In this episode:

-Marina discusses her involvement in growing the Chaincode Labs developer ecosystem in emerging markets.

-She elaborates on Qala, a Bitcoin developer education platform in Africa, and the need for similar initiatives in places like El Salvador.

-Marina highlights “http://Torogoz.dev” real-life applications like immediate payments to coffee growers, potentially becoming a global model for transparent transactions in the agro-industry.

The conversation emphasizes the importance of education, local recruitment, and thoughtful integration of Bitcoin into everyday processes, particularly in the global south.

Marina's Contact Info:

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Twitter-@MarinaSpindler

To learn more about Bitcoin: Join the Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club. Visit https://www.meetup.com/womensbitcoinreadingclubwithorangehatter

Please email questions/comments to Tali@orangehatter.com

Remember: Knowledge is empowerment! 🍊🎩

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Market Kids Short

Get your HODL UP ("The best bitcoin game ever!") at www.freemarketkids.com.

Hi everyone.

Welcome to Orange Hatter.

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

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

Well, of course.

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

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

around the world in emerging markets.

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

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

Kala, which is a program in Africa.

Kala is a Bitcoin developer education platform where you

are part of some of a program.

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

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

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

There's a whole project around it.

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

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

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

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

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

Right?

Thailand, Mexico, Columbia, Argentina, wherever we could

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin was legal tender in the country.

It really was not well received by the business community or

the country and the TiVo wallet.

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

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

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

There was a, a lot of like negative feelings surrounding

it and very politicized.

Right?

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

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

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

the time was not a good one.

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

my, my, I can't understand this.

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

gave them into dollars directly.

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

whole talent, part two, right?

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

they were importing talent, right?

And there's no talent.

There's no talent.

I don't believe in that.

I used to recruit talent for a living.

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

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

But those are the safe choices.

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

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

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

hours studying about Bitcoin.

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

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

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

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

Right?

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

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

sense of focusing on developers already.

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

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

was very focused on technology, right?

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

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

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

Who actually does the homework?

Who actually does the reading?

Who is asking questions?

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

through the Chaincode Labs program.

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

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

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

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

to be part of the fellowship.

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

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

really, really unique, right?

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

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

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

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

in a business because it is legal.

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

in agro tech, agro industry business.

They are a coffee grower association.

I.

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

Association is Cherito Cafe.

Cherito is, has coffees that are called Genesis Block.

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

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

So how does he pay farmers?

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

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

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

had not integrated lightning and Bitcoin into his payment process.

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

which is a country brand, right?

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

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

him integrate lightning payments into his whole ecosystem.

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

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

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

Right.

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

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

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

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

Right.

You just.

Spread it out and do it very transparently.

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

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

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

extremely, hopefully streamlined the supply chain of coffee.

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

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

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

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

they could potentially do it as well.

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

and a brand for El Salvador.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

project is trying to do now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We didn't do any fundraising before.

We're not asking for money every five minutes.

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

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

The program really needed it.

Right.

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

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

Yeah.

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

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

Wonderful.

Yeah.

And I'll send you our wallet for SATs.

Yeah, that would be great.

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

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

system and things being open source.

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

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

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

Well, I think learning about Bitcoin really takes time.

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

gonna just program in Bitcoin.

Right?

It really does take time.

And sometimes we underestimate that other people don't have

time in the global south.

Time is money.

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

Right?

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

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

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

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

Right?

Like go talk to them.

Go talk to Bitcoin Guadalajara.

Go talk to Bitcoin Ekazi.

Go talk to Bitcoin, Guatemala.

Go talk to them and encourage them to participate because otherwise

they just don't know about it.

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

trying to struggle to survive.

Right?

Thanks for joining us today and learning with us today.

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