There are two kinds of Bitcoin mining centers off-grid in Africa

Social enterprise and profit business

I will explain economics of both

In Malawi we visited a social enterprise. Nearly all power in rural Africa is concessionally financed… 🧵

https://twitter.com/profplum99/status/1765292018626933211

So in this case the Scottish government paid for (donated) the microhydro setup that converted this river into electricity for this village and the surrounding area. But they don’t pay for OpEx. A local conservationist in charge of a nearby national park created a power company…

Thrilled to share my new essay

"Stranded: How Bitcoin is Saving Wasted Energy and Expanding Financial Freedom in Africa"

I was profoundly moved by what I saw on a trip to Kenya + Malawi

If this can show you even 1% of what inspired me, that's a win 🧵

bitcoinmagazine.com/check-your-fin… We begin in Bondo, a small town in Malawi, a country where only 11% of the population has access to electricity

The nation suffers 6-8 hours of blackouts a day, but the power in Bondo is consistent because of Bitcoin mining

On Nov 14 @HRF will launch its CBDC Tracker program at the National Press Club in Washington, DC

The Tracker will go online for the first time, providing the public with a resource to examine the progress and risks of CBDC implementation worldwide 🧵

hrf.org/hrf-to-launch-…
Like paper dollars or euros, CBDCs are liabilities of central banks

Unlike paper dollars or euros, CBDCs do not offer the privacy protections, neutrality, or finality of cash

My 10 favorite insights from @LynAldenContact's new masterpiece, Broken Money



#1 On Invasion Money amazon.com/Broken-Money-F…
#2 On Natural vs Manmade Ledgers

Writing "Hidden Repression" was a powerful journey

It took me from shock, to disbelief, to shame, to optimism for a better future

I had heard criticisms about the IMF, especially its role in the global south 🧵

amazon.com/Hidden-Repress… I had heard many speak about the World Bank as a necessary but flawed institution

I was not prepared for what I unearthed

It is one thing for global institutions to be corrupt, trying to help the poor but failing along the way...

NEW: @HRF gifts 16.5 BTC (~$455,000) via its Bitcoin Development Fund to support 12 projects worldwide

Targeting:

🎁 Scaling and privacy
🎁 Censorship-resistant comms
🎁 Education inside authoritarian regimes
🎁 Core development
🎁 Community building

bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/human-… Grant #1: $100,000 to Calvin Kim (@kcalvinalvinn) for his work on Utreexo, a Bitcoin scaling solution for faster verification and synchronization of Bitcoin full nodes

HRF’s funding allows Kim to prepare Utreexo for a main net launch 🚀

bitcoinops.org/en/topics/utre…

If countries can make cheap electricity, it will make sense for them to mine Bitcoin

If they don’t, they’ll export in exchange for BTC

Both are fine

Mining affords no special powers over the network, so it makes no sense for countries stuck with expensive electricity A few notes:

1) Countries may have strictly expensive electricity in their population centers but maybe can make very cheap electricity in remote parts (mountains, tundra, oceans, desert, etc) — BTC will enable them to monetize this remote / stranded electricity

I'm thrilled to announce the publication of my new book: HIDDEN REPRESSION

It's the crazy story of how the IMF and World Bank sell exploitation as "development"

Grateful to @JeffBooth and @Farida_N for providing contributions

Pick up a copy today 🧵

amazon.com/Hidden-Repress… Hidden Repression is a follow-up to my last book -- Check Your Financial Privilege (CYFP.org) -- and was inspired by my research and reporting on the history and evolution of global monetary systems

Attended a lecture by @NJHagens today

Grim but his “what is likely to happen” is compelling

He predicts a massive economic deleveraging

I like that he seems to grasp the flaws in our fiat/credit monetary system as it expands in a way that is detached from finite resources His theory is essentially that fossil fuels have given humanity a temporary subsidy (he calls it the "carbon pulse") to rapidly increase the size of our economies

The human economy, he says, is 1,000x bigger than it was 500 years ago

But we will one day lose this subsidy

NEW: @HRF gifts 2 billion sats via its Bitcoin Development Fund to support 10 projects worldwide focusing on:

🎁Censorship-resistant communications
🎁Bitcoin adoption under authoritarian regimes
🎁Core development
🎁Community building and education

🧵

bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/hrf-do… Grant #1

$100,000 to Qala (@QalaAfrica), a fellowship program training the next generation of African Bitcoin and lightning developers

Funding will help Qala continue their 13-week fellowship program, as well as sponsor Qala fellows to attend @OsloFF ⚡

qala.dev

“Fiat CBDCs will be valuable for purchasing government-approved, mass-produced, and digital goods. For everything else, there’s Bitcoin”

-@saifedean Taken from this excellent lecture

“Can Bitcoin & Fiat Coexist?”

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

1/ What is “development”?

Picture a small, poor nation in the tropics

A new mineral source has been discovered

The first step is that an institution like the World Bank extends a loan — for let’s say, $500 million — to harvest these new resources 2/ Who gets hired to build the mine, the rail link, and the port so that the ore can be extracted, transported and then sold to international markets?

Western companies.

Often from the same nations that bankroll the World Bank.

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible.

I know this already.

Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.

Remember this.

Freedom is a pure idea.

It occurs spontaneously and without instruction… Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy.

There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause.

Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere.

Postfiatism: an early-to-mid 21st-century movement characterized by skepticism of the existing monetary order; a general suspicion of centrally-planned currency; and an acute sensitivity to the role of currency issuance in asserting and maintaining political and economic power Postfiatism is a reaction against the intellectual assumptions and values of the post-1971 political economy. The doctrines associated with postfiatism can be described as the straightforward denial of general philosophical viewpoints taken for granted under dollar hegemony

ETH is now advertising a 7.5% APR for its staking service Cc: @allenf32

Watched “Why We Fight” last night

Telling that the POTUS who knew more about the US military than anyone else—with unquestioned patriotism and sacrifice—was the one who dedicated his farewell address to stridently warning how the military-industrial complex could erode freedom Worth watching the 2005 doc entirely for the classic scene where they get McCain to criticize Cheney’s influence and ties to Halliburton but then the interview is literally interrupted by a phone call to McCain’s office from Cheney and he has to go 🥶

m.imdb.com/title/tt043697…

1/ NEW: @HRF gifts 2 billion sats ($325,000) via its Bitcoin Development Fund to support:

🎁 Core development
🎁 Bitcoin communities
🎁 Scaling and Lightning
🎁 Privacy tech
🎁 Global education

🌎 🌍 🌏

bitcoinmagazine.com/business/hrf-a… 2/ Grant #1: $50,000 to Gleb Naumenko (@ffstls) for his ongoing work on Bitcoin Core

From Ukraine, this year Gleb released Coinpool, a concept for scaling Bitcoin 🇺🇦

He'll continue to focus on security, privacy, scalability, and covenants

coinpool.dev/v0.1.pdf

The @Strike send globally feature is amazing

I just sent $5 from my US dollar balance to @bernard_parah in Lagos, and in under 2 minutes he received the value as naira in his Nigerian account

All I had to enter was his phone number, bank account, bank name

Made possible by ⚡️ The craziest part is that Bitcoin allows us to send and receive value using the “real” and not official exchange rate

So Bernard got 3,579 naira, which is “officially” $8

On fiat rails he would have gotten much less

1/ The global financial and cross-border payment system was built on incentives that forced innovators to extract rent from people who wanted to transact with one another

What if we could build money in a more cooperative way? 🧵 2/ Today, tens of billions of dollars in fees are siphoned off from payments worldwide

Especially from smaller payments made from the Global North to the Global South

Ghanaian scientist and internet pioneer Nii Quaynor (@niinarkuquaynor) opens Day 2 at @AfroBitcoinOrg

OG: Started mining in 🇬🇭 in 2015 and brought in the country’s first Bitcoin ATM 🔥 The Professor talks about the challenge ahead

He sees Bitcoin infra in Africa as similar to what internet penetration was on the continent in 1991

Long way to go!

Grim and sobering trip to Fort Christiansborg in Accra

Headquarters of the Danish-Norwegian slave operation for nearly 200 years

It is estimated that the Danes captured and sold more than 100,000 human beings from what is now Ghana: ~1% of the total Transatlantic Slave Trade The Fort feature a variety of dungeons that were used by the Danes and, later, the Portuguese and the British to detain slaves obtained locally before being sold to international markets

Up to 50 people were kept in small quarters like these, in total darkness

Many went blind