Nzonda Fotsing Sr @BitcoinSophist - Author Of @KidsBitcoin Comic Book - Once BITten 356

Thank you. Thank you. And I'm very excited to be, to be here. And I can't wait to, to talk about my journey and to tell other people how amazing Bitcoin is. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Oh, absolutely. It's a pleasure. Thank you for reaching out. Thank you for what you're doing as well in the Bitcoin space for helping with education, especially of those so young. It's an incredible project. I want to well let let's find out who you are. So the listeners tuning in have an idea of where you're at, where you grew up, and your your kind of yeah your work up until now before entering Bitcoin.

Okay, I grew up pretty much all my life in Cameroon, Cameroon which is. West Central Africa. And Cameroon is the only 2 bilingual countries plus Canada in the world. So most Cameroonians speak French and English. We're colonized by France and Britain at some point. We mostly have mixed education, so we are very balanced when it comes to both languages, most Cameroonians. And I did my schooling here, but at some point during my schooling, I've always been someone Somebody who likes to, to learn by, by themself and learn by doing. And, but school, school wasn't really helping me much, especially about how I wanted to go with my life and stuff like that. Even though I was very, I was just getting to that adulthood, I just really had clear visions of how I wanted to start. And how much they were, how inexperienced I was, but I just kept going. So I had to drop out of school at my first year in the university. So since then, I'm just learning on my own on YouTube, read as much books as I could. And one of the first books that I read was Rich Dad Poor Dad and changed everything for me. And From there, I started to read about outreach and influence. I read lots and lots of books that helped to put me in a space where I could create a vision, purpose, mission for myself. So I learned how to code, I learned how to do programming for like 6 years. So I think I left school Uh, back in 2012. So from 2012 to about 2014, I learned how to do like skills on digital marketing and website building and stuff like that. So, um, I did website building and digital marketing from 2014 to about 2019. But within that time, I got to, I, I helped people to get online with their businesses and then do some marketing for them online and stuff like that. I worked with a lot of local companies and then built a bit of a brand for myself, created a consultancy company. But that was short-lived because during the time I created the company, we had a civil, some sort of a civil war in the country. So, and the town where I was doing it was really affected by that. So I had to leave that town, then come to where I am today. So because Cameroon is French and English, so the civil war was really affected by the English and I was based in the English zone, so I had to leave and come to this side of the French zone where I've been for a Bitcoin like rabbit hole, like in its all, in it all of its essence. I was always into the digital space, computer reading and stuff like that. Yeah.

All right. Okay. Lots of things I want to ask you about there, just in that opening. You're dropping out a little bit every now and then. We will try and push on, and I hope hopefully it will pick up nicely on the final recording. Okay. I think it's just lagging some internet problems, but we'll see. You mentioned colonized by the French and the British. at some stage throughout history and speaking those 2 languages, having that skill is absolutely amazing. What currency are you forced to use? What's the fiat currency of Cameroon?

The CFA. We use the CFA franc. So the CFA franc is being used by 6 African countries, and this is African countries from the CEMAC zone. And we have Cameroon, we have Chad, You have Congo, you have Equatorial Guinea, and then we have Gabon. So those are the countries that use the CFA in Africa. But there's another type of CFA which is called, which is still by the French, is ZAF. So there is ZOF and then there is ZAF, right? So if you go to the exchange, like the international exchanges, you see there are 2 types of CFA. There is ZAF and ZOF. So the the the ZAF is for CEMAC. CEMAC zone is the countries that I just named, right? There are six of them, and this CEMAC zone they have one central bank. That one central bank is Yaoundé in Cameroon. So that's the headquarters. So every year or every now and then, they have like a general meeting of the six presidents where they come and sit here. They decide what amount of money they have to throw back into the system. They have to change. the color of the paper after 10 years, how the country look like, the design and stuff. So that's what they do. But countries like Senegal, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, every other French-speaking countries in Africa that is not the Central African zone uses the ZOF, right? So, so we have in total, France has 18, or I think like 16 or 18 countries in Africa. that use money that's been directly controlled by France.

Yeah.

As intellectual property over that money and whatever thing that happens to it.

It's a crazy system. And I know Joe Hall, Joe Nakamoto did a little documentary on this, which was very educational for many of us to think that France sits here in Europe very much entrenched in the Eurozone and using the euro.

Exactly.

And having Christine Lagarde at the head of the European Central Bank, yet they lord over 16 to 18 different African countries with direct control over those currencies, like the CFA. Yeah. When you, When did that kind— when did you ever question that growing up, or was money just the money with the nice colored paper with the people's heads on? And what do people think about that?

So I've always been very curious about understanding what money is really all about and Like, why are we using the money we are using? I was a bit afraid at the time because the way we grew up is not about asking questions. It's about just obeying and then doing stuff that you're being told to do, right? So yeah, I used to bug my dad for a few times and then just ask him questions about like, why are we using this? Why is Nigeria having naira? And then why is CEMAC zone, 6 independent countries using this? I used to ask my dad questions like that, but he wouldn't really give me a satisfactory answer. So, and then I just started doing research for myself. So, but Bitcoin was a bit far-fetched at the time because at this time around it was like 2012, 2013, 2014. Bitcoin was Far-fetched. So, but I just kept doing research and as I got matured into the research, I began to unravel how this, the system behind the functioning of central banks function, it's a fractional bank reserving and other stuff that the central banks do just to make you understand that they are using Whatever means they can use to control us, and we have nothing to say about it just because they are central and just because some people voted them democratically for them to sit at that position and do whatever thing they want to do. So the more I discovered that, the more I wanted to get angry with myself. I wanted to get angry with the people around me, like for not telling me this stuff, but I just realized that it's not for It's not up to anyone to tell you what, whatever thing is going on, right? So it's up to you to look at it, look at how damaging it can be in the long run, then try to figure out a solution for yourself. And once you can help yourself, you can help the other people around you. So that's exactly what I did. So I just like dive into learning, learning, watch lots of, lots of documentaries about money on YouTube. I've read a lot of books about money on different kind of topics. And then I was like very, very equipped now to speak to somebody, tell them that this thing is just paper. Like even before I like got fully into Bitcoin, yeah, I just, I already knew that this thing is just mere paper. Any day, anytime, they can say whatever thing. Reduce the value of it, increase the value of it, do whatever thing they want, and we'll just sit here. And no matter how hard you work, there's only a level where you can go, except you are part of the system. So if you are just a natural person, you don't want to have anything to do with politics, you don't want to have anything to do with the system, you're gonna suffer, right? So because there's something that is controlling you and it's, you cannot just see it on a deep So it's not obvious, but it's there. So you have to be very critical in thinking. Then you have to become an intellectual rebel to be able to figure that out. And then, then say, this thing is not for me. This is too much noise. This is not getting it. I wanna look for signal. So it was very frightening for me having these discussions at first because a lot of people don't understand. And people ask me like, why do you even care? Why are you bothered? Don't you eat every day? Don't you sleep? You know, so, but I was just, I just kept researching and gradually I began finding people that also were doing the same thing and people who began to understand and people began to like think about it from a revolutionary perspective. And that's how Bitcoin came into the whole scene. And then everything changed, like everything changed completely. Yeah.

You had that brain rewiring like many of us have had. You mentioned your father there, asking him questions and not being able to explain exactly what money is. And I think we've all probably experienced that at some stage in our life. What was his profession? What was he working as when you were growing up?

So my father was just a mere trader. So my father had like a brick-and-mortar shop where he does and buys and sells all sorts of shoes that you can imagine. So my father was selling shoes. Yeah.

And right.

Yeah, he did that, I think, right on from the time I was born. Right, right, right. Like really right now he still does that. So he, he, he's been doing that for so long. And while I ask him like, why are you doing this for this long? He said there's nothing else that he knows how to do best than this. And you know, when people get older and they're accustomed to something, changing is really It's really very hard. So I just do whatever I can to just support him and then allow him to continue doing that as well as he can. Yeah.

How old were you when France devalued the currency and how did that affect the family?

So France devalued the currency, I think like 2 years before I was born, because I was born in 1992. Yeah. I think like 1990, I think. Yeah. If I'm not mistaken, like 2 years before I was born. And I didn't really know how it affected the family because my dad really never told me anything about how that really like changed everything for my dad because prior to the time I was born, My dad had a shop, right? So he had like a really, really big shop where he used to sell stuff for babies, newborn babies. You just come to the shop. It was like a mini supermarket, like back in the days. And in the market where he was, he had the biggest shop, but something terrible happened to the shop. The shop got burnt one night and everything was hilarious. And since then, he never recovered from that. Like, he started doing the shoe business as a recovery for that, but he never really did recover. Like, he never, never really did. Like, even up to now when we have discussions, like, that trauma, that failure of that aspect is still affecting him up to today. And I believe that at some point it was because of the system that was in place, because even getting buyer funds, investments and stuff like that was really, really difficult. My mom used to tell me how difficult things were for him living from a place where he was basically financially stable, comfortable, and then everything goes down. Then he's struggling to be able to get back up and then there's just no way. Then the only option for him was just to start to pick shoes around and then building a business around selling shoes. So I grew up in an environment where we had just the needful, like what to just get by. And then, and that has been my biggest competitive advantage because I took all of those limits and then created abundance for myself. Yeah.

Wow. What a rug pull, huh? You get your currency devalued by, what was it, 50%? I don't remember the exact, right. Okay.

I think 40, 50% or so. Yeah. So,

and not only that, your business gets burnt down. Yeah.

Yeah. So not many people recovered from that currency devaluation and every negativity that came with it. There's so many, there's so many people that, you know, there are very few people in the world That could fall, wake up, fall, wake up, fall, right? And we don't have as much room in terms of how we can see the future right here. So most of our parents were from villages, like small rural, like really rural areas, and they had little room in terms of experience and who to follow based on maybe life strategies and Life's experiences and the things that you can learn. So most of the time they just do some stuff all by themselves. And you know, at the time the internet was not as open like right now where you could go and just pick information to assimilate and try to practice before you can learn. So at the time you just, your environment was pretty much the best resource you could use to be able to build something in your head and then move forward. And if your environment is limited in itself in resources, That kind of indirectly tells you how limited you too can be in terms of how far you can go with certain things. That's why some people, when they fall, it's hard to wake up. And the next thing that happens is people begin to pity themselves. And when you begin to pity yourself, it creates a more environment where the people, even the children you give birth to, don't really see themselves. And just, it's like a vicious cycle. So that has like a really, the ripple effect has different facets if you really look at it critically. Yeah, it was really, it was really bad.

And you mentioned that the area in which you were living entered into some kind of civil war. What sparked that? What was that about? And Yeah, I'd love to learn a little bit more about that history.

Yeah, so, um, you know, in, in Cameroon, like I said, we have French and English like official language. But the interesting thing about that is only 2 regions— so Cameroon has 10 regions, right? And then only 2 regions in Cameroon speak English. 8 other regions speak French, right? So that means that in terms of legislation, in terms of governing, We have to either have English or French. So on the English zone, we have, um, so what they call common law. And then on the French zone, we have something, uh, civil law, because that's how the French do their, their law system and stuff like that. So then we need to have English people that are also represented in the government, in, in, in different aspects of the public, public sector and stuff like that. And then one thing that I noticed while I was growing up, French people, people from the French side of Cameroon tend to want to marginalize or minimize or disrespect people from the English side because they're small, because, you know, yeah. And this happened for so long. And the first opposition party that was created to compete with the other party, which was there on the English side, was created by an Anglophone person. So by the 1990s, like 2 years before I was born, there was an election. And from every indication and the researches that I've read online, the person who headed the English party at the time, had won the election, but the election was rigged. So the French person, who is the current president up to now, continued being president. So the marginalization actually had an effect from that time, even though it was happening prior to that, even before our independence and stuff like that, because we wanted to join Nigeria, right? So We wanted to join Nigeria, but the president, our first president, Ahidjo, came and then we had like a meeting at, I think that was like 1960 or so. And then he put out a vision that Cameroon, which was first one, but was divided after, because we were colonized by Germany first, but after the Second World War, when Germany lost the Second World War, The country had to be divided between English, between France and Britain. So that's why we have 2 languages. So maybe if it was just Germany, we just had like maybe one language or so. So it was after the— so Cameroon was one, right? And then, so fast forward back to the 1990s, this guy won the election, but the election was rigged and it caused a lot of turmoil at the time. And then a lot of people, intellectuals on the English side of the country, Started thinking of this marginalization that kept happening. For example, you could go maybe to a police station and then you want to do maybe your ID card or maybe an official document. So the policeman might ask you like, what's your name? So if your name has English, they might just put you aside. So maybe for you, like, what's your name? If your name has French, they say, oh, come. Especially if the police is French, because most of the official offices are French people because they're the majority. So they tend to favor French people and marginalize. So this is where the war, the idea of revolution started, right? And then the immediate cause was when back in late 2016, lawyers from the English-speaking region were beaten by police people, right? So a lot of people like, man, no, this is enough. We've taken too much from, from these people and then we need to. So it started a really, really big, big, big, big civil war where, but when I say big, big, big, it only affected the rest of the world, the rest of the nation only by just word of mouth. But the actual fighting and the shooting was happening around the area where I was like the English part of the country. So this created rebels because these rebels now wanted to separate the country and then make the English part the country on its own with sovereignty and all of that. But the French part would not accept that to happen. So what will happen is that they'll come look for these rebels, kill them, and in the course of that, they'll kill signatories of Don TVM houses, Misery, poverty, everything just mixed, you know? So yeah. And the day I left, the day before I left, somebody was killed right in front of my office because I was running a smaller consultation company for digital marketing. So somebody was killed like in a pool of blood. I didn't really see the shooting, but I saw like how somebody was dying and dying and dying and dying. So And I'm like, I need to leave. The advantage I had was the fact that even though I grew up in the English part of the country, my parents are from the French part of the country, right? So I have like a balanced culture, so I could easily just blend. So if I speak English, you feel I'm English. So if I speak French, you feel I'm French. And especially my name looks a bit French and stuff like that. So That's how I left the following day. Then I came to Douala, which is the economic capital where I've been ever since. So I never went back because of the old trauma. Left my house, the office, and the small things I've been putting together. Then I came back and then just started life from scratch.

Whoa, man. That's nuts. And who'd have thought the English-French still fighting each other after all of these centuries?

Yeah. Yeah.

But, and it's what, it's just classic, classic divide and conquer and create problems, divide the nation, fuel that hatred that the central banks have been doing for God knows how long just to gain more control over people. And the destruction and the The, the hurt that these people have caused over the last couple of centuries, it is just so disgusting.

And yeah,

well, thank goodness we have Bitcoin now. We have that peaceful opportunity to opt out of all of their fuckery. Yeah. But anyway, Lauren has just walked in to ask you a question, so One second. Uh, Lauren, this is Zondla.

Hi.

Hi, Lauren. How are you?

Good. You?

I'm great. I'm great. Nice to have you on here.

Thank you. Um, so my question is, why do you write comics?

Why do I write comics? Ah, that's a good question. I think that the First, you're the first person to ask me the question. Most people just ask me like, why did you write a book? So, um, I wrote the comic because I want to, first it was about my son, cuz I have a 3-year-old son and, uh, I've read about sound money for too long and I was looking for a way to, to make him understand, uh, what sound money is. So, but it didn't, it didn't really start off like that. So. One day I was working on my computer and he came around because he's very inquisitive. And by some means he saw the Bitcoin logo on my screen. He asked me, Dad, what's that? I said, Bitcoin logo. He said, what's Bitcoin? I said, Bitcoin is digital money. Then he looked at me, then he looked at the screen. He could not say digital money because it's just 3 years, like a few months before he was 3. And then it dawned on me that I might know as much as I know about Bitcoin. What about him? Right? So it was first about him. So I decided now that I would embark on a mission to create content that'll be customized to his, to what he sees every day, and then put Bitcoin in the mix of that. Right? So that's exactly Bitcoin Kids Book. That's what it's about. And I realized that as I was doing the book, there are other families just like me who have kids and who would like to learn about sound money, Bitcoin, all the advantages and stuff like that. And that's how the mission kept getting stronger, the purpose, the vision and everything. And that just glued me. And there's nothing else I want to do rather than just telling families and people that do care and to about Bitcoin and, and how, how it can be transformational to, to every family member. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a, it's the best thing to make comics for little kids, like 3-year-olds, because that's, that age is when they start asking why about everything.

Yes, they do.

Yeah. Yeah.

Would you wanna always do— go ahead, Sunday.

So I'm, I'm saying kids always do ask a lot of why. So, and I was very afraid not to disappoint him. Um, I want, I want to be able to like, uh, really answer his questions as much as I can to be satisfied. So he, he gets to understand the world better before he gets to really start interacting with, with people as he gets matured. Yeah.

I want to ask you a usual question.

What is your favorite thing about Bitcoin?

Generational wealth. That's my favorite. Yeah. Generational wealth. Like without thinking too much, I just like narrow down everything I've learned about Bitcoin. Generational wealth. Because I'm a family person and I like legacy, right? I like to leave something behind for the next generation. And Bitcoin is the best thing that I've seen that does that for me without me trying to do too much, right? I just need to work as much as I can today, holding as much Bitcoin as I can, and everything else will take care of itself.

Yeah. All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Yeah, nice meeting you.

Yeah.

Bye.

Bye. Take care. She's amazing.

Thank you, mate. Thank you. Yeah. So, right. So we kind of, we were on the story there, weren't we? We've done the currency devaluation, the knock-on effect of that, the civil war, the knock-on effect of that. You Falling into the rabbit hole of self-directed education, which is obviously something anybody that listens to the show is aware that I'm a big proponent of that. And that the fact that the state education system is nothing but an indoctrination camp, gulag actually, for want of a better word, for them to be able to steal kids' hearts and minds from a very young age. And what's quite, I'm not sure if you're even aware of this, But the narrative we get spun up here in the so-called West is that free education is a human right. And then, so if you ever challenge the education system, right? Which I've done thousands of times, the classic normie answer is, what? Well, free education is a human right. What, you don't, you like education? I mean, Try telling that to somebody in Africa. They're like, what's that got to do? Where does Africa come into this? They have this kind of idea in their minds that Africa is grossly undereducated and we need more schools out there. And I'm trying to tell them the last thing we need is to send indoctrination camps anywhere in this world. And I don't know why people are so hung up on Africa as a nation, excuse me, as a continent that is desperately crying out for this. So I'd love to hear your experience from growing up in the education system and what you see and why ultimately you came to the realization that self-directed education is by far and away the best way to learn.

So with my experience, I sometimes when I look back, the environment and how far I've come, my environment, how I grew up didn't really propel me for where I was, where I am today. But there was, I don't know, maybe by some sort of privilege or stroke of luck, or I don't know how to put it. I got to embark on a journey of self-development, right? And this is because I've tried to narrow it down. This is because I grew up in a place where there was, I had, I lacked a lot of stuff that I wanted as a young boy growing up, right? But I turned the lack into strength to give me more knowledge to be able to provide those things that My parents couldn't give me for myself, right? And that's how I got into the part of self-improvement, because if I improve myself as much as I can and build my skills in as much as I can, I'll create abundance for myself. And once I create abundance, I'll be able to get the things that I didn't have. And then it's been like a rollercoaster ride. It's a bumpy ride. It's not really smooth because you have look at something, I really don't have a mentor. You look at it, you try it, it doesn't work, it fails. You try, you try, you try until it works, and then you pick other things. So you try to build a whole system in there. I realized that school versus how fast I was learning, like, it was like a day and night, you know. The, the how the school does the teaching And how you go on yourself and pick up a book and how fast you can retain and then practically see how you can solve a problem based on what you have read versus what you learned in school. What's the— okay. I was making that analysis and that's what even pushed me into like, just, okay, I'm enough with school for now. And then I'll just go on myself right now and then be doing stuff. And by the way, my parents were struggling a lot to send me to school, so I had to save them the stress.

Yes.

To, to, to, to do that. And, uh, so, but it took a lot of time for them to realize that I was actually making a good decision for myself. It took about 8, 8 years or so because when I left, I struggled. It was, it wasn't really like I wasn't getting everything right. I think most often I was getting things wrong, but I kept going because in my head I knew that even though I'm losing, I'm, I'm not getting things right, I'm learning. In the process, I'm learning how to fail, how to win, and how to go about life. Life is not about always just seeking for happiness. It's about finding yourself amidst chaos, right? So if you can function in chaos, you become unstoppable. So that's how I was trying to mold myself and then building myself to a place where I might just stand back and then look and say, Wow. I did it regardless of how bumpy the ride was, regardless of the challenges, regardless of the people who said stuff. But self-education is my biggest competitive advantage. The fact that I can just sit, I need a knowledge, specific knowledge about something. I go on Google, I research, I pick the book, I go to YouTube, something I read. 2, 3 hours and I'm already in the mix of what I want to do. For me, that's, for me, nothing compares to that. Nothing, really nothing. And I had to develop a skill to like learning. So, because once I like to learn is the foundation for me to gain any skill or any knowledge in anything that I want. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You didn't develop the skill, you just refound it because it's human nature to love learning. It's just that it gets beaten out us systematically through the education system just by sit down, shut up, do as I say. That's not learning. That's just being taught at. And nobody likes that. You, you know, like inherently will rebel against that with every fiber of your body. But still, we do it to kids from the age of 3, 4, or 5 years of age and put them straight into the system. Expect them to be able to spout dates off when auntie or grandmother asks them, how's school and what did you learn today? And blah, blah, blah. It's, yeah, it's nuts. So did anybody tell you about Bitcoin or did you just kind of run into it when you were doing self-directed education trying to learn about money?

So back in 2017. I like, I like your, I just have to mention this. I like how you ask the question because it really just made me like reflect deeply. I've had a few podcasts, but I think this is the first one that I'm really getting into the details of how the development of myself and everything I'm doing. Yeah. So I appreciate you for that. Thank you. And, uh, so before the Bitcoin and everything, I used to have like a group of young guys, right? And I'll tell you how those group that I created has compounded in so many things I'm doing now. So back in 2017, because I was studying a self-learning journey in 2012, I had a lot of knowledge to share with people. And you know, the thing about learning is when you teach people, you retain more. Right. So most often when I was with my peers, I used to speak, some people, like it just clicks with them and then they just started asking like more questions. Like, what do you do? Can we work together and stuff? So I built like a group of young people that was like, I think like 5 of them, right? And these guys were like incredibly smart, right? And, uh, I was, it was sort of like a mentoring session. So my small office, every now and then we had like a meetings twice a week. They'll come and then we'll sit and then look at money. We do at the time to look at what money is, what economy is, what business is like, different things, right? We're trying to like create a really mastermind group of where people, there's no lack. So if there's some, somebody has a strength in this, you are it. So we build like a really formidable group and that's how Bitcoin got into the mix. Because we were doing focused research and we're looking for different alternatives. So what we did at the time is we put money together. I think back in 2017, Bitcoin was, I think, a bit more than $2,000 or so. I think, I don't really remember the figure, but we put money together. I was like, I think $500, right? But something happened along the line. So we're using, I think Coinbase was what was available. For us to buy Bitcoin. So, but since we didn't really like have the directives on how to really buy and stuff, so yeah. So someone got us scammed along that time. Yeah. So we, since the money wasn't coming from one person, we didn't really feel like the impact, right? But we never stopped learning. All of us kept on learning, but what separated us finally was the, was the civil war that I told you about. So the civil war made it such that I couldn't keep up with the meeting and stuff. I needed to go like search for myself and then try to be, try to be, um, to, to like rebuild myself because I was actually leaving everything that I was building behind and stuff. When we separated, it was really bad for everybody because we were building something really, really strong, which I think it will continue today. I think we'll be like one of the smartest group of people in Cameroon and I think around Africa that whatever thing that you're looking for in terms of business, economy, money and stuff, we could be able to give you like very good information that you'll use for yourselves. Yeah. So, but the war came, separated everybody, and we lost touch. I lost touch with some people, but some people that I had instilled some good like work ethic and stuff with them, we kept on talking. And then some of them got into Bitcoin and, but me, I didn't really get into Bitcoin again immediately after that because I was going through a lot, like mentally I was trying to like really settle myself. shelter as I came to the, this side of Douala and try to figure out how I could do. So it took me like a year or 2 to get back into Bitcoin, but this time was different. Not putting money, but putting money in, like investing in myself. So I picked up The Bitcoin Standard, I picked up 21 Lessons, and that's how the rabbit hole started for me and I just kept reading, reading, reading, reading, reading. Then I started sharing the knowledge. So, but along the line I got into, I got into, because my environment was full of shitcoiners, right? Interesting. And before then I had not gotten into the mix of Bitcoin Twitter to really like build that Bitcoin culture. Right before then, before, after reading the 20, the, the, the Bitcoin Standard 21 lessons, I knew the power of Bitcoin. I knew what Bitcoin was. I knew everything. But now finding the environment and stuff, I didn't really just go to Twitter immediately. So I was, and then I had a lot of peers around the time. So because when I was sharing the thing, I really didn't know the difference between crypto and Bitcoin, you know? You know? Yeah. Shitcoin, you know, I didn't really, so I was just talking about crypto, crypto, crypto, crypto at the time. Right. And this attracted most of these people who do trading, MLM around me. And then I got into some sort of Ethereum and then I became now a blockchain developer. So I built some tokens on Ethereum and stuff like that. And so if you maybe check on Facebook or Google, you see some of my posts, you see self-taught blockchain developer and stuff. So I built DEX platforms and decentralized and stuff. So since I was doing a lot of stuff on Ethereum, I just read Bitcoin Standard and stuff. I knew how powerful Bitcoin is, but I didn't know that Bitcoin was that open until I got to Twitter. I started out following some specific accounts, getting into more Bitcoin books, Then I started shifting all the charts of Ethereum, all the other cryptos in, and little by little, little by little, you know, it was somebody was saying something about Bitcoin. When you learn Bitcoin after 1 hour, there's a certain way you think after 2 hours, after 10 hours, after 24 hours. So I was in that space as I was, the more I learned, the more I removed the noise and then I was just looking only for the signal. So I was just removing them. I was keeping leaving the signal and now it's just all about the signal because it's been like almost 2 years of constant learning on Bitcoin. So I really don't think there's anything that somebody else can tell me about other cryptos that will make me look at Bitcoin differently because at the time, you know, we don't have as much knowledge about it when somebody brings out different things. And especially when you look at how their life has been transformed by what they're talking about, you begin to think like, hey, maybe this could be a good idea. You know? But yeah, I'm in that space where now it's all about the signal. Yeah.

Awesome, mate. And again, somebody else that has learned so much from Bitcoin Twitter, myself included. As many as the books that I've read, you know, I wouldn't have found half the books, I suppose, if I wasn't Lurking on Bitcoin Twitter. And then you go through stages, don't you? First of all, you start, I remember doing this as well, you start following a few people, you're like, these guys are mad as fuck. Like, what are they like? They're talking about everything and everything's a lie and everything's a scam, but somehow what they're saying makes way more sense to what is being originally said or espoused in the mainstream media. Such an incredible journey of, it's definitely, it's shaped my mind in so many different ways and it's been an absolute honor and pleasure to have finally met some of those people. When you get to the conferences and you can find the people that you've been following, whether that's their real name or whether that's a name and then you suddenly twig, it doesn't matter. But when you actually meet those people in real life and you, they could have a completely different persona. But of course what they've written on Bitcoin Twitter especially has shaped so many of our thoughts.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, like you're saying, you know, I wasn't really a Twitter person, but Bitcoin be making me like, My most active app when I look after the week is Twitter. I spend all of my time like looking at feeds and then, you know, there's just so many interesting things about Twitter and Bitcoin and it's because of the way Bitcoin really just transcends every facet of life. It pretty much fixes everything. So there's really always new and fresh content about Bitcoin. About something that it has fixed, and maybe that's what the shitcoiners are saying. And you know, you always have to be able to to to to have this information because you know, like like I was just saying, I live in an environment where somebody can challenge you to a question, and then if you're not prepared, you know, you might you might you might you might you might make them doubt Bitcoin. And and I want to be there. I don't want to be the person who creates doubt about Bitcoin for somebody just because I don't have. as much knowledge about what they're asking me. So I go to Twitter, I like to ask some tough questions about orange peeling people, you know, knowing, because you never know who is out there willing to just challenge you and then make you feel a bit less knowledgeable about what you're doing. And I met most of these people and I just really, I literally almost all the time just put them back at their seats with some really pertinent questions and stuff. So, and all of that is coming from

Yeah. Excellent. Yeah, it's a brilliant way to sharpen your tools. You mentioned the Coinbase earlier on, which was obviously one of the services available to you back in 2017. How's that kind of developed over the years? How many on-ramps to Bitcoin do you have now? Is there a lot of services available to you or are you still dependent on You know, big corporate like clusterfucks like Coinbase?

Oh, uh, you know, I've really, I think I, when I used Coinbase that time, my experience. So I think what happened in this time is like somebody cloned Coinbase website at the time and then they used it to scam a lot of people. Mm-hmm. And I was part of that. So yeah. And since then I just had like a bad experience and I've never used, um, Coinbase. Again, and they're just like tilted to anything that is just really Bitcoin, Bitcoin related. I'm not into, I've never used Binance. I downloaded the app once because I was trying to do some research because I was at, I worked at Paxful, so I was doing some research with different exchanges and then seeing their features. So yeah, most often I'll just get into this. Other exchanges just to see how it works, but everything has been just Bitcoin, Bitcoin focus, right? And I use Moon Wallet, Sparrow, Electrum for different purposes and a few different things for different things. And there's just a lot of things in Bitcoin-only services that you don't even need to think about what the others are doing. You know, so I don't know how Coinbase has developed so far. I heard a lot of things going on, the founder with the, with the, with the, with the US and the regulations. And, you know, I really, I really just want a way where as time goes on, this, most of these other people will think that they can just, they can use the name of Bitcoin to get their way around. I just want them to like to get off. And so the road gets bigger for more and more people who need to know Bitcoin for what it is truly to join the network. Yeah.

When you are talking to newbies or your friends and family and they're ready to hit that buy button, is there, do you have ATMs around Cameroon? Is it easy to find peer-to-peer Bitcoin or are you still completely dependent on internet services?

No. So we don't have like Bitcoin ATMs. There are a couple of people that are looking to bring such projects here, but I think we're not right yet specifically for Bitcoin ATMs. Okay. So Paxful is one of the go-to places where people can just go buy Bitcoin P2P. And so I've been able to build myself Like around people who trade Bitcoin a lot. So let's say I have $5,000 Bitcoin and it's 12 midnight and I need cash. So I have like 5 people that I could just call and, hey man, I need, I need, I have some Bitcoin, I need cash. I send the Bitcoin, they send me the money through my mobile money. So it comes directly to my phone and good. I could do what I can do. So I either use like a platform like Paxful or I just go to the people around on WhatsApp. They're always everywhere. And since I've been doing lots of trade with them, like for money that I want to use and stuff, there's that trust. And, you know, it's pretty much very particularly for me, it's easy for me to go about my life like that. So I just do that. Then I'm looking for like different new services, like gift card, like buy gift card with Bitcoin and stuff. So, and then I also use Bitrefill a lot to buy airtime Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. So there are these new things I'm testing. So I'm gradually building myself to be using just Bitcoin. I want to like maybe sometime next 2, 3 years, everything around me, like, yeah. With just me using Bitcoin everywhere, any, anything that I want to do. And I'm also trying to talk to some businesses, places where I really go, go maybe on weekends to take a drink, to orange peel them. It's a whole process, but I think it'll come, they'll come along. So if these places where I go to buy my stuff and take drinks, they do accept Bitcoin, there'll be no need for me to change. So I want to get to the point where I don't need to convert the money to fiat. I just use it just like that. Yeah.

So far I've managed with my favorite restaurant, my mechanic, and the guy that cuts my hair, although he's chickening out a little bit recently. So it's happening very slowly. And like you, I have a little Signal group where if I need to, if I need a fiat on-ramp, There's always someone there willing to buy the Bitcoin so that you can— we'll get there. We'll get there. It feels slow, but in the grand scheme of things, this is happening at lightning speed. Yeah, it's— All right, so back to the book, or like the comic as Lauren called it. You described to her your driving force and your reason to do it. I'd like to know, How did you find the illustrator for it? Was this just a friend of yours or you paid in Bitcoin or somebody just wanted to be part of the project?

So like I told you, I created a group, a mastermind back in 2017. One of the guys who did the comic, like who's actually the project manager of the comic, was actually one of the guys I used to mentor back in 2017, right? So And he understands how I think, the vision, the mission, and stuff like that. And I paid him in Bitcoin. So he was a project manager and then he had 2 other guys that were like doing the thing. So I came up with the scenarios and with him, because he's a very good writer and very good researcher at that. So we came up with the whole idea and then he managed the project. with the comic guys and that's how we did it. It was pretty much very, let me not say easy, but was easy. We could easily just get along even at the difficult moments in the project because we had like a relationship back then. And even when I left Paxful because I was using my earnings from Paxful to be able able to fund the project. So the actual laid me off in November last year. So, and my plan was to like that, that November where I was getting laid off, my plan was like finish the, the money that was in the contract. And then I launched the book in December of 2020, right? But as I cut, I was cut off, my, the plans changed, right? So I had to divert some of the money back to some family things that I put Yeah, a bit further and stuff like that. So it dampened on the project, but the guy understood because of our relationship, right? So he didn't give me like a lot of stress and stuff like that. Yeah. But the only stress I was like, I was really feeling excited to launch the book in December, which was not possible because of funds and stuff like that. And the guy was like, Right now, um, doing like the digital marketing and then email marketing of the group. There's still one of the guys I used to mentor back in 2017. Yeah.

And did you list on, you listed on Geyser as well, I think, if I remember rightly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, support that I got from, from people like you and other guys, yeah. Helped me like to put things together and then Paying it off and all this stuff. You know, when you are, I was really like very invested in, I invested like all everything on the project and I was just like, I'm doing this for the long time, right? And whatever happens, this is Bitcoin and whatever happens happens, right? I was not really thinking about The outcome, right? But I was just like, focus first on the project because, you know, there are times when, when you think about the result too much, the outcome of what you do or something that you're doing, you tend not to, to, to have the willpower to continue doing. So I just like tend to focus on the work and then blind myself from the outcome first. So when I'm done, we'll figure the outcome out. So there's a lot of figuring out that I'm doing now. that if I thought about, I wouldn't have started the project in the first place. Yeah. Especially about distribution. Distribution in Africa is a whole hassle. So, so that, that alone could make me not to do the project.

Exactly. Yeah. You want to do one stage at a time, you know, keep that flywheel turning and because yeah, you'll get completely overwhelmed if you think about the whole thing. So That was actually my next question. If anybody wants to buy the book, how can they get a copy? Is there a website up? Can they get it from Amazon? Is it on ConsenSys Network? Do you sell them in person at conferences? What's the best way?

So the digital copy is on the website. So the website is on my bio on Twitter. So the digital copy is there. Somebody can just go pay with Lightning. Then you have the digital copy. That's already cool. But for Amazon, we're currently putting, doing everything to make it available on Amazon by the end of this month of June. And Consensus, I'm in talks with Consensus to put the book on their website and stuff like that. And we also translate into different languages, right? So We just finished the French version. And then there is Swahili, there's Pidgin, uh, Yoruba, uh, Pidgin English that we speak in Africa too. And, uh, there's this other guy I, I got to know from Indonesia. So he's just putting it like out in Indonesian language. So they're just different languages that are coming up and, um, it's pretty much It's getting really interesting, but the biggest challenge I've had is distribution in terms of physical copies, right? Like what I started doing is sending out digital copy to Bitcoiners around different countries in Africa that I know that have worked with But the, the, the issue is these people have their own things that they're doing. And so when somebody asks that they need the book, sometimes the delivery is late. Sometimes there's customer service and stuff. So it's really, I'm, I'm still trying to figure out a solution for that, but I know Amazon, once it's on Amazon, is gonna help a lot because Amazon pretty much takes care of everything. Yeah. So, but there's this other company that does distribution in, um, Africa, so I'm I'll begin to start talking with them sometime next week. So there's a lot of figuring out to do that I'm currently doing just to make sure that people get the book easily. But the physical, the digital copy is what I can say 100% that once you go to the website, you click, you pay, you download, then maybe when Amazon comes out, then yeah.

All right. Excellent, mate. I'm going to ask you the final question.

Yeah.

If you had one last orange pill left to give to somebody, who would you give it to and why?

Oh, that's a tough one. I think I'll give it to my wife, right? I'll give it to my wife because I think she's gonna live longer than I am. And I think she has pretty much everything that it takes to keep the family afloat. She has a heart of gold. She can really look at the future and if she had the security of Bitcoin, I think she would let the legacy go on pretty much the way me and her have planned out so far. So I think she deserves the last orange pill. Yeah.

Beautiful. Right now, does she think you're just some crazy dude that talks about Bitcoin all of the time and put too much work and effort into a book?

Yeah, before she thought that I was crazy, right? Yeah. But when she sees the conviction, the consistency, the purpose, the mission, and how that has renewed me as a person and it's affecting her positively, she begins every day to realize, and especially when I talk about The generational wealth aspect of Bitcoin, how that can keep us in a very, very safe place. Because in Africa where I am, people don't really talk about generational wealth that much, right? So you have like very few families that have cool like stuff. You know, I think we're the very, very, very first to be able to really look at Bitcoin and say, oh, this is going to be something that is going to live forever. So like it's better for us to hang on onto something and then see how we can really just help everybody in the family. And she realizes that. So I was talking to my father-in-law about Bitcoin and I just narrowed it down to generational wealth after talking about how secure, how unhackable and everything Bitcoin is. So I just went straight to generational wealth. I was just telling him that, you know, if you put 0.01 Bitcoin, which is about, say, considering the price of Bitcoin today, which is about, I think, $200 and something, right? And when you translate that, that's like 150,000 francs CFA. You put that Bitcoin and leave it for 10 years and you might be, hey, billionaire in CFI. I was like, how is that possible? Right? But I made him to understand that. I showed him the charts of the halving, right? And I told him why it's halving, right? No matter the fact that it's halving, but the value of the previous, the value of the present is way better than the value of the previous, even though the value of the present, the number of the present is smaller. So I explained that to him. I was like, wow. Then, you know, they always have this conspiracy talk, like who controls Bitcoin? You know? So I had to open the Bitcoin code. I opened the Bitcoin whitepaper. I told him, this is the— I showed him like on GitHub, this is the code, right? It's something that I myself, I could write. So just like I go to YouTube and I tell YouTube that fetch me this information, it's, it, that's what the code does. And nobody controls the code. The information has been there ever since. So I tried to like give him like some really practical lessons and thank God he's been always fulfilled. He's 16. So, and he always like asks me these really very interesting questions.

You dropped out, but you're back. Yeah. He, you said, uh, he always asks you very interesting questions.

Yes. Yes. So he will ask me like, um, Where does the government intervene when it comes to Bitcoin? I told him that the government has no intervention when it comes to Bitcoin, like Bitcoin, especially if you self-custody your Bitcoin. So this weekend I'm going to be talking to him about non-custodial and custodial wallets. So I'm taking him on like a gradual process because I actually want him to self-custody his Bitcoin. I told him that even if he doesn't get to see the Bitcoin to the level where he wants, right? He still has daughters, he has a son, like 2 sons that are still like 20 years old and stuff. So he could build a legacy through that for them. And yeah, he's very interested in understanding how he could just save money and then leave it for the kids and stuff like that. So. So I'm going to be taking him on that journey.

Yeah. Love it, man. You're doing Satoshi's work and it's so great when you can hook in a family member and have them listen to you and not give you the side eye like you're that crazy dude. It's like, why do we keep inviting him? All right. How come if anyone listening wants to add some value to you either by helping out on your project or buying a bunch of books to give out to their communities or shipping them to a conference or something, how can they reach you? What's the best way to get in contact?

So the best way to get in contact and get a reply like in less than an hour, 30 minutes, it's Twitter, right?

Twitter.

That's it. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, on Giza, we, we, we, we've updated, uh, the project, so we have a plan to from next month to go to different African countries. So we go to all the countries that are on the coast of West Africa. So we have Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Benin, and Côte d'Ivoire, right? So the project is on GIZ. So we are actually raising funds for that. We want to go with about 2,000 books, right? So we go to those communities, places that accept us and we organize something and then talk to people about Bitcoin and leave books with them and go to the next country. Just like that. I want to do something like that when school resumes in September. So we start another stuff and then, yeah. So we're currently raising funds for that. So if somebody wants to like say, I want to help with 10 books, I want to give you guys 50 books or something like that. So Giza is there, is a place where you just go make a contribution and stuff. And by the 14th, I'll be at Cafe Bitcoin to talk about the project of raising, of going to different African countries in a bid to raise funds to be able to go tell families about Bitcoin, because that's my new mission. telling families just like myself. And, and you know, there's this guy I follow a lot. He's called Naval Ravikant, right? Yes. And it's so, so he says, when you do something that is a reflection of yourself, you are authentic and there's really no competition. And how you do it, you, you just do it differently. So each person I talk to is like I'm talking to my wife or my son and stuff. He has this thing in me and, and, and That's what I just want to keep doing. And we have meetups that we do teaching people about generational wealth on Bitcoin. Why? Because the spectrum of Bitcoin in Cameroon, cryptocurrency is just about making some quick cash and rug pull and stuff like that. We think that helping people to think about Bitcoin generational wealth, because most people feel like Bitcoin, I just need to come into Bitcoin and then look for the sweet spot, put my money, and then 2, 3 days cash out and that's it, right? And most of the time when it comes, 99% of the time it fails. Begin to say Bitcoin is bad. And, you know, so what I'm, the approach we're using Here is you don't need to leave your job necessarily, right? Except it gets to a point where you think you're very dissatisfied with it. But you can use Bitcoin as a hedge over your job. Yes, Bitcoin is a hedge over inflation, but you can also use it as a hedge to make your job interesting so you can gain some skills from there, some money, some earnings, and then take part of the earnings and put it into Bitcoin. Don't leave your job. Bitcoin doesn't make you rich overnight. Bitcoin can save the value of what you are working for, right? So that's the kind of thing we tell people because that you, you have people come to you now and then, do I have to leave my job? I want to start doing trading. I'm like, no, no, you don't have to do that. You just have to use Bitcoin as a hedge to protect the value you are creating. And that's what Bitcoin is mainly created for. We just focus on that and then help people to like really look at Bitcoin differently. And we also want to do a Bitcoin halving party in 2024. So we're trying to look at, it's also, you know, people like to come to places where they enjoy and stuff. So why don't we orientate people during that time subtly, but in the midst of really a lot of fanfare and stuff like that. I'm talking to a couple of friends to see how we can put that together in a bid to orange pill more people onto the Bitcoin standard.

Love it, mate. Well, how can we lose? How can we lose when everybody is doing such amazing work out there in the Bitcoin space and we're just getting more and more people every single day, right? That's the point. Every single day, more people join the network. And leave it. That number will go up forever and people will follow you in your footsteps and start creating content in their own way and start educating people in their own way. Um, one person at a day, plebs. This is, this is all we have to do. That's literally, it's that easy. It's that easy.

This is the only thing we have to do. Like there's no, there's no way out of it. We just have to keep telling as much people about, you know, people have already like put me a label. So, oh, that guy's coming, he's gonna be talking about Bitcoin again. So each, each time I said I was, I was leaving, people are not talking about Bitcoin. I just wanna instill, like provoke something. So this talk about money and crypto comes in, and each time I do that, I realized that, I mean, some of my smart friends that do work and stuff, they don't know about money. Like 3 of them had to pick up the Bitcoin Kids book, read how simple it is, like the history of money and all that. Like kind of looked at me like, man, I didn't know. I knew about economics and stuff like that, but I didn't know the history of money and I didn't know that Bitcoin is It's something that was built over time. It's not, it did not just come fall from heaven and then be saving the life of everybody. There's actually a history dating back right from Trade by Patha, you know? So yeah, it's, and I feel very happy all the time when people tell me that this thing is great and I want to get into this space.

Yeah. Well, mate, we'll leave it on that very positive and inspiring note, and I appreciate you coming on. And apologies to the listeners if there were any little interruptions at the beginning there, but I think the rest of the pod was pretty fine. Like, I don't think there were any audio problems at all. So fingers crossed this comes out really well. Thank you for everything that you're doing. in the Bitcoin space. And hopefully one day, well, no, I will say when we finally do get out to Africa and start visiting some countries over there, we'll come and find you. And I look forward to that.

Okay, cool. I'm looking forward to that. And it was a privilege for me to be on the platform and it's always a great pleasure to talk about Bitcoin with fellow plebs that are doing amazing work as yourself. And Me sitting here talking to you is actually very, it makes me feel good and it makes me think that Bitcoin puts everybody on a level playing field regardless of where you are in the world. As long as you understand the Bitcoin standard, you become unstoppable. And thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure.

For sure. See you later, brother. Take care.

Okay, bye-bye.

Well, plebs, I hope you were inspired by that with Zonda. And look at what Bitcoin is doing here. Here's 2 guys and a girl when Lauren came in to ask her, her question.

Completely different parts of the world. We would never ever have met or even spoken or knew each other existed if we weren't working towards the same goal, and that goal being to educate as many people as we possibly can from anywhere in the world, from any age, about Bitcoin and the power of Bitcoin and what it could mean for them and their family and their future.

I say at the beginning of every show, this is what this show is about. It's about bringing people together to have discussions, to create those big-ideared projects. He's written a book, go and support him, please head over to the website in the, uh, in the links in the show notes, you'll find the book there. Reach out if you've got any way at all in which you can help him, maybe you can help with some kind of distribution. I hope Consensus reach out and can get the book translated into as many different languages as possible, and let's get it in the right hands. Let's get it in schools. Not that I believe schools should exist in any way, shape, or form, especially under a state system, but you know all that. But if they're there, let's get good content into them. Let's make sure that kids are being taught real ethics about money, what money is, and what it How it shapes a society and how society has been broken because of the way that the money is manipulated. That that medium exchange which we're all forced to use by the power of our government, and look how it was completely abused in this story in Cameroon, where all of a sudden his father wakes up and his his net worth has just been. Halved overnight by someone pulling a lever halfway around the world. This makes no freaking sense, guys. This makes absolutely no freaking sense at all. And that's why Bitcoin is so important. And that's why we need to keep pushing the message in whatever way you can. And I know people here listening have got their own little pet project that they want to start working on. If only they found the You'll find the time. I know you will. And when you do, you're gonna deliver something very, very powerful that might only change one person's life and improve their family, or it might change hundreds, or it might change millions. It doesn't matter. We need us all singing from the same song sheet and that signal just to be blasted out every single second of the day. And we need more plebs to do that. There is not enough Bitcoin content out there. As much as you think there is, we always need more. Anyway, that's my rally cry. Thank you everybody for listening. Thank you to the show sponsors. As always, you can stack with Swan, Relay, Coin Corner, and Hodl Hodl. And you can always up your privacy, learn about CoinJoin, get over to wasabiwallet.io. And Bitbox have you covered to make sure you take complete control of your Bitcoin. This is the most critical thing that you could do. If you've been listening to the show for a little while, you know I'm a big champion of this, as are other Bitcoin podcasters. Not your keys, not your coins. Get them safe. You can go to bitbox.swiss/bitten and use the code bitten for 5% off. The Bitbox O2 mempool.space. Get over there, have a look around, have a tinker around, click on a block, see what's in there. It blows your mind when you actually see some of the sizes that are being moved around the world in these blocks. It's absolutely incredible. It's a brilliant visual tool as well, and it's a great way to orange peel your friends and family. Get to a conference, Liberty in Our Lifetime is coming up in October. Free Cities Foundation are putting that one on. 10% discount using the code BITSON. Use the link in the show notes. Download Orange Pill app. Find your plebs. Let's make sure we're meeting with each other and creating these events, these meetups, these workshops. Create a conference. It doesn't matter. Get in front of real-life Bitcoiners. It will change everything. Your life. I'm gonna leave it on that. Thank you so much everybody for listening. Thank you Consensus for hosting this on your YouTube channel, and I'll catch you on the next show.