From Switzerland to El Salvador: why Bitcoin is for everyone

Foreign. Hi, welcome to a Cointelegraph interview. Coming to you from Davos in Switzerland. On my left is Paolo Arduino, CTO of Bitfinex and Tether. Paolo, how are you today?

I'm great. Thank you very much for having me again.

Oh, it's my pleasure. Every time. We always have a nice chat. So, as I understand it, you've just come off the plane from Oslo where the Freedom Forum was taking place, and there were lots of prominent bitcoiners such as yourself, Alex Gladstein, Jack Marlers, Obi. I could go on. Who were discussing there. And here we are at the wef, the World Economic Forum. How do the World Economic Forum and the Oslo Freedom Forum, how do they compare or contrast?

Definitely doing both of them in the same week has been quite interesting. Right. So I was glad to be invited at the Oslo Freedom Forum because first of all, it's not the usual cryptocurrency event. Right. There were no boots, no one was trying to sell you anything. That's a good thing.

No one was shilling anything.

No shilling. And the event was not a bitcoin event. There were bitcoiners, but for the first time, the bitcoiners were there to learn. Right. So there were activists, journalists coming from places where the freedom of speech is not something that you can give for granted. And all that was really interesting. Right. So you need to hear that, you need to understand. It is a good reminder why the entire bitcoin movement was created. Right. To bring financial freedom and freedom of transact to people that are not as lucky as the one living in the western countries.

Yeah.

And the fact that Tether was invited to talk was, for me, really important. Right. Tether has been adopted by the nug, that is the parallel government in Myanmar, the one that is in exile, that is fighting for the freedom of the country as legal tender. Tether has been accepted by the Ukrainian government at the start of the war to accept funding. It was one of the three currencies, bitcoin, ether and tether.

And it was also the fastest, Right, in terms of getting the money into the country, cryptocurrency or bitcoin. And tether was the fastest way to do so.

Right, Exactly. So we are seeing tether more and more being used as an instrument of freedom. So our actual use case to exist, the reason to exist for tether is it started from being a currency and stablecoin used for settling crypto transactions. But it grew a lot recently in being one of the tools to be used by Distressed countries where the national currency is devaluating, where people want an edge against the insane inflation that they have. Right? In Turkey, the national currency, the Turkish lir, has been devaluated 50% over the last few months. And in Argentina you have the same problem, and so on and so forth. And Venezuela, the same thing. So we are seeing tether reaching its apex in being something that people need for day to day life to protect themselves, to protect their savings. Bitcoin is great, but they want the price stability, they want the long term price stability. They understand, right? Bitcoin is great for many things, but it's not yet understood by many.

Could you say that tether is almost like a gateway drug to bitcoin in this context?

It's definitely the best oramp ever created.

So it's the best orange peeling tool.

Yes, My father, right, understands much more. So he now is in bitcoin, but he had first to fill the digital cash, right? And crazy enough, people are all money. The majority of the money is already digital. But they are not used to having a wallet that can, you know, with one click they can send around and it's super fast and arrive in a minute. They are used to a wire that takes days to clear. And so there is. The first step is education, education on the change of technology. And that is really important. And then there is a second step that is education on why we need bitcoin. That is, and hedge and better hedge against inflation is something that no one can take away from you, is something that holds a lot of philosophy and ethos in it, right? So yes, it's orange peeling, but there.

You'Re talking about developing countries. And here we are in one of the most developed, one of the most free countries around the world. And yet it's also the city in the southwest called Lugano where the plan B project is. They're adopting bitcoin and tether as de facto legal tender. I was speaking to Mauro, who had a pizzeria here on a bitcoin pizza day on Sunday. And I asked him, mauro, how's it going in Lugano? Are you accepting bitcoin in tether yet? And he was like, no, but I plan to. And I said, okay, I'll hold you to that. I'll come down there and I'll check. So how is the plan B coming along? And is it just pizzerias? Is this sort of a hark back to your Italian roots?

No, it's not just pizzerias, although of course, pizzerias will be the first step. But actually the plan B is going great. So we just announced the summer school. We are holding this event that is a two weeks course where we have speakers like Adam Beck and others that are explaining and teaching blockchain and cryptocurrency in this modern financial world. And we didn't want to do something extremely technical because we wanted also to explain why this is why this movement, why this crypto movement have even started.

Right.

So we wanted to unit to put together an event, a course that could teach a bit about blockchain from the technical level, high level, technical level, the philosophy, the economics around it, and so on and so forth. And then of course, entering a little bit into the details, there is Lightning Network teaching on how to use nodes and how to set up things and how to use it for payments and so on and so forth.

El Salvador, listening out for these conversations. Maybe we could implement that education in El Salvador, actually.

So we are working with El Zonte Capital to try to bring these very same courses. Well, maybe in a different way based on the, you know, on the type of approach that we are going there. We want to have. So one side you have need developers in the country, on the other side you need people that use it for the day to day activities. So you have to teach a little bit of economics, a little bit of background on what we are doing, why we are doing it. So the contrast between El Salvador and Lugano for me is beautiful because it really tells that bitcoin is for everyone. You have people in a poor country that need bitcoin as a basic financial infrastructure. On the other side, you have probably the country that is crawling with more with banks in the world and still just look around. Yes. And they still need bitcoin because it's a sovereign country. You are becoming the sovereign person.

Absolutely. And the choice of pizza topping from Satoshi Nakamoto, just to go back to the pizza point, is jalapenos and pineapple. I think I just wanted to get your take on this. Yeah, I mean, is this a yes or no?

No one is perfect, you know.

Okay. This is Satoshi's one fatal flaw.

Yes, of course. That's why he disappeared in 2012.

Oh, really? You came after him. You're like, why are you putting pineapple on pizza? Satoshi, what's your favorite pizza topping?

So I like the one with how you said it in English. Salami and a spicy salami.

Diavolo.

Yeah, diavola. I put an egg on top of it.

Oh, nice.

So egg diavola egg and a little bit of mozzarella di buffalo instead of standard mozzarella. So that is insanely good.

So this is what I'll eat when I come to Lugano in the next.

I will. I will bring you to the best place that. Where they do this pizza.

Okay? Great. Okay. And if I ever do bump into Sochi, I'll let him know that Paolo is ready to take him to any pizzeria in Lugano.

Yeah, it's education.

Yeah. It's the key. Brilliant. Thank you so much. It's been a Coin Telegraph interview with Paolo.