[00:02:19] Guys, click on the link in the show notes to the 30-minute video. I’m, I promise you, it’s going to blow your mind. It’s so, so good. So well done and so exciting to see what you guys are doing in the space. So I want to start off emphasizing that I can’t do that video. I can’t do that. Thank you. Cheers.

[00:02:38] Let’s start here. When I talk to people about Fedi and Fediments in general, people almost have like this glazed look on their face. Like, what are you talking about? Like, I thought we were talking about Bitcoin. Help me understand this very simply. As simply as you can describe it, because I know you guys have probably done this, this pitch more times than anybody.

[00:02:58] What is Fedi and how does it relate to Bitcoin? What problem is it solving? Let’s start there so that we can just level set with the audience.

[00:03:08] Obi Nwosu: Well, I will say that as Fedi has matured, and that’s our understanding of what Fedimint is capable has matured. Our language for it has changed because we realized that what began as this really the first ever cash protocol, which we can explain as another buzzword running on top of Bitcoin.

[00:03:28] Morphed into this form of community custody, which can turbocharge existing ways communities come together to custody money. And then eventually morphed into this community super app, a super app like a WeChat or like Alipay in China and like telegram in the West or what Elon Musk wants to turn X. com into.

[00:03:54] But instead of being run by some centralized party or an individual, It was being run by communities on behalf of communities. So because of that, because it’s expanded in our understanding what it’s capable of the language is still new to us because the language is changing over time to be honest But the current language you have two different things You have betty mint, which is the power behind and I love to renounce to give her own take on this But betty mint, which is the power behind betty And this is community custody protocol Using this incredible technology called e cash and it allows communities to come together.

[00:04:31] Choose trusted members of those communities we call them guardians. to manage money and resources on behalf of the community. That’s what FedEvent does. And what FedEvent does is two things. One, it engulfs this incredible experience, a super app experience that takes the best freedom technologies in the Bitcoin space, including FedEvent for custody, but also obviously Bitcoin for storing the value and Lightning to send that value around at low cost and high speed.

[00:05:00] And others. It uses Matrix for chat. It uses Nostra for identity. And in future, any other freedom technology you think can make sense. And we, for the first time ever, bring it all together in this one super app. So you don’t have to have this smorgasbord of different apps trying to navigate. You can have one place.

[00:05:21] And you can see the entire Bitcoin and freedom technology sphere in one place. That’s the Feddy app. And then on top of that, and this is again where Renata and her team. are essential. We have what we call the Fed. I order this human, this decentralized genius spot where we can go on the ground and help and work with communities.

[00:05:43] We locate the communities, we educate them, and we support them in the usage of Feddy and the entire Bitcoin ecosystem of apps that are out there ready to help them. But up until now, I’ve been so far at also too complicated for people to be able to access. So, those are the two things, I mean, Renata, do you want to, you might have a different response.

[00:06:05] Renata Rodrigues: No, it’s very nice explained. I think I would, I just want to highlight that it’s a very difficult thing as well to explain because it’s evolution, it’s progressing, but also it’s new. It’s something that doesn’t exist in this format right now. And a few years ago, if I were to say, you’re going to jump in a stranger car, And he’s going to drop you whatever you want, and you’re going to pay him through an app.

[00:06:30] Or if I were to say, you’re giving me sleep in a very stranger, very strange house, or a random place in Europe, you would say, are you crazy, Renata? What is your problem? And this is Airbnb, this is Uber, right? So when we start to explain Fedi, people are like, but why am I going to have other people holding funds for me?

[00:06:49] And then when they experiment, Ty, they understand the whole concept. The fun fact on this president is like when I go on the ground to teach people about Ty and my team as well, newbies, they get us like, boom, super fast. Mm. And Bitcoiners is still kind of, but why I need this? Like the kind of, because you probably already have.

[00:07:13] Folder on your iPhone saying Bitcoin and all the apps are there, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, but you took like, I don’t know, five years, 10 years. to build this. Yeah. So this experience now, it’s so easy for a newbie that they can get in three, four minutes that Bitcoin’s money, Bitcoin’s useful, and they can send the exchange Bitcoin to money to everywhere in the world instantaneous.

[00:07:43] It’s simultaneously and also through the messages. I myself also feel like Obi, like sometimes I feel like, oh my God, it’s like Uber 10 years ago, like something like this.

[00:07:55] Obi Nwosu: That’s the first time I’ve heard that analogy that Renata was saying and I was like, actually it’s like 100 percent right.

[00:08:01] That’s, this is a whole new category of product, a super app. It’s more understandable in the East because they have super apps. So they immediately get it as a super app, but run by communities, not by centralized parties. And in some of these countries, many people have literally, this is the only app.

[00:08:20] They have on their phone. It’s the app that can replace all other apps, basically. And we’re going to see over the next year, this concept is going to be way more understood in the West because Telegram is every major social media app is trying to become a super app. Telegram has been trying to do that.

[00:08:34] And it’s been stated that by Elon Musk, he’s going to try to fix a comp. And they’re going to spend a lot of time educating people about these, the app to replace all apps. But you can explain it and we can discuss it, but what you’ll find with all of these new apps is you have to experience it. It’s one of these things that you use and then you get why it’s useful.

[00:08:57] And so when people are new to this ecosystem and they haven’t been sort of taught by the existing way things work, there are clean slates, which is by the way, 99 percent of people on the planet, there are clean slates. They then experience this and they realize this is. Really cohesive experience, and it only works because of all of the other work from multiple thousands of people across the Bitcoin space, bringing it all together.

[00:09:23] And then you offer them the alternative where, okay, now you have to download 7, 8, 10 apps to do the same thing, and you have to travel to 30 different websites. And maintain a bookmark of those websites and logins for each one of those, which one do you prefer? And most people will say, I think I prefer the one app that brings it all together in one place.

[00:09:44] While still you as the maker of app, we can show and we can see because the source is available that you have no control. So it becomes very obvious once you experience it.

[00:09:55] Preston Pysh: You got a couple of different things that I think are key points that you just laid out there. It’s a way to transact that’s actually scalable, that puts the power in the hands of the user.

[00:10:07] You were talking about identity being a new form of decentralized identity being wrapped into this. You’re talking about a way to basically do signal chat in a way that isn’t going through some type of centralized control. And all of this is being wrapped in the community part of it. It’s all being wrapped into the app.

[00:10:25] The thing that I think is super important that people that are hearing all this are saying, okay, that’s great. There’s a lot going on. Why does the community need this so bad? And I think if I was going to take a stab at this, I run my own node. I’ve opened channels to create liquidity so that I can spend layer two Bitcoin instantaneously and across the lightning network.

[00:10:46] Problem is you have to have some technical competence to do this. Like if I go to my dad or my mom or anybody in my family, and I say, Hey, you should run your own node. You should open up your own channels and you should be zapping sats around their technical competence isn’t there. And what. The Fediment protocol allows and what your app Fedi allows is you guys are making this very turnkey for a community so that the individual person doesn’t have to be, have this technical competence to set this up and they’re almost able to set up a turnkey bank and run it for their local community, friends and family, however many people they want to bring into their group or their Fediment.

[00:11:27] What in that description is wrong or would you kind of tailor or tweak? Because, I’m definitely not the expert on this, but that’s how I would break down the problem. The problem is scaling. The problem is making things technically accessible, but still allowing people to control their funds and to not be reliant on some type of centralized thing.

[00:11:49] Entity that they’re scared of.

[00:11:51] Obi Nwosu: So, Renata, do you think Preston passes the interview? Can he join them? Yes, that’s what I would say right now. No, is that right? Is that right? I would say that’s right, definitely. Right from the beginning, people can do anything they want to do, but it takes time to be really good at something.

[00:12:13] Yeah. And so, One of the superpowers of humans is the ability, and very few animals, very few creatures. exhibit this in any way, shape or form, the ability to form complex society. And what that means is specialization, different people specialize, and they focus their time and attention on being really good at a few things.

[00:12:34] And then working with other people to be who are really good at other things. And they exchange these services or goods that will come from those abilities with each other. And that’s where money comes into the mix to make that as efficient as possible is the technology to make that efficient as possible.

[00:12:51] But specialization plus this ability to exchange services efficiently leads to complex society. And that is a human technology that very few, if any other animal has now given that’s the way we build and do things that are beyond the ability of one person to do, there’s a spectrum. You can try and do something yourself.

[00:13:11] You can try and learn to build and repair your own car, or you can use a service. And what most people do. In the Bitcoin or crypto sphere. Is they will use these very centralized services run by a very few organizations. And actually as time goes by, as I saw over my career in running and change, those numbers of organizations just got smaller and smaller and smaller and bigger and bigger.

[00:13:35] Whereas the top two or three exchanges in the world now support well over 50%, 60, 70 percent of all trade volume and users. And you extrapolate, you’re going to have these One or two organizations that everybody’s using, or you have to be able to do every single thing yourself, which you know, doesn’t need to, you’d be able to not do the most sophisticated things because you only got 24 hours in a day.

[00:13:58] So there’s this whole area in between those two extremes, two or three centralized entities. Or 8 billion people who have to try and be jack of all trades and also of none. And that is where you have communities ranging from families and groups of friends to clubs, to small towns, villages, to companies and corporates, and to cities, and potentially even countries.

[00:14:22] All between those two extremes of one or everybody. And that’s Is where Fedimint comes in, it provides a technology that allows communities from three people or four people to 400, 000 people, which is the vast range in between to come together and be able to provide a service to all of their members that is similar in some ways better than these very centralized services.

[00:14:49] But it takes them way closer to having the control within their community, but they can still leverage the power of the community to specialize. Some will specialize in being very trustworthy and more technical, and they can provide services to help maintain the system. While others want to use and transact, and others can support in terms of providing community.

[00:15:11] And you can specialize, but at a smaller scale. And so we think that range in between, if you look at the world is where majority of people live, they live in this world of multiple groups that they live. And there’s not been a technology that leverages that existing technology and community and allows you to leverage that to provide an incredible experience for a subset of people or multiple subsets of people.

[00:15:33] Renata Rodrigues: And I would like to add something to that because that’s from the experience that I’m having on the ground, which is the ability that so generally products give you a format and you just use that format, right? Like I have an exchange. That’s what you can do in this exchange. I have a bank. That’s my portfolio.

[00:15:53] In the case of Fedi, because we are centered on, On the human side, when we build, we allow people to choose what they want, how they want to create their own super app. And this makes a lot of difference because when I speak with different people, so I spoke like in, I remember in Ghana explaining Fedi and a guy from a manicure association said, Oh, this would be an amazing tool for us to having, we receive all the times, foreign people.

[00:16:23] And they come to us and they need to book on WhatsApp. We don’t have dollar. It’s difficult to exchange the dollar. So it’s like having an app of the manicure app inside of Peri. Or a community that wants to save together. So then you can grab whatever makes sense for this community and put together. A meetup that wants just to educate people about Bitcoin.

[00:16:49] So they can put like a different tools. And they can use these tools in different for educating people how they can use bitcoin how they can buy bitcoin Even people like you press on that wants to create like a vip list a vip community for your followers so you can Have your app inside of the app to offer to them, your community, your space.

[00:17:12] So it’s mind blowing because I feel like it’s that organic thing that was like shaping by different people and by different needs. It’s a very interesting mindset because it’s the first time I see people think what they’re going to do with that instead of what they have to do, what they’re constrained.

[00:17:32] Exactly. Yeah. And the fun thing is these are very interesting mindset. I’m from Brazil, so this is a very, that’s the mindset of the global South. Totally. We are innovative because we have just. That’s a tool to do a lot of things with that, right? Like if you give a can to a Brazilian or to anyone in the global South, they’re going to do a lamp, a purse.

[00:17:57] We’re going to do different stuff. And that’s the innovative element that we are bringing for people to like, to, okay, I can empower people to think about what they can do with that. So it’s a very interesting mindset switch as well within the communities as well.

[00:18:14] Preston Pysh: Obi, you said the numbers on, like, if I wanted to create a Fediment with just the three of us, I can do this, or if we had 300, 000 people, and let’s say I’m running a large organization, I can create a Fediment for all of those people as well, as far as the scalability, it can get pretty small, it can get pretty large.

[00:18:32] If I was going to do that, if I was going to set up a Fediment for the three of us right now, real simply, what would that look like? How long would this take? How difficult would it be for me to do on the app?

[00:18:43] Obi Nwosu: So first of all, I misspoke, the ideal minimum is four, not three. Four, okay, all right. You told me to find someone else. Let’s say Jeff Booth was here with us. Yeah, exactly. Okay. You can, but also it’s actually possible to run, I actually did an article about this about a month ago.

[00:19:00] Okay. It is possible to run a federation by yourself as well. And it’s useful sometimes for anything from testing and development purposes, if you’re a developer. Or if you want to have this sort of really cool and simple to use multi sig custodial offering. Spending wallet could also do that. So that is possible.

[00:19:20] But the recommended way is a federated mint. And so a Fedimint. So that would, and that would implore Various reasons the minimum before. So walking through the setup we’re actually going to be adding a button in, in the app, which is like create your own federation and it will explore in the coming weeks or so she’ll give you a list, some of the different ways you can do it.

[00:19:41] Mechanism one, number one, if you’re someone who’s quite technical, you can download the code from GitHub. It’s a site where the code is hosted and you can run it and have your own server. Let’s say your home server, similar to where you’ll be running a Bitcoin node or in the cloud and set it up yourself and follow the instructions.

[00:20:02] And we have lots of detailed instructions if you want to do it that way. And I would say if you wanted to do it that way, you’re probably talking about. Probably half a day to set up, if it’s you, not me, if it’s you, not me, if it’s someone’s someone who’s comfortable setting up in that way. Then the next step is we are working with partners and eventually want as many as possible.

[00:20:26] So we’d want this to be on star nine, Umbrell, Raspi, Blitz, and more. People who have basically systems to make it easy to load and set up freedom technology.

[00:20:38] Preston Pysh: For people that don’t know what start nine or Umbral is. So if you want kind of a turnkey way to run your own local node, like you got a Raspberry Pi or you whatever type of server hardware you want, you can download this software onto it and it makes the whole experience just super easy.

[00:20:57] And. What the software providers have is like an app store. So if I wanted to download the Fedi app inside of the umbral, almost like you’re on your laptop and you have like, or just on your smartphone, you have all these different apps. This is what these servers are like, this turnkey software that Obi is talking about. So you would basically be an app inside of this. I’m assuming, is that right, Obi?

[00:21:18] Obi Nwosu: The Fedi, this will be the Fedimint app. Yes. You will download, yeah. Yes. So, so we want to work with as many as possible. The first partner that we worked with, and it’s been a great partner, is a company called Clover. And what they allow you to do is, they allow you to set up a Fedimint server, or multiple Fedimint servers.

[00:21:37] And it’s a click of a button. You enter some information, basically giving the name of the federation, how many guardians, in this case it’ll be four, and a few other pieces of simple information. You click go, and you wait, and a few minutes later, you’re basically set up. And it’s very much click, click, go through a process.

[00:21:58] You should be able to set up in that in a matter of as someone who’s just comfortable filling forms in a web browser. So that’s a majority of people who are computer literates and so on should be comfortable with that. You should be able to set up your federation in a matter of minutes. And then we’re quite excited to see over the coming months set of people, a growing set of organizations who are willing to do that.

[00:22:25] Help people do it because there’s some people even going through that. They’ll still like the that sort of helping hand to help them set up and provide ongoing support. So there was still at the end of the day will be having their own federated server that they control and is theirs, but someone will help them set it up, walk them through it and provide ongoing support if they have any issues.

[00:22:47] So that’s, that would be more of an assisted setup as well. set up, then the effort for you is zero other than deciding to do it and answering a series of questions for someone, maybe on a call saying, well, what would you want to recall? And so on. Okay. Let’s walk through it. It’s now set up. And if you have any issues, please contact me and, and I’ll help you out.

[00:23:08] So the effort for you there is now zero beyond the deciding of doing it. So you go from Half a day for someone technical to near zero for someone who’s not a good view of the fully assisted with clover in between, which would maybe be half an hour if you’re willing to log onto a site and fill in a few options.

[00:23:28] Renata Rodrigues: Preston, I just want to highlight something on the description. Which is, if you think about how many people Obi is mentioning here that we could involve from the ecosystem. And that’s another point that I really, really like by working with Freddy. It’s not about just us. But like involving the whole ecosystem and bringing jobs, bringing business development for the whole ecosystem.

[00:23:53] The concept of winning together, right? Like not just making Bitcoin win by winning together. That’s the first time that I experimented this as well. Like you can help your friends in the ecosystem to succeed as well. Yeah, that’s a great point. Yeah, no, no, carry on, carry on. No, no, it’s just that because I heard sometimes we don’t realize that, and in another hand, how difficult is that to, right?

[00:24:18] Like it’s very easy to create a centralized system. It’s super easy. But when you create like a decentralized one, It’s like involves so many people, so many components around that. And sometimes because the app is super easy, people don’t realize how difficult is the behind the scenes to make this happen for people as well.

[00:24:37] Obi Nwosu: It’s always so easy to make something in a centralized way, which is why The first thing you see are these highly centralized solutions. Decentralization of infrastructure is hard, but it’s worth doing. It makes the system more bulletproof, more anti fragile. And so, if we can do it, we must do it.

[00:24:59] Preston Pysh: Well, and I think in a lot of the communities that you guys are really working with here initially, They’re dealing with local currencies that have absurd inflation rates and are just almost horrific to deal with relative to the dollar relative to Bitcoin.

[00:25:14] And so there’s a huge incentive for these local communities to really kind of rally around something that puts this directly into their pocket. Instead of being a victim of these currencies, but to take advantage of the new opportunity that Bitcoin offers. Talk to us. Renata, you’ve spent a lot of time on the ground interacting with people locally, vendors.

[00:25:36] What is that like? How does the discussion start? And then how do they mature? How open are people to this idea and this technology? Just, I’m really curious to hear that first person experience.

[00:25:48] Renata Rodrigues: So basically, and that’s a bit of difference that the approach that we are having. It’s by using, I don’t explain what Bitcoin is.

[00:25:57] I don’t go over what is the inflation, the history of the money. I simply say, look, we do like this dynamics, which is like a very fun for people as well. So we connect them through the chat. Then we say to them, now we’re going to play telephone. You take ten, I give ten, you take one, give nine to the other, to the other, to the other, and after that I do things like, oh, let’s top up your phone with Bitrefill.

[00:26:25] This whole dynamic takes like five minutes. And when we finish, I pause and ask them like, okay, think about this whole experience that you have. Do you believe this is a Bitcoin thing? They’re like, oh, so it’s not this scam, like this scam that’s been coming to me to, to promise that I’m gonna make a lot of money.

[00:26:44] Like, no, this is money. And then they realize, oh, I can buy things with Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is money. And then we start to, dig in more and more in the app with the, again, with partners, not with just our staff. Yeah. And they realize that, oh, this actually is very useful for me. Yeah. And even like in a different ways, because we understand as well that this variation of the Bitcoin for someone that earns like really little, it’s a big thing.

[00:27:14] So that’s why we have like this middle of the stage, which is a needed thing, which is the stable balance tool that they can convert into USD and kind of hedge their funds.

[00:27:27] Preston Pysh: This is a really big topic. Yeah. We need to cover this topic. We can explain later. People here, there’s so much going on here, folks.

[00:27:36] I mean, there is so much going on. It’s really kind of hard to even remotely cover this. Again, this goes back to my first point when we started. You have to watch the video, the 30 minute video that they put together, because there’s just so much going on. And the video is so well done and so concise, but yet cover so much territory.

[00:27:54] And you can visually see some of the things that we’re talking about to watch the video stable channels. Okay, Obi, you do such a phenomenal job talking about, first of all, the why, like what is the problem and why are we doing stable channels when we have Bitcoin here and can be used? Talk to us about the psychology in the local environment, why stable channels are important.

[00:28:17] If you want to get into the tech, because the tech gets pretty interesting from like a discrete log contract standpoint. I know we’re just throwing out all these terms. If you want to cover the tech, try to cover the tech, but talk to us about stable channels.

[00:28:30] Obi Nwosu: Yeah. Well, I’m on the tech side. This is where one, even just thinking about it, it makes me just so proud of the people are in the team.

[00:28:41] The people on the ground are amazing. And it’s because of Renata and her team that it became clearer and clearer to us as Bitcoiners that we had to have a solution for stability. Because when you’re actually deciding that we want to go beyond our existing marketplace, Yeah. You have to be open and humble and willing to listen.

[00:29:00] And, and this came up again, again, and again. We also understood as Bitcoin is that we wanted a system where we put the customer in control. If you use a normal stable coin, you’re replacing one centralized entity with another centralized entity. So how could we have a solution which provided stability, but still was in the power, we put the power in the hands of the community and we leveraged the power of community.

[00:29:24] And when we looked around the space, there was this concept that was put forward by Tadge Dreiger, who is one of the co inventors, co authors of the Lightning Network, the white paper. That was obviously one of his most famous inventions, but after that he had many others. And one of them was this idea of discrete block contracts.

[00:29:43] Ultimately, what it meant was an ability to use Bitcoin and things like the Lightning Network. To be able to stabilize the value of Bitcoin reduces volatility. And what does that mean? It means that you can, as a user of this service, you can have an experience like your Bitcoin is acting like USD, or it could act like any other currency.

[00:30:06] It could act like your local Kenyan shillings or anything else. Now, I won’t go any more into the technical details of how that works. I can do, but I don’t think that will do your audience a service. But if you’re interested in that, check out discrete log contracts, touch dry job. What we did at Speddy is we realized this was a mechanism that existed that can allow us to have our cake and eat it too for our users.

[00:30:30] We can give users stability, but still it will be all Bitcoin in the actual system. And so when we have this insight, it’s one of our first earliest insights. We held a hackathon and out of the hackathon, as luck would have it, one of the winning applicants, this was over a year and a half ago now. Was someone who implemented on Fediment, the street law contracts and plonked it on our table.

[00:30:54] So what we did is we took that and then we refined it and added to it and refined it over the last 18 months. And so this is very sort of Apple like behind the scenes working on this feature. Until it’s now you see it within the app and certain communities, any community that can want can choose to upgrade their federation with this, what we call a 30 minute module.

[00:31:16] And all of a sudden they can have their own community level table balance feature. So if there was 10, 000 communities and half of them chose to implement it, they would all individually have their own mini Teva effectively for their community. And they don’t have to link it to US dollars. It might make sense to link it to Kenyan shillings because guess what?

[00:31:36] For most people, when they’re spending money, they spend it in their local currency, not Bitcoin or USD. At some places, the currencies collapse so much that they will switch to USD. But many places, the unit of account is the local currency. Again, If you use a stable coin like Teva, which is backed by money in a bank, then if you wanted to do that in a local currency, you’d have to back it by money in a local bank.

[00:32:00] Now, if you think about Teva, for example, they’re being asked by the European Union to hold some of the money in a European bank. I live in Europe. I use European banks all the time, but Teva is not comfortable with a European bank. Teva is not comfortable with a European bank to hold some of their assets.

[00:32:17] Do you think they’re going to be comfortable with a sub Saharan African bank or a Southeast Asian bank to hold local currency? No. So these stable coins that we see don’t really work for any currency beyond the biggest currencies in the world. Almost all of them are USD and a few others. So the rest of the world are excluded from those.

[00:32:38] So that’s the problem that cannot be solved by anything other than an approach like the one that was invented by Paz Dryja. So we’ve now implemented that over 18 months, integrated to make sure it’s production ready, because getting out of something from an idea to being production ready is a very long path, and then made it very simple with an incredibly simple UX for users.

[00:33:00] So then what happens is in communities around the world, they can have their own local currency, but in digital format, don’t have to hold their local currency only in cash. So if I want to go to my bank to get more money or receive payments, I don’t have to walk potentially kilometers to receive it in cash, meaning that my Medium of exchange experience is ours.

[00:33:24] We’re in the West. Medium of exchange, when we use money as a medium of exchange, it generally is an experience that lasts seconds. We take out a card from our wallet and tap, or take out our mobile phone that’s already in our hands and tap, and that’s it. We’ve used money as a medium of exchange. Most of the month, we’re thinking about money as a store of value because we have disposable income to store.

[00:33:45] But if you have little or no disposable income where you cannot think of money as a store of value because you have no value to store. So your default is to think of it as a medium of exchange or unit of account. Most of the month, you’re going to be thinking about it as a unit of account. Because you have no disposable income, you have to budget incredibly carefully.

[00:34:04] And so you’re always thinking about prices. What’s the price of this? What’s the price of that? And therefore a 20 percent reduction in your spending power in a month could mean 20 percent less food that month, 20 percent less meals, 20 percent less travel, 20 percent less accommodation, which 20 percent less medicine because you have no disposable income to have that buffer.

[00:34:23] So you cannot afford the short term instability. The next thing you think about is medium of exchange because you’re dealing with often cash, which means that spending as a much more time consuming process. You have to walk around with cash if you haven’t got enough cash, you have to walk to a bank or walk home, get more, and then you spend very little time thinking about stored value because you have no value to store.

[00:34:46] Soon as you gain store of value, which is the case for most of the people in the West, your view of money does a 180. You spend most of the time thinking about price charts and so on and investments and so on. So you’re spending 80%, 90 percent of your month. When it comes to money, thinking about it as a store of value, your time spent thinking about it as a medium of exchange is literally minutes per month.

[00:35:08] If you take all your payments together and all the times you have to tap, it’s probably like five minutes. You’ve thought about it, you’ve used it as a medium of exchange, and you almost never think about it as a unit of account. Think about the last five times you bought a cup of coffee. How much was the price of the coffee?

[00:35:22] Do you even remember? You don’t, because you literally, it was so cheap for you, you don’t even think about it as a unit of account. And that was one of the big insights. That we had from our team on the ground from the fed, I order that the moment you no longer have disposable income, so it’s not really a global South and West thing.

[00:35:41] It’s more of people who have disposable income wherever they are in the world and people who don’t. Yeah. And so whoever capital that they can use whenever they want or not. And obviously there is a higher number, there’s a higher percentage of these, a higher preponderance of these in the global South than in the West, but they exist everywhere.

[00:35:59] And the moment you don’t have disposable income, your view of money does a one 80. And it’s very hard to empathize and understand that world. If you exist in the other, the moment you have this full income, very hard to understand that literally your view of money does a one 80. The moment you no longer have, so you have a disposable income.

[00:36:20] And so, and that’s it. That’s what we built. We built this incredible, simple experience. It was built based on people being on the ground, helping us understand and get past our own bubble, our own sort of consciousness bubble of how the world works for the world where we live in. And it allowed us to build this very simple product. It was nearly two years in the making.

[00:36:40] Preston Pysh: Here’s what I find so fascinating about this. Cause if you’re in Kenya and you see this on display, or not, it comes and she’s showing you how you’re zapping units around. And then she surprises you. And she says, Oh, that was Bitcoin surprise. The person, I think the very next thing that person’s saying is how can I have it be a Kenyan shilling and not Bitcoin?

[00:37:00] Especially if you’re not a net producer or have a bunch of excess, because all your bills and everything you’re paying in town is in Kenyan shillings. So it’s very logical that that’s the next question that they have. And what Obi just described with discrete log contracts being on top of the Bitcoin lightning network, which is effectively a derivative that one person’s going long Bitcoin, the other person’s wanting the Kenyan shilling exposure through.

[00:37:25] The lightning channel being able to zap sats back and forth to each other. I have no idea at what rate, but it’s some absurd rate per second, right? Because all of that exists today, the technology of this exists today. Renata’s next response to the person is we can turn this into Kenyan shillings, even though it’s all Bitcoin under the hood.

[00:37:44] And it’s going to perform in the exact same way. Which then opens the floodgates to the local community to start basically paying. And they think, and they feel like it’s Kenyan shillings, but it’s all Bitcoin under the hood. Is this properly described?

[00:37:59] Obi Nwosu: It’s 90% correct. Okay. Okay. This is will be the point where I can know there’ll be a lot of people rolling their eyes who are highly technical.

[00:38:08] Yeah. You, you’ve got the, you’ve got the essence of what’s what we’ve done. But 90% still an 90% still an A. Yeah. It’s still an a i I I, I, I think it’s an A it’s an A. But, but I, I do want to clarify a few things. Yes. I and you will be lambasted and rolled across the coals if we don’t. So first of all, the concept of stability as an idea is technically it’s impossible to ensure stability of prices forever.

[00:38:37] Yes, it’s just not possible. So even fiat currency, U. S. dollars and so on attempt to do that. We have central banks and so on doing, attempting to keep the U. S. dollar stable. And we all know that at some point. It will destabilize. It cannot be kept forever. So there is no, it’s not possible to do it. Some people then suggest that we then shouldn’t even try.

[00:38:58] That can only be said from a position of privilege. When you’re not having to deal with, of accounts. Imagine going to a store and all the prices are constantly over. You look and it says one price. You will turn around. Look back, the price is different. As you go to the counter, you came with a certain amount of money.

[00:39:16] But as you go to the counter, the price all of a sudden jumps up and you can’t afford it. And you have to just wait there at the counter until the price drops down and then pay. It’s not practical. Now, if you’ve got tons of disposable income, then you just come with 10 times as much money as is needed.

[00:39:31] And like 999 times out of a thousand, by the time you get to the counter, you’re going to be okay. Even then there’ll be an edge case where it goes up a hundred times and you still won’t be okay. But you can imagine if that’s your buying experience, it would be a terrible purchasing experience. So in theory, although stable prices are not possible forever in practice, But just for our sanity, we need some sort of short term stability, especially if you have very little disposable income, you just do from a matter of practicality.

[00:40:01] If you try to imagine a world where you had no stability, you’d realize it would just not be a practical world to navigate on a short term basis. So that’s why stability is needed in the short term. Some people will argue that you should just not try to go for stability at all. And again, this is a world where you have disposable income versus one where you don’t.

[00:40:19] The other thing to understand is with any derivative contract, there are limits to the point where it’s stable up until a point. So now the points are quite extreme, but they are to a point. If the price were to drop by 50 percent within 10 minutes, which has never happened in the history of Bitcoin, even in its most volatile periods of time, then the price might not stay fully stable.

[00:40:43] But again, in that’s theoretically possible. And so it’s important to point it out, but if you look back the entire history of Bitcoin, even when it was very young, there’s never been a point where the prices dropped 50 percent in 10 minutes. And even if it did, it would mean that you would end up with, as the user, more Bitcoin than you started.

[00:41:02] So you would actually end up gaining from that scenario happening, by the way. You would end up with more Bitcoin. So your punishment would be more Bitcoin. For the person that was taking the fiat side of the channel, it would be beneficial if I’ve got received. So the way it would work is I received money from my family abroad.

[00:41:19] For example, they don’t want to go through using services like Western union and so on, which can sometimes charge up to 10, 20, 30%, they may want to keep more of their hard earned value than 70%. They might want to be close to 90, 95 or more percent. So family, let’s say a child abroad. Decides to send instead, try something new.

[00:41:41] Why don’t I convert some of the money that I was going to send through the old way, but it’s a Bitcoin and send them Bitcoin over the line network. They now receive it seconds later in the wallets, and then they receive that money and they’re not ready to spend all of it immediately. But they will spend all of it over the next week or two, generally, especially because they need the money.

[00:42:03] They have no disposable income, so they are going to use it for their day to day. And so they’ll draw down a bit over time. And so while they’re waiting, they will immediately deposit it into their stable balance. It’s almost like a real reversal. Bitcoin is used as a medium exchange. And then the local contract is actually the store of value for the short term storage of value.

[00:42:23] And then as time goes by, they remove from this almost like a savings account back to Bitcoin as their current account at the point as they’re on the till and will pay for what they need. Or they will work with someone or some organization and there are many in multiple countries that will allow them to convert, say a day’s ration of the amount that they’ve locked up.

[00:42:44] into cash and they will spend that cash locally as their medium of exchange bitcoin to local cash and spend while they keep the remainder in digital bitcoin that’s locked the value of kenyan shillings in the pedigab So that will be an example of one is expensive. It might come from, instead of it coming from friends and probably it could come from an aid agency or it could come from an NGO or humanitarian organization as well.

[00:43:10] But as long as there’s that mechanisms to convert it into the local system, wherever that may be mobile money or cash. The whole system works. So that gives you an example of how it can be used. And it also gives you an example of how simple it is for the user.

[00:43:27] Preston Pysh: Getting deep into derivatives without really saying I’m getting into derivatives, but I want to infer somebody listening to this.

[00:43:35] This is just a tiny morsel of an example of how much is going on under the hood and what this team is thinking about and what they’re accomplishing. It’s totally mind blowing. Renata, talk to me about the Save the Children partnership and what you guys are doing here.

[00:43:51] Renata Rodrigues: So Save the Children is a partnership like this huge organization that support kids around the globe that are like in the risk situation.

[00:44:02] And the idea of this project, it’s helped them to improve their ability to send benefits to their beneficiaries. So right now it’s everything done like either from Western Union, all the traditional system, which is not so efficient, like these vouchers that they send, they don’t have traceability, they don’t know these users, they, the beneficiaries have a lot of risk when they, go to exchange for the funds.

[00:44:30] Sometimes And sometimes they don’t have documentation as well because they’re like refugees leaving the country or sometimes what happens is like a day at first, like prospect to respond emergency, like, I don’t know, a earthquake. So then all these traditional institutions are locked. They have the funds, but the funds can’t arrive in there.

[00:44:51] So they’re trying to find. A system that’s more efficient on this flow. So the pilot that we’re going to start, like so far, we are like exploring the models first is in Philippines. And the idea is create like a reproduce something that is become more trend now between some organizations, which is instead of you send funds directly to some individuals, which is possible to you have a community, a group, a And you send to the group and the group is on charge to distribute these funds.

[00:45:25] So with that, you have like way more efficiency as well and just stability as well. So in our partnership with them, the idea is exactly this. It’s like how we can help them to create a e voucher system that if they wanted to send funds to these communities locally, they can send super fast. And I make sure that arrives safely in the places that is needed, but also created this foundation that when they have an urgency to send the funds, the whole network is already settled.

[00:45:59] So let’s say I have a group of women in Philippines that save the children works right now. And we’re going to send funds to this group. And then Like a regular basis, like just funds that they have sent to help them locally. They have already the network, the connections. So we established the whole process.

[00:46:20] If tomorrow knock on the wood, they have like, I know, I don’t know, a tsunami. This is going to be automatically directed to the group, to the benefit of the group. In the future, ideally we wouldn’t even not need it to convert this into cash. Right. Like the ideas like on board, the business around as well.

[00:46:40] So we can use just the money within the federation in e cash or Bitcoin, depending on the situation in a way that they can easily provide everything that this community needs.

[00:46:52] Obi Nwosu: Renata’s really downplaying the significance of this sort of model, which again was found from working with communities.

[00:47:00] on the ground. And that’s for me, one of the real big insights is that the technology is incredible, but the human technology that Renata and her team are building is just as important and impactful. And one of the insights is, and we’ve talked about it in the launch video, is that normally we’re used to seeing that innovation comes from the West or the first world developed economies or whatever you want to describe them.

[00:47:27] But when it comes to one, there’s many areas, but one specific area, which we notice is really advanced in the global. So it’s mechanisms of communities coming together to custody a value. So community custody is actually an area where there’s incredibly advanced and there’s many models. They go by stock, Val Chalmers, Sacco, we, there’s just so many different names and they work in so many different, varied ways.

[00:47:58] And we and others are building apps to that work with 30 minutes to leverage that. And this example you just, that was just given to you is just one example of how, and it makes sense. Someone who’s local within the community can respond quicker. They’re likely to respond more accurately than someone remote.

[00:48:16] And they’re going to want it to work. Of course, these organizations really wanted to work, but the level of wants is going to be way higher if you’re part of that community. And then you have the other win for the organization and their operational overheads go down because instead of making thousands of individual payments and trying to understand each one individually, they’re They can make one bulk payment and have that disseminated amongst thousands of people, but receive basically leverage and empower the community to help itself. So it’s pride inducing, it’s more efficient, it’s lower cost, it’s a win win win for all parties.

[00:48:55] Renata Rodrigues: And that is interesting when, while we’re talking about that, like, because it reminds me about my cultural shock. When they start to live in the Western, because, and I understood later, why is that happening?

[00:49:08] But so basically living in Brazil, we don’t trust in these institutions, right? So we trust in our neighbor, we trust in our community. So I know about everyone in my community, I could trust my kid to the, these people, my money, we have forms of to put money together as friends to save, because we don’t trust in institutions where they are very corrupt.

[00:49:32] And when I moved to Canada, U. S., Switzerland, I always distrust some institutions over the individuals, right? So, it impacts you in different ways, like we start not knowing your neighbor anymore because you don’t have the sense of community anymore there. Because your bank works, your government works, you trust on that, right?

[00:49:54] And the problem of losing this with the time is You’re trusting something that is centralized, right. And can fail. And when it fails, you get lost. Like who am I going to trust again? And I’m being seen now in us in Canada, this reverse movement now, right? Like everyone is start like, Oh, I think we should create an association here.

[00:50:18] I should, the cooperatives, things like that. So it’s a very interesting mechanism that I feel. Five years ago, I was working on the ground with Bitcoin as well and on the global side as well. And I was seeing this bottom up revolution that Bitcoin was pushing with innovation with people. And now I’m seeing this happening culturally, like slowly, but it’s coming like, because Institutions, you cannot trust them that much anymore.

[00:50:49] So it’s funny because it’s bottom up. It’s coming, but on up, like, even the poorest people teaching us, remind us that the human element is important over the technology that we’re having.

[00:51:00] Preston Pysh: A person’s going to hear that and they’re going to say, okay, well, you’re Fedi, you’re a company. Why should anybody trust you? And I think one of the most impressive things that I saw in the video is how you guys are moving to open source everything. Talk to me about this. And how important this is for growth in just. Anybody can go in and audit the code and look at what’s happening and deeply understand it if they want to, because of this initiative that you have.

[00:51:27] Obi Nwosu: You asked the question, why should they trust us? And the answer should be, well, they shouldn’t have to trust us. That’s the best answer. And especially some of the communities that we’re dealing with, it’s actually. A matter of safety for them to know that all of the elements that they rely on, all the elements of technology I rely on are what I would call freedom technology.

[00:51:51] And what I mean by freedom technology is it’s something that’s privacy preserving and decentralized. It has to have those two elements to be privacy preserving and decentralized. If you have only one, it’s not enough to be a freedom technology because if it’s centralized or privacy preserving, then it still just requires one machine to be turned off.

[00:52:09] And you’ve lost access. Even though I don’t know who’s lost access, I know you’ve lost access. If it’s decentralized, not privacy preserving, then okay, you can’t shut it down, but I can still observe what you do. And I can, and that can, again, you need those two elements to be a freedom technology. And it became important.

[00:52:26] What we are doing with the app is this integration point. It brings everything together into one roof, but the ultimate user interface window into this world of communication, money, and more chats and money and more, but if that interface itself. isn’t a freedom technology, which means that the source has to be visible.

[00:52:48] People can check it and verify that we’re doing what we’re saying we’re doing. Then you still have to trust us that we’re doing something. Now, this was quite key very early on. One of the things I think that we’re very humble team, but one of the things I’m very, very probably personally is the choice of amazing people to work with and the choice of amazing investors.

[00:53:09] And that was something I thought was clear that it was really key early on people who shared the mission and vision. And if it wasn’t for our investors, if they didn’t have the mindset that was similar to us and the same beliefs, then there would be no way for a commercial company or us to be able to have agreements to have done this.

[00:53:30] It just wouldn’t have been possible. But I do think that we’re part of this changing trend. Five years ago, I think it would have been very, very hard for an organization to do what we just did. In five years time, my belief, It will be considered crazy to not be doing what we’re doing to be keeping your code closed source.

[00:53:50] It will be considered crazy. And we’re in this transition period. Now it can be done, but only if you’re very aligned team and very aligned backers and investors and supporters. But I’m hoping that more and more people will see what we’re doing. And we’ll follow our lead here and open source and make transparent what they do.

[00:54:10] And in so doing, their software will become stronger, will become more fault tolerant, and it will push you towards decentralized technologies. Because once it’s open like that, you’ll start realizing, well, maybe at that point, why do I need to run the infrastructure myself? Why can’t I put the power into the hands of users?

[00:54:27] And the user will give that feedback. So it’s a big, big call. And it’s only possible because of everybody, the entire team, from the investors down to the team to back it and be on board with it.

[00:54:40] Renata Rodrigues: Just to add something, like, just right now we are source available. And I think this adds so much protection to the user because they don’t see that there is a backdoor, anything that it’s tricky in the back, in the app.

[00:54:54] So it’s a lot of transparency. For the user. And if you talk about the decentralization, it needs to be transparent, right? Like, otherwise it’s chaos. Totally. And the other point that I never thought about it, and I think the developer is going to emphasize it with this too. It’s like our head of engineering.

[00:55:14] He was sharing, it’s very frustrating for developers to show their work, right? Because their code opened their code. And he was saying, it’s such a proud thing to do to the first time. Like you say, that’s what’s behind the scenes. That is my work for you guys. I never thought about it. Of course.

[00:55:33] Obi Nwosu: Yeah, that’s a very good, that was Oscar. You mentioned that. And it is, they’ve built this incredible app and it’s incredible functionalities. And often these go to die, or they benefit these centralized organizations, but people don’t see the efforts that went into it. Now there’s sources available, people can see it, and they can critique. Again, it’s a very humbling experience.

[00:55:57] They’re going to be opened up to critique. No code is perfect, but I think this code is amazing, but those critiques will make it even better. But I think there’s a point important point that just to be very clear that you’re not to mention is that as of May the 4th, so May the 4th be with you this year.

[00:56:12] We just waited to the announcements to publish it. The code is being sourced available. We had it in a few people’s hands for safekeeping until the launch and by latest and it’s very cool. Latest January 3rd. So The anniversary of the start of Bitcoin 2026, it will be fully open source, a GPL open source for anybody to use in any way they want, but that is a later.

[00:56:37] That’s a later state. It can be earlier. If we decide to, we can decide to make it open source earlier than that. And we may well do that. So, but just want to be very clear in case people states that we’re saying it’s open source right now. It’s not. But the code is, but the most important step is that the source is available, so people can know that we’re doing what we say we’re doing.

[00:56:59] There aren’t backdoors in the code, so that you know that we’re not doing anything to, at least knowingly, and if there is an issue, please comment, let us know. And we’ve had it reviewed and worked on by, and our team is an incredible team. But we’re trying to protect your privacy, we’re trying to protect your decentralization, and we’re going to continue to work to make this app, And our service more and more decentralized and use whatever is the best freedom technology out there at any given time.

[00:57:27] Preston Pysh: Guys, this is so exciting. People can download the app. We’ll have a link in the show notes for if people want to download that. We’ll also have a link in the show notes for the 30 minute video that I’ve talked about a couple times. What else do you guys want them to be directed towards if they want to learn more about this?

[00:57:43] Renata Rodrigues: No, I think our website, we have our Twitter now X account. We have also a telegram community, all Fedi, BTC, and for developers, there is a discord as well, a channel that we specifically talk about technical aspects as well. So there’s like different, and we have the masters available in the communities.

[00:58:10] So in the website, you’re going to see like, there is our masters for different regions. They have like their contact there too. So that’s also a different source.

[00:58:19] Preston Pysh: Okay. I will have links to all of that in the show notes for people. If you’re listening to this and let’s say you, you want to become one of these individuals that’s helping out in your local community, we’ll have all of that in there for you to click on and find.

[00:58:32] Wow. How exciting. Thank you guys for your time. What an interview. This was fantastic.

[00:58:37] Obi Nwosu: Thank you very much.

[00:58:41] Renata Rodrigues: I’m super excited too. And watch for more news. We’ll have more news soon.

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