Final Settlement E013: Bitcoin is the Real Fintech with Abubakar Nur Khalil

It all. Comes down to computers communicating. The information superhighway can be a confusing mix of on ramps and off ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Is it still rat poison? Probably rat poison squared. We need to get into the world of OK, this is actually foundational. Technology. What the Internet of Money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of gun. The one thing that's missing that will soon be developed is a reliable E cash. Welcome back to Final Settlement podcast brought to you by Honor and Media. Today is Monday, September 23rd, and we're very excited about today's guest, Abubakar. Nir Khalil is joining us. Abubakar is a Bitcoin Core contributor and CEO of the Bitcoin venture capital fund Recursive Capital. He is also a board member and CEO of B Trust, a nonprofit focused on training African Bitcoin developers and growing the African Bitcoin ecosystem. He's also an advisor to Early Riders, the Bitcoin denominated investment firm that Michael and I launched earlier this year. Welcome to the show Abu, how you doing? Thanks again for having me guys. It's been good. It's been a good day so far. Awesome. Super excited to to have you join and talk through everything you're working on and kind of share a little bit of the conversations we have behind the scenes as it relates to business building. Specifically on a on a Bitcoin standard and how we see the the the future looks when there's a cost of capital and you have to think more critically about growth and what value looks like to produce in the real world. Definitely, definitely looking forward to. That yeah, so few, you know, various topics we want to get into, but maybe a good place to start it would be, you know, a bit on your, your Bitcoin journey, how you sort of started contributing to Bitcoin in a really meaningful way at a very young age, to be honest. And, and would love to hear a little bit more about that story. And you know how you how you got initially interested in Bitcoin and and sort of grew to the place that you're at now? Yeah, certainly. I mean, ironically it started with my older brother who's now got into the government. So whenever I tell the story that a it's a good government official essentially, not orange Phil me is kind of a ludicrous yeah, I started with this obscure video. I can bring 13. I was 14 at the time. Honestly didn't give too much too much care to it at other priorities as to imagine. And then Fast forward to 2017 came back again asking the same questions around Bitcoin. I was like, you know, the hell is this all about? I just fell in through the rabbit hole like really hard that year. That was roughly around the same time I finished high school, so the year after that essentially. So for me, I was pretty much aimless in life. So I figured with all the exit time I had on my hands, I might as well just learn about Bitcoin. And then I realized early on that a lot of that material was work technical. So I was like, why don't I just teach myself how to code? So I started reading up about like computers, programming and all of that. Then the following year in 2018 was when I started programming. And then that was at the point where I realized that actually Bitcoin did the piece of software. So prior to that essentially was mostly just abstract stuff about like mining the potential and all of that. And then Fast forward 2019 was when I grew the, I guess the confidence essentially to contribute to Bitcoin Core. So my first pull request, coincidentally after I saw pull request emerged from another contributor from Nigeria, I get probably the first Bitcoin call contributor probably from Africa, which is Tim Kimbo. And that was very inspiring for me. So I was like, OK, it's possible. So from then on until now, since she just been constantly to Bitcoin core mostly in the last couple of years due to other priorities with like recursive just mostly been PR reviews, but essentially that's kind of had a story. Well, so honestly, it was over time that I realized Bitcoin had a lot more value than just piece of text. I'm boarded myself into Bitcoin in those days, like finally had the bank account at the time. So interestingly, I've had a different view of kind of banking or how money should work perspective, starting big fan and then eventually having a bank account is kind of contrasting the two. So that's kind of where a lot of my insect comes into play slash kind of the experience I've had with just money in general. So it's definitely been refreshing and I'm glad that was the case and not the opposite. Yeah, it's fascinating. I'm curious, what was that? What was that first poll request when you got enough enough confidence to to contribute? Honestly it was a very trivial change. Now in hindsight I essentially changed the name of the the window to node window from like I think debug window or something on that GUI. At Onramp, we believe that Bitcoin is the most important asset of the 21st century. The hard part is securing it right There are shortcomings with keeping your coins on an exchange, but also with setting up your own self custody arrangement. Onramp solves for these concerns. Our multi institution custody solution maximizes security and minimizes counterparty risk, ensuring that your Bitcoin remains securely in your possession and provides built in inheritance planning to ensure your family is protected as well. On Ramp provides Peace of Mind for your Bitcoin journey, whether for your whole stack or for part of it as a compliment to your existing self custody setup. For more information, check us out at on rampbitcoin.com. Very cool, very cool. Yeah, it's, it's just, it's such an interesting story and, and one I appreciate. And really a lot of the, you know, a lot of what we try to talk about on this podcast in particular is, is, you know, Bitcoin is a piece of software. It's protocol. It's not just another investable asset. It's not just digital gold. But I think, you know, sitting here in the West, sitting in, in, you know, America in particular, I think, you know, especially recently, you know, with sort of the introduction of ETFs and you know, now last week, the approval of options on those ETFs. Like the sort of zeitgeist and focus in the West is very much focused on sort of finding the increased financialization of, of this thing called Bitcoin and, and really looking at it purely as this investable asset that's part of a portfolio. And, and, and you know, a lot of the work that you do and where you, you know, originally came at it from is, is a very different sort of a different sort of angle. It's, you know, this is a piece of technology, this is software. And in many ways, you know, even on the mining side, like there's incredible things happening at the protocol layer that, you know, most sort of institutional allocators in the West are still just scratching the surface of, right. Like they're, they're very much, you know, if they're, if they're beginning to go down the rabbit hole, it's, it's a cursory look and, and it's very much just an investable asset. So very much appreciate sort of, you know, where, where you're coming at from it because coming at, because it's, it's, it's definitely a refreshing angle as we sit here sort of in, in 2024 and, and everyone's focused on ETFs here. Yeah. Definitely, definitely. We definitely have to zoom out and kind of contextualize a lot of things and it just helps with an insight foresight and seeing where the last kit could be in like, you know, 5-10 years, right? One thing before, you know, moving on, on your story, Abu is curious like on that flow of funds, you know, coming in without a bank account, anything you could share like how back in the day somebody got exposure to Bitcoin, but then also you reference that helped in your understanding or thinking about like banking and how that applied. And I think I'm curious if this is kind of this notion in the West that fintechs have this interest in Africa in general, because you can kind of rebuild from the ground up from the first principle layer of tech versus all the like muddiness that exists in the bureaucracy of like the banking system specifically in the US. Curious if that's true and then if that is like how Bitcoin fits into that moving forward with thin tax? I mean, yeah, it's it's definitely an interesting 1. So early days was pretty convoluted in terms of how I was managing my finances. Honestly, if it were to be recorded, I would have probably been seen as like a criminal or something. A lot of tabs, multiple devices, kind of moving close. But what helped was most of the most of the money coming in on my end from that time was from freelancing. And the good thing was most of the people that were paying me or paying me essentially to Bitcoin. And if they weren't, they're essentially paying to, you know, the folks that were doing on and off ramping at the time. So these are people that are doing OTC trade. So I had a couple of friends at the time, I'd send their back account details and then they essentially sell it off the narrative for BTC and they sent. So essentially that was kind of the most of the $10 what was happening, Sometimes even just physical, physical meet ups and then sending it to Bitcoin. Interesting. But other than that, I see when it comes to the Fintech side, the ubiquity of Fintech's not honestly on the continent and to to the point they're making about like having an opportunity to re architect essentially some of the issues of the release that we see on the financial architecture side here in Africa definitely is true. I think the ubiquity that Fintech has found is something that big credit is also going to find in the next maybe 5-10 years for the exact same reason, which is that we have highly inefficient systems of money flows or even just generally our access to international International Monetary network. It's definitely Hanford. It's, it's one of those things where as a Nigerian you kind of expect to be banned off a lot of rails where there's PayPal or things like that just for being high risk. And then locally it's even more computer and it comes to sending money either from your country to another African country. The only thing I can say that works is our banking system here in Nigeria is pretty is pretty good. We have instant payments through banks. So between banks you can actually settle really quickly. But other than that, I'd say pretty much everything else within Africa isn't really at the stage where it's that much or so. Can't see a lot of these fintechs leverage on creating their own small silos of either liquidity pools, more efficient ways to actually send and receive capital from within countries all the way up to outside of countries. I think the one thing that they've been missing for a long time now has been Bitcoin in the sense that you're essentially plugging in from day one into not only just a global monetary network, but one that can facilitate trade and commerce at a local level or even just a regional level. So that's why I feel like there will be that ubiquity when it comes to Bitcoin, not only just for solving that problem, but just in terms of being competitive to, which is why a lot of startups essentially became fintechs here in Africa as well. Yeah, it's it's, it's funny to hear 'cause I've thought about this since working and building and Bitcoin that like you kind of come to this realization like Bitcoin's the real thin tech. When you think about like moving capital border over borders and not needing any intermediary or even custody and thinking about like what does custody look like in collaborative or multi institution? All these notions of like leveraging the protocol multi SIG, they don't require trust to sit with a single entity, which historically existed with the custody of of the underlying to lending against it, right. And how do you like segregate and split? These are all things that you can actually do in the traditional Fiat system. That's like the real financial technology and innovation versus kind of like the lipstick on a pig version that exists in the that kind of like over the like glossing over the traditional banking system. I could definitely say that again. I could definitely say that again, I think they're you'll be hard pressed to see them not realize that in the next couple of years, especially due to all the innovation and and the the tech being built right now. So just take a matter of time before they turn around. So how, how, how would you sort of characterize the state of Bitcoin adoption in Africa? You're, you know, boots on the ground there now, how has that progressed over the past even 12 months or so? I know you gave a, a, a talk recently at Honey Badger that was, that was fantastic. And just talking about like, you know, really what's what's most important here, which is like people actually building on the protocol and using it in, in new and interesting ways and adopting Bitcoin as money in a lot of these areas. So I'm curious, just, you know, how you would characterize at a high level what's transpired over the past 12 months or so? And then also you know where, where I guess your energy and efforts are focused currently in in the region. Yeah, for sure. I'll start with the last 12 months have been kind of just a natural evolution from the last, I'd say five years in terms of people unlearning what it means to build on Bitcoin. And because I think a lot of that, like Michael's talking about regards to the the interplay between Fintech slash Bitcoin here on the content has been highly correlated. I mean, the entire Bitcoin space kind of evolved out of the Fintech space from a lot of entrepreneurs on the ground essentially looking at it as this is a way for us to actually shortcut a lot of the issues that we've been having trying to solve for a while all the way up to realize, OK, this is an actual monetary network that can have its own different niches slash ecosystem that we can kind of build on, whether it comes to mining or things like that. So we've gradually gone from being kind of a pocket of the Fintech space to becoming essentially more and more its own ecosystem that I think will kind of subsume the fintech ecosystem as well. A few others to be honest. And now we're at the point where entrepreneurs understand what it means to build for Africa, at least at a small scale in terms of building on Bitcoin for Africa. And we're starting to see a lot, a lot of these entrepreneurs kind of double down on the ideas that kind of more highlighted on the continent versus outside of the continent. So a lot of that is the reason why you see some of these interesting products, whether it comes to SIM cards that should be used, being used as Bitcoin hardware wallets, for example, with KGS project or even just things around the Lightning Network when it comes to sending sats and receiving in back account and all these kind of things. So I think we're at the point where we've kind of flipped what the paradigm is to what it should be in terms of the builders perspective, in terms of capital allocation slash. Other things I think is just going to naturally follow as more things kind of take better shape in terms of where my energies are focused. Like it's split between two things. So on the entrepreneur side, obviously it's to back up a lot of these early state companies continue on the work that I've been doing for quite a while now in terms of making entrepreneurs understand what it means to build for Africa on top of Bitcoin. Kind of making them understand that they are going to have to shoulder the not necessarily the responsibility, but what it means to architect a Bitcoin company from scratch given all the issues that we have. And then separately on the other side, when it comes to the the developers themselves, some of these projects in education, a lot of that effort is to be trust for essentially 1, giving grants to developers themselves. So they have long term support as well as some of the short term support to kind of figure out a niche and some of these open source products to support them as well, especially Bitcoin Core and focusing specifically on kind of the resilience of Bitcoin and see how they can contribute to that at a global stage. And then when it comes to some of these other projects or even just conferences generally. And to again, narrow down the focus to make sure that people understand what the value proposition is with Bitcoin, the role of Africa in terms of defining the future of Bitcoin and things around that generally. So I see the majority of my time has been spent between these two things, kind of see how we could kind of synthesize both to create a more lasting ecosystem essentially. Yeah, that's, that's super fascinating. Maybe going to the like there's two parts segmenting them. The the first part on the entrepreneurial and and recursive curious like how you know you initially like went down that path and then ultimately you reference kind of rebuilding reground. I think there's a lot happening across Bitcoin in that the 1st 15 years we've seen a lot of I don't want to say capital destroyed, even though it's been capital destroyed, but like ways to do things probably that more not right than right. Effectively, if you think about the digital asset crypto ecosystem, right, they only grafted on a lot of the traditional financial system. When you think about custody sitting with a single entity or flow of funds just or even how the company built, right that companies came in and you foundation or fundamentally cannot build in the same way for for lots of reasons, like growth at all costs. One of them was just like the and I don't know if it's the first one, but it's definitely a main one is the reflexivity of the market and the boom bust are are so cute versus the traditional like kind of general 4 to 10 year cycles that you see in, you know, regular kind of business cycles that to like outgrow, right to take that capital and then like, you know, really like go growth at all costs and then literally have to cut, you know, or just have that burn. It just doesn't work in the Bitcoin ecosystem. You've seen a lot of companies have to like learn that the hard way, but I think that's like you, you mentioned the in Africa like building from the ground up. I think that there's this component that that had to happen, one from learnings, but then two, there's a mindset shift when enough people grok Bitcoin that they wouldn't do that inherently wouldn't even make sense to them. They wouldn't if they even could raise that amount of money. They tell, I'm just going to hold Bitcoin and think about it. And it's kind of partially what we're doing at early riders in the sense of, well, you can raise the money, but maybe the opportunity cost isn't the dollar and you're not sitting those dollars in bank accounts, you're sitting them, they're sitting in the BTC and that just has a more discerning prudent allocation of capital. So just curious like how you seen that transpire since starting and recursive And then it feels like that's kind of like migrated over from the African lens of well, maybe when I build it doesn't have to bolt on the Fintech, but I can start from the ground up. And I don't think that could have happened right off the bat. It like we needed all of this kind of like destruction and kind of like learnings over the course of all this, kind of like ups and downs and Bitcoin to come out the other side and realize, oh wait, there's a better way to do all of this. I totally agree. I think it's one of the benefits of this space to be honest, to the entrepreneurs or just builders is that the timeline, a shortened amount of timeline relative to other ecosystem that we have. I think that has helped with sourcing for a signal over time. You can imagine if this reflected the same timelines that we have in regular, whether it's fintech or just generally company building would have probably been another 5-10 years from the period we are right now. So it's good to have those. Well, it's not a good thing to kind of burn capital, but it wasn't necessary sacrifice in the grand scheme of things from my perspective. And what has been interesting is also the evolution of how people, especially capital allocators speaking to or just more generally globally have shifted kind of their understanding and acceptance of one, the permanence of Bitcoin as an actual technology to the kind of the value proposition that Bitcoin already has and has over other ecosystem like the quote UN quote crypto space. A lot of the early conversations I used to have with a lot of folks on the LP side slash investor side has been why just put all your eggs in one basket, which is Bitcoin as opposed to crypto and all these other things. And it's been interesting to see over time as more scams have happened from that the general crypto space. And then the more value is actually created on the Bitcoin space from actual products that solve problems on the ground, the more they've kind of understood the arguments that I've been making, which is that there is no source of signal outside of Bitcoin, the wider space. So right now their understanding is seeing it from this point of view. So they could they not understand that crypto essentially is a large bucket of promises versus Bitcoin, which is a large bucket of use cases and actual case studies. You can see that people have had their lives changed, so it's a lot easier now to kind of convince them of the benefits of having Bitcoin or build. So essentially seeing the dichotomy between like a bucket of promises versus a bucket of case studies and actual and actual use case on the ground that have materially changed people's lives. It's a lot easier for them to crop. I think the next phase for us is going to be the understanding of again, Bitcoin being. This permanent layer that people can be building on and what that means from a venture point of view in terms of again, weighing off the costs, whether it's holding off Bitcoin as opposed to investing in these companies and seeing what the opportunity cost is for that or the cost for capital like you. And it's definitely going to take a lot shorter over time that the general paradigm shifts that they needed to see first to kind of understand where we're at right now. So it's definitely positive and I'm enjoying seeing the the conversation shift from, oh, this guy is a bit crazy playing everything off. What are the other opportunities that we're missing in the general Bitcoin space? So it's definitely been refreshing. Yeah, I know that's that's really fascinating. I think I always, I always think back to and and I might get, you know, details of this slightly incorrect. But I think, you know, when the notion of like Ethereum was first brought up, it was kind of like, yeah, go test these other things, like go build these other things. If any of them work, we'll like bring them the Bitcoin, IE like the more permanent robust blockchain or protocol. And I think we lost that some somewhere along the way where then it was just, you know, a a myriad of different protocols being created for all these promises, like you said. But it always comes back to what you, what I also heard you say was like, you want to build on that permanent robust foundation, right? And I think that is something that people are increasingly, you know, just as education continues around like the actual fundamentals of these things, I think we are sort of making some progress in that realm that people are beginning to see sort of the broader crypto space for what what it really is. And, and it's a lot of promises built on unsound foundations, whereas, you know, there's a lot of really great building going on, on Bitcoin on a, on a sound foundation. So that's, that's sort of like the crux of the difference. I think one thing I'd be curious about in those two sort of sides that you're focused on currently in, in terms of allocation. And then also sort of the more purely on the development side and giving grants to folks. I'd be curious, is there an interplay between those two things in the sense that you know what you're looking for in terms of giving grants to developers or, or they're sort of, I guess ways that those are connected to things that you want to invest in? Like do you need to find the builders to build the things that like the businesses that you want to exist in the world? Is there any interplay between those two sides of of what you're focused on? Oh yeah, a ton. And which is why it kind of makes juggling the two a lot easier than it seems from the outside. So in terms of the inner play, I see naturally it's contributed greatly to kind of the sources of the pipeline for the fun side in terms of recursive. So previously essentially either reaching out to entrepreneurs and seeing what's kind of in the other line and as well as combining that with getting inbound from entrepreneurs that are aware of us actually located in capital. Over time that has shifted into kind of understanding and seeing that we're very, very early. So we kind of have to induce some of the innovation to a certain degree on the the builder side. So a lot of that has been also bringing on three other essentially sources, which is one from the general developer community that essentially managed to create from, I don't want to say thin air, but let's say conjure from the existing talent that is pretty much around that would have gone to crypto that now thank God is Bitcoin. So a lot of that has been folks just testing ideas and then reaching out and seeing if there is a business case that can be followed up on the venture side. The other side is also just seeding ideas into the ecosystem. So coming up with ideas internally at Recursive that want to fund that we think is useful and then kind of looking for entrepreneurs to build on that and then take it off and then we fund that essentially. The other thing is essentially looking at it from the perspective of the existing companies on the ground that are now shifting their focus to double down on Bitcoin building. Because previously a lot of these companies that were quote UN quote Bitcoin companies to the extent that they were at the time all the way up to now and kind of also shifted their focus to expanding some of the things that they've been building on our workmen. Some of that gets spun off into actual companies slash the folks that are building on that get to fart themselves off of the company itself and that forming companies. So that's another essential piece of the puzzle. But I say in general, the interplay is Tebby connected like one of the reasons why I was really, really passionate, especially in in terms of understanding what is necessary for this piece to kind of be at the point where right now in terms of the venture site has been the lack of developers. So it kind of follows essentially a cycle where you need to critical mass of developers to one be in the space building to understanding what can be built based on the tools that are being built more generally in the global space ecosystem and then having companies come out of come as a result of that. So essentially all these cycles are funding these developers, educating them. I'm understanding that, OK, they can build on Bitcoin from these use cases and some realizing that there are business cases that can be built on top of that. And then coming all the way up to the venture side. So essentially is a cyclical, cyclical cycle for kind of development, kind of bridging myself in between the two. So essentially that's the interplay and it's likely going to continue the same way. I don't think there's going to be like a shift where it will be venture creating the first source staff stuff because there's the issue of the tragedy of commerce really at the open source side. So it's always going to follow from the open source side. Yeah, and that makes complete sense to me. I think it's actually the future. Everything we both kind of stumbled into to this recursive feedback. This is hence the name. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think this is how things were always done and we forgot about them, right? Like if you had a large conglomerate and you built and then you naturally spotted gaps in the market and you had capital, you would go out to the market and you would be able to understand what needed to be built. You weren't theorizing and, and just sitting in an ivory tower being able to think through it. It's a similar example what you're describing as you were coding, you were in the market, You're looking at opportunities, you're seeing things you're building, you're seeing other people build. You're you're ideating and, and influencing some of your vision and thoughts where they're picking it back up. They build things that it enhances or feedbacks into where you're looking at opportunities from recursive and it just kind of is a flywheel versus if you only have one sitting there, you're naturally kind of either stagnant, right? You just look for it. I think about it as like on the VC side, if all you do is is invest your avid hammer and everything needs to look like a nail. And that's just I think as humans, there's not if you do that, our brains are idle, right? Like this notion of like, you want to be building, you want to get and see now you start to like look at you look for opportunities where they may not exist versus if you're constantly building, you have other things you're focused on. It gives you an edge to spot angles in the market that are missing to refine thesis is over time that can now support the investment case. And I think this is just natural way of moving forward. And this is, it's funny because this isn't actually anything new. Like when you look back at the sequoias and the benchmarks of the world, like these individuals were operators back at, I forget the exact firms, but they were like the micro, the semiconductor space in like the late 50s and 60s. They spotted all the gaps where like Atari was a good example of this, like where Atari started to pick up steam because they were buying a lot of these semiconductors and realizing like the growth from there. And they were able to influence, you know, go to market and all the things that naturally come from building a company from the ground up versus not. So yeah, it's it's a very cool like dynamic that you found yourself. In one, one part of what you said that I'm curious about is you, you mentioned sort of you were grateful to have gotten some developers to to stay away from the broader crypto space and and you know, focus on Bitcoin. How would you sort of characterize the general movement of human capital in the development space for the past, call it 12 to 18 months? Because I think there's been this notion of sort of a Cambrian explosion, if you will, of like newer, you know, new people coming to Bitcoin and, and wanting to build on the protocol. But you look at something like, you know, ordinals or runes or these types of things where I think it's, it's almost like going back to what I was saying before, it's like, well, we could look at what Ethereum did, but like we should be a little bit more discerning about like whether we want to bring that to Bitcoin. And I think there's been sort of this influx of people who are just saying like, no, let's just bring all the stuff that we tried on the other protocols to Bitcoin, whether it's NF, TS or different forms of roll ups. So I'm curious like, I guess first part of the question is like how, how would you sort of characterize that sort of flow of human capital, if you will, development mind share? And then second part of that being, you know, what in your mind what is the most valuable sort of two or three areas that a Bitcoin focused developer could be thinking about currently? Yeah, great questions. I mean, before I forget, I'll just like to feed off of the, the last statement you made really with regards to the general issues that we're seeing. Well, I mean, it is an issue to a certain contingent of the Bitcoin space, which is there seems to be this my, my opinion is humbly this confusion that we need to essentially succeed based off of the terms that have been set by the crypto space, right? Whereas I think that is completely unjustified and it's kind of a false premise to start from because again, what is what are the successes of the crypto space to point to my opinion? They're they're lacking or honestly non existent, which is the reason why job security has been a huge issue for a lot of these developers. Like the yes, they do get high paying jobs in those space, but then those jobs last like a week, month plus. The ironic part is like the company just keep busting most of the time. The conversations that I have with a lot of the folks that are working as developers in the crypto spaces constantly keep for the next job versus the Bitcoin space where a lot of the conversations are around sitting, sitting down to look at how they could double down on the work that they're doing that will have effects in the next 5-10 years. So you can definitely see that there is a difference in terms of the mindset when it comes to Bitcoin versus crypto, where the Bitcoin side is mostly around developers that have understood that actually this is a useful tool that now provides for a lot of use cases that were previously either impractical or maybe just purely theoretical that could actually be built on top of. So there's that. I would say resurfacing of interest just as a developer to kind of work on things that materially can make a difference given all the case studies that already are existing in the Bitcoin space. And when it comes to the opportunities that they can explore when it comes to the niches, there are a variety of things from, you know, mesh networking all the way up to him. It's been a huge run all the way up to even some more niche runs around communication protocols with the interplay between no star as well as Bitcoin or even those that are more interested in the artificial intelligence side, which to your point, in the last 12 to 18 months, you've seen quite a lot of them to the realization that maybe Bitcoin is a currency for artificial intelligence in Canada, next wave of the Internet. So we're definitely seeing a lot of those trends. But I think again, just to narrow down to the issues we have right now in regards to people building ruins or some of these other, I do think it's just a natural function of kind of, again, this miscommunication or misunderstanding that we have to succeed on the terms of crypto versus on the merits of Bitcoin as it is. So I think we'll likely continue to see that, but it'll probably die off. Again, like a lot of the cycles we've seen with Bitcoin, a lot of these ideas and protocols are to Bitcoin. You've seen them in the early days. They just keep psyching us. More things happen in the crypto space and then they get brought into Bitcoin. So I wouldn't pay too much attention to that. The long term builders are easily going to outpace importance wise to some of the other guys. They're doing maybe frivolous, but with things that you might consider. Yeah, on the on, on that note, Abu, how do you think about like how do you segment 'cause there's two brains you have to to use in the sense of thinking of innovation and and being a developer and you know, helping fund developers. But historically in Bitcoin, I think objectively innovation is not the easiest to monetize, right. It's it's generally pretty early, takes a while to find commercial use cases and then even the commercial use cases, the businesses generally aren't the most, you know, investable or or monetize. I think about like multi Sig's a great example where, you know, Belshi had the first implementation until maybe 10 years ago, 11 years ago, they built a business, but it was an exchange. They had to naturally get, you know, kind of do a little bit more in in crypto to to justify or to make money. But then really the consumer version of multi city came around in like, you know, 1617 and you have like collaborative custody, but it's been kind of like hard to monetize that, but at least got commercially viable and lots of people now use it. And we know of like there's the nunchucks that were all in Casas and all these different companies that do that. But that took a while, right. And just curious how you think about, you know, innovation versus and, and how to manage that versus like opportunity sets that meet the market where there's an actual need? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's an interesting one. It's definitely still a learning process, to be honest, because I'm constantly being surprised by just the evolution of the ecosystem. Like there are times where you're like, oh, wow, this is happening a lot quicker than I would have anticipated versus all this is going to take way longer than I had I thought really previously. But I think what's interesting is in terms of kind of the dynamics of bridging doing venture this early stage, given the entire ecosystem is essentially early stage. And when it comes to just general Bitcoin companies, you still don't have like Bitcoin Unicorn companies yet. So really at that stage where even exit strategies have been something that are it's kind of like a general issue in the space where there isn't exactly a path to exit for venture. But then again, it is an opportunity for us to maybe rethink venture, which is was interesting about ideas like early writers to where you don't necessarily give in to some of the some of the incentives that we previously have in terms of general venture. So that's another opportunity in terms of bridging the two. Like the way I see the role of big VCs, especially in this stage is kind of walking the path with the entrepreneurs side by side. So capital allocation is not just enough at the early stage because you can throw capital as much as you want at the problem. It's not going to find a use case on the ground. It's not going to find a business case. It's not going to really help the entrepreneurs because a lot of the work that they're going to be facing such the issues have to deal with partners that can weather their storm together with them, as well as providing a path for them to actually succeed. It's a lot of work really with recursivism, just giving out checks is essentially giving out checks and helping the entrepreneurs on a day-to-day or even to to the frequency that see the problems that they're facing required. So a lot of it has been, I think with more stability into some of the tools and services that are already built on the first side. Your point about multi state, easier it is to find kind of business cases because now the issue isn't relegated strictly to the theoretical side of how can this work on a technical side. It's more a case of, OK, now that this works to the extent that it does, what are the opportunities that we could actually meet on the ground that people have been facing that this now actually is able to do so. So I think again, it goes back into the cycle of feeding from having all these successes, stability when it comes to the open source tech, all the way up to realizing that, OK, this can't be implemented in the real world. And then see what the most effective business cases are. Because again, we're really early stage. A lot of these Bitcoin companies pretty much don't have any viable business cases. And the ones that do are kind of like a handful. And even those ones typically do have to keep working with them to get them to a stage where they're sustainable. Because it's not just enough to have a business case. It's you need it to be sustainable for it to be a business. Otherwise, it's just a project that can make money for the short term. So bridging the two and realizing where to bucket the two and kind of how you support each has been the the primary thing that I think we'll we'll have to continue to work on to, to see where we can get it out of stage where maybe we have templates for others to follow or will be coming into the VC space for it. But that's actually kind of how I see the dynamic. Have you seen more play out in Africa versus the US? Like the example that I think of, and this is probably not completely fair, but I think it's directionally that most people don't talk about as lightning. So lightning was looked at as a, you know, it is, I think a big innovation, you know, scaling Bitcoin by layers, but at the same notion like people just don't spend Bitcoin in the US. And I, I like to like it's like the one that's easy to pick on without naming any others is, is David Marcus's firm. What a light spark. A light spark. Yeah. Because like, I think it was like a waterfall where like you get the big VC to invest and then it's a waterfall of everyone else is buying their product from an enterprise perspective. So then the, you know, pre seed, seed or even Series A uses the top and then you kind of just flow and that's like the capital stack. But nobody's actually spending the money either. The like you're not getting meaningful flow through lightning rails to justify a business model or nobody's using it from an enterprise perspective. Like Coca Cola's not going to X lightning company, right? So it's like this waterfall stack that I think is similar to multi stick in the sense like that was the next layer and probably a few years out where then you see some real crazy use cases that can justifies justify real ventures style returns. But does that I I feel confident that's a version of the West that nobody talks about, but I don't feel confident in Africa. That's a version curious like if more people are utilizing Bitcoin from payments or does that kind of poured over the same use case? That's not really, Yeah. No, no, no. It's, it's definitely the case. I think what's interesting is with Lightning, it's the general issue of I think just share volumes of usage, like a lot of the payments are typically, especially at least here in in Africa tend to be really micro. You're not going to have a lot of these business cases that rely on either transaction fees or some of these other say vanilla business cases really taking off steam because again, having a, a percentage of what is the equivalent maybe $100 isn't necessarily going to make you a big business. What's interesting to see is, and this hasn't a whole different conversation without getting into that rabbit hole, but what I've been interested to see is kind of how USDT adoption has progressed in the space, especially in Africa, specifically with regards to tapping into the existing demand of people wanting to have access to USD. And I think in that way it, it probably highlights an example that we could highlight for like more maybe some of these other specific niches in Bitcoin where you don't necessarily have to create demand from scratch in that specific instance. And then have business cases built on top of that. I think you can just tap into existing demand that people already have and then allow for your technology to kind of facilitate that, which is what USDT has essentially done in, which is why the volume is just crazy, especially in the last couple of years where people are starting to realize that OK, government doesn't allow them to hold U.S. dollars, whether it's physical or bank. No, it's sorry, even the bank accounts really don't necessarily support it global level where you can center see USD the same way you would want to, but USDT allows for you to do this globally. So I think the same thing is going to be true for light in the sense that we'll likely need to look for places that have a lot better market fit. That is already solving a larger issue that already has the volumes to support business cases, whereas business is more broadly and then tapping into that as opposed to like recreating it based off of maybe theoretical ecosystem they can build on top of this technology. So we'll see how, you know, artificial intelligence, Noster, all of the buzzwords really can kind of fit into that and to be finding it. Yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to, it was perfect transition. I was going to ask you your view on sort of stable coins generally in the sense that going back to what you said before around, you know, the the broader crypto space doesn't really have a whole lot to show for it at the end of the day in terms of like successful use cases. I think if we were all being generous, we would say. Well, maybe stablecoins would be the one thing that like they've gotten some traction with in the market. And when you talk to crypto people, they'll point to that too. Now in just saying that, you know, there's a ton of of, of payment volume, payment volume in stablecoins sort of globally. I'm curious, I guess first part being do you do you see that as one of the, you know, one of those opportunities that make sense to bring to Bitcoin in some way? And then if yes, you know, in your view, what are what are what are sort of the best ways that people are going about doing that now, whether it's, you know, something like Taproot assets or you know, things on the E cash side. Curious what your view is on sort of the different ways that people are going about bringing, you know, U.S. dollar based value to Bitcoin. I mean, honestly, it might just be one of those situations where it might not be all too beneficial in the sense that you might have to sacrifice stability and maybe at the certain layers for for you to support either stable coins or maybe just this general paradigm of having stable currencies in the Bitcoin realm. It might just be a case where unless you leave that to the folks that are already doing all these other protocols where there's Tron or things like that, just focus on things that work with Bitcoin to maintain, again, it's resilience, making sure that we're not introducing things on because of sacrificing it as a result of saying, you know, OK, convincing ourselves that there is this an extent amount of use case that people could tap into and that would capture all of that in Bitcoin. I don't necessarily think that that might be the the most the most sound way for us to build something that we want to still be around for decades. I mean, we're taking examples from chains and other protocols that aren't necessarily stable or even going to be around for the conversation that we'll be having with our grandkids or even great grandkids. I don't think that might be a necessary path to take. But in terms of I think the one thing that maybe crypto could show for it, definitely it is stable client. Then I mean, the one thing really is the stable client ecosystem just reflects the the current state of geopolitics one as well as the current state of economics more broadly. There's not a case where it's something that is a big problem or maybe it's a technological problem. It just reflects the stage of human civilization that we're at right now, whether it comes to the dollars hegemony or maybe just some of the issues that we have with regards to the lack of national sovereignty, which is head. It's a conversation that people have been having maybe having currencies that are stable for national for maybe countries on the big vertical. So I think honestly a lot of it is just a completion of we have a lot more things that need to be fixed outside of pickup for it reflecting the these pieces that we could find on top of pickup versus seeing that this works because of the way the things the way things work right now. And then we want to put that into pickup and then kind of replicate that same success. So I think we just have to separate our concerns and then focus on things that are more long term than just kind of replicate the success of stable things. That makes a lot of sense and it goes back to what you initially said or were discussing about something. We just think about it makes it makes foundational sense, but it hasn't been approached in that you want the use case to come from the existing world. Like the you, you graph Bitcoin onto it. It's this notion of you're not recreating the entire wheel, you're kind of repurposing it. And then maybe over time it can look a little different. But it's this notion of if there's demand for a use case and Bitcoin can port over, that's where you can find some kind of monetization, some kind of commercialization that does it. But that generally comes from a market of professionals that have been around for a very long time because they know the existing system. Like to change it, you have to know it very deeply. And then the into that ties into like banking fintechs and it's then it goes to the second order of there's probably a lot of incentives on why people are pushing stables on Bitcoin. But at the end of the day, like to your point, there's tech debt that comes with it, but there's also like commercial debt. There's like this commercial in the sense of somebody has to understand that. Even though people think that you can obfuscate it, like the first movers or the 1st adopters have to start to understand, well, wait, what's happening here? And at the end of the day, like stables have multiple layers of counterparty risk. So putting it on Bitcoin doesn't really help the underlying stability of the, the underlying. So it doesn't matter what the currency is, if it's a Tron or the, the blockchain, it's just a database that somebody else is controlling. We all know that. So just use whatever is there, that's your, you know, understand what stables are used for and then Bitcoin to sit next to it. Just provide a better experience over time for the individual to understand what they're doing within an application versus like trying to merge and conflate into feels like some of those misaligned incentives with VC and like somebody raises $100 million to put things on Lightning. Now you have to start creating these weird Frankenstein solutions that don't rally really make. Sense exactly, exactly. And honestly, that's the main I think insight that we probably have to base a lot of the next couple of decades of building on pop up because we do go to the path of just distracting ourselves, the things that we think are priorities then. And then what is the whole water for the enterprise just working on Bitcoin in general? Yeah. And no, nobody talks about this and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the incentives, but like the reality is we're so early to Bitcoin. The two main use cases are how to buy it and how to hold it and like you can, you can make successful business as but or venture firms just focusing on those two, because the part that everybody forgets is bitcoins money. And if bitcoins money, it requires financial services. But the kicker is financial services are localized. Everybody forgot about that with the aggregation of big banks. So every city, every like country or every state like can have its own Bitcoin version. There's enough to go and like actually educate and get those people in because nobody's, you know, again, it's .00 whatever 1% of all humans are into Bitcoin. And I think we get, I think what happened was we graphed it on traditional tech and venture where we got really excited by like just always improving and optimizing for, you know, these big things that are going to come. And there's no doubt like they'll come, but it's like, well, they come and we're alive or in the next 10 years to return to capital or for people to see it. And generally it's probably not the, the, the case. They're good friends. And I don't know if this is exactly fair, but like the person that the, the group that comes to mind is Mutiny community, like had a lot of tech and a lot of things, but like, it's just like, was there enough value, time, motivation to like build something that people are using in 2024? Is it a 2028 project? And I think that's like the, the stuff we have to like work through as like as a, as groups building in the space of like, what do we find the time? And to your point, like capital will be destroyed and I guess it's needed, but I was thinking about like I don't want it to be my investors capital that's being destroyed if we're going to like do it the delicate balance there. Does your Bitcoin custody setup keep you up at night? Maybe you still have coins sitting on an exchange worried about hackers. Or maybe you've set up your own self custody, but don't feel safe with your Bitcoin savings stashed on a little plastic device in your desk drawer. Gain Peace of Mind with On Ramp and our multi institution custody solution. Here's how it works. On Ramp creates a dedicated multi sig vault just for you. 3 separate institutions each hold a key on ramp bit go and coin cover, but none can move funds unilaterally. Instead only you have control over your coins. 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Yeah, it's a, it's a good point just on like the timing of all this and and you know, just your time horizon on an investment or just like the practicality of a, of A use case. That's why maybe I would be, I'd be interested to hear you talk a little bit about what you've done or invested in on, on sort of the mining side of things, because that's like a very near term, I would say, you know, thing to be focused on at least, you know, again, you know, we've seen a ton of mining infrastructure built out in Texas over the past few years. But then would be curious to hear sort of what you've seen in Africa and in, in the mining side of things because yeah, I think that's a, that's a real time practical use case for, for sort of the Bitcoin protocol, if you will. So we'd love to hear sort of the the status update on that. Well, definitely, I think the the main thing for me thinking about the mining space is thinking about it again from this long term sales, ensuring that we have all the necessary foundations right now to get to the stage where again, we're ready to accept and a lot of these bleeding as things that will happen that maybe we're not necessarily seeing right now. So a lot of them has been kind of a mix of seeing what the energy market is now in terms of both from a sovereignty perspective. Increase in honesty has been one of the main things I've been thinking about in terms of Africa is actually leveraging the clean mining to explore some of the energy sovereignty that has been missing from other ecosystems like just mining for natural resources, which honestly has so much technical death and fantastic all of that. When it comes to looking at some of the consequences of exploring that through that Ave. I think there is that aspect. The other aspect obviously is on the business case side. So it is kind of balancing off, are you trying to start off multiple mining operations and then funding companies that engage in that or maybe is it a specific company that has some use case in some part of Africa that you're trying to explore? It's like a pilot test case for maybe looking at how you can fund that more broadly. And honestly where we do sit right now, it's there are a couple of things that are in there right now, which certainly just close, but high level the way we're looking at this is from all three apples. So looking at what makes the most sense given the state of affairs right now from just a Bitcoin halving cycles all the way up to kind of the unit economics doesn't make sense. It does not make sense. What are the reasons which we can improve some of the issues that we've had with generally repairing machines here on the ground, they come here or even just for some teaching machines getting into Africa. A lot of that honestly is just looking at how some of these early stage companies there in the next maybe 12 to maybe 18 months. And then looking at how in between that we could finalize some of the investments we're looking at from that perspective of having these guys in a certain locations haven't got us highlights to kind of feed off of maybe some other operations that might do with maybe government level mining operations or just exploration for energy management. And seeing how we could also explore some of these other bleeding edge aspects when it comes to maybe starting off some of these data centers that kind of missing on the continent and then maybe selling off compute and if using mining system at that cost. So there is just managing the reading the meeting edge, although up to some of the more realistic business cases. So essentially that's kind of where we are, right? Gotcha that that's, that's super helpful. It makes a lot of sense. One thing you mentioned in there was sort of the regulatory landscape and I, I'd be curious, you know something I think I've heard you say in the past is like you would like to see greater consistency from the various regulators across Africa. Are we getting any closer in that respect or is it still very sort of disparate in terms of how regulators are approaching Bitcoin or or mining specifically even? I mean honestly with I still have hope, I don't want to sound too weak. I think the main issue is it's just balancing out two things you're trying to balance out on the government's head at least. Putting my empathetic hat on, I think what they're struggling with is balancing off protecting people, specifically the general populace slash investors, and then also balancing off protecting the national currency as well as obviously defending our economy. Because for contacts like Africa has been no Nigeria specifically has been called, you know, the, the giant of Africa quite a while, but we've slipped down to 4th right now in terms of the size of our GDP, the size of our economy by GDP, like we're way behind I think Egypt, Algeria as well as South African. So for the government, I think managing inflation, managing the the decline of the currency to insane levels where it's on par with Sats is just of high priority. But at the same time, they also do have an obligation to the general populace to kind of spread some of these economic development, which requires you to also kind of prioritize providing an enabling environment for innovation to take place. And now they have realized like there is that permanence to the general ecosystem or specifically with Bitcoin. But the problem I think with balancing these two is the length that they're viewing from, which is crypto and Bitcoin is the same thing. It's the same ecosystem. So the problem they're going to have to face at least confront right now for it to get really good for our end is to segregate these two ecosystems and then regulate them according. Because the problem is Bitcoin is not like anything that's outside of the space and it's its own ecosystem versus crypto, which is pretty much all the same thing. And it's all just security is pretty much so things are high regulated. I think that's up to, you know, our security Exchange Commission. In terms of the other ecosystem, like with Bitcoin, I think it's going to require a lot more, a lot more of an open framework to kind of understand everything that's happening in this space. And then other than that, I think the other thing that they need to do is kind of synchronize on who gets to set what regulation that kind of cascades into other regulatory agencies. I mean, for now the defacto situation we have is the Central Bank of Nigeria, since she's setting regulation and then everyone else adopting regulation that adapts to that new framework. I think what they probably need to do is look at each department and then again, first of all, segregate back from crypto. And then accordingly, if we're talking about the regulation, what are the respects of the Bitcoin ecosystem that should be catered to? Maybe securities is to that extent or maybe commodities or you want to come to just defending the currency. What does it mean for you to regulate a Bitcoin exchange or Bitcoin only exchange? Right now, the unfortunate situation we have is the exchange side. We have two native exchanges that have now been where it is illegal. We aren't necessarily operating as having a license there within an incubation program. So the problem with that is we don't have any Bitcoin native companies and those incubation programs. So what it effectively means for us is if in the next couple of months slash years to the extent of the duration of this program, if you don't have like the obligation that again is ill fit for the entire ecosystem. So like more issues coming out of that as opposed to what they're trying to fix for. So honestly, a lot of it is being and trying to be as consistent with the messaging as possible, trying to understand where they're coming from, trying to engage with them constructively, which is that's not the the easiest thing to do to begin with. And then more broadly, honestly just seeing these cases that work on the regulatory side from other parts of the world and then building a kind of general framework that works for us here on the ground as opposed to just copying it, which is what a lot of these agencies have been doing on the 1st side of them. That's such a a great question, Ryan. In response, Abu, in the sense of like we talk about order of operations again. And you just hit the nail on the head that, like would you said, is, is happens everywhere at the most micro example from a human, an individual wondering like crypto and Bitcoin. And then is it, you know, if it's, if it's conflated, then it's a risk allocation versus if it's a store value, then you can really come from first principles of like an allocation that's material because it's just a better way to store 1's wealth. And we find this all the time happening with institutions, Raas, like there's this conflation. And so now you have to start back from the, the beginning. So we focus heavily on education. But then we've seen this in the UAE specifically, right, where ADGM and Vara, like they're just the, the regulators there are they merge both together. And I think we've kind of seen at least somewhat OK, like in the West so far with, you know, the CFTC and commodity being deemed a commodity versus crypto. But I think like what you, what you outline is, if you can drill a little bit more, because I know you talked about it with Matt on like, I think everybody sees the headlines in Nigeria that, oh, they're like banning Bitcoin, right? And it's like that's not what's happening that they're deeming certain exchanges to, to have a regulatory approval to like participate. And I know you've been work, I think you've been working with them. If you can just share a little bit more about that, like what's actually happening that they're not banning Bitcoin, but they're trying to build. But again, the regulatory body. So they actually have bureaucracy that I think you're hitting on is not the most efficient as well learning. I mean, it's a lot of things that have to be considered like obviously on contingent from the Bitcoin contingent that constantly is making noise on X or other platforms about Bitcoin being binded in XYZ jurisdiction in Africa. Honestly, a lot of it has to do with, in my opinion, three things. 1 is a lack of understanding of how regulation just evolves naturally when it comes to engaging that side of things that happen. And just the general timelines. I think there's another thing that they're kind of not understanding. Like it's easy because we're in this large bubble in the big price space where things went so fast. So the expectations is for everything else that reacts or interacts with this ecosystem to also match that type of energy or that timeline, which is honestly not the case. It's not something that's gonna be practical for us in terms of regulation too. The third thing I think is a lot of the criticism on the government sides from Bitcoin or just general folks in the space, honestly has a lot to do with an implicit framework that they're operating with or they'd like to see operating for a use actually for regulating Bitcoin. Which honestly, what's the time. If you do sit down with some of these critics, you do find out that their frameworks are regulating Bitcoin or what they think Bitcoin should be regulated as is just as confusing or even more complicated than what the regulators are operating with. So I think a lot of it really is you have to figure out what is the most holistic way that we purchase both in terms of what are the needs on the Bitcoin side for people that actually are using Bitcoin, which is the Bitcoiner. So they are kind of primed for engaging with in terms of what it means to regulate Bitcoin effectively. And then on the regulator side, again, it's honestly just letting them sort out that distinction between Bitcoin too and then regulating accordingly. I think again, a lot of it is just to keep it clear, like the bigger regulatory landscape in Africa is it just matches the regulatory regimes across each of these regions. Like if the priority for the specific region has to do with maybe fending off any sort of competition to the national currency, a lot of that would have to do with their central bank regulating that. We've seen that with Nigeria, Kenya and some of those other regions. But if it has to do with maybe commodities or maybe they're facing issues and kind of increase maybe the amount of inbound coming from tags, they, they tend to move forward regulate to that as maybe an asset class essentially on its own. So I think what people have to realize is when you're looking at some of these headlines coming out of Africa, the first thing that you need to do is figure out what the regulatory regime is in that specific region and then understanding how that affects exactly what the the new news is that's coming out of that. So for Nigeria, again like you mentioned that the very example is with the exchanges, a lot of people read it as. Crypto is now legal to do for exchanges, whereas really the case is that regulatory agencies banned all operations that are engaging crypto and provided for this one Ave. for you to start getting working with them to get regulation in shape to regulate that equals and stuff. So technically, there is no license for you to operate as a crypto exchange or a Bitcoin exchange. And what you have right now is being a part of this program. And again, it's going to be probably the same case for a lot of other African countries. Or to be honest, I think what they're doing is looking on to Nigeria and some of these other parts that are maybe more mature in terms of their regulation to see what makes the most sense for them to adopt. But again, if you see me standing out of Africa, the first thing to do is get contacts around and feed the regulation and then figure out, OK, this new regulation itself where the primary source of information is it the central bank? Go read the press release that they have on the circular and then get back to the story As opposed to oh shit they corresponded. The cool for is we'll figure this out because like El Salvador I think was first and everybody that's ever been close to that knows that it was a complete shit show and how they had to figure it out. And then the UAE came around in Singapore and it's gotten a little bit better, but everybody that's there still knows. And then obviously what you just described and it just takes time for this to like the framework because I think to your point, like your brother being involved, like there's good people in these agencies. They just have no idea what they're doing. And if they do know, then there's all the bureaucracy to figure it out. And so it kind of like seems like a pretty practical approach is like, maybe if this is all a Ponzi, let's or like there's some scams here, let's stop it and then let's let people gate through as we go. Maybe that's, I don't know if that's the right approach, but I can see how you could come to the other side of like why that would make sense in a country. No, exactly, exactly. Honestly. And that's the most practical way forward. And this is going to take some patients on both sides, the regulator side having the kind of the humility to kind of understand that this is frontier tech. There are a lot of things that need to be figured out. And then our end is looking at it that some of us, let's see majority of a lot of folks that are engaging at this level is likely their first time slash. Maybe they don't have too much experience working on regulators to begin as. So there's a lot of learning about what the mechanisms are in play and how regulation just evolves and how to most effectively and efficiently engage with them really constructively. So a lot of both sides together. That's super interesting. Well, I know we're, we're coming up on an hour here. Michael, is there anything else you wanted to touch on before we wrap? Definitely, I mean it ties into what we just talked about is I know the answer to this. So I'm not going to fully go and and like I want to ask like I was he bullish on Africa, but I think I feel like he he is bullish on Africa. No, maybe not Obviously, I mean we're we're bullish on Africa as well. But I want to go into like you have intimate knowledge of why you are, you know, boots on the ground. And so like curious on the different aspects. 2 that I want to just like tease out are the engineering development, right? Like since I was back in the the Googles and we works for the day. I've always seen this interest in engineers in Africa and like in Della was a big one from like outsourcing to get talent there you were you're engineering at 13 years old. So like what? What is it that's happening there that has this ability for engineers to to proliferate and grow technology in general? Bitcoin is just technology. So that's one to tease out. And then the other one is just the, the notion of Islamic finance that roughly 50%, I believe Muslims are in Africa. And you know, Bitcoin is the perfect form of money for everyone, including Muslims. And they haven't had it. They've been looking for a non debt based, you know, capital structure, not only a money, just capital structure in general. How do they like do anything? So I mean, I'm sure there's more and I'd love for you to share more, but those are the two that I'll like tease out if you wanted to start with. No, for sure. I think on the dev side, again it goes back to job security. I think a lot more people are understanding that there is far better job security in the big plane space. And a lot of that on C has to do with, again, a lot of the great work we've been doing that would be just ramping up grants all the way up to the program we've been running to just get developers turned down at a rate where we can sustain folks. And we do have folks that are of sound signal. The other thing I would see is there's also this growing understanding within the developer ecosystem and for folks that are working in the group just based that Bitcoin is the only opportunity that they have to actually build things that are meaningful that actually will contribute to like a it's not to appreciate what a greater society or or better living standards. I run across the forest. So a lot of it is seeing one there's struck security to they can actually make the lives of themselves family members as well as the general continent a lot better because a lot of people that are you know younger here on the Internet, which is roughly over 60% of the population. There is this general kind of guilt slash burden that you do have to carry, which is how do you effectively contribute to making Africa a better place and how do you do that materially without necessarily just like Pentel outline have been has been done with by previous generations. So I think they're starting to realize that Bitcoin is that out in certain fact that useful on the continent in terms of shaping the narrative of Africa, that the future of Africa and writing really the the very consequential chapters in our entire guest history when it comes to being a continent. Getting to that stage where we're finally, you know, leveraging off of a lot of the problems that people see in the continent, but then doing so in a way that is able to kind of benefit folks on the ground. But I think that's one aspect when it comes to just kind of kind of how folks are seeing on the dev side in terms of Islamic finance. Like it's an interesting angle because we've seen and get to your point, there's a large contingent of folks that are missing here on the continent over obviously 50 specifically, my country is cycle of 5050. So we haven't had a census in a while. So those numbers are pretty much just based off of projections in terms of how people see it on the Islamic side, I can tell you the conversations have definitely drastically shifted ironically because I've crypto, not necessarily just Bitcoin. And the problem is twofold. Like there's one angle, which is the Sonic finance does have kind of inherits the my opinion. The I wouldn't necessarily see in coherence, but also the hypocrisy of general finance, which is Islamic finance or the notion of sound money or the notion of what it means to have halal money. Quote, UN quote is completely antithetical to the way money works right now where a lot of the currency that we have are debt based, which is completely around. So there is that issue of Islamic finance's birth out of that ecosystem. So a lot of the concept that people are used to when it comes to what is halal when it's around from the finance side is based off of these false assumptions that money to begin with is a lot that we use currently, which is, you know, Fiat itself, which isn't the case. So I think now they're having to kind of come to bear that Bitcoin is the only a lot of money that you can have other than maybe come on previous currencies like gold or silver, which tradition has been within the history of Islam when it comes to finance. So again, right now what they're realizing is a lot of these moms are shakes. Such people issuing fatwas are starting to least understand that Bitcoin is in crypto, which has been the main issue that they've had because they were seeing Bitcoin turning from an angle of gambling or speculation, which is generally where crypto is. So a lot of them are understanding that this, there's no concept of debt when it comes to Bitcoin versus all these other cryptos are just generally money. So now it's getting to the stage where they have to undo all the technical hypocrisy that they've been going through, which is OK, that Fiat is halal because no one wants to accept that they're they've been essentially engaging in around this whole time, but they're intentionally uneventionally. But interestingly, it is something that should be expected If you do read into a decent a decent of the prophet saw that said them when it comes to predicting the state of the future where you won't be able to run away from interest to such a river. This was what that report is. So people should have expected this in the case. Let me, I think right now, suffice to say, I think we're going to get to the stage where we'll have a lot more fat wealth than our probate one, especially coming most likely from the Gulf regions and then having other parts of the world can adopt that same stat. So you're slowly, but gradually, I think we're seeing a lot more than starting to come around. I could definitely tell you, but you're locally make sure we're starting to see some of the amounts come out open steal. I hold Bitcoin and it's actually not around. It's a loud. And then gradually you'll have to undo all the Islamic finance issues with RIBA and just general dealing with Fiat and it could be low. And so we'll see. It's going to take a while, but I'm definitely bullish. It's definitely positive. It's changing. And that's that's like absolutely incredibly exciting when you think about both sides of which you outlined going backwards of like 2.1 billion Muslims that effectively have had to like take trade-offs and how they like manage in the economy because of that system and either being apprehensive to participate or just not even participate in that all when you can unlock that Harris Afron, who's an advisor to honor at Mina and believe you guys are in touch with, has been, I think a big proponent on the notion of of Bitcoin Islamic finance. And I think that's just going to be amazing 10 years from now to see like that as well. And then the other side of it is the the notion of when you have property rights and money being able to be stored in Bitcoin for a continent, what does that mean from the productivity, right, Especially an energy rich continent such as Africa, when it comes to, you know, commodity based money that you can go tap into that can aggregate and then you can actually go so super bullish on that. And you know, I think bullish on recursive that if anybody wants to reach out, they should, you should get a hold of you if they're looking at some exposure to the African continent when it comes to Bitcoin. Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to wanted to, you know, come up where, where can people find you for, you know, if they're interested in learning more about recursive or what you're doing with B trust, let the people know. Yeah, for sure. I'm pretty active on X, I'm an Auster, so my handles are both the same one both which is IA 1999. And what the question is RCRSV capital on both Auster as well as X and then B Trust is similar as B Trust team, which is just on X right now. We don't have an Auster for now. But yeah, this is generally the channel you can buy me on and maybe Forbes if you're interested in reading long term based on, well, just for discussing you might cover a lot of the developments here. Beautiful. Love it. Well, thank you very much for for joining us today. It's an an awesome conversation and I have to have you back on in the future for another update. For sure looking forward to it. Thanks again for helping guys. Thanks, Oliver. All right, take care guys. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. 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