August 26, 2025 • 58 mins
Episode 1155 of Bitcoin And . . . is LIVE!
Topics for today:
Wine
nostr: https://primal.net/BenJustman
Twitter: https://x.com/BenJustman
Website: https://www.peonylanewine.com/bitcoin
https://liberux.net/
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-circular-economy-awake-costa-rica
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Topics for today:
- The Costa Rica Bitcoin Circular Economy Deep Dive
- Google's Decision to Doxx Android App Devs
- Can a Linux Phone be Useful?
Circle P:
Peony LaneWine
nostr: https://primal.net/BenJustman
Twitter: https://x.com/BenJustman
Website: https://www.peonylanewine.com/bitcoin
Today's Articles:
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/25/google-will-require-developer-verification-for-android-apps-outside-the-play-store/https://liberux.net/
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-circular-economy-awake-costa-rica
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
It is 08:47AM
Pacific Daylight Time. It's the August
2025,
and this is episode eleven fifty five
of Bitcoin and Yesterday,
while cutting yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and it became apparent to everybody but me that Google
has pulled a little rabbit out of their hat and it's not a good rabbit this is not the rabbit this is not the fluffy rabbit that you want
(00:29):
This is the bad kind of rabbit that nobody nobody wants and I'm gonna talk about it and then we're gonna talk about a possible solution
but then I'm gonna do a long read
from Bitcoin Magazine about the circular economy
in Costa Rica.
And, honestly, right now, unless something changes
(00:51):
during the show while I'm recording,
there's just not a whole I mean, unless you want me to go over
again how many companies are starting to get into shit coinery for their corporate treasuries, and I've got that in quotes. You can't see me, but I'm air quoting their their corporate treasuries.
Because I've I discussed it yesterday
(01:12):
sort of at length
that we're seeing an alt season that's being driven
by
CEOs
and CFOs
because they're doing the they're making the exact same mistakes
that went on
2017,
2018,
2019,
2020,
'21, '22, you name it. They're doing the same they're making the same mistake.
(01:38):
Except this time instead of it being retail
and people being duped
into buying some kind of shit coin on Twitter,
this time it's
people that should know better.
People that have a a much better world view
in terms of economics and how they work and what these technologies actually mean when they're free and running around in the wild. And yet, here we are.
(02:03):
It's 2018,
2019,
all over again, except this time it's wearing a suit. Because, honestly, that is
all
that I am picking up
as I did my morning curation for today's episode. And I'm just I'm not going to do it. It's a waste of everybody's time to talk about how Tom Lee has bought yet more Ethereum.
(02:25):
I I feel bad for Tom Lee.
Unless, of course, he's doing this on purpose so that he can sell his bags later and dump it on retail as these people usually do and then
buy actual real Bitcoin with it, but it's just not worth our time.
But the circular economy
and what's going on in Costa Rica,
(02:45):
I think that is worth our time because I've always kind of thought that after El Salvador,
just down south, you know, I think you skip over Nicaragua and then you go down south a little further, you've got Costa Rica, which is
damn near a first world country and has been for quite a while. It's been a destination for American tourism for decades and decades and decades. It's clean. It's nice.
(03:08):
It's fairly wealthy as far as Latin American countries go, and they were have been dipping their toes into the Bitcoin scene for a while, and I keep thinking that they're pretty much next on the list. So I really wanna get into this
big read from
Bitcoin magazine
about what's going on in Costa Rica. And I I actually think it ties in nicely
(03:32):
with what's going on here with Google and this this
Linux phone that I wanna tell you about
because we either start taking things into our own hands
and start building the things that that have been provided to us now
or we're just gonna end up in a gulag.
(03:52):
I
the whole point
of being able to side load APKs into your Google phone
was so that you could try out stuff that that the Google people didn't really want in their Play Store. They didn't want to take
responsibility for something bricking your phone. And, hell, from a liability standpoint, I don't blame them on that.
(04:14):
But they honestly just just should have put a waiver up
on
the Play Store or
or or something. When you buy your phone, when you buy your Pixel or whatever, the a waiver that you have to sign that says, if I side load for, like, APK
and it breaks my phone, I will not hold Google responsible.
But no, they didn't go that route, and you have to ask yourself why.
(04:38):
So let's let's begin today's episode by reading
this one from TechCrunch.
Google will require developer verification
for Android apps
outside
the Play Store.
This is Sarah Perez writing by the way.
Google is tightening security measures around Android app distribution, the company announced on Monday.
(05:02):
Starting next year,
Google will begin to verify the identities
of developers
distributing their apps
on Android devices,
not just those who distribute
via the Play Store.
The changes will affect all certified Android devices once live,
though the global rollout will be more gradual.
(05:24):
The tech giant stress that this does not mean developers can't distribute outside of the Play Store through other app stores
or via sideloading,
Android will remain open in that regard. However, developers
who appreciated the
anonymity of alternative
distribution methods will no longer have that option.
(05:45):
Google says this will help cut down on bad actors who hide their identity
to distribute malware,
commit financial fraud, or steal users' personal data. I'm pausing right there to say this is nothing but a it's for the children argument
because they could very easily draft a waiver
that you have to sign when you purchase a Pixel phone or a Google phone or something like that.
(06:11):
They could very well
have put something in their operating system
that senses that, hey. You're about to side load an APK. You've gotta sign this waiver that says you will take full responsibility for any damages that this app or apps that you're about to sideload.
You take full responsibility for it bricking your phone or or losing your personal data or whatever.
(06:36):
But, no,
Google chose not to go that route.
They could have, and it would be legally binding, and it would completely shield them from any legal action if that particular
document was created
right,
but no.
And you have to ask yourself
(06:56):
why.
Let's continue. According to its very own survey, Google says that more than 50 times more malware came through the Internet side loaded sources compared with Google Play, where it has required developer verification since 2023.
Initially,
Google will allow interested developers to sign up for early access starting in October 2025 to test the system and provide feedback.
(07:22):
In March 2026, verification will go live for all developers. And by September
2026,
any app
installed on an Android device in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand will have to meet the new requirements.
Starting in 2027,
the requirements will be rolled out globally.
(07:42):
Developers will have to provide their legal name,
address,
email, and phone number, which could push independent developers to register as a business for their own privacy's
sake.
Apple implemented a similar change for the EU App Store earlier this year to comply with the Digital Services Act, a regulation that now requires app developers to provide their trader status, and that's in quotes,
(08:07):
to submit new apps or app updates for distribution.
Google notes that student and hobbyist developers will be able to use a separate
type of Android developer console account when this system rolls out as their needs differ from commercial developers.
The changes could have
significant
(08:28):
impact on the Android app ecosystem
and app distribution
as Google works to cut down on the security issues and malware
that have typically plagued its platform.
So that that's the TechCrunch article that was being blasted out far and wide yesterday.
And honestly, all it says is it does not matter.
(08:49):
You are going to have to dox yourself
if if
if you are developing for Google,
which
begs the question.
If Google's not in control of me getting something from GitHub, an APK
from GitHub,
and sideloading it into their phone
(09:11):
now,
with I mean, because
these guys are are are anonymous.
Cali is a good example. BitChat. He he he took he took the code for BitChat from
iOS and essentially
ported it, for lack of a better term, to Android.
We don't know who Cali is. He hasn't I I guarantee you he hasn't given his phone number to somebody, his physical address to somebody, and his legal name to somebody.
(09:39):
Not not for for Bitcoin and and and development stuff. I I can almost guarantee it.
Cali's not that kind of person. I haven't met him personally, but you get a sense of some of these people when you've been in the space for a while. Cali's not not not the kind of guy that says, hey. Here's my address and phone number. I I'm sure that you'll that that you having
(10:07):
BitChat app
side loaded into a Google device, like a phone.
Or how
how
are they going to get Cali to dox himself?
And I think what this all leads to is that there is going to be some kind of change to the Google operating system for their phones and whatever else you you put this this mobile,
(10:31):
operating system on, that there will be a change to it. And it will sense that you're about to sideload an APK
and that it will look for some kind of certificate
from that APK
that Google
issues
to a developer
if they want their app to actually be able to be side loaded into the Google phone.
(10:57):
So I sense that a Google operating system for mobile devices is on the horizon.
It will be rolled out. It will probably be certificate based. And to get that certificate,
if you want to distribute you you're more than welcome to develop anything for
Google OS
for their
(11:18):
phones and distribute it via GitHub. But if you want it to actually be side loaded and work inside the Google environment, it's going to have to have a certificate.
And the only way you're getting that certificate
is by doxxing yourself to Google.
This is
not good.
(11:40):
And Google was the last, sort of like the last bastion. And I was I had always been wondering when this day would come.
I I I honestly thought it would be a lot sooner than
than what we're seeing.
That said,
there has to be a different way.
We've only we we essentially only have a couple of phone makers.
(12:02):
You know, we we've got we've got Apple,
and we've got Google,
and we got well, I mean okay. We've got a few phone makers. Right? But they are they only really ever use the operating system iOS
or Android.
Yes. There's graphene. Yeah. I get that.
(12:23):
When will they be compromised?
And I'm not saying that they will. I'm just saying
I I can't go around feeling good about myself saying, well, there's GrapheneOS and everything will be fine,
which is why I want to tell you about this Linux phone. And, again, this is this was a note on Nostr.
(12:44):
So so but I'm over here at the at the the note provided a website,
and it's called
Liberux.
Liberux?
Liberux?
Liberux?
I l I b e r u x. And you can go find it at liberux.net.
That's liberux.net.
(13:05):
And it's a it's a handheld mobile phone,
looks to be a smartphone.
It's called the Linux phone.
That's what LibriX is is saying.
According to this, it's not out. They're, I guess, in the middle of crowdfunding.
It's, quote, coming soon, t m.
But if it does come out,
(13:27):
you can look forward to an eight core processor,
up to 2.4
gigahertz. So it seems to be fairly powerful.
It looks like a smartphone. It's got a it it looks like any other smartphone that you might have. It's got a nice screen. It's nice and big. It's got a black background. It seems to display graphics very, very well.
(13:49):
It has 32 gigabytes of RAM dual channel
and a two terabyte storage capacity, which is wow. Well, honestly, that's kind of impressive right there.
So if I go if I dive a little bit further into the specs where where was it? Oh, for god's sake. Where was it?
I think it's on Debian. I think that the distribution that it's using is Debian. Yeah. Here it is.
(14:15):
LibreX OS is based on Debian
13 Linux,
and it's touted as being an ethical and mostly open source operating system. I I guess they're talking about the Debian the Debian development itself,
but
it's apparently designed to have modular
(14:36):
architecture.
So what they're saying is that you can replace the RAM,
you can remove the LTE five g modem and replace it. It has interchangeable storage,
error correcting
memory.
It's just it's it's about they're they're saying that it's about
reuse and not obsolescence.
(14:57):
So that could be just pure marketing.
Who knows?
But
I would love a Linux based phone.
So
I'm sure that there are other devices out there that that run on Linux, but this particular ecosystem
is
(15:18):
it's ripe
for massive development
in the with with the same ethos and the same fervor
that we're seeing development on Noster,
with BitChat,
with Bitcoin, with Lightning, with eCash,
You name it, man. That that that whole thing,
this goes right along with it.
(15:40):
So if you know more about LibriX,
get in touch with me on Noster,
and
let me know what you think. And also
let me know what else is out there.
Okay. So let's just break it down right here. We've got iOS as an operating system.
We've got Android OS as an operating system.
(16:02):
We've got Graphene OS, which seems to be breaking the tide of
the the stranglehold
that that iOS and Android OS has.
But
what
Linux based solutions
do we have
for mobile
smartphones
(16:22):
with five gs connectivity
or LTE or four gs or you know wireless and Wi Fi the the the Bluetooth
the whole what else
out there exists that developers can start developing for
because we've got to leave
the Play Store and the Apple App Store behind.
(16:44):
We've
we've really got to start looking back at Zapstore, which is something that you can use with Graphene OS,
at least as far as I as far as I know.
We need more. We need we need a lot more than just this. But if you wanna go look at on if you wanna go look at the phone, again, it's libereux.net,
(17:05):
liberux,.net.
It's a good looking phone. I I have to admit, man. I mean, honestly, I I kinda want one of these, you know, if if if at all possible.
But, again, it's, you know, it's just in development as far as I can tell.
So
that was sort of the the the spiel about the fact that we've gotta get out of this.
(17:27):
We don't have any choice.
We are ethically bound at this point
to be like water, just like Bitcoin is water to the economic system, just like Nasr is water to the modern communication systems.
We need
water for the App Store ecosystem.
We've got to be able to route around it because they're putting dams up,
(17:49):
and all that water is looking for
is the lowest point of energy entry
to go downhill. That that it water wants to move.
It will flow,
and it will eventually flow over the top of the dam.
We just need to figure out a way to route around this shit right now.
(18:09):
Now
now. Not later.
Not a it'll be fine for, like, a couple of years. No. It's not fine.
This is not fine.
It needs to be fixed, and we need to fix it right now.
Otherwise,
freedom is
freedom is in danger.
(18:33):
Okay. I'm gonna take a breath. I'm gonna take a little pause,
and we're gonna go in and read this big read
from Bitcoin magazine, and it's written by
Gabriel Kerman.
Freedom of mind and freedom of money
inside
Costa Rica's growing Bitcoin
circular economy.
(18:54):
And this is an excerpt
from a book entitled
Bitcoin Circular Economies.
And this is the chapter in that book
about Costa Rica.
The embryo of each Bitcoin circular economy is unique.
The purposes of Bitcoin circular economies are diverse,
(19:15):
and as they grow, the projects develop their own identity,
education,
p two p,
payments, wallets, etcetera.
The quests
of their protagonists
often shape the origin of each with characteristics
and needs that define them. The founders,
who decided to pursue
this social,
(19:37):
technological,
and economic adventure, defined the spirit of the project.
The Bitcoin Jungle project was born in the heart of the Costa Rican jungle, where a vibrant community of expats
and digital nomads from all over the world is trying to develop a more conscious way of living in harmony with nature.
(19:57):
Two men
lit the spark
that gave birth to Bitcoin jungle.
Over
time, others joined the fire.
But two were the energies that aligned to start this project, one, a developer and serial entrepreneur,
the other, a journalist,
retired teacher, and democracy
(20:17):
activist.
Both share two deeply rooted beliefs in their hearts. First, Costa Rica is the best place in the world to live.
Second,
Bitcoin is an enlightening technology that can lead humanity to a more peaceful and evolved lifestyle.
Richard Scottford lived in Hong Kong for more than twenty years.
(20:39):
He worked as a teacher and a freelance reporter for various media outlets, always as a political analyst.
Richard witnessed firsthand the peaceful protest
that began
there
in 2014 with the Umbrella Movement, which later became a symbol of resistance.
Without mincing words, Richard supported Hong Kong's democratic struggle against the Chinese Communist Party,
(21:02):
which imposed an election system where the people could only choose
among candidates
selected by the Communist Party.
Through his articles, Richard became part of Hong Kong's political scene, and when his friends and colleagues began to be imprisoned,
he decided it was time to take a new direction in life.
(21:22):
At the time, Richard knew nothing about Bitcoin
and admits that he crossed off the list
of all the mistakes that cryptocurrency
users usually make before coming into Bitcoin.
Quote, we were scammed. We lost money until mid twenty eighteen when we started to understand the differences
(21:42):
between Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies,
end quote.
The realization about Bitcoin and the profound impact it could have on the world came at a very special time in the lives of Richard and his wife.
Quote,
we were in the middle class trap
where we had everything we needed.
(22:04):
All we could do was have more or better stuff, a better car, a fancier boat, a bigger house, or join a better club. I call it a trap because there was nothing extra to own.
It was clear that our happiness was not going to change by having more or better things.
We wanted to do something radically different, and that's how we ended up in Costa Rica, end quote.
(22:30):
At first,
the couple explored the diverse climates and landscapes of the country.
They found many similarities with the jungles of Hong Kong, enjoyed the volcanic beaches of the Pacific Ocean as well as those of the Caribbean.
It was not easy to impress the new visitors who knew the Asian beaches by heart, and it wasn't until Christmas of twenty nineteen
(22:51):
when Richard would find a new meaning to his purpose in Costa Rica.
Quote, we participated in an Ayahuasca
ceremony in the jungle.
Suddenly,
three different ideas connected in my mind.
On the one hand, I felt a call to deep dive
into jungle medicine,
which is central to Costa Rican culture. On the other hand, all the ideas I had about Bitcoin connected.
(23:16):
At the time, I was precisely
falling down the rabbit hole studying and learning as much as possible.
It all connected with conversations
about the best way to school our daughter.
It all came together. I was a teacher in Hong Kong, so naturally, it came up for me to get involved with the local elementary school.
(23:37):
Then the idea of building our own secondary school in 2020 would come up. End quote.
Before long,
the dream of opening his own school came to life. Quote, I told my wife, we are going to create the first school in Costa Rica that accepts Bitcoin,
and we're going to teach their kids and our kids about Bitcoin.
(23:57):
The only thing I could think of was to send out a tweet to the Bitcoin community that said, quote,
we are a school in Costa Rica. We want to accept Bitcoin.
How can we
do
it? Many people responded
to Richard's request for help, including
Nicholas Berti, cofounder of Galloy and the Bitcoin Beach wallet currently called Blank.
(24:20):
Nicholas suggested that the best way to start accepting small payments was through a Bitcoin Lightning wallet and offered to help.
He encouraged them to create a fork of their own wallet based on the open source repository of the Bitcoin Beach wallet.
That was the first moment
Richard realized he wasn't alone. Quote,
that's where things started to take shape. We wanted to develop our own wallet to simplify payments at school and at the same time also facilitate Bitcoin adoption in Evita,
(24:51):
the town we chose to live in.
The problem was that we didn't have the technical skills needed to fork the Goloj repository
and build it, end quote.
The universe manages to cross the paths of people who need each other. Just when Richard was stymied by his lack of technical skills to launch a local version of the wallet tailored to Uvita's needs,
(25:12):
he met Lee Salminen,
a software engineer and serial entrepreneur from Boulder, Colorado.
Lee is a cheerful, positive person who sees opportunity in every challenge.
The combination of his technical skills, his passion for Bitcoin, and his purpose in life
made him the perfect candidate
to start a Bitcoin circular economy.
(25:34):
Richard and Lee fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
Lee is another
core founder of Bitcoin Jungle. He was able to bring the project to life. He copied Galloy's wallet over a weekend without any support.
Even the guys at
Galloy couldn't believe we had done it so fast.
Quote, Bitcoin is a tool to change the world,
(25:56):
to raise the awareness of humanity, end quote.
Just at that time,
the first edition of the Adopting Bitcoin conference was taking place in El Salvador.
Richard traveled to the neighboring country while Lee stayed in Costa Rica working on the wallet.
Going on that trip to El Salvador
was eye opening.
(26:17):
No one knew who I was. Just a simple English guy walking down the halls trying to make friends saying, hi. We want to do something like Bitcoin Beach in Costa Rica. Can you help us? End quote.
Seen from the outside,
Bitcoin Jungle's approach seemed impossible.
Copying the source code of a wallet over a weekend without technical support from the original developers was a huge challenge.
(26:42):
Then
launching an adoption campaign without a significant amount of SATs to donate and start the process.
However,
Richard knew that a Bitcoin circular economy in Costa Rica had potential for one simple reason. Quote,
the SATs were already there.
I knew Costa Rica was different. There were a lot of people around me who owned Bitcoin. It was full of expats.
(27:07):
All we needed was to create the payment rails to get them moving.
The money was already here. We just needed places to spend it, end quote.
Richard doesn't beat around the bush and get straight to the point because he feels he has a message to share.
Quote,
you have to know your community,
understand, and provide the services they need. It's important to learn from other circular economies, but many times the keys to success
(27:34):
are in the differences, end quote.
When Richard returned from El Salvador, Lee already had his wallet working.
The excitement within the volcanoes of the Costa Rican jungle
was beginning to stir the first tremors.
From the beginning,
the founders of Bitcoin Jungle decided to keep the efforts concentrated
in a relatively small area called the Golden Triangle,
(27:57):
demarcated by the towns of Domenical,
Uvita,
and Tinamaste.
Instead of spreading the efforts throughout the country, they decided to focus on this particular region
characterized by spiritual seekers,
surfers, and people with a deep connection to nature. Quote, although Bitcoin jungle is spilling all over Costa Rica, in the beginning, we had no plans to go out massively and try to adopt the whole country.
(28:25):
It has always been about keeping it small, local,
within our personal connections.
The area between Dominical,
Uvita, and Tinamaste
has a lot of healers,
natural medicine practitioners, and alternative people.
It has this unique energy that is hard to explain but easy to feel.
It is a very large area full of foreigners who receive income from their countries
(28:49):
and need to spend it in Costa
Rica. Govinda
wears yoga attire and whispers in a calm voice, which conveys
the vibe of much of this community
of foreigners
who chose Costa Rica as their new home.
Govinda is another key member of Bitcoin Jungle.
He runs the holistic center Awake,
(29:10):
a sustainable hotel,
with activities related to yoga and meditation.
Awake is also the place where many Bitcoin meetings are held, as well as training sessions on the Bitcoin Jungle Wallet.
This center is also the location where the Nostrika
conference was held in 2023.
This unique community has adopted Bitcoin as another tool
(29:33):
to seek the elevation of human consciousness
and harmony with nature.
In pursuit of contributing to this balance,
gaining trust within the community
was key to integrating this innovative technology
into their daily lives.
Quote, it was the key to success of the project to have founders like Lee and Richard, Govinda explains.
(29:56):
When the project started,
there were several cryptocurrency
scams going around and they were able to explain in Spanish to the store owners the differences with Bitcoin
as well as the technical aspects of the wallet in very simple terms.
They were key to developing confidence in the project and the team of people behind it.
(30:18):
Being scarce, digital, and transparent,
Bitcoin begins to demonstrate its advantages,
solving problems for multiple types of people.
It was worth looking into at the profile of the main users of Bitcoin Jungle. They face a different problem than the exiled families in El Salvador
who send remittances back home.
(30:40):
It is true that both projects coincide in the way they define their target influence area, seeking to concentrate the amount of Bitcoin payments per store,
nurture their user experience, and economic revenues with the aim
of maintaining a stable relationship between the number of visitors and the length of the stored network.
However,
(31:01):
the Golden Triangle population has something in common that other Bitcoin circular economies did not.
As Richard likes to say, quote, most of the people in the Bitcoin jungle community
have already done the work, end quote.
He refers to the fact that many of the people in Uvita and Domenical
already understood
(31:22):
how to hold virtual currencies,
and many even used Bitcoin as a store of value.
The team just needed to give them a direct payment system to ignite the virtuous circle
cycle.
Instead of paying with high fee credit cards and constantly needing to transfer money into the country from abroad,
users could simply load their Bitcoin lightning wallet and buy whatever they needed. Quote, our main goal was pretty simple.
(31:46):
We were focused on reducing the friction of using Bitcoin for people visiting and living in Costa Rica.
Richard expounds
the conclusion
he came to
sometime after processing the purpose that had distilled
his spiritual journey.
All that remained
was to design an adoption strategy and encourage Bitcoiner tourism.
(32:09):
Costa Rica is known worldwide for its paradiasicle
beaches, misty jungles, exotic animals, volcanoes, and surfing.
It tends to be a very attractive spot for tourism in the Central American Corridor.
Add its political stability, its high security standards, its motto, pura vida, which means pure life, as a declaration of respect for nature and the abolition of its army.
(32:35):
The result not only caught the attention of tourism within the ecosystem,
but also of the community of digital nomads who began to take it as one of their permanent residences.
The community continues to expand with a growing percentage of visitors and families
who decide to settle.
Most are foreigners from The United States, Canada, and Europe, some seeking to escape excessive surveillance
(32:58):
and increasing
government oppression. Quote, many came here looking for a new social contract,
one that works for everyone and is not imposed from a top down approach. Govinda stresses before pausing,
taking a breath, and clarifying the unwritten but community adopted manifesto.
Quote,
we believe in freedom, peace, and prosperity,
(33:21):
which are values that are deeply aligned with Bitcoin.
We don't want to be told what to do.
This is why I have high hopes for the rapid growth of the Bitcoin jungle community.
However,
the first years of these projects, which grow into a Bitcoin circular economy, are not easy.
Founders often delimit the boundaries.
(33:44):
There are multiple ways to get involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and given the characteristics of the Costa Rican community,
different models were discussed in the early days.
Having a large community of tech savvy expats with Bitcoin available to spend represents either a temptation or an opportunity, depending on your point of view, to develop a profitable business.
(34:06):
One of the early contributors to the project was interested in pursuing this line,
while the other founders wanted to build a nonprofit community endeavor. Quote, there was an interesting situation at the beginning because one of the early founders
tried to turn it into a commercial project and make money from it.
All the other founding members were more interested in it remaining a community driven thing.
(34:30):
This led to a very healthy split around 2021
and what is now known globally as Bitcoin Jungle is the non profit project that we decided to continue Govinda clarifies,
inviting reflection with raised eyebrows.
There are multiple Bitcoin businesses around the world
that follow conscious efforts of social responsibility.
(34:53):
However, there is a reason why Bitcoin circular economies are deeply rooted as nonprofit community projects.
Govinda converses while touching the air with his hands.
The more he shares his thoughts, the closer he comes to the image of a shaman who can observe the inner self of people who cross his path.
(35:14):
People can sense it.
The energy is completely different if there is someone behind it who wants to make a profit
or if it comes from a sincere and genuine interest in the good of people and humanity.
These subtle energies create projects with a very different spirit.
We were not doing this for the money.
(35:35):
Govinda
speaks confidently of ideals.
When the goal is to provide that a new social contract is possible,
The words do not waver, quote, we believe in Bitcoin and we believe in Costa Rica.
We want it to be a union between technology and nature
to raise the level of consciousness.
(35:55):
We are ready to dedicate some of our time and energy to make this happen as a gift to our community
and to the world.
Bitcoin aims to change power dynamics of money,
to break free from abusive forces that enslave us and to reclaim our sovereignty to choose freely.
(36:15):
Bitcoin Jungle was able to build its own identity.
Another unique feature of this Bitcoin circular economy is to link with Nostr,
the open source communications protocol that's ideal for developing decentralized
social networks.
These platforms can easily integrate with the Bitcoin Lightning Network and implement micro donations called Zaps for content creators.
(36:39):
Given its unrestricted
access, design, and
resistance to censorship, Nostra is ideal
for promoting freedom of expression in the face of social control and government censorship.
Jack Dorsey, the original founder of Twitter, has been living in Costa Rica for a long time and has been closely following and supporting the growth of Bitcoin jungle.
(37:00):
He is one of the big promoters of Nostr, has funded several projects in that ecosystem,
and was instrumental
in creating the first
international conference on this technology.
Quote,
Jack was one of the first people to follow our Twitter account,
but he had no personal contact.
One day, he tweeted that a Nostra conference should be organized in Costa Rica and that he was willing to fund it
(37:26):
if the community
organized it, end quote.
Pride covers Richard's face as he describes the backstage of Costa Rica,
the event they organized together.
After all, Richard had experienced firsthand the social control during his years in Hong Kong. Quote, we all love the idea because decentralized social networks are very much needed today.
(37:50):
So we reached out to him and offered our entire infrastructure and business ecosystem to simplify payments for attendees.
The combination of the world's first Nostra conference with the possibility of powering the Bitcoin jungle circular economy
seemed like a perfect match.
Jack Dorsey
gave the green light.
The Nostra Protocol has multiple philosophical
(38:12):
similarities
with Bitcoin,
and, consequently, there is significant overlap between their communities.
Govinda,
as expected,
holds space for individual freedoms alongside its inner peace.
This new communications protocol has the potential to enable social networking
with complete freedom of expression.
(38:34):
We could build a decentralized Twitter on Facebook.
We can talk
and share ideas or images without surveillance. It's cryptographic
and decentralized,
like Bitcoin.
Since its creation by anonymous user Fiat Joffe in 2020, the Nostra Protocol
has seen a rapid increase in usage driven primarily by the Bitcoin community.
(38:59):
The team insisted to Jack that the event be held in Uvita to leverage
and stimulate the Bitcoin circular economy.
As it happened, the Nostra Rica conference was a success.
With over 50 speakers and 300 participants,
it significantly increased international awareness of Bitcoin jungle.
Quote,
it really put us on a map as a destination for many Bitcoiners Richard recalls.
(39:25):
We already had one of the best user experiences for spending sats and enjoying Bitcoin, but
many of them still hadn't heard of us before this event.
The circular economy that Nasr has its strongest relationship with today is Bitcoin jungle,
and that has had many good consequences. Not only did it increase the endogenous tourism of the ecosystem,
(39:48):
the unexpected success of the conference
also generated the first economic gain for Bitcoin Jungle.
Up until this event, everything had been self funded.
The devices we delivered to the stores, the cost to support the users,
the training,
the node on which the wallet runs, and so on.
We don't charge anyone, not on transactions within the node. Everything is completely free,
(40:13):
Richard humbly shares.
Going forward,
we plan to continue doing festivals every year to further advance our community mission so everyone is invited
to the Freedom Festival in February
2025,
end quote.
Costa Rica is a very special place.
Many people who dream of making a positive contribution to the world, for some reason, are attracted to this country.
(40:40):
The connection between these international
spiritual seekers and Costa Rica has created a unique community in the world,
combining
innovation,
yoga, nature,
Ayahuasca,
and technology.
In retrospect,
it is understandable
why this environment became fertile ground for the birth for perhaps the most important Bitcoin circular economy in the world.
(41:05):
This transcendental
aspect
is present in the minds and hearts of those who make Bitcoin jungle.
Richard,
who used to be a reporter clinging to the truth and transparency of democracy,
continues to go through a personal transformation,
though without losing his essence. Quote,
I would say my main goal is the spiritual elevation of consciousness about Bitcoin.
(41:29):
I think Bitcoin is a fundamental part of this new world that we are trying to build. That's why we created Bitcoin Jungle.
It's our contribution to a more conscious and free future for humanity.
Those who are deeply connected to Gaia
tend to perceive the cyclical nature of all processes
(41:49):
in our universe.
Human evolution has also been shown to follow recurring patterns.
Many Bitcoiners
have been pointing out for over a decade
that we may be on the verge of a major paradigm shift.
This sense of hope is palpable throughout the Bitcoin Jungle community.
There is a deep shared belief
(42:10):
that after the inevitable collapse of fiat currencies under the weight of their own debt,
there will be a new beginning.
There is a large community of international seekers here.
They believe in freedom, peace, and prosperity,
values that are deeply aligned with Bitcoin's culture. They understand how money printing and inflation create poverty and inequality.
(42:32):
They understand
how traditional institutions and governments extract value from working people.
All of us believe in the sovereignty of individuals
and the power of decentralized communities.
This is why Bitcoin and Costa Rica are made for each other.
Govinda no longer sounds like a shaman. He now speaks like the leader of a movement.
(42:55):
He probably has a little bit of each. Either way, both he and Richard are very clear in their motivations.
Quote, we're not just doing this because we love Bitcoin.
We're doing this because we want to change the world. But to do that,
it's important that we also change inwardly.
It's a fusion between our spiritual quest,
(43:16):
a new philosophy of life, and a technology that facilitates it.
There is no way we can sustainably raise human consciousness
unless we liberate the way we store and transfer value between us, Richard concludes.
When people cannot control the soundness and ownership
of their own money,
their vital energy can be abused and manipulated.
(43:40):
This also applies to sovereign countries when they see their foreign currency reserves being diluted by the issuers
of those fiat currencies.
With Bitcoin, individuals and nation states become truly sovereign entities
with the ability to protect their wealth from potential confiscation.
Quote,
Bitcoin protects your energy in a way that no one can mess with, Govinda enthuses.
(44:06):
Quote, before Bitcoin, we were truly free only in our souls.
We have energy sovereignty as spiritual beings, but on a physical level.
We were completely controlled by the elites,
their politicians,
and their armies.
Now Bitcoin has extended our freedom to the physical world. That changes everything.
(44:27):
It also enables sovereignty,
celebration of life,
and healing on a global scale.
Bitcoin is the liberation of humanity from ancestral
abuse,
end quote.
In the case of Bitcoin jungle, as in all other Bitcoin circular economies,
their first contact at the beginning of the project was with the friends of Bitcoin Beach.
(44:52):
In addition to that first inspiring trip to El Salvador
and the opportunity
to use their wallet code, both teams have a permanent communications channel to collaborate and share ideas.
On the educational side, Bitcoin Jungle has also received support from My First Bitcoin. Quote, we have a very good relationship with Mike and the Bitcoin Beach team.
(45:15):
We are also very grateful to Napoleon from My First Bitcoin, Richard punctuates his mental list of collaborations.
Quote, I myself
dictate his materials to the kids here at school.
Whenever we meet at any conference, we try to organize a dinner between the circular economies.
Thankfully, that table is getting bigger and bigger every time.
(45:37):
Bitcoin is very powerful,
end quote.
The Bitcoin circular economies play a unique role in the ecosystem
because
they demonstrate on a smaller scale how global Bitcoin adoption
can benefit people and communities with different needs. Quote, I'm a big fan of the Bitcoin Ecosi team, Richard sums up in a demonstration of the strength that traces the invisible thread. Quote,
(46:03):
how a poor village in South Africa has been able to create a Bitcoin circular economy that is becoming known around the world.
Richard even dreams of the day
when we have conferences totally dedicated
to studying these early
adopter case studies.
Quote, I would love to see a conference totally dedicated to Bitcoin circular economies with projects from all over the world coming together to share their experiences, their stories, and their lessons learned, end quote.
(46:33):
What role
will a Bitcoin circular economy play in the future?
Will these early communities be the birth of a new way of organizing society?
Will we see an exponential growth of Paris Passau BCEs
with the mass adoption of Bitcoin?
If today's overcrowded cities continue their decline along with fiat governments drowning in debt, it is possible
(46:57):
that a decentralized
way of living could offer a better quality of life,
greater community livelihood, and deeper connection with nature.
For years,
the Bitcoin community has predicted the emergence of luxurious Bitcoin citadels in the future.
Can a Bitcoin circular economy be a more heterogeneous
and inclusive alternative to those citadels?
(47:20):
Quote, to me,
a circular economy is the lifeblood of Bitcoin even if many Bitcoiners haven't realized it.
Bitcoin strongholds will be elitist places,
designed from the top down and only for a lucky few.
The great thing about a Bitcoin circular economy is that we have not been designed
out of luxury, Richard expounds. Quote, we have simply emerged from social,
(47:44):
not for profit efforts with the goal of improving the lives of everyone in our communities.
And that's the end of the article. Now here's some some notes at the bottom end of this article.
Gabriel Kerman
is a blockchain entrepreneur with more than a decade of corporate finance experience. He's a cofounder of several projects such as Rootstock,
(48:05):
lie law, Bitcoinetta,
and Blockchain for Humanity. He dedicates his life to Bitcoin innovation and education.
His first book, Bitcoin Circular Economies, is out this month by Bitcoin Magazine Books.
Bitcoin Jungle can be found on Instagram and
a few other places. You can read the article for yourself.
(48:26):
So that's that's the article. I really wanted to to get into this one because I believe that he's right.
Bitcoin circular economies
are more important now than they have been in a long time. And I don't mean that in a way that means that at one point or another Bitcoin circular economies weren't ever important.
(48:48):
In fact, Bitcoin circular economy has is
is just as important now as it ever was. What I'm talking about is the in the minds of humans,
our perception
of the importance
of Bitcoin
circular economies.
There was a time when we really weren't thinking about it. You know, back in the day was huddle, huddle, huddle. And now we're getting into a lot more people saying, you know, we should probably
(49:13):
be spending our our Bitcoin.
Well, let me tell you first and foremost, nobody can tell you what to do with your Bitcoin.
They can make a suggestion, and you are more than, you know, welcome to tell them to go pound sand.
There's there's nothing in on my side of this microphone that is trying to suggest that you need to go spend your Bitcoin. That's that's for other people to say. You do whatever the hell with your Bitcoin that you wanna do with your Bitcoin. It's your Bitcoin.
(49:37):
You're 100%
sovereign, and that's
the core
of a Bitcoin circular economy.
No one can tell you what to do with your money, and nobody can tell you what the value of your money
is.
That's just between you and a vendor, or you and a friend, or you and your remittance partner, however it is that you wanna look at it.
(50:02):
Nobody gets to define
the value of that but you and the other person.
For instance,
you can say, yeah, but
the value of Bitcoin today is basically in dollars, and that's kind of like, you know, the markets decide. No, no, no,
no. I don't I don't actually have to look at that if I didn't want to. If I'm in a Bitcoin circular economy and it's 100%
(50:26):
Bitcoin being passed between people that are selling, I don't know, empanadas
and, people that are selling houses and motorbikes and boat rides out on the Pacific Ocean,
that's between me that value of how much Bitcoin I give them is between me and that person.
It doesn't have to be
centered on what the value is
(50:46):
of the market.
Now most people will do that.
I'm not saying that they won't, and I'm not even saying that they should or they shouldn't look at it that way. I'm just saying that nobody's nobody's telling me that I have to look at 1 Bitcoin
as a $110,000
US.
I could simply say I I have 1 Bitcoin.
(51:08):
I think that that yacht that you own there, mister Yacht owner, is is worth 1 Bitcoin, and I would like to buy that yacht. If the yacht owner agrees that 1 Bitcoin buys that yacht, then that yacht owner is going to sell me that yacht, and I'm going to give him 1 Bitcoin.
Maybe that yacht's worth $250,000.
Who knows?
(51:29):
That
because the value of bitcoin is what we make of the value bitcoin because it's sovereign money for the first time.
It's sovereign money And now it becomes
a conversation
between two people in a true Bitcoin circular economy.
And I shouldn't I honestly, I shouldn't have picked on yacht because
(51:50):
honestly, I'm
have owning a yacht
is like
if you've ever talked to an RV owner,
most of them, they think that they like an RV,
find out that they don't really like having a recreational vehicle at all, and then they wish that they had never bought it. And the same is true for even a small boat.
(52:11):
Could you imagine a yacht?
A $250,000
yacht with twin diesel 12
cylinder engines
and cooling systems and electrical systems. I mean, there's a lot of people that own a boat that wish they'd never got it. Not a never got a boat in the first damn place. There's a lot of boats that I've seen in
in the
(52:32):
in Colorado where I I go to a house up there all the time, which is by a lake. I see a lot of people whose boats haven't moved in ten years,
and they're by a lake.
It's clear that they're not all that interested in owning their boat.
It sounds to me like a yacht would be a management nightmare, so let's talk about something more
more along my lines of what I find valuable.
(52:55):
10 acres of of arable land in Costa Rica.
How much Bitcoin is that worth?
I'm not required
to go check
Coinbase
and find the price of the United States dollar against Bitcoin.
And neither is the person who has 10 acres of arable land in Costa Rica and wants to sell it to me. Me and him can have a conversation of what we think the value is. I'm not saying that that happens.
(53:22):
I'm saying that for the first time in the history of humanity,
or at least the first time in the history history of humanity
since,
money was taken over and turned into essentially fiat by governments and people that have a lot of people in their pay on their payroll with guns.
(53:43):
Before that time when money was private, we could have that conversation about what we thought something was truly worth.
But when the when money was taken out of our hands and for whatever reason, we said, yeah, may the government should be in control of the money.
Where
a, where did we get that notion from in the first place?
I think it was marketing by by people
(54:05):
who just wanted to steal everything, and they, over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years,
figured out that most humans are just rubes waiting to be told what to do, what to believe,
what color they think they're seeing is actually some other color. It is amazing
what you can do to the human mind. I've seen it in marketing.
(54:27):
It's amazing that you can sell somebody the ugliest jeans
if you pay a supermodel
a whole shit ton of money to get in front of a camera while she's wearing it.
And all of a sudden, those jeans, even though they're
fugly as
a f,
become something everybody wants.
(54:49):
I mean, back in the eighties, there was Mon Chichi.
It was a stupid toy monkey,
but the marketing campaign behind it made it one of those things where you it was sold out by Christmas.
You couldn't get it for your kid.
Many such cases.
Why do you think that money is not a product?
Because that's what fiat money is now. I can tell because it's been marketed.
(55:15):
We got marketed out of the sovereignty of our money.
And because of that, we constantly have to ask a third party what the value of that money is.
You see how that works? It's non sovereign
money.
The only place that I can tell where sovereign money truly exists is in two places.
(55:38):
One, a Bitcoin circular economy,
and two,
people that are willing to trade bricks of gold between each other physically,
not paper gold,
actual standing in front of the other person saying,
here's my bar of gold. Where are the keys to the house that you're selling me? Because we're standing on the on my new front lawn. Where are the keys?
(55:59):
Alright. That that's the that's the only time that you're gonna find
actual sovereign money.
So a Bitcoin circular economy
is increasingly important.
It's increasingly important
as our as to how we perceive
its importance. It's always been important. It will always continue to be important.
(56:26):
How do we perceive that?
That that's sort of what is the make or break of all of this.
And the way that I'm beginning to perceive it is that I don't have to
look at the price of Bitcoin in US dollars to find its value.
I can have a conversation with somebody else who is like minded and doesn't need to necessarily look at the value. Doesn't mean they won't,
(56:51):
and it doesn't mean I won't. It just means that we could.
Whereas, if we're holding fiat,
we don't have a choice.
We don't have a choice.
So
that's
the episode for today,
and I do hope you got something out of it. I think it's a really good chapter
(57:14):
for this book. I'm becoming a little bit more increasingly interested in
possibly getting this book for myself and reading about the other Bitcoin circular economies because there's
there's not just the Costa Rican one.
These things are popping up in a lot of places.
And what else does it mean? And what other ways can we live? Do we have to live the way that we're living? And I contend that the answer to that question is
(57:39):
no.
I'll see you on the other side.
This has been Bitcoin and and I am your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon.
Have a great day.
It is 08:47AM
Pacific Daylight Time. It's the August
2025,
and this is episode eleven fifty five
of Bitcoin and Yesterday,
while cutting yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and it became apparent to everybody but me that Google
has pulled a little rabbit out of their hat and it's not a good rabbit this is not the rabbit this is not the fluffy rabbit that you want
(00:29):
This is the bad kind of rabbit that nobody nobody wants and I'm gonna talk about it and then we're gonna talk about a possible solution
but then I'm gonna do a long read
from Bitcoin Magazine about the circular economy
in Costa Rica.
And, honestly, right now, unless something changes
(00:51):
during the show while I'm recording,
there's just not a whole I mean, unless you want me to go over
again how many companies are starting to get into shit coinery for their corporate treasuries, and I've got that in quotes. You can't see me, but I'm air quoting their their corporate treasuries.
Because I've I discussed it yesterday
(01:12):
sort of at length
that we're seeing an alt season that's being driven
by
CEOs
and CFOs
because they're doing the they're making the exact same mistakes
that went on
2017,
2018,
2019,
2020,
'21, '22, you name it. They're doing the same they're making the same mistake.
(01:38):
Except this time instead of it being retail
and people being duped
into buying some kind of shit coin on Twitter,
this time it's
people that should know better.
People that have a a much better world view
in terms of economics and how they work and what these technologies actually mean when they're free and running around in the wild. And yet, here we are.
(02:03):
It's 2018,
2019,
all over again, except this time it's wearing a suit. Because, honestly, that is
all
that I am picking up
as I did my morning curation for today's episode. And I'm just I'm not going to do it. It's a waste of everybody's time to talk about how Tom Lee has bought yet more Ethereum.
(02:25):
I I feel bad for Tom Lee.
Unless, of course, he's doing this on purpose so that he can sell his bags later and dump it on retail as these people usually do and then
buy actual real Bitcoin with it, but it's just not worth our time.
But the circular economy
and what's going on in Costa Rica,
(02:45):
I think that is worth our time because I've always kind of thought that after El Salvador,
just down south, you know, I think you skip over Nicaragua and then you go down south a little further, you've got Costa Rica, which is
damn near a first world country and has been for quite a while. It's been a destination for American tourism for decades and decades and decades. It's clean. It's nice.
(03:08):
It's fairly wealthy as far as Latin American countries go, and they were have been dipping their toes into the Bitcoin scene for a while, and I keep thinking that they're pretty much next on the list. So I really wanna get into this
big read from
Bitcoin magazine
about what's going on in Costa Rica. And I I actually think it ties in nicely
(03:32):
with what's going on here with Google and this this
Linux phone that I wanna tell you about
because we either start taking things into our own hands
and start building the things that that have been provided to us now
or we're just gonna end up in a gulag.
(03:52):
I
the whole point
of being able to side load APKs into your Google phone
was so that you could try out stuff that that the Google people didn't really want in their Play Store. They didn't want to take
responsibility for something bricking your phone. And, hell, from a liability standpoint, I don't blame them on that.
(04:14):
But they honestly just just should have put a waiver up
on
the Play Store or
or or something. When you buy your phone, when you buy your Pixel or whatever, the a waiver that you have to sign that says, if I side load for, like, APK
and it breaks my phone, I will not hold Google responsible.
But no, they didn't go that route, and you have to ask yourself why.
(04:38):
So let's let's begin today's episode by reading
this one from TechCrunch.
Google will require developer verification
for Android apps
outside
the Play Store.
This is Sarah Perez writing by the way.
Google is tightening security measures around Android app distribution, the company announced on Monday.
(05:02):
Starting next year,
Google will begin to verify the identities
of developers
distributing their apps
on Android devices,
not just those who distribute
via the Play Store.
The changes will affect all certified Android devices once live,
though the global rollout will be more gradual.
(05:24):
The tech giant stress that this does not mean developers can't distribute outside of the Play Store through other app stores
or via sideloading,
Android will remain open in that regard. However, developers
who appreciated the
anonymity of alternative
distribution methods will no longer have that option.
(05:45):
Google says this will help cut down on bad actors who hide their identity
to distribute malware,
commit financial fraud, or steal users' personal data. I'm pausing right there to say this is nothing but a it's for the children argument
because they could very easily draft a waiver
that you have to sign when you purchase a Pixel phone or a Google phone or something like that.
(06:11):
They could very well
have put something in their operating system
that senses that, hey. You're about to side load an APK. You've gotta sign this waiver that says you will take full responsibility for any damages that this app or apps that you're about to sideload.
You take full responsibility for it bricking your phone or or losing your personal data or whatever.
(06:36):
But, no,
Google chose not to go that route.
They could have, and it would be legally binding, and it would completely shield them from any legal action if that particular
document was created
right,
but no.
And you have to ask yourself
(06:56):
why.
Let's continue. According to its very own survey, Google says that more than 50 times more malware came through the Internet side loaded sources compared with Google Play, where it has required developer verification since 2023.
Initially,
Google will allow interested developers to sign up for early access starting in October 2025 to test the system and provide feedback.
(07:22):
In March 2026, verification will go live for all developers. And by September
2026,
any app
installed on an Android device in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand will have to meet the new requirements.
Starting in 2027,
the requirements will be rolled out globally.
(07:42):
Developers will have to provide their legal name,
address,
email, and phone number, which could push independent developers to register as a business for their own privacy's
sake.
Apple implemented a similar change for the EU App Store earlier this year to comply with the Digital Services Act, a regulation that now requires app developers to provide their trader status, and that's in quotes,
(08:07):
to submit new apps or app updates for distribution.
Google notes that student and hobbyist developers will be able to use a separate
type of Android developer console account when this system rolls out as their needs differ from commercial developers.
The changes could have
significant
(08:28):
impact on the Android app ecosystem
and app distribution
as Google works to cut down on the security issues and malware
that have typically plagued its platform.
So that that's the TechCrunch article that was being blasted out far and wide yesterday.
And honestly, all it says is it does not matter.
(08:49):
You are going to have to dox yourself
if if
if you are developing for Google,
which
begs the question.
If Google's not in control of me getting something from GitHub, an APK
from GitHub,
and sideloading it into their phone
(09:11):
now,
with I mean, because
these guys are are are anonymous.
Cali is a good example. BitChat. He he he took he took the code for BitChat from
iOS and essentially
ported it, for lack of a better term, to Android.
We don't know who Cali is. He hasn't I I guarantee you he hasn't given his phone number to somebody, his physical address to somebody, and his legal name to somebody.
(09:39):
Not not for for Bitcoin and and and development stuff. I I can almost guarantee it.
Cali's not that kind of person. I haven't met him personally, but you get a sense of some of these people when you've been in the space for a while. Cali's not not not the kind of guy that says, hey. Here's my address and phone number. I I'm sure that you'll that that you having
(10:07):
BitChat app
side loaded into a Google device, like a phone.
Or how
how
are they going to get Cali to dox himself?
And I think what this all leads to is that there is going to be some kind of change to the Google operating system for their phones and whatever else you you put this this mobile,
(10:31):
operating system on, that there will be a change to it. And it will sense that you're about to sideload an APK
and that it will look for some kind of certificate
from that APK
that Google
issues
to a developer
if they want their app to actually be able to be side loaded into the Google phone.
(10:57):
So I sense that a Google operating system for mobile devices is on the horizon.
It will be rolled out. It will probably be certificate based. And to get that certificate,
if you want to distribute you you're more than welcome to develop anything for
Google OS
for their
(11:18):
phones and distribute it via GitHub. But if you want it to actually be side loaded and work inside the Google environment, it's going to have to have a certificate.
And the only way you're getting that certificate
is by doxxing yourself to Google.
This is
not good.
(11:40):
And Google was the last, sort of like the last bastion. And I was I had always been wondering when this day would come.
I I I honestly thought it would be a lot sooner than
than what we're seeing.
That said,
there has to be a different way.
We've only we we essentially only have a couple of phone makers.
(12:02):
You know, we we've got we've got Apple,
and we've got Google,
and we got well, I mean okay. We've got a few phone makers. Right? But they are they only really ever use the operating system iOS
or Android.
Yes. There's graphene. Yeah. I get that.
(12:23):
When will they be compromised?
And I'm not saying that they will. I'm just saying
I I can't go around feeling good about myself saying, well, there's GrapheneOS and everything will be fine,
which is why I want to tell you about this Linux phone. And, again, this is this was a note on Nostr.
(12:44):
So so but I'm over here at the at the the note provided a website,
and it's called
Liberux.
Liberux?
Liberux?
Liberux?
I l I b e r u x. And you can go find it at liberux.net.
That's liberux.net.
(13:05):
And it's a it's a handheld mobile phone,
looks to be a smartphone.
It's called the Linux phone.
That's what LibriX is is saying.
According to this, it's not out. They're, I guess, in the middle of crowdfunding.
It's, quote, coming soon, t m.
But if it does come out,
(13:27):
you can look forward to an eight core processor,
up to 2.4
gigahertz. So it seems to be fairly powerful.
It looks like a smartphone. It's got a it it looks like any other smartphone that you might have. It's got a nice screen. It's nice and big. It's got a black background. It seems to display graphics very, very well.
(13:49):
It has 32 gigabytes of RAM dual channel
and a two terabyte storage capacity, which is wow. Well, honestly, that's kind of impressive right there.
So if I go if I dive a little bit further into the specs where where was it? Oh, for god's sake. Where was it?
I think it's on Debian. I think that the distribution that it's using is Debian. Yeah. Here it is.
(14:15):
LibreX OS is based on Debian
13 Linux,
and it's touted as being an ethical and mostly open source operating system. I I guess they're talking about the Debian the Debian development itself,
but
it's apparently designed to have modular
(14:36):
architecture.
So what they're saying is that you can replace the RAM,
you can remove the LTE five g modem and replace it. It has interchangeable storage,
error correcting
memory.
It's just it's it's about they're they're saying that it's about
reuse and not obsolescence.
(14:57):
So that could be just pure marketing.
Who knows?
But
I would love a Linux based phone.
So
I'm sure that there are other devices out there that that run on Linux, but this particular ecosystem
is
(15:18):
it's ripe
for massive development
in the with with the same ethos and the same fervor
that we're seeing development on Noster,
with BitChat,
with Bitcoin, with Lightning, with eCash,
You name it, man. That that that whole thing,
this goes right along with it.
(15:40):
So if you know more about LibriX,
get in touch with me on Noster,
and
let me know what you think. And also
let me know what else is out there.
Okay. So let's just break it down right here. We've got iOS as an operating system.
We've got Android OS as an operating system.
(16:02):
We've got Graphene OS, which seems to be breaking the tide of
the the stranglehold
that that iOS and Android OS has.
But
what
Linux based solutions
do we have
for mobile
smartphones
(16:22):
with five gs connectivity
or LTE or four gs or you know wireless and Wi Fi the the the Bluetooth
the whole what else
out there exists that developers can start developing for
because we've got to leave
the Play Store and the Apple App Store behind.
(16:44):
We've
we've really got to start looking back at Zapstore, which is something that you can use with Graphene OS,
at least as far as I as far as I know.
We need more. We need we need a lot more than just this. But if you wanna go look at on if you wanna go look at the phone, again, it's libereux.net,
(17:05):
liberux,.net.
It's a good looking phone. I I have to admit, man. I mean, honestly, I I kinda want one of these, you know, if if if at all possible.
But, again, it's, you know, it's just in development as far as I can tell.
So
that was sort of the the the spiel about the fact that we've gotta get out of this.
(17:27):
We don't have any choice.
We are ethically bound at this point
to be like water, just like Bitcoin is water to the economic system, just like Nasr is water to the modern communication systems.
We need
water for the App Store ecosystem.
We've got to be able to route around it because they're putting dams up,
(17:49):
and all that water is looking for
is the lowest point of energy entry
to go downhill. That that it water wants to move.
It will flow,
and it will eventually flow over the top of the dam.
We just need to figure out a way to route around this shit right now.
(18:09):
Now
now. Not later.
Not a it'll be fine for, like, a couple of years. No. It's not fine.
This is not fine.
It needs to be fixed, and we need to fix it right now.
Otherwise,
freedom is
freedom is in danger.
(18:33):
Okay. I'm gonna take a breath. I'm gonna take a little pause,
and we're gonna go in and read this big read
from Bitcoin magazine, and it's written by
Gabriel Kerman.
Freedom of mind and freedom of money
inside
Costa Rica's growing Bitcoin
circular economy.
(18:54):
And this is an excerpt
from a book entitled
Bitcoin Circular Economies.
And this is the chapter in that book
about Costa Rica.
The embryo of each Bitcoin circular economy is unique.
The purposes of Bitcoin circular economies are diverse,
(19:15):
and as they grow, the projects develop their own identity,
education,
p two p,
payments, wallets, etcetera.
The quests
of their protagonists
often shape the origin of each with characteristics
and needs that define them. The founders,
who decided to pursue
this social,
(19:37):
technological,
and economic adventure, defined the spirit of the project.
The Bitcoin Jungle project was born in the heart of the Costa Rican jungle, where a vibrant community of expats
and digital nomads from all over the world is trying to develop a more conscious way of living in harmony with nature.
(19:57):
Two men
lit the spark
that gave birth to Bitcoin jungle.
Over
time, others joined the fire.
But two were the energies that aligned to start this project, one, a developer and serial entrepreneur,
the other, a journalist,
retired teacher, and democracy
(20:17):
activist.
Both share two deeply rooted beliefs in their hearts. First, Costa Rica is the best place in the world to live.
Second,
Bitcoin is an enlightening technology that can lead humanity to a more peaceful and evolved lifestyle.
Richard Scottford lived in Hong Kong for more than twenty years.
(20:39):
He worked as a teacher and a freelance reporter for various media outlets, always as a political analyst.
Richard witnessed firsthand the peaceful protest
that began
there
in 2014 with the Umbrella Movement, which later became a symbol of resistance.
Without mincing words, Richard supported Hong Kong's democratic struggle against the Chinese Communist Party,
(21:02):
which imposed an election system where the people could only choose
among candidates
selected by the Communist Party.
Through his articles, Richard became part of Hong Kong's political scene, and when his friends and colleagues began to be imprisoned,
he decided it was time to take a new direction in life.
(21:22):
At the time, Richard knew nothing about Bitcoin
and admits that he crossed off the list
of all the mistakes that cryptocurrency
users usually make before coming into Bitcoin.
Quote, we were scammed. We lost money until mid twenty eighteen when we started to understand the differences
(21:42):
between Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies,
end quote.
The realization about Bitcoin and the profound impact it could have on the world came at a very special time in the lives of Richard and his wife.
Quote,
we were in the middle class trap
where we had everything we needed.
(22:04):
All we could do was have more or better stuff, a better car, a fancier boat, a bigger house, or join a better club. I call it a trap because there was nothing extra to own.
It was clear that our happiness was not going to change by having more or better things.
We wanted to do something radically different, and that's how we ended up in Costa Rica, end quote.
(22:30):
At first,
the couple explored the diverse climates and landscapes of the country.
They found many similarities with the jungles of Hong Kong, enjoyed the volcanic beaches of the Pacific Ocean as well as those of the Caribbean.
It was not easy to impress the new visitors who knew the Asian beaches by heart, and it wasn't until Christmas of twenty nineteen
(22:51):
when Richard would find a new meaning to his purpose in Costa Rica.
Quote, we participated in an Ayahuasca
ceremony in the jungle.
Suddenly,
three different ideas connected in my mind.
On the one hand, I felt a call to deep dive
into jungle medicine,
which is central to Costa Rican culture. On the other hand, all the ideas I had about Bitcoin connected.
(23:16):
At the time, I was precisely
falling down the rabbit hole studying and learning as much as possible.
It all connected with conversations
about the best way to school our daughter.
It all came together. I was a teacher in Hong Kong, so naturally, it came up for me to get involved with the local elementary school.
(23:37):
Then the idea of building our own secondary school in 2020 would come up. End quote.
Before long,
the dream of opening his own school came to life. Quote, I told my wife, we are going to create the first school in Costa Rica that accepts Bitcoin,
and we're going to teach their kids and our kids about Bitcoin.
(23:57):
The only thing I could think of was to send out a tweet to the Bitcoin community that said, quote,
we are a school in Costa Rica. We want to accept Bitcoin.
How can we
do
it? Many people responded
to Richard's request for help, including
Nicholas Berti, cofounder of Galloy and the Bitcoin Beach wallet currently called Blank.
(24:20):
Nicholas suggested that the best way to start accepting small payments was through a Bitcoin Lightning wallet and offered to help.
He encouraged them to create a fork of their own wallet based on the open source repository of the Bitcoin Beach wallet.
That was the first moment
Richard realized he wasn't alone. Quote,
that's where things started to take shape. We wanted to develop our own wallet to simplify payments at school and at the same time also facilitate Bitcoin adoption in Evita,
(24:51):
the town we chose to live in.
The problem was that we didn't have the technical skills needed to fork the Goloj repository
and build it, end quote.
The universe manages to cross the paths of people who need each other. Just when Richard was stymied by his lack of technical skills to launch a local version of the wallet tailored to Uvita's needs,
(25:12):
he met Lee Salminen,
a software engineer and serial entrepreneur from Boulder, Colorado.
Lee is a cheerful, positive person who sees opportunity in every challenge.
The combination of his technical skills, his passion for Bitcoin, and his purpose in life
made him the perfect candidate
to start a Bitcoin circular economy.
(25:34):
Richard and Lee fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
Lee is another
core founder of Bitcoin Jungle. He was able to bring the project to life. He copied Galloy's wallet over a weekend without any support.
Even the guys at
Galloy couldn't believe we had done it so fast.
Quote, Bitcoin is a tool to change the world,
(25:56):
to raise the awareness of humanity, end quote.
Just at that time,
the first edition of the Adopting Bitcoin conference was taking place in El Salvador.
Richard traveled to the neighboring country while Lee stayed in Costa Rica working on the wallet.
Going on that trip to El Salvador
was eye opening.
(26:17):
No one knew who I was. Just a simple English guy walking down the halls trying to make friends saying, hi. We want to do something like Bitcoin Beach in Costa Rica. Can you help us? End quote.
Seen from the outside,
Bitcoin Jungle's approach seemed impossible.
Copying the source code of a wallet over a weekend without technical support from the original developers was a huge challenge.
(26:42):
Then
launching an adoption campaign without a significant amount of SATs to donate and start the process.
However,
Richard knew that a Bitcoin circular economy in Costa Rica had potential for one simple reason. Quote,
the SATs were already there.
I knew Costa Rica was different. There were a lot of people around me who owned Bitcoin. It was full of expats.
(27:07):
All we needed was to create the payment rails to get them moving.
The money was already here. We just needed places to spend it, end quote.
Richard doesn't beat around the bush and get straight to the point because he feels he has a message to share.
Quote,
you have to know your community,
understand, and provide the services they need. It's important to learn from other circular economies, but many times the keys to success
(27:34):
are in the differences, end quote.
When Richard returned from El Salvador, Lee already had his wallet working.
The excitement within the volcanoes of the Costa Rican jungle
was beginning to stir the first tremors.
From the beginning,
the founders of Bitcoin Jungle decided to keep the efforts concentrated
in a relatively small area called the Golden Triangle,
(27:57):
demarcated by the towns of Domenical,
Uvita,
and Tinamaste.
Instead of spreading the efforts throughout the country, they decided to focus on this particular region
characterized by spiritual seekers,
surfers, and people with a deep connection to nature. Quote, although Bitcoin jungle is spilling all over Costa Rica, in the beginning, we had no plans to go out massively and try to adopt the whole country.
(28:25):
It has always been about keeping it small, local,
within our personal connections.
The area between Dominical,
Uvita, and Tinamaste
has a lot of healers,
natural medicine practitioners, and alternative people.
It has this unique energy that is hard to explain but easy to feel.
It is a very large area full of foreigners who receive income from their countries
(28:49):
and need to spend it in Costa
Rica. Govinda
wears yoga attire and whispers in a calm voice, which conveys
the vibe of much of this community
of foreigners
who chose Costa Rica as their new home.
Govinda is another key member of Bitcoin Jungle.
He runs the holistic center Awake,
(29:10):
a sustainable hotel,
with activities related to yoga and meditation.
Awake is also the place where many Bitcoin meetings are held, as well as training sessions on the Bitcoin Jungle Wallet.
This center is also the location where the Nostrika
conference was held in 2023.
This unique community has adopted Bitcoin as another tool
(29:33):
to seek the elevation of human consciousness
and harmony with nature.
In pursuit of contributing to this balance,
gaining trust within the community
was key to integrating this innovative technology
into their daily lives.
Quote, it was the key to success of the project to have founders like Lee and Richard, Govinda explains.
(29:56):
When the project started,
there were several cryptocurrency
scams going around and they were able to explain in Spanish to the store owners the differences with Bitcoin
as well as the technical aspects of the wallet in very simple terms.
They were key to developing confidence in the project and the team of people behind it.
(30:18):
Being scarce, digital, and transparent,
Bitcoin begins to demonstrate its advantages,
solving problems for multiple types of people.
It was worth looking into at the profile of the main users of Bitcoin Jungle. They face a different problem than the exiled families in El Salvador
who send remittances back home.
(30:40):
It is true that both projects coincide in the way they define their target influence area, seeking to concentrate the amount of Bitcoin payments per store,
nurture their user experience, and economic revenues with the aim
of maintaining a stable relationship between the number of visitors and the length of the stored network.
However,
(31:01):
the Golden Triangle population has something in common that other Bitcoin circular economies did not.
As Richard likes to say, quote, most of the people in the Bitcoin jungle community
have already done the work, end quote.
He refers to the fact that many of the people in Uvita and Domenical
already understood
(31:22):
how to hold virtual currencies,
and many even used Bitcoin as a store of value.
The team just needed to give them a direct payment system to ignite the virtuous circle
cycle.
Instead of paying with high fee credit cards and constantly needing to transfer money into the country from abroad,
users could simply load their Bitcoin lightning wallet and buy whatever they needed. Quote, our main goal was pretty simple.
(31:46):
We were focused on reducing the friction of using Bitcoin for people visiting and living in Costa Rica.
Richard expounds
the conclusion
he came to
sometime after processing the purpose that had distilled
his spiritual journey.
All that remained
was to design an adoption strategy and encourage Bitcoiner tourism.
(32:09):
Costa Rica is known worldwide for its paradiasicle
beaches, misty jungles, exotic animals, volcanoes, and surfing.
It tends to be a very attractive spot for tourism in the Central American Corridor.
Add its political stability, its high security standards, its motto, pura vida, which means pure life, as a declaration of respect for nature and the abolition of its army.
(32:35):
The result not only caught the attention of tourism within the ecosystem,
but also of the community of digital nomads who began to take it as one of their permanent residences.
The community continues to expand with a growing percentage of visitors and families
who decide to settle.
Most are foreigners from The United States, Canada, and Europe, some seeking to escape excessive surveillance
(32:58):
and increasing
government oppression. Quote, many came here looking for a new social contract,
one that works for everyone and is not imposed from a top down approach. Govinda stresses before pausing,
taking a breath, and clarifying the unwritten but community adopted manifesto.
Quote,
we believe in freedom, peace, and prosperity,
(33:21):
which are values that are deeply aligned with Bitcoin.
We don't want to be told what to do.
This is why I have high hopes for the rapid growth of the Bitcoin jungle community.
However,
the first years of these projects, which grow into a Bitcoin circular economy, are not easy.
Founders often delimit the boundaries.
(33:44):
There are multiple ways to get involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and given the characteristics of the Costa Rican community,
different models were discussed in the early days.
Having a large community of tech savvy expats with Bitcoin available to spend represents either a temptation or an opportunity, depending on your point of view, to develop a profitable business.
(34:06):
One of the early contributors to the project was interested in pursuing this line,
while the other founders wanted to build a nonprofit community endeavor. Quote, there was an interesting situation at the beginning because one of the early founders
tried to turn it into a commercial project and make money from it.
All the other founding members were more interested in it remaining a community driven thing.
(34:30):
This led to a very healthy split around 2021
and what is now known globally as Bitcoin Jungle is the non profit project that we decided to continue Govinda clarifies,
inviting reflection with raised eyebrows.
There are multiple Bitcoin businesses around the world
that follow conscious efforts of social responsibility.
(34:53):
However, there is a reason why Bitcoin circular economies are deeply rooted as nonprofit community projects.
Govinda converses while touching the air with his hands.
The more he shares his thoughts, the closer he comes to the image of a shaman who can observe the inner self of people who cross his path.
(35:14):
People can sense it.
The energy is completely different if there is someone behind it who wants to make a profit
or if it comes from a sincere and genuine interest in the good of people and humanity.
These subtle energies create projects with a very different spirit.
We were not doing this for the money.
(35:35):
Govinda
speaks confidently of ideals.
When the goal is to provide that a new social contract is possible,
The words do not waver, quote, we believe in Bitcoin and we believe in Costa Rica.
We want it to be a union between technology and nature
to raise the level of consciousness.
(35:55):
We are ready to dedicate some of our time and energy to make this happen as a gift to our community
and to the world.
Bitcoin aims to change power dynamics of money,
to break free from abusive forces that enslave us and to reclaim our sovereignty to choose freely.
(36:15):
Bitcoin Jungle was able to build its own identity.
Another unique feature of this Bitcoin circular economy is to link with Nostr,
the open source communications protocol that's ideal for developing decentralized
social networks.
These platforms can easily integrate with the Bitcoin Lightning Network and implement micro donations called Zaps for content creators.
(36:39):
Given its unrestricted
access, design, and
resistance to censorship, Nostra is ideal
for promoting freedom of expression in the face of social control and government censorship.
Jack Dorsey, the original founder of Twitter, has been living in Costa Rica for a long time and has been closely following and supporting the growth of Bitcoin jungle.
(37:00):
He is one of the big promoters of Nostr, has funded several projects in that ecosystem,
and was instrumental
in creating the first
international conference on this technology.
Quote,
Jack was one of the first people to follow our Twitter account,
but he had no personal contact.
One day, he tweeted that a Nostra conference should be organized in Costa Rica and that he was willing to fund it
(37:26):
if the community
organized it, end quote.
Pride covers Richard's face as he describes the backstage of Costa Rica,
the event they organized together.
After all, Richard had experienced firsthand the social control during his years in Hong Kong. Quote, we all love the idea because decentralized social networks are very much needed today.
(37:50):
So we reached out to him and offered our entire infrastructure and business ecosystem to simplify payments for attendees.
The combination of the world's first Nostra conference with the possibility of powering the Bitcoin jungle circular economy
seemed like a perfect match.
Jack Dorsey
gave the green light.
The Nostra Protocol has multiple philosophical
(38:12):
similarities
with Bitcoin,
and, consequently, there is significant overlap between their communities.
Govinda,
as expected,
holds space for individual freedoms alongside its inner peace.
This new communications protocol has the potential to enable social networking
with complete freedom of expression.
(38:34):
We could build a decentralized Twitter on Facebook.
We can talk
and share ideas or images without surveillance. It's cryptographic
and decentralized,
like Bitcoin.
Since its creation by anonymous user Fiat Joffe in 2020, the Nostra Protocol
has seen a rapid increase in usage driven primarily by the Bitcoin community.
(38:59):
The team insisted to Jack that the event be held in Uvita to leverage
and stimulate the Bitcoin circular economy.
As it happened, the Nostra Rica conference was a success.
With over 50 speakers and 300 participants,
it significantly increased international awareness of Bitcoin jungle.
Quote,
it really put us on a map as a destination for many Bitcoiners Richard recalls.
(39:25):
We already had one of the best user experiences for spending sats and enjoying Bitcoin, but
many of them still hadn't heard of us before this event.
The circular economy that Nasr has its strongest relationship with today is Bitcoin jungle,
and that has had many good consequences. Not only did it increase the endogenous tourism of the ecosystem,
(39:48):
the unexpected success of the conference
also generated the first economic gain for Bitcoin Jungle.
Up until this event, everything had been self funded.
The devices we delivered to the stores, the cost to support the users,
the training,
the node on which the wallet runs, and so on.
We don't charge anyone, not on transactions within the node. Everything is completely free,
(40:13):
Richard humbly shares.
Going forward,
we plan to continue doing festivals every year to further advance our community mission so everyone is invited
to the Freedom Festival in February
2025,
end quote.
Costa Rica is a very special place.
Many people who dream of making a positive contribution to the world, for some reason, are attracted to this country.
(40:40):
The connection between these international
spiritual seekers and Costa Rica has created a unique community in the world,
combining
innovation,
yoga, nature,
Ayahuasca,
and technology.
In retrospect,
it is understandable
why this environment became fertile ground for the birth for perhaps the most important Bitcoin circular economy in the world.
(41:05):
This transcendental
aspect
is present in the minds and hearts of those who make Bitcoin jungle.
Richard,
who used to be a reporter clinging to the truth and transparency of democracy,
continues to go through a personal transformation,
though without losing his essence. Quote,
I would say my main goal is the spiritual elevation of consciousness about Bitcoin.
(41:29):
I think Bitcoin is a fundamental part of this new world that we are trying to build. That's why we created Bitcoin Jungle.
It's our contribution to a more conscious and free future for humanity.
Those who are deeply connected to Gaia
tend to perceive the cyclical nature of all processes
(41:49):
in our universe.
Human evolution has also been shown to follow recurring patterns.
Many Bitcoiners
have been pointing out for over a decade
that we may be on the verge of a major paradigm shift.
This sense of hope is palpable throughout the Bitcoin Jungle community.
There is a deep shared belief
(42:10):
that after the inevitable collapse of fiat currencies under the weight of their own debt,
there will be a new beginning.
There is a large community of international seekers here.
They believe in freedom, peace, and prosperity,
values that are deeply aligned with Bitcoin's culture. They understand how money printing and inflation create poverty and inequality.
(42:32):
They understand
how traditional institutions and governments extract value from working people.
All of us believe in the sovereignty of individuals
and the power of decentralized communities.
This is why Bitcoin and Costa Rica are made for each other.
Govinda no longer sounds like a shaman. He now speaks like the leader of a movement.
(42:55):
He probably has a little bit of each. Either way, both he and Richard are very clear in their motivations.
Quote, we're not just doing this because we love Bitcoin.
We're doing this because we want to change the world. But to do that,
it's important that we also change inwardly.
It's a fusion between our spiritual quest,
(43:16):
a new philosophy of life, and a technology that facilitates it.
There is no way we can sustainably raise human consciousness
unless we liberate the way we store and transfer value between us, Richard concludes.
When people cannot control the soundness and ownership
of their own money,
their vital energy can be abused and manipulated.
(43:40):
This also applies to sovereign countries when they see their foreign currency reserves being diluted by the issuers
of those fiat currencies.
With Bitcoin, individuals and nation states become truly sovereign entities
with the ability to protect their wealth from potential confiscation.
Quote,
Bitcoin protects your energy in a way that no one can mess with, Govinda enthuses.
(44:06):
Quote, before Bitcoin, we were truly free only in our souls.
We have energy sovereignty as spiritual beings, but on a physical level.
We were completely controlled by the elites,
their politicians,
and their armies.
Now Bitcoin has extended our freedom to the physical world. That changes everything.
(44:27):
It also enables sovereignty,
celebration of life,
and healing on a global scale.
Bitcoin is the liberation of humanity from ancestral
abuse,
end quote.
In the case of Bitcoin jungle, as in all other Bitcoin circular economies,
their first contact at the beginning of the project was with the friends of Bitcoin Beach.
(44:52):
In addition to that first inspiring trip to El Salvador
and the opportunity
to use their wallet code, both teams have a permanent communications channel to collaborate and share ideas.
On the educational side, Bitcoin Jungle has also received support from My First Bitcoin. Quote, we have a very good relationship with Mike and the Bitcoin Beach team.
(45:15):
We are also very grateful to Napoleon from My First Bitcoin, Richard punctuates his mental list of collaborations.
Quote, I myself
dictate his materials to the kids here at school.
Whenever we meet at any conference, we try to organize a dinner between the circular economies.
Thankfully, that table is getting bigger and bigger every time.
(45:37):
Bitcoin is very powerful,
end quote.
The Bitcoin circular economies play a unique role in the ecosystem
because
they demonstrate on a smaller scale how global Bitcoin adoption
can benefit people and communities with different needs. Quote, I'm a big fan of the Bitcoin Ecosi team, Richard sums up in a demonstration of the strength that traces the invisible thread. Quote,
(46:03):
how a poor village in South Africa has been able to create a Bitcoin circular economy that is becoming known around the world.
Richard even dreams of the day
when we have conferences totally dedicated
to studying these early
adopter case studies.
Quote, I would love to see a conference totally dedicated to Bitcoin circular economies with projects from all over the world coming together to share their experiences, their stories, and their lessons learned, end quote.
(46:33):
What role
will a Bitcoin circular economy play in the future?
Will these early communities be the birth of a new way of organizing society?
Will we see an exponential growth of Paris Passau BCEs
with the mass adoption of Bitcoin?
If today's overcrowded cities continue their decline along with fiat governments drowning in debt, it is possible
(46:57):
that a decentralized
way of living could offer a better quality of life,
greater community livelihood, and deeper connection with nature.
For years,
the Bitcoin community has predicted the emergence of luxurious Bitcoin citadels in the future.
Can a Bitcoin circular economy be a more heterogeneous
and inclusive alternative to those citadels?
(47:20):
Quote, to me,
a circular economy is the lifeblood of Bitcoin even if many Bitcoiners haven't realized it.
Bitcoin strongholds will be elitist places,
designed from the top down and only for a lucky few.
The great thing about a Bitcoin circular economy is that we have not been designed
out of luxury, Richard expounds. Quote, we have simply emerged from social,
(47:44):
not for profit efforts with the goal of improving the lives of everyone in our communities.
And that's the end of the article. Now here's some some notes at the bottom end of this article.
Gabriel Kerman
is a blockchain entrepreneur with more than a decade of corporate finance experience. He's a cofounder of several projects such as Rootstock,
(48:05):
lie law, Bitcoinetta,
and Blockchain for Humanity. He dedicates his life to Bitcoin innovation and education.
His first book, Bitcoin Circular Economies, is out this month by Bitcoin Magazine Books.
Bitcoin Jungle can be found on Instagram and
a few other places. You can read the article for yourself.
(48:26):
So that's that's the article. I really wanted to to get into this one because I believe that he's right.
Bitcoin circular economies
are more important now than they have been in a long time. And I don't mean that in a way that means that at one point or another Bitcoin circular economies weren't ever important.
(48:48):
In fact, Bitcoin circular economy has is
is just as important now as it ever was. What I'm talking about is the in the minds of humans,
our perception
of the importance
of Bitcoin
circular economies.
There was a time when we really weren't thinking about it. You know, back in the day was huddle, huddle, huddle. And now we're getting into a lot more people saying, you know, we should probably
(49:13):
be spending our our Bitcoin.
Well, let me tell you first and foremost, nobody can tell you what to do with your Bitcoin.
They can make a suggestion, and you are more than, you know, welcome to tell them to go pound sand.
There's there's nothing in on my side of this microphone that is trying to suggest that you need to go spend your Bitcoin. That's that's for other people to say. You do whatever the hell with your Bitcoin that you wanna do with your Bitcoin. It's your Bitcoin.
(49:37):
You're 100%
sovereign, and that's
the core
of a Bitcoin circular economy.
No one can tell you what to do with your money, and nobody can tell you what the value of your money
is.
That's just between you and a vendor, or you and a friend, or you and your remittance partner, however it is that you wanna look at it.
(50:02):
Nobody gets to define
the value of that but you and the other person.
For instance,
you can say, yeah, but
the value of Bitcoin today is basically in dollars, and that's kind of like, you know, the markets decide. No, no, no,
no. I don't I don't actually have to look at that if I didn't want to. If I'm in a Bitcoin circular economy and it's 100%
(50:26):
Bitcoin being passed between people that are selling, I don't know, empanadas
and, people that are selling houses and motorbikes and boat rides out on the Pacific Ocean,
that's between me that value of how much Bitcoin I give them is between me and that person.
It doesn't have to be
centered on what the value is
(50:46):
of the market.
Now most people will do that.
I'm not saying that they won't, and I'm not even saying that they should or they shouldn't look at it that way. I'm just saying that nobody's nobody's telling me that I have to look at 1 Bitcoin
as a $110,000
US.
I could simply say I I have 1 Bitcoin.
(51:08):
I think that that yacht that you own there, mister Yacht owner, is is worth 1 Bitcoin, and I would like to buy that yacht. If the yacht owner agrees that 1 Bitcoin buys that yacht, then that yacht owner is going to sell me that yacht, and I'm going to give him 1 Bitcoin.
Maybe that yacht's worth $250,000.
Who knows?
(51:29):
That
because the value of bitcoin is what we make of the value bitcoin because it's sovereign money for the first time.
It's sovereign money And now it becomes
a conversation
between two people in a true Bitcoin circular economy.
And I shouldn't I honestly, I shouldn't have picked on yacht because
(51:50):
honestly, I'm
have owning a yacht
is like
if you've ever talked to an RV owner,
most of them, they think that they like an RV,
find out that they don't really like having a recreational vehicle at all, and then they wish that they had never bought it. And the same is true for even a small boat.
(52:11):
Could you imagine a yacht?
A $250,000
yacht with twin diesel 12
cylinder engines
and cooling systems and electrical systems. I mean, there's a lot of people that own a boat that wish they'd never got it. Not a never got a boat in the first damn place. There's a lot of boats that I've seen in
in the
(52:32):
in Colorado where I I go to a house up there all the time, which is by a lake. I see a lot of people whose boats haven't moved in ten years,
and they're by a lake.
It's clear that they're not all that interested in owning their boat.
It sounds to me like a yacht would be a management nightmare, so let's talk about something more
more along my lines of what I find valuable.
(52:55):
10 acres of of arable land in Costa Rica.
How much Bitcoin is that worth?
I'm not required
to go check
Coinbase
and find the price of the United States dollar against Bitcoin.
And neither is the person who has 10 acres of arable land in Costa Rica and wants to sell it to me. Me and him can have a conversation of what we think the value is. I'm not saying that that happens.
(53:22):
I'm saying that for the first time in the history of humanity,
or at least the first time in the history history of humanity
since,
money was taken over and turned into essentially fiat by governments and people that have a lot of people in their pay on their payroll with guns.
(53:43):
Before that time when money was private, we could have that conversation about what we thought something was truly worth.
But when the when money was taken out of our hands and for whatever reason, we said, yeah, may the government should be in control of the money.
Where
a, where did we get that notion from in the first place?
I think it was marketing by by people
(54:05):
who just wanted to steal everything, and they, over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years,
figured out that most humans are just rubes waiting to be told what to do, what to believe,
what color they think they're seeing is actually some other color. It is amazing
what you can do to the human mind. I've seen it in marketing.
(54:27):
It's amazing that you can sell somebody the ugliest jeans
if you pay a supermodel
a whole shit ton of money to get in front of a camera while she's wearing it.
And all of a sudden, those jeans, even though they're
fugly as
a f,
become something everybody wants.
(54:49):
I mean, back in the eighties, there was Mon Chichi.
It was a stupid toy monkey,
but the marketing campaign behind it made it one of those things where you it was sold out by Christmas.
You couldn't get it for your kid.
Many such cases.
Why do you think that money is not a product?
Because that's what fiat money is now. I can tell because it's been marketed.
(55:15):
We got marketed out of the sovereignty of our money.
And because of that, we constantly have to ask a third party what the value of that money is.
You see how that works? It's non sovereign
money.
The only place that I can tell where sovereign money truly exists is in two places.
(55:38):
One, a Bitcoin circular economy,
and two,
people that are willing to trade bricks of gold between each other physically,
not paper gold,
actual standing in front of the other person saying,
here's my bar of gold. Where are the keys to the house that you're selling me? Because we're standing on the on my new front lawn. Where are the keys?
(55:59):
Alright. That that's the that's the only time that you're gonna find
actual sovereign money.
So a Bitcoin circular economy
is increasingly important.
It's increasingly important
as our as to how we perceive
its importance. It's always been important. It will always continue to be important.
(56:26):
How do we perceive that?
That that's sort of what is the make or break of all of this.
And the way that I'm beginning to perceive it is that I don't have to
look at the price of Bitcoin in US dollars to find its value.
I can have a conversation with somebody else who is like minded and doesn't need to necessarily look at the value. Doesn't mean they won't,
(56:51):
and it doesn't mean I won't. It just means that we could.
Whereas, if we're holding fiat,
we don't have a choice.
We don't have a choice.
So
that's
the episode for today,
and I do hope you got something out of it. I think it's a really good chapter
(57:14):
for this book. I'm becoming a little bit more increasingly interested in
possibly getting this book for myself and reading about the other Bitcoin circular economies because there's
there's not just the Costa Rican one.
These things are popping up in a lot of places.
And what else does it mean? And what other ways can we live? Do we have to live the way that we're living? And I contend that the answer to that question is
(57:39):
no.
I'll see you on the other side.
This has been Bitcoin and and I am your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon.
Have a great day.
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