Voltage - 00:00:06:
Alright, well, great. We'll dive in. Well, Samson, we appreciate you being here. This is Bobby from Voltage and I'm so grateful that you responded to my invitation and what an eventful week to chat with each other and discuss what's going on in the world with just bitcoin and Lightning. So thank you.
Samson Mow - 00:00:24:
Yeah, happy to do it.
Voltage - 00:00:27:
Awesome. Well, the first thing I want to kind of talk about is I know you've made the shift from Blockstream to JAN3. Is that how you pronounce the name of your new venture?
Samson Mow - 00:00:39:
Yes, that sounds right.
Voltage - 00:00:41:
Perfect. I'd love to just kind of hear a little bit related to that because I know you're helping with nation state adoption and I just feel like there's a ton you're going to be doing over the next year to make an impact to really help the world understand and adopt bitcoin and Lightning. So maybe give us an updated breakdown of what's going on with JAN3.
Samson Mow - 00:01:00:
Sure. So I would say maybe the key difference between Blockstream and JAN3 is I want to focus more on bitcoin adoption, both grassroots and top down, working with governments that are interested to pursue a bitcoin strategy. So for the bottom up grassroots part, I'm going to try to push Aqua, it's a bitcoin and Liquid Wallet that I started at Blockstream and then I brought it over to JAN3 and we're making some improvements on that. But I think a key part of that is to focus on this may sound weird to bitcoiners, but to focus on allowing people to transact in stable coins over Lightning. So that's something we're going to try to implement in the coming months, maybe a year, depending on how things go. But I think in LatAm and a lot of more developing countries, it's really important for them to be able to transact using a dollar denominated asset just because they can't weather price fluctuations as well as people that are better off can, especially if they're doing business and they have to pay their vendors in dollars. Still, then it makes sense that they transact in dollars as well, or at least can convert and settle in dollars. So that's one thing. And I guess having more freedom to focus on working with governments like El Salvador and then I think upcoming is the Central African Republic and others, so I have more time and more latitude to go and focus on these things than at Blockstream. But Blockstream still does a ton of important work and they are the service provider for the Liquid network, which we're building on a lot of Liquid infrastructure. So it's still a super important company. And of course they contribute massively to the Bitcoin protocol and to the Lightning protocol.
Voltage - 00:03:01:
Absolutely. So the Aqua wallet, how it enables people to use bitcoin and Liquid and you mentioned other countries needing to use stable coins and then being specifically built on Lightning. I think one thing at least is someone who's on bitcoin Twitter 8 hours a day. You always hear about bitcoin adoption. People refer to it as just it may be being a savings vehicle or a way to transact day to day just so you don't have to deal with these international fees, et cetera. But it sounds like a lot of nation states, they actually may just be wanting to leverage bitcoin purely for dollars. Are there some countries maybe that aren't really concerned with using bitcoin itself as an asset, but just using it as a rail for stable coins specifically?
Samson Mow - 00:03:46:
Well, I think you need to be able to offer both things. And this is why Strike is really important too. And Strike was, I think, a key part of why it took off in El Salvador because it allows that convertibility. I think we're at the stage where we can dictate. Everyone has to take bitcoin and hold bitcoin. Right. I think we still are at the point in hyperbitcoinization where you have to have that flexibility and allow for people to choose based on their own economic situation and needs. So that's also why I think Chivo, it might be centralized, but it still provides valuable service to people too, because it allows them to get in and out of bitcoin easily and to settle in dollars when they take the transaction. And it's also connected to the ATM so they can take cash out, which these are all things I think help grease the wheels of hyperbitcoinization. It's not just going to be every day. Everyone at one point in time is going to say, well, we're all bitcoin only, but it's going to be a process that takes some time and there are tools along that way that can make it happen faster and make it easier for people to get into bitcoin.
Voltage - 00:04:58:
Absolutely. Now, I know in the last month or so, was it 44 countries, central banks, all were in El Salvador and I heard, I forget which podcast, but that was actually planned well before Pandemic. That just happened to be where the cards fell, that everyone was going to be in El Salvador. But I'm not sure if you were actually their boots on the ground during that event. But were you present?
Samson Mow - 00:05:22:
No, I wasn't.
Voltage - 00:05:23:
Got you, I guess, working closely with some of these other nations and just really being in the mix on this. What was your big takeaway from that and just the response from just these other nations with interest?
Samson Mow - 00:05:37:
Well, I think doing that conference in El Salvador was just a stroke of luck and maybe it's just serendipitous. Right. So, yeah, like you said, it wasn't planned. It was planned well in advance and it just happened to land in El Salvador this year and they're able to bring them to El Zonte and show them around. But I think the key part of this is you have El Salvador working to orangefield other nation states, right? So it's a big boom for bitcoiners when you have countries trying to orange pill other countries. Right. And I believe El Salvador probably had a hand to play in the adoption of bitcoin by the Central African Republic too. So they're obviously watching the news and paying attention to everything that's happening. So it's all happening according to plan.
Voltage - 00:06:29:
Absolutely. I'm very curious too, just to kind of shift the subject to like volcano mining. How is that coming along? I feel like it's not something where you just see like monthly updates, at least from everyone I'm following on Twitter. What's the status, if there is anything to share on that front?
Samson Mow - 00:06:49:
Yeah, actually I forgot one point. I was in Guatemala earlier this year and I actually met with the central bank in Guatemala and even though there was one guy that was a bitcoiner, there were other people that work at central bank that own bitcoin and are interested in bitcoin too. So I think everything that's happening is it's not kicking off a chain reaction right away, but it is starting to turn people's wheels in their heads and get them thinking and the discussion is happening. So it's advancing everything on the bitcoin front about the volcano mining. So El Salvador has one container right now in their Berlin facility operated by lago L-A-G-O, but they pronounce it LaGeo. But as you know, the plan is to do the bitcoin bond or volcano bond and then expand the operation with additional geothermal power and more mining equipment. But they had a lot of issues dealing with the gang violence. So that slowed some of their legislative efforts to put forth the new laws. I think there's 52 or 53 new laws that will go to Congress. And in that raft of laws is one of the laws that is needed to make the volcano bonds happen. It's the laws for digital asset issuance or crypto asset issuance which would enable them to issue the volcano bond. So that has to happen first and then the capital raise can happen. But even like if they did pass the law, I'm not sure if now is exactly a good time to go ahead with the raise. I think it's going to be a difficult environment right now, so we'll have to see what happens. But I know that they're readying the law and getting it all polished up.
Voltage - 00:08:49:
Great. Now the space, like, appreciate an update on just some of these kind of broader things. I really want to talk more about just some, like the Lightning Network and its impact on nations. And you did bring up countries being able to use stable coins over Lightning and leveraging Liquid. I'm really interested to kind of hear over the next, let's say two years, whatever would be a good time to kind of cover and just like talk about some of the goals. But five years might be too far out. But what do you see being the biggest advancements in some of these other countries that are most necessary, maybe that people simply are just not talking about, like in our Bitcoin bubble on Twitter, if there was something you could share.
Samson Mow - 00:09:36:
Let's do the first one first. So what is the impact? I think I forgot which outlet it was, but they asked I think LN Market, they asked the question, could El Salvador have adopted Bitcoin without the Lightning Network? And that was an interesting thing to think about. And I think even if Lightning didn't exist, you could still have countries adopting Bitcoin. But having the Lightning component makes Bitcoin coin a currency, so it makes everything a lot better. You can have the payments and remittances and boost tourism, et cetera. But still, like Bitcoin at the main chain level, at the L One level would still be good enough for adoption, right? You could still have a central bank accumulate Bitcoin on their balance sheet or in their reserves to basically act as a replacement for gold. And given the current macroeconomic situation and the geopolitical situation, potential for wars and whatnot, and the eradication of foreign currency reserves, that whole system is now broken because it's obvious that you can freeze them when someone's your enemy. That kind of illustrates that Bitcoin is needed even at that very basic, fundamental level, just as a base reserve currency that you can hold yourself. So I think Lightning is important and it makes it better. But even without Lightning, you could still potentially have had Bitcoin adoption at the nation state level just because Bitcoin is Bitcoin.
Voltage - 00:11:16:
Absolutely.
Samson Mow - 00:11:17:
So your other part of the question was, sorry, was it five years out? What's the impact of yeah, I know.
Voltage - 00:11:23:
Five years is pretty far out to really project with how rapidly things change. But over the next year or two, what are the most potentially in demand things other than the dollar stablecoin thing, which I want to dive into more. But what are people not paying attention to that these communities really need? I've heard issues with the chibo wallet and a bunch of different FUD. I don't know if it's true. I haven't really gone down on the weeds to kind of nitpick on that. But where are the improvements that need to be made just so these communities can truly rely on the technology?
Samson Mow - 00:11:57:
Let's see. Well, I think there are still challenges to address in the Lightning Network itself. It's still difficult to run Lightning for an average person noncustodially, so it's easy for using a custodial wallet. But if you really want to run Lightning in a noncustodial manner, then you have to deal with things like panels and balance. And that can be a bit too complex for people to deal with because they just want to use something. Right. The expectation is you just use an app and it works. And I don't think we're there yet, and I don't think having everything custodial is the solution either, because then technically you don't really need Lightning. We're also kind of in this weird transition phase where Lightning works. Adoption is increasing massively, but it's still by and large power through custodial services. It's probably not the bulk of it, but it's a fair chunk of it. So I think that has to be addressed. And I believe one of the things that Blockstream is working on could fix that. It's a service called Green Light where they spin up a Lightning node for you on demand, but your keys are held on your device. So that would mean it's effectively like an SPV wallet, right. Your service is in the cloud, but your keys and your signing are on your device. And there are some benefits to Greenlight because right now if you have a Lightning node at home and one on your phone, then you basically need to have two separate Lightning nodes and deal with all the management separately. But if it's in the cloud, then you can kind of use it whether you're home or on the go. And I think this is an interesting way to go about it. So there are a couple of companies integrating with Green right now and I'm also looking at that for Aqua. But that seems to be a better solution than custodial management wallets right now. But I think that would be an avenue worth pursuing. And if more people use things like that, then it would improve the overall health of the network.
Voltage - 00:14:19:
I agree.
Samson Mow - 00:14:20:
Yeah. So what else are people not thinking of? I don't know. I think people are thinking of everything. But I see an area that we can get an easy win is at the point of sale terminal. So at the Miami conference this year, jack Mallard has announced that he's working with a big point of sale terminal company in the US. And I think that will get a lot of adoption if he pushes that through and finalizes it. But I think there's other opportunities, other regions of the world because Lightning is for payments. If you can tackle some of these point of sale terminal companies and get them to integrate maybe in Latin or in Africa or wherever, then you can gain a lot of traction really quickly. Maybe not in Africa, maybe in Europe, but I think that's a prediction made in 2018 that will see mass adoption of Lightning in five years. So we're getting there. But I think the more point of sale terminals that we can onboard and hook up with Lightning, the better. There's a number of companies that have their own apps or their own point of sale terminals like iPad based or Android tablet based, but still like those old style ones. They're everywhere, they can still function and you need someone to work with them to refresh it. That's definitely something I'm thinking of doing to a chance, even though we have a lot of things on our plate, but I think it's an easy win and low hanging fruit.
Voltage - 00:15:57:
I agree. Our guy Nate, who's listening, he's always getting tons of questions about how to accept payments, crowdfunding getting tips and I think proven that will be very impactful. That just gets the average person using it. Small businesses using it. Small businesses are really the lifeblood of not only our country but especially other parts of the world. So I kind of want to shift a little more back to the stable coins on Lightning. So I've heard a few different things. I heard Pierre Richard mentioned on a podcast recently about the potential capability of adding funds to Lightning channels, jumping back and forth between bitcoin and dollar and then the Lightning splicing that's been kind of making headlines this week. I heard the first Lightning splicing transaction happened and I think there's going to be a lot of cool things that can come from that and just giving people the optionality to jump back and forth between bitcoin and stable points in an easy more private way, if you will. But where are you seeing just value, I guess with just all of these capabilities of just now, the dynamic changes and just what's happening within Lightning channels, if that makes sense.
Samson Mow - 00:17:14:
Yeah, there's a lot of interesting tech being built out, but again, I don't think a lot of it is really accessible to ordinary people. Right. The ones that are they probably run as a service and operated by a company or something like that. I think there are easier ways to achieve some of those similar things that are less fancy. There's this thing called peer swap that's being worked on by Warren Tagami from Blockstream. But that's a way for you to rebalance Lightning channels using bitcoin and using Liquid. But Liquid would be cheaper of course. So there is a benefit there. But I think the simpler ways to do things are probably better than the more complicated ways. It's still very early. A lot of things like slicing and even like trampoline, routing, all that stuff, it doesn't really feel like it's fully functional yet.
Voltage - 00:18:22:
Yeah, absolutely. Now on the liquidity front with Lightning, like you mentioned, making these noncustodial solutions and also just the reliability of payments over Lightning, what's the conversation on the nation state level about liquidity? Is there really demand and just need for much larger payment amounts or is it simply, hey, we just need to be able to buy milk, bread, bananas, like kind of standard things? Is there any conversation going on at the high governmental level related to liquidity that may be aligned with a lot of the stuff we're just hearing? Like at Blockstream and at Voltage.
Samson Mow - 00:19:04:
I haven't really seen it. Generally when you're engaging with politicians and governments and bankers, central bankers, they're more discussing bitcoin to base layer. Right. I think the level understanding hasn't progressed that far yet. Where they're talking bigger Lightning payments and what not. I think it's still at a more basic level. And even then it's like discussions about how bitcoin itself can help them or what exactly could be a method that they use to adopt bitcoin. Right, so I think we're still far away from having those types of discussions. But the Lightning aspect, the payment aspect could be an easy way for some government cities or municipalities to onboard because they have services to offer. Right, so if you look at Lugano, they want to accept bitcoin for payments and for cities services like parking tickets or payer taxes. But some things like parking tickets or even using municipal services like a swimming pool or whatever, those are probably small. So you need Lightning for that for Madeira. I talked with Andrea loja, he's a guy working with the president madera, and they think taking some payments probably would be the easiest way to start their bitcoin adoption program. Potentially like paying for a visa, like working visa, but again, that would be involving Lightning. But again, these amounts are not going to be massive, so you're not going to have those types of discussions that you're bringing up.
Voltage - 00:20:50:
Got it. So if orange pilling is bitcoin, what do you call Lightning pilling? I guess we need to come up with a name for that since that's the next step.
Samson Mow - 00:21:00:
I don't know. Yellow pilling.
Voltage - 00:21:03:
Right, well, cool. Well, what for you that June 3 is going to be doing for these nation states who are adopting bitcoin? What are you most looking forward to, just with everything that you're working on?
Samson Mow - 00:21:22:
Well, everything is exciting. I think pushing aqua, getting it into the hands of more people, getting Lightning supported in aqua is really high on my list of priorities. And then I like to see about some mining initiatives that we could potentially do to see if there is a way that we can get home mining more possible. So I've been kicking around some ideas, figuring out what we could do on that front. But the sky is the limit. There's so much to do in bitcoin, and oftentimes people forget that. And there's a common narrative in the media or even amongst the cryptocurrency industry. Bitcoin is old tech, but there's just so much you can do to improve on bitcoin and make bitcoin better. And there's not enough time in the day to work on all these different initiatives. Right. But, yeah, we have a number of trips coming up to a few places. So we'll be in Panama, we'll be meeting some of the bitcoin is there that are working on the bitcoin option in Panama. And then I have a conference in Korea, which I'll try to get some meetings around and pretty much the whole rest of the year, starting from July, I have trips to different places, so there's a lot of stuff going on and of course, just building up the team itself is a big challenge and also exciting too. Awesome.
Voltage - 00:22:54:
I look forward to seeing your food blog blog as you're traveling the world, man.
Samson Mow - 00:22:58:
You mean the coffee blog, right? Yeah.
Voltage - 00:23:01:
You'll be needing a lot of coffee. Well, here's a good question. I see a lot of plebs down here. A lot of us that are on bitcoin, Twitter, maybe that are not developers who can contribute to just these code bases and just different things that need to be done. But what do you think is the biggest thing people can do to help with some of this nation state adoption? The first thing I think of is simply educating others, just really like staying on the track of orange pilling, but may not have. What is the biggest impact thing you think we could do just in America, Canada and maybe like Europe to help some of these other countries advance that really need to adopt it at a nation level?
Samson Mow - 00:23:42:
Well, I think if you want to push for nation's adoption, you have to engage with politicians, right. And that might be a sticky thing for bitcoin to do, right, because there's a lot of mistrust of politicians that has been rightfully built up over decades. But if you're going to want to pursue this strategy, it's something you have to do. And they're trying to work on this. So there's this guy in Peru, G, he's been helping us with letter writing, trying to engage with the Peruvian government and arrange for meetings. I see planned. Marcus is here too. He's been working on some stuff, too, in Belize. And there's a ton of things that ordinary people can do. You just have to reach out and start talking to politicians and trying to orange pill them. Right. Another example is Canada. I'm from Canada, but there's a number of bitcoin here trying to work on some initiatives. So Brad Mills and VK? We're working on some things. And of course, we're also talking with Pierre Polyeth, right? So he's now in the running for Conservative Party leadership, which would allow him to run for Prime Minister. But these things wouldn't just happen on their own. You have to actually reach out and engage. And of course there will be dudes, there will be failures, but if you don't try, you never know if you can succeed. Right, but I think we're interesting time in the world where bitcoin is very much needed and it's just a matter of educating people and making them see that bitcoin is needed, right. And if they can understand the value proposition and the benefits that bitcoin can bring, then potentially we can actually change things. Because, I mean, the world is in a pretty bad state right now with inflation the way it is and monetary policy just out of control. So I think if we just make a concerted effort and focus and try to orange pill politicians and help them establish their platforms and messaging. And I guess the most important thing is understanding how bitcoin works, too, at a very fundamental level, then we have a chance to really fix things right now.
Voltage - 00:26:13:
Yeah, you raise a good point. A lot of bitcoin is don't want to maybe necessarily get involved with politicians. But I'm actually moving my family across America in the next four to six months and I reached out to a couple of gentlemen who worked for the city and for the local government. And they're doing this big crypto event and I just said. Bitcoin only is what matters. And he says. Bobby. I know. But the state requires us to be unbiased and we have to present everything. I thought that was interesting because it's like, well, that gives me a pretty darn good reason to show up and talk to these politicians, because, you know, these chick corners are going to show up and pitch there as hard as they can. So it's like we're almost we need to be there, regardless of what our ego may or may not say. Getting involved with politicians. Yeah. Another question on that is, do the politicians that you're speaking with maybe ever express fear about adopting bitcoin, even if they wanted to? Like maybe their international loans from the IMF or in jeopardy, et cetera, stuff like that?
Samson Mow - 00:27:13:
Well, definitely the IMF has played that card right with Argentina. If you do anything with bitcoin or crypto, then you're not going to get a loan. So it is a threat that they're using to try to slow down adoption. So, I mean, any politician that's paying attention should be fully aware of what they're getting into. But the question is, do they have the balls to go up against the IMF and break the cycle of debt? Right? You can't really stop borrowing from IMF. The only way to do it is to just say no and find another way. But finding another way, of course, is difficult. You have to raise capital, you have to get money somehow. And I think that's why I think bitcoin bonds are interesting, because it can tap into a new source of capital for nation states to access, instead of just borrowing fiat money from the IMF. But there's another thing I wanted to talk about. I forgot what it was. We skipped ahead of it. What was it about the events about being open, right. And non biased. So I've heard that a few times, actually. I forgot which one it was, but there was another guy I was talking to and he was saying, we have to be free market and will be welcoming to everybody. We don't want to offend people in crypto by saying bitcoin. Right. But then I told him, it doesn't matter if you say bitcoin, they're still going to come, just like parasites. The best example of the software, they said, we have a bitcoin law, but every single bitcoiner made a pilgrimage to O. Salvador trying to affinity scam or grift off of the bitcoin law and president booklet. So it doesn't really matter. You can save bitcoin only, but the shit coins will still come. It's not like they have any pride and shame to not show up. Right? There's tons of bitcoin 2022, but there's no bitcoin is going to ethereum DevCon or whatever like that. Right. It doesn't work that way. So you can always be bitcoin only and you're still inclusive because they'll come no matter what.
Voltage - 00:29:41:
Yeah. As like a marketing and sales type guy just jumping in the lions den with them and let's bring them back. Yeah.
Samson Mow - 00:29:53:
There's still a lot of crypto conferences, right? Like, even if you look at consensus, it's like a crypto DeFi conference. But I think I didn't go because I didn't want to, but I think it's still valuable to go and spread the message. Right. Even if you look at Michael sailor, he goes on a lot of crypto podcasts too. And it's important because if you just ignore those venues or those platforms, then you're not reaching anyone new. You're preaching to the choir. So you have to go out of your comfort zone and go to a crypto conference and speak about bitcoin. Right. So there's nothing bad about that.
Voltage - 00:30:33:
Absolutely. Well, usually in the latter half, I'll pull some folks up, let them ask some questions as well. But is there anything else you think that's just imperative to share, that maybe I'm not asked that's just new and just the adoption space on the nation state front?
Samson Mow - 00:30:53:
No, we covered a nice piece of ground, so nothing that comes to mind. Just one thing I have to drop in 15 minutes, so I only have 15 minutes left.
Voltage - 00:31:04:
Great. Okay. That sounds perfect. Appreciate these up. So I'll add a couple of these folks who requested to speak as speakers, and we'll just take a couple of questions here. Neo, what's going on?
Neo - 00:31:19:
Yeah, thank you. Great listening from you. I wanted to ask you any update on the franchise change that you are on boarding orange billing.
Samson Mow - 00:31:33:
Sorry, on the what franchises.
Neo - 00:31:43:
Maybe? Hopefully somebody will do it. My question is, I know you touch on some of the corners coming after bouquelle, after the bitcoin wall and all that, and we know that they come to the conference. You see them all around, right? They tried to piggy back on. Now I have questions I don't know if you're free to answer or not, but your personal opinion, because when you hear the crypto bras, right, what they say is that we should be open as the corners because they're actually increasing the funnel and bitcoin will only benefit. Right. But if we listen to obviously the corners on our side, we feel like the contaminated space, and we see what happened with lumen and Celsius. Now we're kind of seeing the impact on that, right?
Samson Mow - 00:32:43:
Yeah.
Neo - 00:32:44:
So what's your personal take on that? Do you think that it's positive that we have different, so to speak, blockchain trying to innovate, if we call it that way? Or do you think that is negative? Maybe in the short term, medium term, long term, maybe they're different. So I would like to pick up your brain there. What do you think?
Samson Mow - 00:33:13:
I said it's a massive negative. Like all of these things just drag us down and most of them are not they're not even decentralized, right? If you look at most of the these days, they're just web. JAN3 is basically all VC back blockchain projects. So there's nothing even remotely comparable to Bitcoin, right? At least like ten years ago, the projects that came out are forks of Bitcoin and they're still proof of work systems and there's like at least something going on there that involves work and energy, right? But nowadays all these things are just like proof of stake, delegated proof of stake. There's like no energy, no effort required. You're literally just printing money, just like fiat money. And all of these things blow up because they're just rehabilitating everything that they have. It's house of cards stacked on top of house of cards and they blow up. And all this blowback comes back to bitcoin. The whole reason for this crash is because of all that shit, right? It's because of Luna. And then the recent crash is because the Celsius bank run and the drop down to 20. It's because of Luna, right? This is a holdover from that 60 billion hole that they knock into that whole DeFi ecosystem market cap. And it's still rubber baiting, but I think we're probably through it now. But all of that stuff just drag us down. None of it. There's no good ending for any of that stuff. It all trends to zero. And yes, they might bring in more people, they might increase the size of the market, but they're also harming the people that they bring in.
Neo - 00:34:54:
Yeah. So I think it's negative. I agree with that. I'm glad to hear that from you. Now, what can we do as the community to prevent another Celsius in a couple of years? Is there anything we can do besides yelling and pointing fingers? I know education is key, but they have so much marketing teams that they always have the nicer, faster, greener, prettier Coin and Charles in Africa. This is good for women and we respect the environment and all that marketing scheme and just people get sucked into that, right? And I'm not sure what we can do besides speaking the truth. I mean, is there anything that you suggest that we know as a community?
Samson Mow - 00:35:49:
Don't be toxic, but there's not much you can do. Like, these things play on human greed and human greed is not going to go away. It's part of humanity, right? So it's like saying we're going to suddenly all become enlightened and see Bitcoin and pursue the only true path forward. That's not possible. Everyone's going to be greedy. Everyone's going to want crazy gains and all these guys are going to promise them crazy gains and the cycle will repeat. It's like the matrix. You keep going again. But I think we can make it better by calling out the scams and Corey clipstin. He does a great job calling all this stuff out, right? I've kind of given up because I don't want to learn about them and I don't really care anymore. I just call it ethereum because that's the origination of all scams. But there's like tons of scams and you can break them down and call them out and it's a useful service, but it just takes a lot of effort. Right? There's more and more of these shitty projects coming out. Like there's 20,000 so much shit out there that not one person can call all that out and address it. Right? But what we can do is try to push the nation stated option. So getting more countries to adopt bitcoin, getting bitcoin established as a standard, I think this will help. But none of the stuff will go away. There's going to be another luna. I guarantee you. In four years. And eventually. Maybe 100 years from now. We'll start to see them trickle out because there will be like a history book on this stuff and people can read it and say. Oh yeah. They've been doing this for 100 years and people have been losing money on this stuff for 100 years and none of it's decentralized or even valuable. So it'll take some time, but potentially we can see the end of it. But it's going to be with us for a while.
Voltage - 00:37:56:
I love that history book idea. That's great. Neo. Appreciate the questions, man. Hey, heritage, do you have something you wanted to ask?
Heritage Falodun - 00:38:05:
Yes, thanks.
Voltage - 00:38:07:
Voltage.
Heritage Falodun - 00:38:09:
Thanks for having me in your space. I'm a message followed on from Nigeria. And yes, I've been listening to the conversation. I'm particularly affected about the part you said about education and enabling bitcoin adoption, especially to the nation state. So Georgia from the father central African republic is the first African country to declare between good tender. But then I have questions. You mentioned something about Lightning Network. That is the more point of sale terminal. We can get hooped up with Lightning, the better it is for Lightning Network itself. But then in a case of country like Nigeria, whereby the adoption process itself is forced by the citizen of the country, not by defense, and this is actually in Africa, in a jurisdiction like this, access to some of the different ISIS to get channels and all is not as easy as it is to get in western countries. And yes, youth people are like seeing the impact of bitcoin in real time in terms of cross borders, in terms of boycotting, inflation of about 26% in Nigeria and stuff like that. But then when it comes to utilizing this innovation in a wide range of technical aspects. We've been having difficulties in getting like raspberry pie, even getting cold wallets to people and stuff like that. So I just want to ask a question from something. Since you are like the co-founder, CEO of January 2, you guys pronunciation of the company, and you focused on bitcoin education and adoption. So what are the things in stakes for nation state adoption in Africa and Nigeria? Population adoption rate.
Samson Mow - 00:40:33:
Yeah, so this is why I walked back on. I said point of sale terminals. I think Africa may not be a key market for point of sale terminals because I think mobile phone usage is probably more prevalent. And that's why in Africa overall, people have skipped over a lot of that stuff and just went to payments by phone and using phone payment apps like M, Pesa and everything like that. So maybe the angle there is to focus on a better mobile experience and push that. I think hardware wallets, hardware wallets are still expensive, but the cost can technically go down. Like at blockchain, we built the jade wallet, right? And it's retailing at, I think $46 or something like that. Potentially you could get that price even lower if you manufactured it higher volumes. So I think it just takes some time, but some manufacturers going to be able to make a cheaper harbor wallet for $10, something like that, and roll that out. But yeah, I mean, getting raspberry high, getting all that stuff is going to be a barrier. Maybe the green light solution is probably better, right? Because it's a cloud Lightning wallet and you just keep the key on your device. Or actually maybe you can make a better hardware wallet like a Lightning hardware wallet that's just signing off on Lightning transactions. And you could maybe get the cost of that far lower because it would be much more reduced in functionality and scope.
Heritage Falodun - 00:42:21:
Thanks for that. And just to wrap it up, my final question and contribution is going to be, I think it was the last figure was about the process of getting education across the nation state adoption. I'm just going to say that orange peeling is actually a collective work for every bitcoin. Since bitcoin itself doesn't have a marketing strategy, it doesn't have a community manager like all these bitcoins. And you're trying to say something in regards to how all the coins operate, I'm just going to add the same. All alternative coins concerns or mechanism is proof of grid. When they play proof of grid on individual password like short time tinkets, then they are able to leverage them into the crypto space. I believe in the long run when there has been experiences, different people going through different or du sando heritage. Thanks for having me in your space.
Samson Mow - 00:43:33:
Thank you.
Voltage - 00:43:34:
Thank you, Sam. And you need to jump or you got time for one more quick question.
Samson Mow - 00:43:38:
I'll do one more.
Voltage - 00:43:39:
Pushing it. Viking, you're up, bro.
Samson Mow - 00:43:42:
I don't want to do that, bro. Look, I saw that tissue guy. Deborah Zion was here first, so I'm going to give it to him.
Tseggai Debrezion - 00:43:53:
All right? Thank you. Thanks for allowing me. My name is Sagai Samson and Graham. Thanks for allowing me to speak to you and ask your question. Actually, I'll make it quick. We tried to look into a Lightning Network enabled like payments, remnants, products for Africa actually carrying from heritage point of view. Anyways, I've been speaking with Voltage and also with the green light. At the same time, spoke with the Graham. It's been nice. And at the same time with a Christian from Greenlight. What is the core difference between what both of them are doing? We try to stay true to the principles of Bitcoin having basically ownership of the custody of the product. Anyways, the way we were talking about it, so I wanted to see what is the core difference. This question can go to both of you guys. Any one of you guys can answer that, I guess. Thank you very much.
Samson Mow - 00:44:53:
Yeah, I don't know that much about this class, so maybe, Bobby, you can take it.
Voltage - 00:44:59:
Yeah, I mean, someone else need to come and answer that. Like the core difference. Roaches of running the Lightning Network. That might not be the perfect question for the end.
Samson Mow - 00:45:09:
I'm going to ask the last question of the fucking whole thing.
Voltage - 00:45:12:
Look.
Samson Mow - 00:45:12:
AO, check it out. Samson, quickly, yes or no question. What is funner? Working on video games or working on bitcoin? I think video games is more like art, like painting. But bitcoin is lusting and endless entertainment. All right, that's it. I would ask more, but I know you got a jump, brother. Thanks, guys, it's been fun. We could do another one. Just like Questions all questions, one time maybe.
Voltage - 00:45:43:
That sounds good. Samson, thanks for your time. And Samson, I know you got to jump, but I pulled Nate up here. T, if you want to ask that question again, Nate can try to answer that in the best way he can. I want to say thank you and please reach out anytime. If you have any announcements or anything.
Samson Mow - 00:46:00:
We'D love to host you again. Sounds good. Thanks, Nate. Thanks, Bobby. Guys, later.
Voltage - 00:46:05:
Thanks.
Neo - 00:46:06:
Bye.
