BTC + ETH-

-IOPIA

This week, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Kal Kassa, the number one Bitcoin educator in Ethiopia.

Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Kal is quick-witted, highly-disciplined and extremely knowledgeable when it comes to Bitcoin, and the people of Ethiopia are lucky to have him leading the Bitcoin education efforts in their country.

Enjoy the interview!

(And please like, subscribe, rate, review, etc. on whatever platform you use to listen. It helps more people find the YouTube channel/podcast.)

Bitcoin hardware wallet poll

I recently ran the following poll on X (Twitter) in efforts to garner more information about Bitcoin-only hardware wallets/signing devices.

Source

I’d you’d like to learn more about these three wallets, click “Source” (above) and check out some of the comments on this tweet. People shared a lot of great info.

I ran this poll because I’ve decided to either change my hardware wallet or or set up a multisig wallet using two or three different wallet brands after learning that Ledger has access to all of its users’ private keys via it’s operating system.

A conversation with a Ghanaian priest

On Wednesday, I had lunch with one of the priests I worked with while helping to develop a trade school in rural Ghana.

Since we first met in 2009, I’ve never known him as one to complain. Yet, when we met on Wednesday in Brooklyn, he seemed quite shaken and frustrated.

He described to me how difficult the financial and economic situation in Ghana is and how much of what he and many others in the country have saved has lost much of its value.

He also described to me some of the corruption that has taken place at the highest levels of government and how this has caused Ghanaian people to lose faith in their government.

This was surprising to hear, because, when I lived there, almost everyone I spoke with very much liked the then president of the country, John Atta Mills.

Anyway, I felt quite sad and helpless as he described the scenario in Ghana and how it has impacted him. All I could think to do was ask him if he’d heard of Bitcoin — a way for him to personally take control of his savings. He said he had, but he didn’t know what it was.

In that moment, I realized I didn’t have any good resources to share with him that would be able to provide an overview of what Bitcoin is within an hour or so.

This motivated me to step up my educational efforts and to create better content and materials for beginners.

I will start by adapting a lecture I just presented to about 70 Kenyan, Rwandan and Ugandan women and posting it on my YouTube channel. I’ll be sure to share a link here in the newsletter.

Teaching at Bitcoin DADA

I taught this lesson mentioned in the previous section at Bitcoin DADA (“DADA” is Swahili for “sister”).

Below is a tweet from Lorraine Marcel, the founder or Bitcoin DADA, in which she described the vibe in the virtual classroom during the lesson.

Source

The questions that these ladies, mostly beginners, asked during and after the lesson were so sharp.

Lorraine is creating some truly adversarial thinkers — those who are mindful of what could wrong from the protocol level of Bitcoin all the way down to how you secure the bitcoin you hold — which a good way to be if you want to store your wealth in this asset.

After the class, one of the students shared her takeaway from the lesson:

Beautifully put.

Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) + Bitcoin Magazine Pro = A dynamic duo doing its part in fighting climate change

In last week’s edition of the newsletter, I shared my thoughts on whether Marathon Digital Holdings (Ticker symbol: MARA), a bitcoin mining company, was a buy or not. I’ll revisit this in the next section.

Before that, I just wanted to share that Marathon and Bitcoin Magazine Pro will be teaming up help integrate Bitcoin mining into landfill management to help mitigate the amount of methane — a gas that’s far worse for the environment than CO2 — released into the atmosphere.

If more and more Bitcoin mining is powered by waste gas like methane, Bitcoin mining could become a force to help reverse the effects of climate change. We love to see it.