WBD545 Audio Transcription
Bitcoin for Fairness with Anita Posch
Release date: Wednesday 24th August
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Anita Posch. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
Anita Posch is a fellow Bitcoin podcaster, author, advocate, and educator. In this interview, we discuss her mission to educate Bitcoin educators in emerging countries, the challenges Africans face using Bitcoin, and the numerous innovative Bitcoin initiatives happening in Africa.
“In Zimbabwe for instance with that high inflation: if you tell them you can’t inflate that money, you can’t make more out of this Bitcoin, you can’t censor it, your government can’t take it away from you, everybody understands immediately.”
— Anita Posch
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Hello.
Anita Posch: Hello.
Peter McCormack: So, we've got a great addition since we last spoke. Well, we've never got to do this in person.
Anita Posch: No, never.
Peter McCormack: Which is a point of sadness for me but a point of happiness today, because you know how much I love you, you're one of my favourite people in the whole world, and since we've gone on the road we've given young Danny over there a microphone; he's now got a camera.
Danny Knowles: Yep!
Peter McCormack: He's also got his own fans.
Anita Posch: Oh, really?
Danny Knowles: Well, one fan!
Peter McCormack: You've got that one guy! What does he say?
Danny Knowles: I'll find his name; I can't remember.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he talks about Danny coming from a --
Danny Knowles: But shoutout that one fan.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, shoutout that one fan. He comes from like a magical universe.
Danny Knowles: Time traveller.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and we have a screen if you want to use it. Peter Schiff's with us.
Anita Posch: Yeah, he sits close to me.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Anita Posch: And who's that?
Peter McCormack: You don't know who that is?
Anita Posch: No.
Peter McCormack: That's Chucky.
Anita Posch: From a film, movie or something, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, Child's Play. Do you want to know the weirdest thing about this? Let me tell you about this, this is so fucking weird. Do you not know the film?
Anita Posch: No.
Peter McCormack: Okay, I swear to God I have got no idea who the manufacturer of this is and I don't know if they're trolling me, but my daughter loves horror films and there are ones she wants to watch, but I've been taking her through some of the classics and we watched Child's Play; she kind of liked it but she thought he was freaky. So, when me and Danny were in Austin, we were in one of those kind of movie memorabilia stores and they had a Chucky; I said, "I've got to get that for my daughter". So, I go it, she was like, "No, Dad, that's freaky, I don't like it".
So, we've been doing this thing where we just hide it in each other's stuff, I hide it in her school bag so when she was in class she opened it, he was there, and she hides it in my bed. But anyway, he talks. But up until about a week ago, he only said two things. Now, in the last week, he's learnt about eight new things and we're like -- do you know what the film's about?
Anita Posch: No.
Peter McCormack: All right, so there's this criminal, I can't remember his name, and he's being chased by the police and he hides out in this toy store and then he says some kind of demonic prayer and ends up possessing the doll. Then the mum of this child wants to get her the Chucky doll because the kid wants Chucky, she can't afford it, and then there was like a back-alley one for sale and she gets it and it's this one. So, this kid ends up having this toy and then, over time, the toy starts running around and then killing people because he's possessed, but he talks, right. But like I say, up until a week ago, he said two things.
Chucky Doll: I don't have a problem with killing.
Peter McCormack: That's new.
Chucky Doll: I like a little killing now and then; what's wrong with that?
Peter McCormack: That's brand new. That's new.
Chucky Doll: Hi, I'm Chucky, want to play?
Peter McCormack: That's old.
Chucky Doll: The first thing we've got to do is get me out of this body.
Peter McCormack: Right, can you see he's saying a lot of different things, right?
Anita Posch: Yes.
Peter McCormack: He said two things for the first three months we owned him, and I've looked in the back and there are no settings. There's press the button for him to make a noise or on and off. So I think either this is actually possessed and he might murder us over the next couple of days, or they're trolling us and they've done a thing whereby they switch off things he says for a certain time, but it's weird. But anyway, that's Chucky. Are you a bitcoiner? Anyway, we'll leave him there, he can go next to the Bitcoin racing car. Anyway, that's a diversion. Anita, how are you?
Anita Posch: Thanks, I'm fine. Hi, Pedro.
Peter McCormack: Pedro.
Anita Posch: Don Pedro.
Peter McCormack: The real Pedro. Every time I see you, and it's nice to see you in the country, it's nice to see you in Bedford, but you've been travelling a lot; let's talk about that, because you told me you've gone nomadic.
Anita Posch: Yes.
Peter McCormack: So, what happened; how come you went nomadic? I'm so jealous, by the way.
Anita Posch: Yeah, nothing happened in way, I think it's a development, a personal development in a way. For at least ten years, I have been thinking about staying in Bali over winter. 20 years ago, when I decided to become self-employed, it was always the goal to live and work and it's basically the same, so you never need a holiday in the classical sense, because your work and your life is one.
People call it maybe work/life balance now, I don't know, but Bitcoin finally gave me the possibility to do it, because with Bitcoin I now have contacts all over the world and I can just like write to them and say, "Hey, I'm coming to the UK, can we do something together?" Some people then even invite you to their house.
Peter McCormack: Some people invite you and then say, "Actually, I can't fit you in because my house is full", I'm so sorry about that.
Anita Posch: No problem.
Peter McCormack: But you are welcome back any other time.
Anita Posch: Thank you very much, not a problem at all, because you also have to be very flexible living that life. I think now I came to that point at the beginning of the year, after COVID also, I thought, "I have to do it now", I mean I'm also 52 you know.
Peter McCormack: Shut up, no you're not, come on.
Anita Posch: I am.
Peter McCormack: Come on!
Anita Posch: Yes, I am. I can't do that in ten years, or I think I won't do it with that energy I still have, you know?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I get it.
Anita Posch: Also, I think it's important to do it now because we are, in a way, in a race for privacy and for Bitcoin, to spread the word.
Peter McCormack: Yes.
Anita Posch: That's also the reason why I thought I should be going there where Bitcoin is needed the most, and that's what I'm doing now.
Peter McCormack: How much of your travelling journey, nomadic journey is about Bitcoin for you, not the education, teaching people; in terms of, are you living on Bitcoin, are you living part on Bitcoin?
Anita Posch: At the moment, I'm living fully on Bitcoin. I mean, I've still got my classical bank account in Austria; I need that to pay things. But I made the experience that you need to be very, very clever, and it's a lot of work to do that in the given environment. Now that you also have capital gains tax on Bitcoin in Austria since a year, it's much more difficult now, because at the beginning I just held my Bitcoin for a year and then I was free, I didn't have to pay tax for it. But now, with all these combinations of earning sponsoring money in Bitcoin, and then I was doing classical mistakes, like thinking it won't go down again or even if I will manage, you know.
Peter McCormack: We all do that!
Anita Posch: So now, of course, my tax advisor says, "You could pay more income tax now in advance, because with that what you've already earnt this year you will be in a higher level and you'll need to pay more tax in the next years and also social insurance". And I said to him, "Yeah, but the money's only on the paper because the price of Bitcoin has gone down, it's over, I don't have the money anymore".
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but hold on, don't they only tax at the point you sell?
Anita Posch: Yeah, but I use Bitcoin, and every time I use it to buy stuff, to buy a plane ticket, to pay the people in Zambia, I pay them in Bitcoin, of course, it's a taxable event. So, each of these events, like even if I spent just $5 or sent some Lightning sats, I would need to write that down with the price of Bitcoin when I got it and with the price when I sold it or used it --
Peter McCormack: I see.
Anita Posch: -- and have to pay the income tax and all of these things and, for a one-person business, this is really cruel.
Peter McCormack: So, what about with the rest of the travelling? Yes, you're trying to live on Bitcoin, but are you trying do it to the max whereby you don't have any kind of other -- like you don't have a credit card?
Anita Posch: No, I'm not that serious in that way.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Anita Posch: I'm serious but I still have a credit card, as I said, I have a bank account, because I don't want to overcomplicate things, and I'm not the person who is going somewhere and trying to convince people to use Bitcoin. So, if people are not open to the idea, I don't say anything. I mean, just when I came here, I started to ask cab drivers, taxi drivers if they use Bitcoin or I could pay them in Bitcoin, because the one today said --
Peter McCormack: Here in Bedford?!
Anita Posch: -- he only can take cash, and I said, "I don't have cash. My credit card?" "Yeah, maybe it works", it worked and then I said, "But I could have paid you in Bitcoin", and he actually said, "Yeah, I'm actually interested. Two years ago, I downloaded a wallet, I want to invest in Bitcoin but I didn't do it then, I don't know why", and I said, "Yeah, now is a good chance". But he didn't know you, and the second taxi driver also didn't know you, so you really need to do more here.
Peter McCormack: I mean, I'm trying my best! I bought a football team.
Anita Posch: Yeah, I know, but that's the thing they know, when I say, "He's the Chairman of Real Bedford", then, "A-ha, yeah, I think I heard".
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well, listen, I'm trying to make Bedford our version of El Zonte in the UK and I'm not going to say who's here just in case, I don't want to dox anyone, but we've got a little Bitcoin meet-up tonight. For me, I'm just super proud, tonight I'm going out to dinner with a bunch of bitcoiners in Bedford which is so amazing for me.
Anita Posch: Cool. How cool is that?
Peter McCormack: You've been travelling all over the place. Look, I've got to say, I'm most interested in what's been going in Africa, because I think your work there is super-important. I've been following it, I do get your emails, I've seen what's been happening and I think that's the bit me and Danny were both super-interested in. It feels like Africa's become like a real passion point for you in terms of this, I think I know why but I'm going to let you answer first.
Anita Posch: Interesting what you think you know!
Peter McCormack: Well actually, no, let me go first, because then I could just say this; I think you've done a lot of work out there trying to help women and empower women out there; that's what stands out to me from your updates, and I think that's why it's been a passion point for you, but correct me if I'm wrong.
Anita Posch: Yeah, I mean Bitcoin is a passion project in general for me, not only because of the women's rights but also queer rights. Just today I posted something about how bitcoiners should actually stand with queer people, because we have been oppressed by governmental repercussions and regulation all of our lives, and that's what we jointly fight against actually. So, I don't understand why some bitcoiners, some, always make jokes with the rainbow flag or things like that.
So, I think my resistance to some sort of government restrictions, regulations and pressure comes from there and from the fact that I think that sadly, our world is very unfair. I think this will stay that way, but I think we can change that a little bit by our actions or how we go along with other people, how we do our relations, how we are with one another.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Anita Posch: So, the passion for Africa comes, in a way, through that, because European countries and people from Europe, for centuries, we went there and stole everything from them, and now they are basically deprived of everything and are in this bad situation, and we are the developed world, the First World, they are the Third World. No. I mean, this has reasons, they are manyfold, of course, but that's one of the reasons.
I want them to have the chance to use an open monetary system where they don't need an ID, they don't need a sort of fixed income or wealth or status already to be able to have some sort of economic means to be able to save, to be able to get a credit maybe once. That's the reason why I'm going there, because the need is there much higher than in Europe or in the US.
Of course, everywhere in the world we have disadvantaged people, that's not the point, I'm also there for them, or try with my educational work, but I'm focusing on African countries, or let's say the global South, because they are suffering the most. The number of people who are living in dictatorships or authoritarian countries, let's say basically the number of people living in full democracies, is going down. So, from 2020 to 2021 --
Peter McCormack: I know.
Anita Posch: Exactly. So, more and more people, actually 4 billion of people, are not living in a full democracy.
Peter McCormack: I know, and some people want to burn those democracies down.
Anita Posch: Exactly. So, Bitcoin is a lifeboat for all of these people, and I also see the crackdown on privacy rights in the digital space, it's becoming tighter and tighter everywhere. So I think that basically, the people in the global South, if they were to adopt Bitcoin in a self-custodial manner, non-KYC Bitcoin because they can't be banked, they shall stay unbanked, that's my idea, they just should use Bitcoin.
If they more and more use Bitcoin in that manner, then they will save us also from these privacy restrictions, because then you have a mixed use of Bitcoin. You can't then say, "Non-KYC Bitcoin, go back into your hole; it's not there, nobody uses it, so we can ban it". They can't ban it then if half of the world is using it.
Peter McCormack: So, you want to keep unbanked to the unbanked?
Anita Posch: Yes.
Peter McCormack: That point on queer rights actually is super-interesting, because I'd never really thought about it in that way. Look, I've noticed that undertone of both misogyny and homophobia that exists, but you could just say certain people in Bitcoin but it's almost unfair, it's just in society it exists, so naturally it will be in both. But I have seen it, but actually that affinity that people who are anti-state should have with queer communities, it does exist, because queer people have had to fight for years for just some semblance of equality, and even in some places still don't have it. You've just been to Africa, is it Uganda, it's still illegal to be --
Anita Posch: No, it's not only illegal, I think in Tanzania you can get a life sentence. In Iran, just recently, they hanged gay men.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so people who are vocal proponents of liberty and freedom should be directly aligned with the cause of queer people, but I'd never heard it put to me like that as something you should have an affinity over as people who are kind of like fighting the states; so, yeah, good point. So, can you actually just tell me some of the stories? Talk me through the countries you've been, I just want to know it all, honestly, it looks fascinating. Where's your favourite place you've been going to, all of it?
Anita Posch: All are favourite places in a way, they're all different and there are different people doing different projects and I learned a lot from all of them. So in March, I was in Zimbabwe, the second time now, and --
Peter McCormack: Does Zimbabwe still have massive inflation?
Anita Posch: Yes, it's even worse now.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Anita Posch: In March, I think the exchange rate from US dollars to Zimbabwean dollars was $1 to Z$600. Back in 2020, when I was there, it was $1 to Z$60, and now it's $1 to Z$900, or $1 to Z$1,000 in just the three, four or five months now.
Peter McCormack: So, would people there holding Bitcoin have a very similar scenario to people that I met when I was in Venezuela where they said, "It doesn't matter if the price of Bitcoin goes down, it's still going up for me?"
Anita Posch: Yeah, that's one thing to see it, exactly, but of course we have to be honest and say if one of the Zimbabweans started at the end of last year to save a little bit in Bitcoin, now he or she also has just half of it, so that's hard. But for me, the bigger use case there is basically sending money in and out of Zimbabwe, because in Zimbabwe we have currency controls. In Zimbabwe, the central bank is really determining the exchange rate, so it's really a controlled market, that's not a free market. The government and the financial leads of the central bank, they basically extract all the value from the people by their money policies, or their bad money policy.
Peter McCormack: Is it stupidity or is there corruption there; are they stealing the money?
Anita Posch: Most part is corruption, sometimes I think they also say really stupid things, but they are all educated in the West and things like that, they are very clever people so it must be malice. They recently started to issue gold coins.
Peter McCormack: Oh, I saw this.
Anita Posch: Zimbabwe is a very rich country; they have a lot of gold. They started issuing gold coins and said, "To fight inflation and all the money", they always say it's international sanctions and the others, it's always the others, and it's not they're buying the newest SUVs and things like that. So, they're issuing gold coins now and they said, "Really, as a store of value, we are now issuing gold coins and Zimbabweans can buy gold coins", so the joke is nobody knows who is the owner of the goldmines.
Then the other thing is you get it cheaper if you have US dollars; if you are able to pay in US dollars, you get it cheaper. There is an article, I can tell you afterwards the link, and somebody really said that's the worst scam he has ever seen, and it's out in the open. So rich people bought all the gold coins and can sell them with an arbitrage of, I don't know, $300 per 1 coin or something. So, yeah, every tool is manipulated.
Now there's a new movie that was released these days about the last election and, of course, the governing ruling party said, "Now the movie is banned". People have been gone missing, political opponents of the regime, and yeah, next year is a new election and already they are banning the colour yellow because yellow is the colour of the opponent party and things like that.
Peter McCormack: Is it the same party as Mugabe was?
Anita Posch: Yes.
Peter McCormack: ZANU-PF is it?
Anita Posch: Yes, exactly.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it is, okay. When you go out and visit there, do people understand money? My experience with Venezuela is that actually, in some ways, people understood money more there than they did, say, in the UK. What I mean by that is it's not about the education of money, they understood the value of money more in that here, my friends all have pounds, that's it, the odd random person might have a bit of Bitcoin, but 99% of people I know, maybe more, just have pounds.
Whereas in Venezuela, people knew, "Right, I need to get rid of my Bolivar, I need dollars. If I can't get dollars, I want Columbian peso, and this is why I want it and this is how I hold it". They had to learn what money is because of inflation. Inflation here's just like slow and insidious so people haven't had to learn; is that similar in Zimbabwe?
Anita Posch: It's very similar, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's interesting that, isn't it?
Anita Posch: People need to live a whole different life than we do, because everything is always about money. Every day you ask someone else or look up in the news, "What's the price of money today? How high is the exchange rate?" because the higher it is the more expensive goods get. If you have to some money you immediately spend it so you never learn to save money because why would you save it? It's gone the next day so you spend it, and that's definitely not the right way to build some sort of wealth or savings if you always have to spend it.
So, yes, everybody knows that the US dollar is a much better money than their own currency, and they have this history of hyperinflation in 2007/08, and now they're almost back in hyperinflation. At the moment, it's the country with the highest inflation rate in the world.
Peter McCormack: Again!
Anita Posch: It's Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, somewhere, Venezuela, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Okay. So, when you go out there what kind of areas are you going to? Are you going out to villages? Are you going to remote areas? Are you staying in the towns?
Anita Posch: This time I was only in town in Harare and we visited the Nhimbe Fresh farm in Marondera. The Nhimbe Fresh farm is that project where you could buy --
Peter McCormack: Is that the blueberries?
Anita Posch: Yeah, that's the blueberries, that led to the blueberries; but the first project they did, they did with the Sun Exchange from South Africa. It's a company that is crowdfunding a solar power plant in South Africa; good idea actually because they have a lot of sun and they also, in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, have a lot of power outages, so you have hours where you don't have any power and you need solar then to heat the water and to have electricity.
Peter McCormack: Do they know when the blackouts are coming or do they just happen?
Anita Posch: No, so the difference is in Zimbabwe you don't know when they come. In South Africa, they are more developed.
Peter McCormack: Have you been doing lessons and the lights just go out?
Anita Posch: Yes.
Peter McCormack: Oh wow!
Anita Posch: It happens.
Peter McCormack: How regular are we talking; it is a daily occurrence?
Anita Posch: Sometimes. It depends also on the location where you're at, the quarter of the town where you are. For instance, in the centre of Harare where the hospitals and the government is sitting, you always have power.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course, you always have power, money and food.
Anita Posch: Yeah, exactly.
Peter McCormack: Fuckers!
Anita Posch: Yeah, but in South Africa, you get a text. So there are, I think, WhatsApp groups where they tell you, "Today at 8.00pm to 11.00pm, there will be no power". So, coming back to visiting Nhimbe Fresh, they built their solar power plant on the farm to be independent, self-sovereign and to be able to produce all the time, because for instance they also grow tobacco and tobacco needs to be dried, and they showed us the petrol and the wood is bad for the environment, "The power from ZESA, with the interruptions, the quality of our tobacco is much worse than now that we have permanent electricity", and this feeds a lot of people there; the farm has, I think, about 2,000 workers at the moment there.
Peter McCormack: Wow!
Anita Posch: I was interested in it, because the solar power plants, you could buy one solar cell in Bitcoin too, and you can get some earnings in a way from that crowdfunding now the solar cells are working, and they are selling their excess energy to the grid.
Peter McCormack: Wow! So, when you head out, you've obviously created a community of people you know now if you go to Zimbabwe, but when you go out are you on a set mission? Are you like, "I want to go and educate 20 people, 50, 100?"
Anita Posch: No, the goal is actually to educate the educators.
Peter McCormack: I knew you were going to say that.
Anita Posch: I can't do that alone and I don't want to, and I'm not the right person coming there and telling them how it works; I don't want to be that. I want to share my knowledge with people who are interested in it and who also want to share that knowledge with their peers, because it's a grassroots development, it has to come from the people on the ground.
So, what I'm looking for are committed people who are already a little bit interested in Bitcoin, or at least show some interest in it, and are willing to learn and to set up Meetups, for instance. I think local Bitcoin Meetups are the most important thing. The most important thing is trust. We say Bitcoin is trustless, okay, but what does it mean? You don't need trust in the network itself, but you need to trust your peers still, because there are so many scams, and that's one of the things I've learnt there too. I don't know how we should do all of that education, because so many people have been scammed. Everybody knows about Bitcoin, or almost everybody has heard about it, but the first question I get, "But is it not a scam?"
Peter McCormack: They think it's OneCoin.
Anita Posch: Yeah, or any other scam there.
Peter McCormack: I'm going to come back to scams, I just want to stick with this educating the educators. So, do you know how many educators you've created, say, in Zimbabwe?
Anita Posch: Five, ten.
Peter McCormack: Five or ten? So, they can go around and create the Meetups, which is great. But when you first met them, it was new to them as well, ish?
Anita Posch: Yes, that was in 2020. When I met the first people, I didn't know that they are bitcoiners, they were interested in digital technologies and things like that. So my friend there scouted them from a network of, "I know people, you know, may be interested in Bitcoin". Then, when I was there the second time, the same people came again, came back to my event.
Also, for instance, Alexandria from Bulawayo came. I traded it of course, and he saw it, and he said, "Are you coming to Bulawayo as well?" It's a six-hour bus ride from there to Harare. I said, "No, I can't", and he said, "Okay, I'm coming". So, he drove all night long just to come to that Meetup and he just said, "I'm so happy that you are doing this because I feel I'm alone. People feel really isolated; they know about Bitcoin, they heard about it, they like it, they think this is a great chance, but they can't speak with anyone about it because they don't know anyone". So, that's the reason why I think these events and Meetups are so important.
Peter McCormack: But forget the scam thing for the moment, when you started explaining Bitcoin to people, do they naturally start to understand? Do they see the value of the fixed currency, the anti-inflation side of things?
Anita Posch: Yeah, my talks are always a little bit customed to the country where I'm at and, in Zimbabwe, for instance, with that high inflation, if you tell them you can't inflate that money, you can't make more out of these Bitcoin, you can't censor it, your government can't take it away from you, everybody understands immediately.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course.
Anita Posch: Yeah, so it's much more easy actually to get people to adopt it there, in a way.
Peter McCormack: What kind of local challenges are the users there facing that, say, we don't face here?
Anita Posch: Electricity cuts.
Peter McCormack: You can't spend your Bitcoin, or you can't charge your phone.
Anita Posch: Yeah, you can't use Lightning maybe at that moment, and not all people have smartphones. There's no internet in some regions.
Peter McCormack: Can we come back to that one? So, when I was on the border of Venezuela in Cúcuta there were two issues; one is having the phone charged, but secondly some people didn't have a phone. So there were people who would share a phone, and I think that was a real kind of wake-up call to actually some people still need some form of physical money.
Anita Posch: Yeah, but a lot of people in African countries, mobile money is very common. You have it with EcoCash in Zimbabwe, you have it with M-Pesa in Kenya and other countries, so they are used to using money via text message. A lot of them also only have those feature phones where you can only send texts, they don't have a smart phone; so they are used to that. Now there is something I'm very happy to see, that now someone from a South African country has started to code a tool where you can send Lightning via text.
Peter McCormack: Amazing.
Anita Posch: Yes, Machankura 8333, or something, is the name.
Peter McCormack: That's a very cool concept.
Anita Posch: Yes, it's a cool concept. I mean, it's custodial.
Peter McCormack: Well, it has to be.
Anita Posch: It has to be, of course, yeah. Just recently I saw one possibility, for instance, for people there, because in Zimbabwe you don't have an official exchange and usually the international exchanges cut you off as soon as you enter your address, because as an Zimbabwean, you are under sanctions. So now you can basically buy a Bitcoin voucher in South Africa, and 1 to 3 million Zimbabweans are estimated to live in South Africa and work there, and they want to send money home.
So you can go and buy an Azteco voucher, 1 For Me it's called, and you buy it with South African rand and then you can send the code to redeem the Bitcoin to your friends and family and they can redeem it in Zimbabwe. Now, this also works with this text message tool.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so is getting Bitcoin quite difficult then in Zimbabwe?
Anita Posch: Yes, the best to do it is to earn it. Like, if you're digital worker, you're producing content or you're an internet marketer, you can ask the companies abroad to pay you in Bitcoin. If you have family abroad, the diaspora, the Zimbabwean is very big, they can send you Bitcoin. So, that's basically the best way to get it.
Peter McCormack: Okay. Are you going to be in Ghana in December?
Anita Posch: Yes.
Peter McCormack: For the conference?
Anita Posch: Yes.
Peter McCormack: I think we're going.
Anita Posch: Yeah, sure, that'll be cool, yeah.
Peter McCormack: I've not been to Africa ever.
Anita Posch: Yeah, I know. Two times you said you're coming, but you never have time.
Peter McCormack: I know!
Anita Posch: But I'm looking forward if you're coming. It's planned that I'm going to Nigeria afterwards.
Peter McCormack: Are there a few people doing that?
Anita Posch: Maybe, I think I'm joining Paxful there doing another of their campus tours through Nigeria, because they are doing a lot of work there.
Peter McCormack: Yes, I think I might be doing that as well.
Anita Posch: Oh, wow, cool.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay, so I'm going to be there, you're going to have to show me around because I've not been.
Anita Posch: I will.
Peter McCormack: What is Nigeria like as well? What are the different challenges there?
Anita Posch: I've never been to Nigeria.
Peter McCormack: Oh, you haven't?
Anita Posch: We've got to say that countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, they're all different and there are so many people living there, we have no imagination. I mean, Nigeria, I don't know how many million people are living in Nigeria?
Peter McCormack: I have no idea. So which are the other countries you've been to? You've been Zimbabwe…
Anita Posch: Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa; that was this year.
Peter McCormack: So, with South Africa, do they have a more developed Bitcoin ecosystem?
Anita Posch: A little bit, yes. So they already even have regulation, so that's always the question, is this good or bad? For Zimbabweans, I think it's now a brilliant time. As long as your country doesn't have strict regulations, you should try to get as much Bitcoin as you can. South Africa, yeah, you have Cape Town. South Africa is a very European African country, it's the most European African country. But South Africa, in Cape Town, I have to say most bitcoiners I met are white people living there, white South Africans. But there's a big exception for that, and that's the Bitcoin Ekasi project in Mossel Bay.
Peter McCormack: Tell me about that.
Anita Posch: It's fantastic, it's I think one of the most important projects in the space that we have at the moment, to prove the point that Bitcoin is also for poor people, and they also can use it and it also helps them.
So, Bitcoin Ekasi, the initiator is called Hermann Vivier, and Hermann is a South African living in Mossel Bay; that's some hours from Cape Town on the sea. He, funnily enough, started a surfing company ten years ago, and he had a tourism company, showing people around. In that company, he thought, "I want to do something for the people who live here".
They have several townships in Mossel Bay, one of them is the township where he then offered children and young children, young people, to learn surfing for free. They also have education there, so the children come after the official school, and I make this because they seem not to learn anything there in school as teachers have given up, and so they get a little bit of education, they get a meal. When they go home, they're all brushing their teeth because brushing your teeth is not something you do in a township, and also they learn social skills and they learn to surf, which is something where you learn something about yourself, you learn about courage and persistence and doing things long term.
Then Hermann, I interviewed him, I can't remember when he started to use Bitcoin himself, but he then heard of Bitcoin Beach and he basically thought, "I'm going to do the same. I'm trying to do the same here", and he started only one and a half years ago I think. He has surf coaches, young men, some children are like three years and starting surfing.
Peter McCormack: You agree with that one, don't you, Danny?
Danny Knowles: For sure.
Peter McCormack: Danny's a big surfer.
Anita Posch: Ah, okay, cool. Yeah, and so he started to educate his coaches about Bitcoin and showed them how it works, and now there are some junior coaches and a senior coach, he's called Luthando, and they are basically educating their peers in the township about Bitcoin. They're using Lightning. Why? Because Lightning you can use also small amounts; you couldn't do that with Bitcoin. So, they are not only educating them, Luthando is going around and just trying to, yeah, convince a little bit the shop owners of these little spaza shops, these little huts, to accept Bitcoin, because he's paying his coaches in Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: I get it, they're trying to create that circular economy.
Anita Posch: They are trying to create a circular economy, exactly.
Peter McCormack: Nice.
Anita Posch: It works.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it does.
Anita Posch: They have now 10 out of 17 shops accepting Lightning. When I was there, I brought some Trezor hardware wallets.
Peter McCormack: Nice.
Anita Posch: I did a hardware wallet workshop with Luthando and the junior coaches, because now the shop owners, they don't have computers, they only have phones, and so they built a sort of Bitcoin Ekasi centre in the township and people can go there to use the computer of Luthando and their own hardware wallet, so it's their hardware wallet. He basically now showed them how to use a hardware wallet, because a shop owner might have more money than the usual person in a township, and that's great to see how it works. I think it might soon even be possible to spend the satoshis in other shops outside of the township as well.
Peter McCormack: Well, that's what happened in El Salvador. So, when I first went out there, Michael had set up this project, very similar, where he was paying kids to clean out the sides of the roads where the rubbish was and teach surfing, and then he convinced the little store and a pizzeria to take Bitcoin, and then that expanded and now pretty much every hotel or shop accepts it in El Zonte. But you can go up the road, El Tunco, there's like a café and two other places accept it. I mean, now the whole country does, kind of, but that's what it is, it's like this seed and this seed grows and it's just fantastic to see. We're going to try and do the same here in Bedford, by the way.
Anita Posch: Yeah, cool. I'm coming again.
Peter McCormack: Yes, we've got one place to accept it which is my football club, but we will work on this, we will plant the seed here. That's fascinating, I like that.
Anita Posch: I also brought RaspiBlitz so, in Bitcoin Ekasi they should also have a running Lightning node now, a full node on Lightning node, yeah.
Peter McCormack: By the way, have you finished your update to your book yet?
Anita Posch: Not yet, I'm just in the middle of it, but I will release an audio book soon.
Peter McCormack: Are you narrating it?
Anita Posch: No, no, I'm not.
Peter McCormack: Are we going to get an American Anita Posch?
Anita Posch: No, a UK guy living in Zimbabwe.
Peter McCormack: A UK guy?
Anita Posch: No, it's a Zimbabwean but he has UK roots, so this will be fun!
Peter McCormack: Do you ever read a book anymore?
Danny Knowles: Rarely.
Peter McCormack: Do you ever read a book anymore? I don't.
Anita Posch: Before I wrote my own I did, yeah, because I had time. So, basically I learnt the most from books and podcasts about Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Well, I don't.
Danny Knowles: Everything I do is audiobook now.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, everything I do is, yeah, interesting. Okay, Bitcoin for Fairness, talk to me about this.
Anita Posch: Yeah, at the end last year I thought, "I want to do more", like just podcasting, I mean, just podcasting, sorry if you have such a big podcast like yours you're also educating masses.
Peter McCormack: I mean, I want to do more than just podcasting.
Anita Posch: You do?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Anita Posch: Yeah, now you have the circular economy in Bedford.
Peter McCormack: Exactly, and my football team.
Anita Posch: Exactly, the King of Bedford!
Peter McCormack: Oh God, I'm really embarrassed about that now! Anyway, come on, tell me.
Anita Posch: Yeah, so I thought about a funding model also for my work, because I didn't have the development like other podcasters where I was growing my audience and I could live off the sponsorships easily, sadly, and also I had this idea of sharing my knowledge and I think it's important to do that.
So, yeah, I started to reach out to people, and basically it was Elizabeth Stark giving me the idea, and she said to me, "Anita, do you actually get a grant?" and I said, "No", but actually that's how I would like to work, because it takes down all the stress you have, and it's an existential crisis in a way if you don't get money and you don't know how to live in the next six months or something like that as a self-employed person. It also gives me now the freedom to actually do what I want, and that's fantastic.
So, Bitcoin for Fairness, I've used this name because I think that's the ultimate endgame of Bitcoin, or the ultimate use case of Bitcoin is giving open and fair access to anyone, and it's also the ultimate argument against all anti-bitcoiners. You can argue about the electricity use of Bitcoin and all these things, you can argue all the time, but if you tell people, "Look, there are 4 billion people living in authoritarian regimes. Do you really want them to not have access to an open monetary system?"
Peter McCormack: Well, some people don't still.
Anita Posch: Yeah, but --
Peter McCormack: Who's that prick who lives up in Berkeley in San Francisco? He was always commenting against stuff. He commented against that letter that David Zell wrote the reply to.
Danny Knowles: Oh yeah, I'll find him.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, someone like him. So there are people who, what you explain to him, bear in mind he lives in Berkeley, San Francisco, a very privileged life -- I want to say Wheatley or something. It's not that Stefan Dahl, it's another one. Anyway, I've explained, I'm literally saying to him what Bitcoin does and how it's fair, and he just doesn't want it, he wants it banned.
Anita Posch: No, they think traditional money can do that too. I've also been told several times, "Don't focus so much on Bitcoin, there are other means of payment we can use". Yeah, but they are not censorship-resistant, they are centralised, they can be manipulated; it's just not the same.
Peter McCormack: It's not the same.
Anita Posch: This is just a point where you get to when you have spent a lot of time thinking and learning about Bitcoin. You don't get that, I also didn't get it in the first weeks, months, years of my bitcoining.
Peter McCormack: I still don't!
Anita Posch: You still don't?!
Peter McCormack: So, what are you doing? Are you crowdfunding?
Anita Posch: I'm crowdfunding, yes, on Geyser Fund for instance, which is an interesting platform too. It's a platform on Lightning where you can do crowdfunding.
Peter McCormack: Well, I'm going to support you, you know I support you on it.
Anita Posch: Yeah, cool. Then this time I already have my grant proposal; I can present it to you afterwards.
Peter McCormack: What are you doing? Are you have individual proposals and you want people to sponsor specific things; or is it a general fund?
Anita Posch: It's a general fund, because I can never say what's the next thing that's coming up. For instance, now I'm working on a one two-page brochure where you have an A4 sheet of paper with two sides, you can fold it, with the basic information about what is Bitcoin, how it's not a scam and how you can use it in a self-custodial manner.
I want to have that as a template, then people from different countries can translate it into their local language and you can then take it to Meetups, print it out, it's not expensive to print out the sheet of paper, you can do that everywhere; and then you can give it out on these Meetups so people really have something in their hands. Most of the time, new people come, they listen, they are interested, then they go home and then they forget about it, or don't have time to research it, or they don't know where to start.
Peter McCormack: Okay. Are you accepting fiat or just Bitcoin for your grant?
Anita Posch: I'm accepting everything!
Peter McCormack: Right, okay. Well, I don't even need to see your proposal, I will support you because your work's wonderful and I know you don't live an extravagant life; you're not going to take proposals and go and buy yourself a Dior bag. I know you're absolutely focused and dedicated to this. You're about as Bitcoin as they get and you're one of the most hard-working bitcoiners I know. I can't say that, I have a podcast as a job and a career and I spend a lot of my time on it, but it's in you, you've dedicated yourself to this.
It's easy for me to give you dirty fiat, because I send it just from the business account, but just send me the stuff, but you don't need to send me a proposal. Actually, when you have something live you want to me share out as well, I'll retweet and get it out there, tell people, because people should support you.
Anita Posch: Yeah, please, thanks. So, people do support me and I want to say thank you to all the private people, the individuals who donated, and also to the sponsors, of course. But the sponsors, it's more like a business deal; I issue an invoice, they get marketing, but I have to say they are on the right side as well meaning they, as you, trust me. As I said before, they let me do what I want, I just get back to them a report and they see what I do and that's proof enough.
Peter McCormack: I don't want anything; your emails I get are proof enough. Just give me an address, we'll send you some money, we'll support you on this.
Anita Posch: Thank you.
Peter McCormack: And like I say, we'll share it out, get other people to do it, because like I said, it's super-important work and also the fact that you are representing women and you are representing queer people, which I think are just largely underrepresented in the Bitcoin community.
Anita Posch: One story about queer people, I reached out in Zambia to a local LGBTIQ group, because I wanted to try to show them that Bitcoin is not a scam and how they can use it; because I think, as I said, poor people in these countries, people living under authoritarians and dictatorships, queer people and those minority groups as we call them, I don't know if this is politically correct now, they should use it first because they can gain the most. But they didn't come back, and I think the reason is most people think it's a scam and they think you want to sell them something, but I don't want to sell something. Another story, if I may, about scams?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course, you can tell as many as you want. Like I said to you earlier, I want to come back to scams because I know how prevalent the issue is in Africa. We've got Jamie Bartlett coming back in, haven't we?
Danny Knowles: Hopefully.
Anita Posch: Oh, the guy who did the documentary on OneCoin?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, the BBC one.
Anita Posch: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so he's coming back to update us on that, he's in the UK.
Anita Posch: Is she still alive?
Peter McCormack: I don't know where she is. Has she been found?
Danny Knowles: She's on the FBI's top ten most wanted list now.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. She was in Bulgaria for a long time, but he's coming back to talk to us about that, because I know how big an issue the OneCoin scam was in Africa.
Anita Posch: It's still going.
Peter McCormack: It's still going?
Anita Posch: Yeah, yeah, I've been told that it's still going.
Peter McCormack: That's unbelievable.
Anita Posch: The problem with scams, I've heard a story, for instance, a company owner in South Africa, I mean many people in South Africa and Zimbabwe still have maids and people who help them, and he said to one of his maids, "I can pay you in Bitcoin", and he explained everything and said, "Do you want to be paid?" and she always said, "No, no, no". Then she took it and he then said, "Okay, but now don't spend it, keep it, and if you ever want to spend it, come to me first. I will help you", and what happened? She spent it on a scam because her sister convinced her that this is great to make money.
Peter McCormack: Oh God!
Anita Posch: Exactly, so he's already telling her, "I'll help you, yeah? Ask me first", and then the need is big, because when you're poor, you even more want to make more of your money.
Peter McCormack: Of course.
Anita Posch: You're using everything to get more money and you believe these scams.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's so sad, and it's so sad that people in Africa are targeted so much as well with these scams, and they're already struggling.
Anita Posch: Yeah, but it's also here, even in Austria, and then I don't understand. Here, you have the means, you have the possibility to ask someone else. There are Bitcoin Meetups, we are online, Bitcoin Austria is answering questions by email, and people are always sending us a message when it's too late, when they are being told they need to pay something more to get their funds back; that's when they ask us.
Peter McCormack: So, we had Obi in here the other day. You're obviously a lot closer to what's happening in Africa. How much of a gamechanger do you think Fedimint will be for African communities?
Anita Posch: A huge gamechanger. I love the idea of Fedimint and I hope that they are successful in developing it. So, Fedimint is a protocol and for me, I learned in 2020 that in southern African countries you have a sense of Ubuntu, meaning the community is everything, you take care of your family, you are responsible for each other; the opposite of being self-sovereign. So, I think Fedimint and the eCash tokens can be that sort of community money. So with Fedimint, Bitcoin can really become community money. So, one of the biggest problems is self-custody, it's not easy. I mean for me now it's easy, because --
Peter McCormack: You've been doing it a long while.
Anita Posch: -- been doing it a long time. So you need to educate yourself a little bit and also sometimes with all these scams going on and phishing mails and people's passwords and whatever. So, I think 90% of Bitcoins are on centralised exchanges, owned by people on centralised exchanges and not in self-custody. That's why I always also have that focus on self-custody, because you get the positive properties of Bitcoin only if you self-custody it. But a lot of people don't have the means to do that in these countries and you also can't really educate them on that.
So, Fedimint is basically a federation where trusted members of the federation, of the community, it starts with a minimum of four people. These four people can be very knowledgeable bitcoiners, for instance, and they run the Fedimint software on their Lightning or Bitcoin full node, I don't know exactly the technicalities. Then it's like a multisig, so these four people hold the Bitcoin of the community in a shared custody. So, it's a semi-custodial way where the people who are participating in the Fedimint network or in the local community, they don't need to take so much care about their keys as in a full self-custody solution, but they are also not custodial.
So, Obi said something great, "It's from KYC to KYF", from know your customer to know your family and friends, because you trust your friends or your family already. That's also a model many people -- also in Austria, I also have people I take care of their Bitcoin, because they don't know how to do it or they're losing their wallets and things like that and I'm just like, "Okay, I do it for you, yeah, because I don't want to see you lose the Bitcoin".
Peter McCormack: Of course.
Anita Posch: So many people are doing that already for their friends and family, and those could be guardians of the network.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay.
Anita Posch: It also brings privacy, because the eCash tokens that you get are IOUs and they are not recorded on the blockchain anymore, and even the Fedimint people, the guardians, don't know who exchanged the Bitcoin to tokens now; they are interchangeable. So, if you're sitting in Africa in a community and have your own Fedimint there, you still can send your tokens to your family in the UK, basically it will be most of the times the other way round, and you do that over Lightning.
So, I guess, in the future, a Fedi wallet will be integrated into a Bitcoin wallet that does Lightning, Bitcoin, stablecoins on Taro and Fedimint tokens, and I don't know what else we'll be seeing in the future.
Peter McCormack: We will have everything we need at that point.
Anita Posch: Yeah, and I don't know what their timeframe is of planning to do the project. It also scales Bitcoin, because you don't need to wait for the next mined block to be in a transaction.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's very interesting. For me, at first, I was like, "Why would I use this? I already have multisig cold storage", but I was coming from my end of the spectrum, backwards a bit.
Anita Posch: Yeah, it's not for you.
Peter McCormack: No, it's for the people to come --
Anita Posch: From the other way.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, from the other way.
Anita Posch: Yeah, exactly.
Peter McCormack: That's when I realised, I was like, "Actually, this is super-interesting", so okay. So what's next, Anita? Where are you going next? What are you working on next?
Anita Posch: Next is I'm going to Riga, to the Baltic Honeybadger Conference, and afterwards the goal is to go to Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Peter McCormack: When?
Anita Posch: September, October.
Peter McCormack: We can't do then, can we?
Danny Knowles: No.
Peter McCormack: Sorry, I'm not going to promise this time because we can't. I do want to go.
Danny Knowles: What about December?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I do want to go to Zimbabwe.
Anita Posch: Yeah, I invite you to come.
Peter McCormack: I know, I know. Danny just keeps me so busy.
Anita Posch: So, Danny, make it happen.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's Danny's fault.
Anita Posch: Please.
Danny Knowles: Well, the conference in December.
Peter McCormack: The conference in December, yeah. So we'll definitely get to Africa. I've never been to Africa.
Anita Posch: I've never been to Ghana and Nigeria too and I guess it's completely different to Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's going to be so exciting to go.
Anita Posch: So, I want to go there, because in Zambia, the guys who are now in a way ambassadors of Bitcoin for Fairness on the ground, they had the idea to do not only Meetups but also to do a workshop for journalists now.
Peter McCormack: Great.
Anita Posch: When I was there, I had some media interviews and I met some journalists, and it's such a lack of knowledge about Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's the same everywhere though.
Anita Posch: Yeah, but I don't know, yeah.
Peter McCormack: I think theirs might be ignorance, whereas I think the western media's a bit more malicious.
Anita Posch: That might be, yeah. So, they had the idea and I think it's a great idea because, yeah, articles in the media are important. So, we're going to do a workshop for journalists and I also want to bring a RaspiBlitz to Zambia.
Peter McCormack: Nice.
Anita Posch: In Zimbabwe, the most interesting story is about Bitcoin mining with solar in Zimbabwe now.
Peter McCormack: Wow!
Anita Posch: Yeah, there's a guy from the UK, he's diaspora Zimbabwean, and he's running a farm in the heart of Zimbabwe, he has to stay anonymous, and he asked me if I know Bitcoin miners in Zimbabwe and things like that, and I said, "No". But then another guy, and I think maybe he's also from the UK, who had some ASIC miners at home and he didn't use them anymore, he said, "I'm going to donate these miners to you". The guy from here, he sent it to his farm and he installed the miners in one of his cooling rooms, he needs cooling for his produce, and there the miners are now and it's the first Bitcoin mining that I know of in Zimbabwe.
Peter McCormack: Wow!
Anita Posch: It's just a small experiment, of course.
Peter McCormack: But, from a seed…
Anita Posch: They do, I don't know, $20 a week or something from that, because electricity on the one hand is very cheap in Zimbabwe, I don't know why, and he has the solar power; and yeah, it's great to see that. I hope also that Blockstream said they will donate a Blockstream satellite so that mining machines are connected over the satellites to the Bitcoin network so that he doesn't lose the connection to the Bitcoin blockchain. Yeah, I hope we can do that in September, October.
Peter McCormack: You are so busy!
Anita Posch: I'm very busy, it's too much. Actually, a UK podcaster, the last time he said to me, "If I were you my head would explore", and since then I think about my head exploding, and yeah, it's a little bit like that.
Peter McCormack: Well, I'm going to support you because I think you're amazing. I love everything you're doing.
Anita Posch: What I want to say to people is what I think Bitcoin is: Bitcoin is a silent revolution, and I love that thought, because it helps us in the fight against surveillance and always more and more tightening privacy rights. If you are supporting Bitcoin just by using it, either holding it or using it for day-to-day things in a circular economy, then you support freedom fighters and human rights activists, you support the people in these countries from here just by holding Bitcoin.
If you are anti-Bitcoin, you are anti-privacy, you're anti-freedom of speech, and you're against the fact that there are 4 billion people who should also get fair access to an open monetary system. I think these are important things, and we are in a new crypto war. Like, in the 1990s, the cryptography was banned by the US, they said, "Cryptography is like munition", and there's the story of Adam Back who wrote a privacy tool and printed it on a T-shirt to show the authorities you can't ban mathematics and cryptography.
Recently, with the crackdown on Tornado Cash, I saw this quote again from Phil Zimmermann, the inventor of PGP --
Danny Knowles: Pretty Good Privacy.
Anita Posch: Yeah, thank you very much, for email encryption. He said, "If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy, and I don't want to live in a world like that". So, what I think is important to say is all of that, what I just said: Bitcoin is uncensorable, it's unstoppable, and I think it gets the most meaning and value if you use it and not only hold it. I'm not saying anything against circulation or store of value, it's an important part of Bitcoin, but I think circular economies will help Bitcoin adoption much more in these countries where I was talking about than all the hodling of the people in western countries.
Peter McCormack: Amazing. Well listen, that's a very profound end, but also I just want to say thank you again, you're doing work, really important work that others aren't. There's a whole load of Bitcoin where we cover like economics and western First World problems and it's just kind of like, yeah, okay, it's important and I get it's important, but you're doing the real work on the ground with communities where it makes a real difference to their lives. We will support you financially, we absolutely will. If other people want to support you, how are going to get it out to them? Can you give me a link?
Anita Posch: Yeah, as I said before, there is the crowdfunding campaign on geyser.fund, then you can also use Bitcoin or Lightning at BFFbtc.org/donate, that's the Bitcoin for Fairness website. Yeah, please follow me on Twitter and my newsletter at anita.link/news.
Peter McCormack: Well, keep crushing it, keep doing everything you're doing. You're a friend of the show, you're always welcome on. I'm so glad we got to do this in person.
Anita Posch: Yeah, me too. The last thing, it just came to my mind again, my next goal, with others from Zambia, is to start podcasts. Actually, the teaching --
Peter McCormack: Are you trying to get me more competition?
Anita Posch: Yes.
Peter McCormack: I was about to give you some money.
Anita Posch: But it's not really competition.
Peter McCormack: I'm only joking.
Anita Posch: It's in competition in their local language. So, the goal is to do decentralised Bitcoin podcasts and to let people translate Bitcoin podcasts into their local language, or just do a podcast in a local language. I think also, speaking of privacy and all the things that happen in the digital space, podcasting is so important because the RRS feeds cannot be influenced by anyone. They can't censor your RRS feed as they can with their newsletter or your website, or whatever.
So, I think that it's cheap, it's relatively easy to do today. You're a pro, yeah, but you can do it on your smartphone too, and so it's easy, accessible and I'm looking forward to do that project and to help the people on the ground.
Peter McCormack: This is why your head's going to explode because you've even got things you've forgot about that you're doing!
Anita Posch: Exactly.
Peter McCormack: Anita, look, keep being amazing, keep doing what you're doing. I'm so glad that I know you and I'm so proud of the work you do, I think it's incredible, I think it stands out as somebody who's really dedicated to growing Bitcoin for the right reasons. So, we are indebted to you and you are a friend and anything we can do for you, you always let us know.
Anita Posch: Thank you very much, Peter. You were one of the first Bitcoin podcasts I was listening to in 2017.
Peter McCormack: Oh, stop it! All right, I think we're going to go and have some food, and thank you for coming to Bedford, by the way.
Anita Posch: Thanks.
