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Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ Profile picture
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5 Sep, 7 tweets, 6 min read
@joshtpm 1/ Josh, what's remarkable is your arrogance, ignorance, and financial privilege. 1.3 billion live under double or triple digit inflation and 4.3 billion live under authoritarianism. Millions of them have turned to BTC as a way out. That you would mock them is bizarrely cruel.
@joshtpm 2/ To give you an idea of the scale of what's happening here, @paxful is just one BTC p2p marketplace. They have ~ 2M users in Nigeria alone. Exchange operates in India peg Bitcoin users at north of 10M. There are millions more from Argentina to Turkey to the Philippines.
@joshtpm @paxful 3/ Why would they turn to BTC? Unlike you--who lives in a liberal democracy with a reserve currency--they live under weak currencies without proper rule of law and civil liberties. Hence they turn to an open-source money that can't be censored, remotely confiscated, or debased.
@joshtpm @paxful 4/ If you are interested in learning instead of mocking those less financially fortunate than you, I would be happy to share what I've learned anytime. For now, here is some of my writing spotlighting users in Palestine, Cuba, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Togo, Senegal, and beyond:
@joshtpm @paxful 5/ Afghanistan: bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoi…

Cuba: bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/cubas-…

Palestine: bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/can-bi…

Togo and Senegal: bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoi…

Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia:
bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-…
@joshtpm @paxful 6/ Also, I just visited El Salvador where people use BTC to connect to the global financial system in a way that would otherwise be impossible.

Here's a barista in a tiny village who received hundreds of BTC tips from dozens of countries in the past day:

@joshtpm @paxful 7/ Here's another example from Central America, me transforming Bitcoin on my mobile wallet into a $10 bill in less than 2 minutes, paying a tiny fee, without using the banking system.

Surely you can see how vital this is for those without bank accounts?

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More from @gladstein

Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ Profile picture
16 Sep
1/ My latest essay "The Village and the Strongman: the Unlikely Story of Bitcoin and El Salvador" is now live.

How did the smallest country in Central America—most known for its civil war and gang violence—become ground zero for a monetary revolution? 🧵

bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/the-po…
2/ It all started in the seaside village of El Zonte. With a population of just a few thousand, dirt roads, tarp and sheet metal roofs, and no supermarket, most residents don't even have bank accounts. Historically, it was a place where residents were caretakers or fishermen.
3/ Twenty years ago, no one would have thought such a place could change the world. But two young men in town received a gift—the ability to dream—from a social worker, who taught them how to hope for a better future. @jorgebitcoinES and @romanmartinezc began to build.
Read 61 tweets
Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ Profile picture
14 Sep
1/ Today @HRF announces 375 million satoshis in Q3 gifts from its Bitcoin Development Fund to 10 projects spanning the globe.

This round focuses on Bitcoin privacy, ⚡, dev education in emerging markets, improving user onboarding experience, and continued core development 🧵 👇
2/ 50 million satoshis to @bernard_parah, @actuallyCarlaKC, Tim Akinbo, and @ihate1999 for the creation of qala.dev, a program to help train and grow new Bitcoin developers in Nigeria and wider Africa. Special thanks to @paxful for making this gift possible.
3/ 50 million satoshis to @diopfode for his efforts with bitcoindevelopers.academy to help individuals in West Africa and especially those living under the colonial CFA franc system to build and use Bitcoin applications. Special thanks to @ManuelStotz for making this gift possible.
Read 13 tweets
Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ Profile picture
13 Sep
“The plan is for Ukraine to make Bitcoin legal tender by the start of 2023 and create a ‘duel-currency country’ where Bitcoin sits alongside the fiat hryvnia before potentially being phased in as the dominant financial structure”

🇺🇦

cityam.com/ukraine-set-to…
Note: this seems like speculation based on recent public statements and actions of the Ukrainian government, which is pro-EU/NATO. What’s interesting to consider is that Ukraine today is very much a key piece of US foreign policy, and on America’s side vs Putin, etc
As @anilsaidso reminds us, some politicians in Ukraine have disclosed owning hundreds or even thousands of Bitcoin:
Read 4 tweets
Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ Profile picture
10 Sep
1/ New @WSJ article laying out the statist case for Central Bank Digital Currencies and the war on cash:

“If people can’t hoard physical money, it becomes much easier to cut rates far below zero”

🧵 with key quotes👇

wsj.com/articles/digit…
2/ “If people can’t hoard physical money, it becomes much easier to cut interest rates far below zero; otherwise the zero rate on bank notes stuffed under the mattress looks attractive. And if interest rates can go far below 0, monetary policy is suddenly much more powerful”

🥶
3/ “Initially, CBDCs will almost certainly be designed to behave as much like ordinary bank notes as possible, to make their adoption easy and minimize disruption, while use of physical cash will be allowed to wither away. But... monetary caution is unlikely to last.”

🥶
Read 9 tweets
Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ Profile picture
5 Sep
1/ As Tuesday's Bitcoin legal tender law looms for more than 6 million Salvadorans, many if not most of them fear a big monetary change.

This is partly because of the dollarization which occurred exactly 20 years ago, in a similarly rushed, top-down way 🧵 🇸🇻
2/ Last week I attended the anti-Bitcoin law protest in San Salvador. This is the secretary of a union for judicial employees.

She was against the law for many reasons, but a big one was that last time the govt changed the money system in 2001, it was bad for the lower classes.
3/ Dollarization was fairly unique in El Salvador's case. The country wasn't experiencing high inflation, or any kind of economic crisis. But policymakers said it would help bring down interest rates and fuel the banking sector. Which it did. But it had unintended consequences.
Read 26 tweets
Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ Profile picture
2 Sep
Flawless experience using @MuunWallet here in El Zonte to buy all sorts of things with Bitcoin 👌

If you visit, make sure to stop by for a coffee with Karla, an excellent barista.

You can tip her instantly from anywhere in the world with Lightning here:

strike.me/karla
Wow! Karla has received more than 80,000 satoshis in tips since I shared this post.

Those are seeds which will grow into a big tree 🌳

Grateful for you all 🙏 🧡
Update: it looks like she has received more than 300,000 sats by this point.

From more than 20 countries.

You're all amazingly generous, thank you!
Read 5 tweets

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