A Tale of Two Americas: Marina's Bicultural Experiences and Exploration of Bitcoin - 4

Tali: 00:00:00

Hi everyone.

Tali: 00:00:01

Welcome to Orange Hatter.

Tali: 00:00:02

Today you're listening to part four of my conversation with Marina.

Tali: 00:00:06

... and I wanna go into what you're doing in El Salvador.

Marina: 00:00:09

Well, of course.

Marina: 00:00:10

One of the projects that I was working on in the ecosystem was

Marina: 00:00:15

working with Chaincode Labs to help grow their developer ecosystem in,

Marina: 00:00:19

around the world in emerging markets.

Marina: 00:00:21

And so one of the projects that I was supporting with connections,

Marina: 00:00:25

calling people, making sure that it, the project was succeeding, was

Marina: 00:00:29

Kala, which is a program in Africa.

Marina: 00:00:32

Kala is a Bitcoin developer education platform where you

Marina: 00:00:36

are part of some of a program.

Marina: 00:00:38

You get selected as a developer with a certain amount of experience

Marina: 00:00:42

and you go through this open source free and open source program.

Marina: 00:00:46

But in that particular case, they have really great mentors.

Marina: 00:00:48

There's a whole project around it.

Marina: 00:00:51

And so that program selected 14 fellows for their, their program, and it was

Marina: 00:00:58

14 fellows from across Africa that were selected, and I thought it was brilliant.

Marina: 00:01:03

I thought it was great that this could happen in emerging markets, that this

Marina: 00:01:07

was being created, but I, I also felt the need that, and, and they agreed

Marina: 00:01:12

obviously, that there was a need for this to happen in other places.

Marina: 00:01:15

Right?

Marina: 00:01:16

Thailand, Mexico, Columbia, Argentina, wherever we could

Marina: 00:01:20

invite people to participate like you can, Chaincode has....

Marina: 00:01:24

Lab has a, an open source project program that you can join.

Marina: 00:01:28

It has lessons that like, it starts like a certain date and you participate

Marina: 00:01:33

and you learn, and then you can become part of the community, right?

Marina: 00:01:37

If you're a developer, so what, what I thought was, well, if El Salvador has the

Marina: 00:01:43

new law where Bitcoin is legal tender and companies are having trouble hiring local

Marina: 00:01:49

talent because the, you know, obviously they, they're programmers but they don't

Marina: 00:01:53

understand Bitcoin or lightning, maybe something that would be really important

Marina: 00:01:58

because obviously, as you may remember, this was a top-down decision where the

Marina: 00:02:02

president suddenly, suddenly announced via Jack Mallers in Miami, that, that

Marina: 00:02:08

Bitcoin was legal tender in the country.

Marina: 00:02:10

It really was not well received by the business community or

Marina: 00:02:15

the country and the TiVo wallet.

Marina: 00:02:18

Even though it was a, an important attempt to make sure that it was massified in

Marina: 00:02:22

the country and accepted, it really didn't come from the ground up the

Marina: 00:02:26

way that Bitcoin is usually grows, or is usually encouraged, peer to peer.

Marina: 00:02:33

There was a, a lot of like negative feelings surrounding

Marina: 00:02:36

it and very politicized.

Marina: 00:02:39

Right?

Marina: 00:02:39

And so you couldn't hire because there was no talent.

Marina: 00:02:41

You couldn't really, the ... wallet wasn't working.

Marina: 00:02:45

And so most, most of the people's experience with Bitcoin at

Marina: 00:02:48

the time was not a good one.

Marina: 00:02:50

It was, like, okay, the, the TiVo ATM machine ate my Bitcoin or

Marina: 00:02:56

my, my, I can't understand this.

Marina: 00:02:58

So people were, a lot, a lot of them were converting that $30 that the government

Marina: 00:03:02

gave them into dollars directly.

Marina: 00:03:04

They were not keeping the Bitcoin, so, And in any case, the

Marina: 00:03:07

whole talent, part two, right?

Marina: 00:03:09

10, 10 or so companies moved to El Salvador, but they couldn't hire, so

Marina: 00:03:13

they were importing talent, right?

Marina: 00:03:15

And there's no talent.

Marina: 00:03:17

There's no talent.

Marina: 00:03:18

I don't believe in that.

Marina: 00:03:19

I used to recruit talent for a living.

Marina: 00:03:21

I know that you have to go find them, right?

Marina: 00:03:23

Most people will tell you, okay, talk to this person and that person.

Marina: 00:03:26

But those are the safe choices.

Marina: 00:03:27

Those are not the, the, the grit people, the, the people who are gonna care and

Marina: 00:03:32

go above and beyond because they're fascinated by the, by the technology.

Marina: 00:03:36

You know, it's not like natural, okay, I'm gonna spend 2,000

Marina: 00:03:40

hours studying about Bitcoin.

Marina: 00:03:41

It's not like if you have a job, if you have a life, you don't,

Marina: 00:03:44

you don't, you're not immediately just gonna jump in and do it.

Marina: 00:03:48

There has to be cer a certain, you know, process or course,

Marina: 00:03:51

or a something available to recruit you to learn about it.

Marina: 00:03:55

Right?

Marina: 00:03:56

Somebody has to tell you, hey, you should, you should do this.

Marina: 00:03:58

And so we created a, a program that is very similar to Kala in the, in the

Marina: 00:04:03

sense of focusing on developers already.

Marina: 00:04:06

Not, there's other programs out there that are teaching you how to download

Marina: 00:04:09

a wallet or teaching you the, you know, the basics about Bitcoin, but this

Marina: 00:04:13

was very focused on technology, right?

Marina: 00:04:16

So developers with over two years of experience in programming, and

Marina: 00:04:21

we started with mastering Bitcoin, which is like a Socratic seminar, and

Marina: 00:04:26

we had 80 students go through that, which we call Proof of Work, right?

Marina: 00:04:30

Who actually does the homework?

Marina: 00:04:31

Who actually does the reading?

Marina: 00:04:32

Who is asking questions?

Marina: 00:04:34

And then we did Mastering Lightning, which is the other book that goes

Marina: 00:04:38

through the Chaincode Labs program.

Marina: 00:04:40

And there we had 30 students who did the homework, who passed our test,

Marina: 00:04:45

who were kept showing interest even though they have full-time jobs.

Marina: 00:04:49

And finally, we, from those 30 students, we made another test.

Marina: 00:04:54

We asked them to, you know, just prove that they wanted

Marina: 00:04:57

to be part of the fellowship.

Marina: 00:04:58

And from there we selected six students who became part of the fellowship program.

Marina: 00:05:04

They are working on a project right now, which I think is really,

Marina: 00:05:07

really, really unique, right?

Marina: 00:05:09

Because for example, Kala in Africa, there's no country like where you can

Marina: 00:05:14

just, okay, here we are, we're gonna use Bitcoin transparently all over the place.

Marina: 00:05:17

You can't really embed it in businesses super easy yet, and yet

Marina: 00:05:22

in in El Salvador, we had that unique difference where it can be embedded

Marina: 00:05:27

in a business because it is legal.

Marina: 00:05:30

And so we decided to partner with a company that is focused in the agro,

Marina: 00:05:35

in agro tech, agro industry business.

Marina: 00:05:38

They are a coffee grower association.

Marina: 00:05:41

I.

Marina: 00:05:42

That, you know, the leader of, of the, of the Coffee Grower

Marina: 00:05:45

Association is Cherito Cafe.

Marina: 00:05:47

Cherito is, has coffees that are called Genesis Block.

Marina: 00:05:51

I mean, he's a Bitcoiner by heart, but he really could, he really had,

Marina: 00:05:57

had, uh, had not integrated Bitcoin or lightning in his payment system.

Marina: 00:06:01

So how does he pay farmers?

Marina: 00:06:03

How do coffee, coffee exporters or, or people in Germany or us paying him how

Marina: 00:06:09

he pays the, the, the coffee growers that entire side of the business.

Marina: 00:06:14

You know, yes, he was enthusiast of business of Bitcoin, but he

Marina: 00:06:18

had not integrated lightning and Bitcoin into his payment process.

Marina: 00:06:23

So what we wanted to do was something that you called Marco Pais,

Marina: 00:06:28

which is a country brand, right?

Marina: 00:06:31

We wanna help him become a country brand of Bitcoin and for El Salvador.

Marina: 00:06:35

So a brand for Bitcoin and a brand for El Salvador by helping

Marina: 00:06:39

him integrate lightning payments into his whole ecosystem.

Marina: 00:06:43

So when, when he buys coffee from the grower in a certain region.

Marina: 00:06:47

He gets his payment immediately through lightning and doesn't have

Marina: 00:06:50

to wait three to four months live in that purgatory of pretend money.

Marina: 00:06:55

Right.

Marina: 00:06:55

Where like, they're gonna pay you, but who knows when?

Marina: 00:06:58

Like, no, it's immediate, it's instant.

Marina: 00:07:00

You get your, your, you know, and you can also pay the different coffee

Marina: 00:07:04

growers, not just one, and then trickle it down with the extra fees.

Marina: 00:07:08

Right.

Marina: 00:07:09

You just.

Marina: 00:07:10

Spread it out and do it very transparently.

Marina: 00:07:13

So that's the project that we're working on.

Marina: 00:07:15

We're gonna be what we call from seed to coffee cup, right?

Marina: 00:07:19

So the process of the payment, the payments is gonna be ex

Marina: 00:07:23

extremely, hopefully streamlined the supply chain of coffee.

Marina: 00:07:28

And again, coffee is a global, a global phenomena, and the goal is because it will

Marina: 00:07:34

be an open source system, any company in El Salvador can copy this payment system

Marina: 00:07:40

that we built for Cherito Cafe or any company, let's say Colombia or Mexico,

Marina: 00:07:45

or who, or Ethiopia, who is fascinated by this, who wants to do this as well,

Marina: 00:07:50

they could potentially do it as well.

Marina: 00:07:52

So it can become a, a brand for Bitcoin and a brand for coffee

Marina: 00:07:56

and a brand for El Salvador.

Marina: 00:07:58

If we can make this succeed, and obviously it's a lot of work,

Marina: 00:08:01

it's gonna be a six month program because our students work full time.

Marina: 00:08:05

So you have to remember that part too, that that is different

Marina: 00:08:08

from other countries and other situations, but it's also legal.

Marina: 00:08:12

So we can do it and we can really not feel like, okay, is this gonna pass the law?

Marina: 00:08:16

Is this gonna get us in trouble with, you know...

Marina: 00:08:18

we have that flexibility and freedom and so that is what the

Marina: 00:08:22

project is trying to do now.

Marina: 00:08:24

That is why right now we're trying to find a partner that really makes sense, where

Marina: 00:08:28

we can, you know, set up a node for the team and set up, you know, the, the, the

Marina: 00:08:33

fee you'd be able to, to, to do fees and payments and, and liquidity on the node.

Marina: 00:08:39

So we're trying to raise about $12,000 for the program.

Marina: 00:08:43

So we can, you know, do workshops that are not just for our fellows, but for

Marina: 00:08:47

other people in the community, you know, and also get the node, get, get

Marina: 00:08:51

the liquidity, start the program going, but only after proof of work, right?

Marina: 00:08:57

We didn't do any fundraising before.

Marina: 00:08:59

We're not asking for money every five minutes.

Marina: 00:09:01

Like there's a lot of programs who are...

Marina: 00:09:03

we chose to really be very careful and only fundraise once.

Marina: 00:09:08

The program really needed it.

Marina: 00:09:10

Right.

Marina: 00:09:10

And once we've proven that the talent was there and that this

Marina: 00:09:14

project was hopefully gonna be so unique that you should support it.

Tali: 00:09:20

Yeah.

Tali: 00:09:20

And if you can send me the contact info for anybody who listens to this

Tali: 00:09:24

program and wants to reach out to you or to support the fellowship.

Marina: 00:09:28

Wonderful.

Marina: 00:09:28

Yeah.

Marina: 00:09:28

And I'll send you our wallet for SATs.

Tali: 00:09:31

Yeah, that would be great.

Tali: 00:09:33

So you had mentioned that, that when it comes to coding and the developers, it's

Tali: 00:09:37

so important to get local talent, and yet we talk about this being a global

Tali: 00:09:41

system and things being open source.

Tali: 00:09:45

Are you specifically referring to just the legal aspect of it or is there something

Tali: 00:09:49

else that, uh, restricts, not restrict, but where having local talent is better

Tali: 00:09:54

than, say, us just exporting talent from North America or Europe or something?

Marina: 00:09:59

Well, I think learning about Bitcoin really takes time.

Marina: 00:10:03

You know, it's not like a sudden, like, okay, now I'm

Marina: 00:10:05

gonna just program in Bitcoin.

Marina: 00:10:07

Right?

Marina: 00:10:07

It really does take time.

Marina: 00:10:10

And sometimes we underestimate that other people don't have

Marina: 00:10:14

time in the global south.

Marina: 00:10:16

Time is money.

Marina: 00:10:17

They barely are passing back, passing the they, they don't, they cannot.

Marina: 00:10:22

Right?

Marina: 00:10:22

And so it really, like, they say proof of work, proof of work, but.

Marina: 00:10:27

Sometimes we don't have time for it and it, and it's really hard and so that's

Marina: 00:10:31

why it's so important to have programs that are, like, really recruiting abroad.

Marina: 00:10:36

Not just, not just, okay, here it is free.

Marina: 00:10:39

Right?

Marina: 00:10:40

Like go talk to them.

Marina: 00:10:41

Go talk to Bitcoin Guadalajara.

Marina: 00:10:43

Go talk to Bitcoin Ekazi.

Marina: 00:10:45

Go talk to Bitcoin, Guatemala.

Marina: 00:10:47

Go talk to them and encourage them to participate because otherwise

Marina: 00:10:50

they just don't know about it.

Marina: 00:10:52

They don't have time to pay attention, and they're just

Marina: 00:10:54

trying to struggle to survive.

Marina: 00:10:56

Right?

Tali: 00:10:57

Thanks for joining us today and learning with us today.

Tali: 00:11:00

If the discussion with our guest resonated with you and you would

Tali: 00:11:04

like to dive deeper into the world of Bitcoin, don't miss out on joining the

Tali: 00:11:08

Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club.

Tali: 00:11:10

The meetup link is in the show notes.

Tali: 00:11:12

Also, if there are women in your life whom you think will both enjoy and

Tali: 00:11:16

benefit from learning more about Bitcoin, please share Orange Hatter with them.