56] Charlene Fadirepo: I was just going to add, I mean, Erik kind of blew through this, but Erik spearheaded the start of the organization called Gamma and that literally seeded other Bitcoin mining companies in Africa.

[00:16:07] And they didn’t have to do that, but they literally have allowed other Bitcoin miners to start up giving them so definitely tips and trips, but just kind of giving them a playbook to actually start their businesses. And I think that’s really significant because. Like, I, in the book, I talk about that selfless leadership and I give Gritless credit because not only did you guys start Gamma, you also open sourced the blueprints to your mining container.

[00:16:28] That’s significant. Again, other companies would have kind of held that information close to the vest and built in secret, but in true, like, open source Bitcoin esque form, you guys are really focused on the collective and making sure that the ecosystem grows. And I think that’s to Gritless’s credit.

[00:16:44] Erik Hersman: Yeah. I’ll tell you a funny story about that. Charlene, we were sitting there. So body who I think you’ve met is our mechanical engineer and he’s worked with me for like over a decade in past businesses. It’s really good. And he had designed our Bitcoin mining container. We’d gone through a couple iterations and we’re just before the Africa Bitcoin mining summit.

[00:17:02] And last year I said, okay, Hey, I need all the designs. Cause I’m going to, I’m just going to publish them to everybody so that they can get them too. So they don’t have to start from scratch because not most people won’t have a mechanical engineer in their back pocket that they can put to work on designing a container.

[00:17:16] He’s like, Erik, are you sure? I mean, like, why don’t we just sell this, the plants? That’s like, listen, it’s just not how we make our money, right? like it’s just, it doesn’t actually matter. So how about, how about we have a license for agreement with them? he’s like, I’m coming up all with all these things.

[00:17:33] Like, buddy, I understand why you’re saying this, but you know, the reason that I love Bitcoin mining is I have no sales, I have no marketing and I have no customer service. I don’t want any of those things. So let’s just open source this and we’ll make our money off mining like we normally do. And, much to his chagrin, he, we, we went ahead and did it now he’s getting, he’s on call with, different miners who are trying to use those same designs to build stuff in Nigeria and Ghana and elsewhere.

[00:17:58] So it’s been kind of fun to see, but the reality is that we don’t make our money off of that. Why should we focus on that? And we’re open source kind of guys anyway, so we like it when more people can do more stuff.

[00:18:08] Preston Pysh: Erik, when I hear what you guys are doing, the thing that I find so exciting is you have going back to this idea of the chicken and egg problem with energy and powering and just competition.

[00:18:20] So community doesn’t have access to just energy abundance. How can you possibly think that that community can compete with others that will just take it to an extreme? Not only are they powered, but they have access to AI and all these other things. Like your ability to leapfrog and just do more with way less starts with energy.

[00:18:39] It starts with having a powered community and the ability to power tools to whether the tool is AI or, some type of jackhammer or whatever, just genErik. Right. And so when we look at what you’re providing that buyer of last resort is saying, Hey, you can come into this community, that community, you name it community.

[00:18:59] And we can build infrastructure now, and we know there’s going to be a buyer that’s interested in consuming this electricity, even if we built this today, and only 10 percent of it was being used naturally without any Bitcoin miners. Now, all of a sudden, we can build any size power plant, and as long as we can produce the energy for a pretty cheap price, which my understanding in Africa is pretty cheap.

[00:19:20] Pretty much the case all around. And there’s tons of natural resources to tap into whether it’s hydro or, or whatever. And so now you’re just, you’re really kind of changing the competitive landscape because of Bitcoin mining and nothing to my knowledge has ever existed. In history that could provide such a service to allow this issue of the chicken and egg to disappear.

[00:19:44] It seems though that, based on what you said, it seems that today and the start, which I would call this prototyping versus where I think this is all going in 10 or 20 years from now is there’s energy infrastructure that’s already been built. That is producing way in excess of what the local community is demanding.

[00:20:02] And you’re coming in and demonstrating how you can consume all of this. It seems like that’s where it’s at today. It doesn’t seem like you’ve had power producers come in and build because they know that the Bitcoin miners can consume the additional electricity. Is that a fair statement? And if so, do you see that shifting anytime soon, based on what you’ve demonstrated through a lot of this prototyping?

[00:20:23] Erik Hersman: Can I actually share something with you on screen? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is a slide I like to use to talk to people about things. So the global access to electricity today is 800 million, 600 million of them are in Africa, right? Those are people who do not have any access to electricity. But if you look at this research paper that was done this year, 14 years ago in 2010, we had 1.

[00:20:44] 4 billion people without electricity across the world. And that number has dropped to the 800 million that we see today. But look at the bottom subs are in Africa. It’s remained exactly the same at 600 million, right? Why, why would we still not have enough electricity in Africa? That’s the kind of thing that bothered me when we started this whole process of Gridless is I understood Bitcoin mining.

[00:21:06] We went in there, we started doing it. It just made me start wondering, why is it that we don’t have enough electricity for everybody? What’s going on here? And so I had to do a ton of reading. To understand what was setting this problem up and, the thing that was bothering me was like, there’s this problem of lack of energy across Africa and everybody knows it.

[00:21:25] Okay. So why are we not building more electricity? And the answer really quickly came down to this, was that for the national power grid in utilities, they built about as far as they can to get a return on investment. They won’t get a return on investment by punching power into these very far away communities that are distributed over large amounts of space.

[00:21:45] So they don’t. So the only answer then is that mini grids have to be built in these rural areas. It turns out that Africa is one of the places with the best. Off grid energy resources. So you have hydro, you have solar, you have, geothermal. If you have the capital to develop it, you have wind, all these kinds of things that actually make it really easy to bring in off grid energy.

[00:22:07] And, but then, so why are, why are investors not investing in off grid energy if there’s a buyer there, right? And the answer for that is it’s stupid investment. It just doesn’t make any sense because there’s not enough people who can pay for it. So if I’m a poor rural African, how am I going to pay enough money to pay back a 2 million investment in energy?

[00:22:27] It just takes too long, right? And so I can buy an led light bulb or I can charge my phone. Sure. But that doesn’t use very much power. And so if I’m an energy investor, I basically enter this willful delusion with the energy developer that will someday in 30 years get paid back on this energy, but that just doesn’t happen.

[00:22:46] It never has. Right. So along comes Bitcoin mining and says, Oh, by the way, we can make this profitable for you now. And, and it does. And it’s like this magical thing. But here’s the crazy bit who’s actually financing these things to date. It’s concessionary financers. So this is your, Rockefeller foundations.

[00:23:02] It’s your USA. It’s all these African development bank, maybe the European development bank. it might come as a surprise to you, but they’re not all big fans of Bitcoin. And so even though we came out and showed this model, we actually had at least one of our energy partners who had gotten debt financing from one of them get pushed back and told that they couldn’t receive the Bitcoin.

[00:23:23] So you, what’s the hang up there? Why, why is that fine? Why? So I, I was on the phone with that funder and I explained to them what was going on and that, we’re the, we’re the anchor tenant on that site. And in fact, if we’re not on that site, that energy site is not self-sustaining and goes bankrupt, right?

[00:23:39] So our existence on it makes it possible. Or that whole community to get power, right? We’re talking thousands of families have electricity in their homes people have built, Maze mills so people don’t have to the women don’t have to walk 10 kilometers now to get their maze milled There’s cell phone towers that have power in them And they want that to go away because they would rather we not pay the energy partner bitcoin as their revenue stream It’s one of those things that it’s a perception problem and a regulator problem in Europe that is infecting the development of energy in Africa.

[00:24:11] So that then led us to think, okay, well, if that’s the case in the financers, if we know that the symptom that we’ve been solving for is that is making energy profitable, the disease is actually, we’re not building enough. All right. So how do we build more energy? Well, if we go back to look at the traditional financing of it so far, you realize that it just will never move forward.

[00:24:31] Yeah. Is there a new way to think about financing more energy? And as Bitcoiners, we were challenged by the, likes of Jeff Booth, Elise from Stonemark and OB, all of us, either friends or investors and Gridless, and they said, listen, you’re, you’re thinking of this with a Fiat mindset. Why don’t you look at this as a Bitcoiner and think about how you could do that.

[00:24:50] And by the way, do you know you could get loans against Bitcoin? We were like, what? We had no idea you could do that. So what we did is we sat down and re ran the numbers. And we’re like, if you do Bitcoin financing of new energy, you could actually build much more energy than you could if you spent it with dollars anyway.

[00:25:07] And maybe there’s a way around this kind of broken model of energy investment in Africa. And Bitcoin is the method for that too. And to kind of give you an example of what I mean by this, the capital efficiency is really just unmatched. So if I take 20 million and I put that into runner river hydro in Africa, I can build 10 megawatts.

[00:25:25] So, in 30 years, unless I go raise more money, I’m still just 10 megawatts. However, if I take that same 20 million, put that into a Bitcoin treasury, and then I leveraged that Bitcoin treasury against a Swiss bank, that would give me a 50 percent LTV, right? At an 8 percent interest rate, I can build one to four gigawatts in 30 years.

[00:25:44] That’s the difference. Wow. That’s 148 X capital efficiency. Wow. So there’s a new way to think about this. Like we see the likes of sailor using it for micro strategy as a really interesting way to make more money. Make more dollars, but there’s a way to make both make more Bitcoin and more energy with it too.

[00:26:04] Preston Pysh: Man, that is so powerful.

[00:26:07] Erik Hersman: Wow. I just threw a lot at you guys.

[00:26:09] Preston Pysh: No, that’s amazing. It’s so exciting.

[00:26:12] Charlene Fadirepo: I think your average Bitcoin is thinking the same thing. We have all of this Bitcoin. We don’t want to sell it. We don’t want to pay capital gains. Can we lend against it? It’s the same model and the retail level.

[00:26:21] It’s just, Hey, I don’t want to pay taxes at the corporate level. It’s, how can I make my money work for me? I mean, it makes sense. I think, I think sailor is pricking the consciousness of everyone and saying, are you, is this a Bitcoin first approach? are you really being a good steward with your resources?

[00:26:38] So, I mean, it makes a lot of sense.

[00:26:40] Preston Pysh: I’m just excited for where this goes because when you show that comparison of the numbers, all of a sudden you’re highly incentivized to act in this manner and to build out the energy in these locations. And I just, I can’t even imagine the unlock from a talent standpoint of what happens when you start doing this over the next decade or two.

[00:26:59] It’s going to be mind blowing. Yeah, well, yeah, go ahead, Charlene.

[00:27:04] I

[00:27:04] Charlene Fadirepo: just, I just want to tell a story because I think you have kind of the large, you have marathon that’s playing in Africa. You have Gridless and then you have some of the smaller players. And I just want to tell a quick story about a smaller.

[00:27:14] The marketplace is open for everyone to win. And so in 2022, I met, yes, our symbol, and I will, I give him credit. He was the first person. He’s a Nigerian Bitcoin miner. He is the person that explained Bitcoin mining to me. I met him on Twitter. He was like, I’m mining Bitcoin in Africa. And I’m like, what?

[00:27:33] Are you serious? Yeah, he had 12 Bitcoin miners. And he said, Charlene, and so his story is incredible. He was, I think he studied agriculture undergrad, he was fixing solar bikes, and he wasn’t able to make a living fixing solar bikes. He clearly has an engineering, ability. So he switched to Bitcoin mining, was running 12 machines and making about 60 US dollars a month, which again, not a ton in the US, but in Nigeria, not bad for an income stream.

[00:28:00] That was a couple years ago. I talked to him in Nairobi. He’s running more than three sites and has Almost a thousand miners in his company, mining company. He’s running a 500 megawatt facility in Nigeria. He probably is the largest Bitcoin or one of the largest Bitcoin miners in Nigeria. He’s probably about 28 years old.

[00:28:24] He has employed his brother, many of his friends, he literally has used Bitcoin mining to uplift his entire community. It tells me that he has friends that were. Doing some dubious things. They have stopped that and they have, he’s trained them in Bitcoin mining and he’s literally become a leader in his community.

[00:28:44] And the last piece is he learned to fix Bitcoin miners and he taught himself.

[00:28:50] So this is a kid. I mean, a CEO, but just really literally he had the engineering prowess. He had the intellectual curiosity and he had the talent. To create an entire mining company by himself with his buddies, and he’s doing extremely well.

[00:29:06] And now he’s 1 of the folks that Erik’s worked with to kind of give people insight into how to mine in Nigeria. And that’s incredible. And so I think it’s important to say that, like, small scale, large scale. That innovation is happening at every level and Africa is the place for it.

[00:29:22] Erik Hersman: What’s funny about the real quick person is that we were just sitting down talking this last week and he set up energy blooms new site. My care has a new site and it’s a gas flaring site in Nigeria. But he, he called on Siambola, who’s, one of the Gamma members in Nigeria. So Siambola and Sambo shoot down there.

[00:29:42] They, they get waylaid by pirates on the way. And he loses his very cool merch from the African Bitcoin mining show that he’s the most sad about. But they set up this new site and then they make their way back and he doesn’t get mugged on the, on the way back the other way. But that’s the kind of craziness that goes on here.

[00:29:57] So you have a community of people who are coming together to learn about things and teach each other. And then other people reach out to them instead of saying, Oh, let me go take the energy contract from you because now I know where it could be. He says, yeah, sure. Pay me to help you set this up. But then it’s your site.

[00:30:12] Here’s your 500 kilowatts, one megawatt, whatever it is. And I think it’s not always going to be those kinds of relationships, right? There is going to be some cutthroat going at it for energy contracts, but you see this kind of work within the condoms thus far. And we’ve been trying to build a community that works together rather than one that, is odds with each other.

[00:30:30] Preston Pysh: That’s the power of ABC too. You’re getting people together. You’re showing the team effort, right? Charlene, this story you just told reminds me of. some of the coaching that I find in your book. So this idea of innovation, let me read this quote here. The start of chapter three, it says, creativity is thinking new things.

[00:30:49] Innovation is doing new things. And you go into this leap framework. So for people listening very, very simply, this is for people to really kind of harness this idea of innovation to transform themselves. And you just provided an amazing story of somebody who literally just did this. And so somebody might be seeing that or hearing that and saying, I need to innovate myself.

[00:31:11] I need to have some type of breakthrough, like the story that you just provided. And so you have, it’s a four step process. I’m going to very generically cover this, but she goes into a lot of detail in the book on how a person can do this. You start off, love the unknown, then embrace the fear, align with your goals, and then power up your skills are the four things that she talks about in this leap framework.

[00:31:32] Talk to us about what you’re trying to accomplish with this in the book.

[00:31:35] Charlene Fadirepo: Yeah. And so, and thank you for bringing this up, because I don’t think I’ve spoken a lot about this part of the book. I meet Bitcoiners from all around the world. And so what happens is that you learn about Bitcoin, then you’re excited and then you don’t know what to do.

[00:31:47] And I literally wanted to create a chapter to help guide a new Bitcoiner’s thinking to figure out how to take their place in the Bitcoin space. It’s not enough to huddle. It is not enough to hold. we need all kinds of talent building and creating. And so I actually tried to think about my journey and created this framework so people can figure out how to plant the seeds of innovation in their own lives.

[00:32:10] And so I really hope that people use this chapter to inspire themselves to build in the ecosystem and don’t be compelled. You don’t have to be a developer. You don’t have to be a miner. You literally could be a content creator and make an incredible impact on this ecosystem. I just would like people to read the book and then take action.

[00:32:28] So yeah, this is probably one of the most fun chapters. And, it’s particularly women, sometimes women can be intimidated in the Bitcoin ecosystem. And so I really hope that if women who read the book, I really hope that they decide, okay, well, I’m going to figure out how to leave. I’m going to take Charlene’s framework, apply it to what I can do and really make an impact in the ecosystem.

[00:32:50] Preston Pysh: I love it.

[00:32:50] Erik Hersman: Well, speaking about women too, I mean, you’ve been doing some stuff with, the women in the community with, events around ABC and stuff.

[00:32:57] Charlene Fadirepo: Oh yeah, that’s, that’s right. So two years ago I started something tiny called the Satoshi Sister Circle. And so it was an idea, I’ll give Natalie Brunel credit.

[00:33:06] I’m a huge fan of Natalie. She’s a good friend of mine. Natalie has done amazing work. Creating a space for women in the larger Bitcoin magazine conference. And I spoke at one of her first events and I said, and it was incredible. We had 200 women from all around the world. It was in Miami. And I was like, this is amazing.

[00:33:23] Can we create something like this for ABC? And so that same year I went to Ghana and said, can we just have a women’s brunch? I really would like to bring women together in the space so that we can start to think about how we want to make an impact. It was a small brunch, but it was great. And so many women came up to me and said, We need this.

[00:33:40] And so from that point on, we had another women’s Satoshi Sister Circle brunch that was in Nairobi and Gridless was a sponsor. So thank you, Gridless. Betty was a sponsor. Thank you, Betty. And it has developed into a global empowerment network for women in the ecosystem. We are starting a mentoring program, which I’m super excited about.

[00:34:02] And we would really like to grow women in the space. If they want to be employees at fantastic Bitcoin companies, great. If they want to be entrepreneurs, we want to support them in that. Or if they just want to be creators, but we want to move people from this spectator view of Bitcoin to an action oriented view.

[00:34:19] And so hopefully the Satoshi Sister Circle organization will enable that.

[00:34:23] Preston Pysh: Guys, I got to tell you a funny story that happened to me. I normally don’t like to talk during the shows. I want to showcase my guests, but this is too funny. You’re talking about Natalie Brunel and women in Bitcoin. And this story is hilarious.

[00:34:35] The story is hilarious. So, all right. So. We’re in Miami. This is probably, I don’t know, maybe two years ago or something like that. And Natalie was putting on her Women in Bitcoin, and my wife was with me in Miami, and Natalie kept telling me, Preston, you got to make sure your wife comes to this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:34:55] So I tell my wife and you guys got to realize my wife really doesn’t she’s not really interested in Bitcoin at all. It’s hilarious. It works great for us because, I do the show and it’s like, after I’m done, we don’t talk about that kind of stuff. And, but anyway, she’s there with me in Miami.

[00:35:09] And when she’s with me and we’re walking around, it almost always turns into these, like, hardcore, like finance. And she’s not a math person either. I’m a hardcore math person. So like, I think in her mind, anytime we have like a Bitcoin conversation, it’s math and financial terminology and blah, blah, blah.

[00:35:26] And she’s just like, get me out of here. Like, I don’t really. So anyway, long story short, Natalie’s like Preston, make sure Demi comes over to the thing. So I’m telling my wife and she’s like, okay, I guess I’ll go. Like, I’m going to go there and sit and listen to all this. Engineering, math, blah, blah, blah.

[00:35:42] She goes, she has the best time ever because my wife, she runs a nonprofit and so she’s very like nonprofit oriented and, and whatever. So she goes to this and they’re showcasing a lot of these amazing stories of like how Bitcoin’s impacting people and whatnot. So she comes back. I didn’t go Greg Foss went, there’s a picture of Greg Foss.

[00:36:04] He was the only guy at this event, but anyway, she comes back. And she was like, she was thrilled. So this is the funny part of the story. It was like the next day or whatever. I’m not trying to name drop. I’m not trying to like do any good. This story is hilarious. So we both got asked to have dinner with Michael Saylor and we’re at his house and there was probably 10 people, 12 people or something like that at the dinner table.

[00:36:26] And Michael runs these dinners in the way Michael operates and he starts off the dinner and he says, all right, I want everybody to go around the table and say the 1 thing that you’re thankful for before we start having a conversation. So it goes around the table and my wife and I are sitting there at the very end of the table.

[00:36:44] We’re like the last ones to go. It goes around the table. This is so ridiculous. So it gets to my wife and she has to say what she’s thankful for. And doesn’t she say, she goes, well, I am thankful for Natalie Brunel because for the first time, I feel like I actually understand Bitcoin.

[00:37:04] And the whole table, the whole table just erupts laughing. And they’re all looking at me like, Preston, you idiot! Like, how in the world is your wife saying that she never understood Bitcoin until she met Natalie Brunel?

[00:37:17] Charlene Fadirepo: Sometimes you have to hear it from a woman.

[00:37:19] Preston Pysh: Right? So.

[00:37:21] Charlene Fadirepo: Exactly.

[00:37:21] Preston Pysh: Just to, I guess, pull.

[00:37:22] This is why these spaces are important. That’s why it’s important.

[00:37:25] Charlene Fadirepo: But you know what, Preston, that’s an amazing story. And that’s just how the world works. you need a lot of voices in Bitcoin because sometimes the same message is just not heard from the wrong person.

[00:37:35] So there you go.

[00:37:35] Preston Pysh: I was definitely the wrong person, right?

[00:37:39] Charlene Fadirepo: But hopefully she’s coming to more events.

[00:37:42] Preston Pysh: She has come to some more events and she just. I think honestly, though, like ever, ever since this brunch that Natalie through my wife has looked at it very differently than she ever looked at it before.

[00:37:53] So I guess I have Natalie to thank as well, but yeah, women in Bitcoin, right? Women in Bitcoin. sorry. I, that was a really long story. I hate to take time out of the show for personal stories, but okay. let’s see here. I’m a little lost and embarrassed myself. Okay. I know where I want to go, Erik. So during the ABC event, you took some people out to a mining site.

[00:38:16] I’m curious. What were some of the comments that surprised people the most when they got on the ground and they actually saw like the physical hardware and what it was that you were doing? Like, what’s some of the comments that you heard people say?

[00:38:29] Erik Hersman: Oh, like, oh, we didn’t realize it was this easy or you make money doing this, no, I’m just kidding.

[00:38:35] They wouldn’t say that. But it’s interesting when you, when you get people on the ground, even fellow Kenyans, right? They, they, they look around, they’re like, like Bitcoin has always been an esoteric thing for most people where it’s this digital currency. You don’t touch or see it, but for the first time with, they get to see something physical that’s a part of Bitcoin and they can actually touch it.

[00:38:58] And they can hear the fans going and they can feel the heat and all of a sudden they’re like, okay, this is where new Bitcoin gets created. This is where transactions happen. So even with Bitcoiners from Africa, it becomes real, right? I think that’s the thing that gets always gratifying to see is that people kind of can put a point on it.

[00:39:20] we took people to three different sites, this ABC actually. So we took them to our biomass. We took them to our hydro and we took them to geotherm. And so, different groups went to different places. there’s something kind of magical about each, each of those types. Right. It was turning agricultural waste into energy, taking steam from two kilometers deep in the earth to make energy.

[00:39:40] Watching the river and just seeing the turbine spinning. And, each of these things, again, it kind of brings it to the floor. And I say that in Charlene would remember this from my talk. I talked to actually a lot about how, well, energy, human progress is the story of energy. We have distanced ourselves so much from what energy actually is, from the electricity in our homes, to the hospital being open at night, to all these normal things that we just take for granted.

[00:40:07] We forget what energy actually is and how much people power is behind everything we do. And so when you get to see energy being made and you get to see it in powering this base financial commodity called Bitcoin, you really realize there’s something here. Right. And I think that’s the gratifying part is like, some guys geek out over the technical parts of it and they’re looking at it.

[00:40:29] They’re like saying, Oh, so this machine is really that dumb. Yeah. It’s really that dumb. It’s really that poorly made. Right. They’re really not great machines. And, and you’re like, okay, well if you can do that with that, imagine what you could do with this. You’re like, and, and they start thinking about, well, near my village is a river that nobody’s put any hydro on, and could we do something there?

[00:40:48] The visitors who come in are always enthralled by just talking to community members. they’ll, they’ll talk to somebody who lives nearby and say, how has electricity changed your life? And, from. Bitcoin honey badger was here and she went to the hydro site with me and she ended up talking alongside, I think Joe Nakamoto, to some of the, the local community members.

[00:41:08] And she was very silent on the way back, right? As she was thinking about how much of an impact she could see this energy had on everyday lives of people in the community. And it’s, it’s heavy, right? We’ve been distanced. Those of us who live in the city. And when you get out to the rural area, they realize how much of a base commodity energy is.

[00:41:27] Preston Pysh: Charlene, did you go to any of the sites when you were there on the tours?

[00:41:30] Charlene Fadirepo: I was fortunate enough to visit the Cotugu site a couple on the first Africa Bitcoin mining summit. And, I think you realize, so I agree with everything that Erik said, but then you realize that when you go to one site, there’s so many.

[00:41:45] Areas of rural Africa that do not have electricity. I mean, the sight line of just gorgeous trees and they call it the bush, but it is the most fertile and beautiful place that you ever seen. So bush sometimes has a negative connotation. I think of it as the Garden of Eden because there’s rolling blankets of lush, lush grass and trees and everything just pristine beauty of beautiful earth where there are people that just live there and they and they’re kind of doing the best with what they have and in many cases they don’t they don’t have a lot of access to resources so you just kind of get it is a reminder of definitely How, gratitude is really important in this space, but also how much work we have to do.

[00:42:30] There’s so much work. And I think that the encouraging part for me is that there’s so many areas in Africa that can very easily benefit from a mini grid, and just like that, you can change lives. Immediately, you don’t have to wait for the World Bank. You don’t have to wait for the government.

[00:42:46] You don’t, you literally don’t have to wait for anybody. You, you just need, you don’t even need a ton of money. You could just get started and the community will support you. And that’s what I think is beautiful. It’s that, we have such interesting, unique problems in Africa. And again, just incredible innovation to solve them.

[00:43:03] Preston Pysh: What’s one of the biggest, hang up there.

[00:43:05] Erik Hersman: One more, image or something. Yeah, go ahead. So this, this is the site that was built in Zambia. It’s a 700 kilowatt site in very, very rural Zambia that powers. When we started a year ago there, it powered a thousand families and about 200 businesses now powers 1, 500 families and 250 businesses.

[00:43:24] Charlene was dead on on this. This site was actually built with some concessionary financing, but it was built by the community. So all of that civil works you see on the side there, there was no heavy equipment used. It was built by members of the community who came together and laid those stones. Wow.

[00:43:41] Stone by stone cemented it. of course, the turbine and the pipes were brought in from afar, but the rocks are all local. It’s on the, on the Zembezi River. It’s a beautiful place. But, what I think is interesting about this is that there’s sites like this all over Africa. The things I talk to is this slide, which is, this map shows all of the hydro available across the continent, sub Saharan Africa.

[00:44:03] And there’s 400 gigawatts of energy available. 40 gigawatts have been built, right? And you can see from this that there’s actually very small sites as very as well as large sites on this map in the red And blue dots there’s so much more to be developed and charlene’s right. We don’t need concessionary financing to build this We don’t need a bunch of aid money to do this This can be done as bitcoiners as investors just with bitcoin mining being a part of it That completely changes the dynamics of what we have in front of us and realizing that we’re in the place that has some of the best inputs for energy in the world into the place that has the least amount of energy for the people, we realize that you’re actually sitting in a perfect storm where Bitcoin mining can solve a major humanitarian need at the same time as making real money.

[00:44:50] Preston Pysh: Yeah. Wow.

[00:44:51] What would you guys say is one of the main things that are preventing growth or preventing Bitcoin from really kind of taking hold? Is it policy?

[00:45:01] Erik Hersman: I think there’s two sides to that. I’m not probably the best verse at the first one, which is maybe Charlene. I think there’s two sizes, the use of Bitcoin, which is by everyday people just in their daily lives.

[00:45:11] Savings, spending, whatever it is, and then there’s the generation of Bitcoin around energy. So those two sides of the spectrum, I’ll let Charlene speak to the first one now.

[00:45:20] Charlene Fadirepo: Yeah. So the use of Bitcoin, I mean, that’s leaning into this idea of policy. It’s a patchwork of policy across Africa. Some very restrictive, some very, favorable.

[00:45:30] And sadly in places like Nigeria, where you have arguably the largest P2P value, or at one point the largest P2P volume, Nigerian, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the SEC, which is their regulatory body, they have been very aggressive in a very negative way against Bitcoin and crypto because a couple of years ago, they actually blamed it for the devaluation of the Naira.

[00:45:50] Well, we know that’s not the case. Sadly, the currency in Nigeria has been troubled for the past 60 years. It had nothing to do with Bitcoin. In fact, because of the economic decay of the currency in Nigeria, that is why you saw that peer to peer volume going to Bitcoin in Nigeria. Because Nigerians were like, wait, we need better purchasing power.

[00:46:08] We need a better store of value. We need sound money. And again, not because the government said so, not because a company said so, or a foreign body said so, but literally there was a clear and present need. For better money. And so I think the regulation is catching up. It’s getting better. It’s not the best.

[00:46:27] South Africa is better than others in South Africa. There are businesses that have registered crypto licenses. And so they can, businesses can allow for the payment and the sale of Bitcoin and the payment of employees in Bitcoin. So that’s great, but the regulation has never led. innovation regulation has all like I’m a banker and this president, innovation regulation has always chased innovation, but I think Bitcoin mining changes the model.

[00:46:53] And when there’s money to be made, somehow regulators get it together. And I think that when you start to make that economic case, it’s good business. To be a minor, and it’s a good business to be involved in the Bitcoin, then all of a sudden people start to be flexible. And so I’m very hopeful that as we experience these all time highs, as Bitcoin is a conversation all around the world, the central banks in Africa will take a second and third look to start thinking about how Bitcoin can be a part of their national strategy.

[00:47:22] Preston Pysh: Love that. Erik, anything else to add?

[00:47:24] Erik Hersman: I think you’re right on the last bit. I mean, I’ve had conversations with three different government representatives in the last week from different countries in Africa who this usually happens as the price goes up. All of a sudden they hear about, Bitcoin mining, they realize they have stranded power.

[00:47:38] Gridless is the one they’ve heard about. So they contact us, even though we don’t do big power, at least we can give them some insights into why it’s worth doing. I think, on the regulatory side for mining, though, it’s not the same problem, right? Energy development is energy development. It’s been going on for decades anyway, and the regulations are there.

[00:47:54] And if you’re doing it unusually in Kenya, it’s under one megawatt and Zambia is under five megawatts. There’s a lot less red tape to just build energy to do Bitcoin mining. It’s just data center loss. Right? So the same data center laws that you use for building a, a large Google or Facebook type data center are now the same things that we follow.

[00:48:12] Right? So we get type approved on the importation of the Bitcoin miner itself, and then it’s just, it’s just the basic paperwork. So the regulation isn’t the problem, especially when you’re dealing with independent power producers. When you’re dealing with government to do the mining, then you have to deal with the internal bureaucracies, but it’s not as big of a deal.

[00:48:29] When you’re building your own energy or you’re building on other people’s independent power production.

[00:48:34] If a person’s hearing this and they want to have an impact in Africa, I know the Btrust Foundation, I don’t know, do they take donations or is that just kind of Jack and Jay Z’s own, do you know if they take donations at Btrust?

[00:48:49] Charlene Fadirepo: I think they would be open to it. I know the folks there, they would be open, and can I just say, like, yeah, well, we mentioned at the ABC, they had their first beach rest developer day and they hosted 250 Bitcoin core developers. Dang, dang, so they’re training these folks up to hopefully go run Bitcoin companies or contribute to Bitcoin core.

[00:49:08] So, I would venture to say that they would be very open to taking donations because they are a grant making body, but also a training facility.

[00:49:15] Erik Hersman: Okay. Yeah, they do. And I think just to bring it back to what we started out at the beginning is, we’re seeing like the Tondo’s and the BitSocko’s launching this time.

[00:49:24] But a lot of that generation of Bitcoin software engineering talent has been driven by the trust on the continent. Kala was soaked up and became BTrust builders. we’re seeing a few other initiatives. But the, the main thing is that they’ve put a few years now into, and, and, and a lot of money into getting, grants for, giving grants to these young entrepreneurial software engineers.

[00:49:48] Some of them get jobs at other Bitcoin companies, and some of them end up building their own apps and services. And so we’re starting to see the fruit of that labor. So I think what BTrust has done, and the seeds they’ve planted will continue to bear fruit for the coming years.

[00:50:01] Preston Pysh: And I see there’s a website, Btrust.tech. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes. guys, thank you so much for making time. This was such an exciting conversation. And I think it’s just, I don’t know, I’m just so excited about this and I think it’s going to be massive in the coming decade or two. I mean, you guys are spearheading so much of this and being able to come on and just kind of illustrate some of these examples is just so illuminating to myself and I’m sure to the people listening.

[00:50:26] So give people a hand off to your, I know you guys are both active on X, but also give people a hand off. I know Charlene, your book or anything else that you guys want to highlight. Charlene, go first.

[00:50:37] Charlene Fadirepo: Sure. Please feel free to follow me on Twitter at Charified Aripo. you can also follow the Satoshi Sister Circle.

[00:50:42] If you’re a woman that’s starting their journey in Bitcoin, we welcome you. We’d love to support your journey. So we’re at, at Sat Circle. I think it’s at Sat Circle. If you follow me, you can, you can follow, Satoshi Sister Circle. And then of course, if you feel so inclined, check out my book, The Bitcoin Leap, it is available on Amazon. I think it’d be a great Christmas gift for anyone that’s just starting their Bitcoin learning and they want to understand the real impact of Bitcoin. Thanks.

[00:51:08] Erik Hersman: Well, Preston, first, I’m not going to let you off the hook. If you said you’re this excited about Africa and Bitcoin, then, are you going to come next year to the Africa Bitcoin conference?

[00:51:15] Preston Pysh: I need to come. I need to come. I think that’s a, yeah, yeah.

[00:51:19] Erik Hersman: That’s not a commitment yet, but you know, we’ll work on you.

[00:51:23] Preston Pysh: So here’s, here’s my challenge. My new year’s resolution is I’m going to like dial back the yeses that I gave in 2024. That’s my, I traveled so much in 2024. You say that every year though, Preston.

[00:51:35] I know.

[00:51:36] Charlene Fadirepo: We all say that every year.

[00:51:36] Preston Pysh: I know.

[00:51:37] Erik Hersman: Listen, we’re not asking you to travel to a lot of places. We’re just asking you to travel to our place.

[00:51:41] Preston Pysh: Honestly, this would be my priority. This would be like one of my priorities for the year, to be quite honest with you. Of anything I’ve been asked to, this is a priority.

[00:51:48] Yeah. All right.

[00:51:49] Erik Hersman: Well, Preston, we’ll consider that as we need to do more work to convince you. Okay. No, that’s a yes. Okay. Awesome. So, yeah, so, I guess for, for Gridless, it’s just, we’re at Gridless compute on Twitter. That’s our one and only public channel. So when we talk about things, that’s where you find them out.

[00:52:06] And then, there’s a Gamma site as well. It’s Gamma underscore Alliance. That’s where you can find news about some of the other members from, we’ve got Sebastian in the Congo, we’ve got Sambola in Nigeria, I got Nemo up in Ethiopia. We’ve got. Two new groups, one gas firing in Nigeria, one doing hydro in Ethiopia.

[00:52:25] We’ve got Sid down in Zambia. So they’re all, they’re all in Gamma official and then, sorry, Gamma Alliance. And I’m personally, I’m just that white African on Twitter. So if you want to find me there, you can.

[00:52:36] Preston Pysh: All right. I’m in, is it in December next year? When is it?

[00:52:39] Erik Hersman: Yes, probably November, December. it hasn’t been officially set, but yeah.

[00:52:43] Charlene Fadirepo: I haven’t set the location too. So the question could be someplace really fun.

[00:52:49] Preston Pysh: I can’t wait. All right. Just tell me the dates. I’ll get it on the calendar and I will be there, sir. Oh, okay. Got it. All right. Okay.

[00:52:56] Charlene Fadirepo: That’s a commitment.

[00:52:56] Preston Pysh: It is. Yeah.

[00:52:58] Erik Hersman: Thanks, Preston. We’re going to hold you to it now.

[00:53:02] Preston Pysh: Guys, I really enjoyed this and I’m just so excited about all of this. For the listener, we’ll have all those links and things that they talked about in the show notes.

[00:53:11] Guys, thanks for making time.

[00:53:12] Erik Hersman: Thanks for having us, Preston.

[00:53:13] Charlene Fadirepo: Thanks for having us. Take care.

[00:53:16] Outro: Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Bitcoin Fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes.

[00:53:25] To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast. com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.