Stablecoins and Identity in Africa, Two Panels | Nairobi

0:00AYou know, we have -- if you want to transact $10, you know, I, I don’t think the financial crime investigators are going to come after us for $10. So that one, you only simply need to have your name, or we simply need to have your phone number. If you’re going to transact $100, we probably need to see a copy of your ID, right? And so as we continue to give you additional service on the platform, we continue to ask for what you call enhanced KYC. Up to that point where we want to know where you live, and here we come to NAV and say, “Look, can you verify that this data is the same?” So identity, and especially when it comes to KYC, it’s always about what financial service do you want to give. I’ll even give you another extra step. It’s different between on-ramp and off-ramp. One is higher risk than the other. Okay, so it’s all we classify that depending on how much you’re transacting, and sometimes. KYC data from the telco is not enough. For example, if you want to go above $500, the KYC data from the telco might not be enough. So you might now rely on, you know, additional, what you call enhanced KYC.

1:04BThank you.

1:10Daniel KimotoThank you. You, as I think folks are gathering questions, I think there’s a question here from Mr. Justice.

1:23DThank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, this is really, really powerful. But because you are too close to the issue, you don’t know how powerful you guys are. Um, Kenya led with the development of MBS as a digital platform. And I was at that time part of an organization that was having a conversation at the international level to try to find out how money and resources can be -- can reach VLK’s users at the village grassroots level. And it was absolutely difficult. I was looking at the market capitalization of crypto today, and I saw that it has hit 3.7 trillion, just crypto alone. In other words, it is more than what a lot of the, uh, the, a lot of countries in Africa have budgeted annually.

1:23DAnd here is this 7 point -- 3.7 trillion. Another I understand that by the end of this month -- next month, it will probably be about $9 trillion. Kenya is walking this pace as if we don’t know what the world is doing. How are we putting our hands in this pie? 4 years ago, I understand, that there was a task force that was appointed to look at how regulation could come into crypto. You are the experts. My question is, where is it now? Because when you mention crypto to banks, central bank and other commercial banks, it is as if you have mentioned the word devil. A lot of countries are now embracing this, and regulation and policy is what needs to usher in our own entry into this important business.

1:23DSo I am sure that you do know where this is, or if you don’t know, let us know how you can play a role in convincing the government that they need to be in crypto worldwide. Thank you very much.

4:41BThank you.

4:42Daniel KimotoThank you for that question. I think part of it can be answered here. I think also the next panel may cover a part of it, so stay tuned for the next panel as well. They should have somebody who has a response to that. So I think, do we have anyone who would like to take that as we close to winding up?

4:58AYeah, no, that’s a really good question. And having been involved in the industry for many years now, there’s been various efforts that, you know, a lot of players have done in terms of trying to get especially the regulators closer and closer to understanding the technology and the opportunity at hand. I like what you said, that, you know, mentioning crypto around bankers and especially regulators at some point was very dangerous. You know, I think, I think we’ve lost professional networks because we’re in crypto. But now everyone is sort of warming up to it. And to bring you up to speed, in the last couple of years there’s been a few sort of spirited sprints in terms of drafting regulations.

4:58AThese are already sort of at advanced stages in Parliament in terms of discussion and being passed. You know, there are other players who are not in this room who have been very closely involved in that process, supported in a lot of resources. You know, you know that’s a you know that’s a lot that’s a lengthy legal process. So we have our lawyer friends who are not here today, but we we are a big community and everyone so many stakeholders have been involved from us who run businesses and doing investments to the ones who you know in charge of compliance and regulations. So there’s a lot of concerted effort, I can assure you.

4:58AAnd you know I’ve been playing my part. Daniel has been playing a very big part, and we’ve all been contributing to bringing these closer and closer together. And there’s a very big opportunity in the next couple of months. Hopefully, once we get the regulations in place, this room will probably be 3 times or 5 times as big, because then everyone will get very comfortable in investing in this industry. And finally, I can, you know, reach out to the professional networks who abandoned me and tell them now it’s legal.

6:52FYeah.

6:52Daniel KimotoThank you. Thank you for the question and thank you for taking it. I think now we’ll -- as we draw close to a close, if you have any questions and you would like to approach any of the panelists directly, feel free to approach them and share your contacts. There’s going to be a bit of a networking session towards the end of this event. As we close, there’s 2 questions. The first one is, as -- and this one I think goes to you, Nav, and of course Isha. So looking at identity, as more and more people get their identities, and once we get to the point where we even know where verifiable addresses are and where people live, what else gets unlocked beyond just a seamless ability to transact? What are the industries would be touched by very good identity systems if we set that up. And Duncan, you have a lot of experience from your time in the identity company. Feel free to jump in on this one as well.

7:55GYeah, so beyond finance and Web3, it’s basically everywhere you plug your address. It’s smart devices, it’s e-commerce, it’s Imagine that you had a verifiable address and you had a document that was sent to you. Everyone’s signing docs on DocuSign or one of these other kind of platforms where your verified address could get injected into legal documents. The same thing with your insurance company. The use cases are endless. Emergency services. It’s wherever you’ve ever shared an address, you could actually easily expand into that space. So before Okaya moved to Nigeria, We pivoted product and market out of Kenya into Nigeria. We used to do last-mile delivery in Kenya for all the Art Cafe brands, for Hot Boy, for a whole bunch of brands.

7:55GThe market wasn’t big enough for us. We found a much more urgent issue, which was the KYC for addresses. And so we went to Nigeria. You know, we worked with Uber. We were one of the handful of companies in the world that had access to Uber’s API. So we were able -- you were able to hail a cab through your OKHi address app. And we cut Uber’s pickup time by 20% on average. So if you have a high-quality digital address that’s verified, you could plug that data into any space and basically enable seamless use cases.

9:17Daniel KimotoYeah, thank you for expanding my thinking around that.

9:24AJust to add on to that, years ago I sort of came -- designed this, what I call like the identity journey from cradle to grave. So when you think about identity, from when you are born, you got that birth certificate. That’s your first identity, right? And every time you interact with an authority, you go to school, you get a new identity, you know. So identity keeps on following you around. And so even Even non-financial, other non-financial use cases. When you’re getting a SIM card, you know, that’s just communication. When you’re signing up at immigration, they want to know where you’re going and, you know, all that.

9:24ASo there’s a lot of -- what you need to follow is just a human being from cradle to grave, and each and every of those points, there’s identity embedded, including e-commerce shopping. Yeah, some of them, some services are gated. So what’s going to happen is Adoption is going to rise faster in sort of regulated industries, right? So financial services are going to have faster adoption. At some point, maybe commerce. Now what’s going on in Europe, sort of age-gated services now require you to verify your identity. So it’s coming closer and closer home, and you’ll find it across so many different use cases. And because of the digital device, I mean mobile phone, it’s not so much as Wow, thank you.

10:43Daniel KimotoIsha, would you like to wrap it up?

10:44BI do.

10:47HI mean, these guys gave very serious financial services, obviously, but I’m going to talk to you about some of the fun ones that I have kind of seen in the recent past. EU just had a regulation that said that you actually have to verify that you’re over 18 to be on Tinder and any dating app, and so you need identity for that. When you order food, especially alcoholic beverages in a lot of countries, I literally in New York have to give my passport or some kind of thing to the guy who’s delivering it.

11:20II don’t want to do that.

11:20HI don’t want to give him my passport, say, for a bottle of beer. And so identity can be used for like a -- like, you’d be surprised how much you use identity on a day-to-day basis. Things like even like dating is because identity gated. And I think it’s just like tip of the iceberg now, right? With digital identities, a lot of the world didn’t have digital identities and still doesn’t have it. With digital identities becoming more popular and more commonplace with everyday people, I think you’ll see some really interesting use cases. I think 6 months from now when we’re sitting here, we’d be like, oh, digital identities, yeah, of course we have them. I don’t know how many of you have them right now. I have one.

11:57FBut 6 months from now, I think everybody will have them and you’ll be using them on a daily basis.

12:01ASorry for having so much talk about identity, but I kind of go crazy when this topic comes up. I just have one quick anecdote about the most powerful story I’ve ever heard about identity and how it can change a country’s life and people’s lives. So one time there was this young boy who lost both parents and he was an orphan. Luckily, the country he came from had a really good sort of identity database, and they were able to identify that there is 2 adults who’ve passed away and there’s a child who’s been left without parents. And quickly, because they had a digital database that, you know, keeps all this, they were able to intervene and make sure that that child is supported through school in scholarships and, you know, their school fees are not up to you.

12:01AThe child was brilliant, and they ended up, you know, going all the way to university. University, and you know they finished university, and because they were brilliant they got into one of the Big Four. So the guy when he was telling us his story was a partner at KPMG, and thankfully the government had a really good identity platform and was able to intervene in his life when he was really young, and he was able to have a whole completely different opportunity in life only because of that intervention. And so that’s how powerful it is. when you have proper identity infrastructure in a country.

13:17Daniel KimotoWow, thank you, thank you. I hope you guys have enjoyed and have learned as much as I have. The bet that the organizers of this panel took was that identities is going to be the next frontier. We have stablecoins, next is going to be identities, and I feel like the bet paid off. And I wish you guys the very best. Best in what you’re working on. Thank you all for your attention and your questions. Feel free to reach out to the panelists after this or during the networking session. Thank you for your attention. My name is Daniel Kimoto. It was a pleasure being the moderator of this panel.

13:53FEnjoy your evening.

13:59KAnother round of applause, please, for our moderator and our panelists. Shukran.

14:05FGet me a photo.

14:11LYes, sir.

14:30KThank you, guys. Thank you so much. Daniel? Sorry, I need to -- I don’t ask him in person because I’ll whisper into the mic, by the way, do it. So, Ibrahim, I promised you something, but I’m going to bring you in.

14:51LI’ve just --

14:52Kthat’s what I was checking. I’ve just found an opportunity, so I’ll bring you in in a bit. In the meantime, you You can just download MiniPay, and then Ibrahim will take us through what we need to do. Right. So that was a very powerful conversation on identity and trust, right? And these basically are the foundations of any financial system. I don’t care what people think, those are definitely the foundations of any financial system. Now let’s bring it a bit closer to the ground. Beyond the frameworks and the flows, how is stablecoins being used day to day.

15:26BRight.

15:26KAnd we’re talking about in places like markets and communities across the continent. Our next panel is actually going to take us there. Across the continent, the reality looks like this. 7 out of 10 stablecoin users rely on them for remittances and savings, not just speculation. And that’s according to the Yellow Card report. And we’re seeing new use cases every single day, from crop insurance payouts to payroll systems in Ghana. This is what beyond the hype actually looks like. So please join me in welcoming our 3 panelists, starting with Derek Bundy. Remember, guys, we’re doing Oscars. So there was a -- there’s a whoop somewhere, but there’s a whoop is missing now.

15:26KSo Derek Bundi is the CEO and co-founder of Pretium Finance, right? Derek is a fintech innovator who co-founded Pretium Finance after working as a software engineer. The platform, active in 7 African countries, empowers users to spend digital currencies like USDT directly on everyday purchases without conversion to local fiat. Our next panelist is Dominic Mulinda. Dominic Mulinda is the Chief Product Officer at Honeycoin. Dominic leads product strategy at Honeycoin, a payments and stablecoin platform now active across multiple African markets and processing millions of dollars every single month. Following a $4.9 million seed round -- yeah, $4.9 million seed round. Right, he is driving its expansion into new settlements across the continent, new markets across the continent.

15:26KAnd our last speaker -- I like the way we have gender balance because we had one female, we should have now another one -- and that is Faith Nyambura. Karibu, Faith. Faith is a co-founder of GoChapa. Faith is bringing mobile-first crypto payments to underserved African Markets. Gojapa is simplifying peer-to-peer stablecoin payments, making them accessible to the many, not just the few. And it gives me great pleasure to welcome our moderator for this particular panel, and that’s Ronald Ziok. Karibu sana.

17:51FWow.

17:57MIt’s an honor to chill with the big boys here. One is operating in 7 African countries, the other did a pre-seed round that was very, very public, you know, like everywhere on the news. And then this other guy’s here with GoChapa, like trying to onboard like average users onto Web3 and growing really fast. It’s a pleasure. Yeah, I think for me, uh, and don’t worry guys, we won’t take long, I promise you. After there’s food, so chill. Um, guys, like, it’s, it’s, it’s always, um, really important to go back to the beginning, right? The origins. So I’m, I’m pretty curious, uh, starting with you, Derek, like, how did you get into the Web3 space? What was that aha moment that made you feel like, hey, I feel like there’s a gap here and I want to build and make something better in this space?

18:58DerekThank you, Ronald. Great to see you. I greet you. My name is Derek. By background, I’m a software engineer. I’ve been building, uh, level for the longest time, pushed a lot of the financial services and financial tools that are available to business across Africa. All my development experience have been mainly on the fintech space. Within that, dealing within the fintech space, I remember I’ve been building financial services and financial tools for startups. Who had presence in couple of African markets. Out of that, I had an opportunity to touch a lot of payment rails across Africa, starting with Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and a couple other African markets.

18:58DerekAnd it happened within the engagement or within the day-in, day-out activity. I was introduced to blockchain technology. Now, this was quite an exciting Exciting technology for me, because initially or now my former employers managing all these financial tools across Africa. Remember, we are touching a lot of payments, and across Africa it’s it’s so unique or kind of weird. The financial payment or the financial landscape in the context of Africa. Kenyan markets. It’s totally different in another African markets. With such kind of the pain point we are -- we were experiencing then, and now here we’ve been introduced to blockchain technology, I could see the possibility of this new technology and how it can really bridge these 2 worlds.

18:58DerekI In such a way now, it’s a bridge between what we were doing in Nigeria and Kenya, bringing the unity across the stacks. These now are business tools that is serving the guys in Kenyan markets. And now we have other customers in another African market. Now, for me, I visualized this new technology as a bridge between the two worlds, bringing the unity among the business operations. And since then, now when Pritia Makro was born, and, uh, now upon having been introduced to this new thing, it couldn’t really fit with the current structure of my former employers. Remember, uh, crypto is not a thing you go and tell business -- business guys, let’s introduce this new technology into our daily operations.

18:58DerekSo that wasn’t quite, uh, quite of a conversation we could do then, but I pushed it out now to start building as a separate entity. And since then, we chipped out with my co-founder Chris. He’s there, by the way. We are a small team. In every meeting we meet the Pretium team, we have Chris there, we have Faith there. So basically, that’s all about me.

22:11FThank you.

22:14MOver to you, Dominic.

22:15ORight, that’s a really cool story. I’m drawing so many parallels because we kind of ended up at the same place with different origin stories. So our superhero arc, which is really bad, was when we set out to start Honeycoin a little over 5 years ago. It’s more like if Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee and Stripe had a baby. That’s essentially what we’re trying to do, right? We wanted to help creators on the continent be able to easily monetize from a global audience and receive payments in crypto, but certainly have it settled in their local fiat. So we deployed this in Nigeria, we deployed this in Kenya and Ghana at the beginning, and that’s where we started.

22:15OAnd we got very varied results. And let me just say, we did not end up -- we are where we didn’t think we’d end up, but it’s just by following out a thread. And the real, let me say, light bulb moment for us clicked with us when we started realizing a lot of the power users and the customers that we are serving, the big pain points that they had where they would lose so much time and so much value between the point where they actually have settled the money that they have earned, especially from cross-border payments. And we’re like, hey, they -- I mean, at the time in 2020, you could already see the writing on the wall.

22:15OStablecoins are there. They provided such programmable ways in which you can be able to shorten that time and reduce the fees, the, the amount of loss that people are losing in those kinds of transactions, and just have it settled in their local fiat of their country of choice. And so that’s how we started And at the moment, basically, we’ve just built a more advanced version of the same.

23:58FAmazing.

24:00M5 years is a really long time in crypto, man. Congrats to you guys.

24:07ISo it’s such a pleasure to be seated next to people who have been in the space for 5 years, considering us, you’re not even a year within the space, but It’s all good, we are learning from you guys. Yeah, so for GoChapa, GoChapa was started to solve just one problem: the complexity that is within the crypto space. And a lot of people, when they’re starting in the space and the applications that were there and they’re still there, is that they are very complicated and not very beginner-friendly. So GoChapa was built with the whole idea of wanting to simplify the complex entry into the crypto market. So basically a very simple UI/UX and what we are already used to using, which is mobile money entry. So basically being able to buy crypto from as low as 200 bob from your M-Pesa and you have crypto in your wallet.

25:11MThat’s really amazing, and I love the fact that you’re working on that. Man, like, my entry into this space was very painful because you guys know, like, uh, how many of us here while in campus used to do these, uh, gigs online to get to survive and have money to party? Yeah, I see you guys. So for me, uh, I did I did, I did a gig, uh, back in the day, and then I was supposed to be paid by stablecoins, uh, on, I think, Tron network. At the time, I didn’t really understand all these things. So, um, for one reason or the other, I, I lost these funds because, you know, you just know how complex it is, right?

25:11MYou have to send this address, but then you -- I sent the wrong one, so the funds went to a different blockchain. I mean, it was very, very painful, and I love the fact that you’re trying to abstract some of these pain points. Back to you, Derek. I remember last year there was this really nice video where -- was it Tosin Onyekosi from Nigeria? She only had MiniPay and Pretium, and she didn’t have cash. cash, right? So she just came with the MiniPay wallet and Pretium, and she was able to navigate, like, payments here in Nairobi. Like, would you like to take us through that user journey?

25:11MWho uses Pretium while crossing different borders? And what is that magic moment that makes it 10 times better than, you know, like a person choosing to go with their Visa card, for instance?

26:56DerekThank you, Ronald. Uh, Pretium, we bridge the existing payment, uh, links with blockchain ecosystem. Uh, the beauty of our unique value proposition with Pretium, we touch the everyday payment portion of it in such a way everyone from your destination country For us who are based in Kenya, we use our mobile payments in payment on everything. Like when you came here, you paid your Uber with your mobile wallet from M-Pesa. It’s the same experience with William Finance. In this case scenario, we like to put it into this perspective: pay with stablecoins as much or as much as we are. Pushing people in our adoption of the blockchain technology across Africa.

26:56DerekThere is a bridge of the seamless integration of these digital assets on everyday payments. That’s where now Pridium comes in. In such, in such cases where now you don’t need to do a P2P for you to get fiat when you, you are in possession of stablecoins, you are able to use the same stablecoins on your everyday payments. Another use case where now preterms comes in is now probably like if now you are flying into Kenya, we are able to plug you into the existing payment rates and you pay just like local. We under conversation with Taylor. Taylor came in the other day. Now for him, he only earned access to stablecoins and we are able to plug in him.

26:56DerekTo local payments. For him now, he has been paying with stablecoins for all his engagement within the context of the Kenyan markets. If Taylor now flies to Nigeria, for example, within the same, same platform, we just switch the country in-app and we plug in him to the existing or the mainstream payment infrastructure in Nigeria. So the platform, we extend the functionality to where now within implicate the everyday payments. Like, I don’t remember the last time I used my M-Pesa wallets. I’ve been paying my internet connections using stablecoins because now we act as a bridge between the existing payment rails and the blockchain technology. Another, another good use case we’ve seen on our platform is people doing -- using our platform to do intra-Africa cross-border border payments in such a way if I have my family who are residing in Zambia, for example, I’m able to switch the country up and send money back home.

26:56DerekSo we, we are operational in 7 African markets. So this kind of ecosystem we are creating where now the language of stablecoins or the language of blockchain, it’s no longer a complexity because the reason or Where we are coming from, where why crypto crypto it’s all has been always been tapped as a scam. It’s probably if I introduce one of my friends to the crypto, probably I give them stablecoins or whatever the assets, and at the end of the day, if they don’t have a way to cash them out or to convert them into local currencies, it becomes an issue.

30:17FAs As long as something have been tagged as a currency, it fundamentally should integrate with the system. That’s the kind of the aspect that we have been looking at. And maybe to mention, we have already restored the 10K because that’s really big. Yeah, you mentioned that’s like what’s starting up. The problem is how do we get like local creators here to be able to play? And then they can -- these funds can certainly be their local funds, right? So you guys something close to like a Web 2.5 thing or something called stablecoin sandwich. So like, why is this hybrid approach really the winning strategy, especially for the African market?

31:17ERight. So I think this is the point where many people have to stand on a conviction.

31:25FSo for us, the number one reality about this is that they live in their different cities. That is what we know. That is what is popular.

31:39EAnd very recently now, people have been talking more about stablecoins. So to build something that’s purely on-chain is to ignore really the installed trust that people have with the traditional finance system, as their bank accounts, investments, money. And it’s the same case even cash.

32:00FTo some extent, certain markets, I mean, 90% of people are sitting there taking cash.

32:08EBut then to build, um, to build something visually attractive is also -- you know, the programmable benefits that you get building content. And so our conviction as Honeycomb is to kind of find a synthesis between the two where we can abstract the rails, right, where we are focusing really more on the outcomes than on, than on like what rails we use. Because people buy outcomes, they do not buy chains. People buy -- want to know that, hey, if I’ve been paid in Amsterdam for an inventory shipment that I’m expecting, I can absolutely in my Kenyan bank account in T+0, unlike if it were, you know, traditional rates and you have to wait 2 days or experience very punishing FX costs where you’re losing between maybe even 2 to 7% of the value of that particular transaction. And this is a genuine problem.

33:10FIt cuts across multiple verticals, cuts across multiple markets, and that’s the thing that we’re trying that you need to try and build a settlement layer that can handle T plus 0 to actual settlement times, allow you to process smaller payments that’s in the scheme of the settlement, or via the intermediary to move on to the next operation. So a hybrid approach is the one that we stand by. We have a lot of information about those. You see, that’s what’s pragmatic. Are these my friends?

33:48ENow in a legitimate industry, because, uh, I get calls and I’m like, hey, uh, I want to move this amount of money and I hear there’s this thing I saw on the news, something I think the US, where stablecoins are now legitimate. So how do I go about it, right?

34:06FAnd you see, this is just Like everyday people who don’t know anything, don’t know anything about the technology. Yeah, over to you. I have 200 shillings, right?

34:22EI’m only new to our platform and I want to get USDT.

34:27JLike, what are the key moving parts that you guys have to connect behind the scenes to make So basically, on the back for you, you deposit your shillings, uh, M-Pesa, then you credited your 200 worth of USDT. But what usually happens behind the scenes is that first of all, we need to have an M-Pesa API integration. That helps us basically receive the message in real time. You send the message right now, we receive it immediately for us to be able to settle your request for USDT. So on the other part is also we have -- we ensure that we have liquidity, uh, USDT liquidity on our platform and other stablecoins as well.

34:27JWe have USDC as well, so we ensure we have USDT USDT or USDC, whichever stablecoin that someone wants to purchase in terms of liquidity to just fasten the process. So there’s also that. Then the other aspect we have to cater is the FX conversion rate. So what’s the market rate for US dollar at the moment? Is it 130, is it 128, 129? So also that happens the market automatically depending on how the rates are on that specific day. Then the other thing that we have to consider is actually those 3. Yeah, so basically it’s like buying bundles. So you buy from your airtime that you have, you want bundles.

34:27JYou don’t see the whole process of servers, cables, and all of that. It’s just a one-time transaction, and you have your USDT.

36:41FBut now you expanded your offerings to have a B2B offering. I’m curious, like, how do you solve the challenge of scaling trust, especially trying to accommodate B2B? For us, it’s leading to multiple problems. What they said in the right context is, if we promised to convert, if we promised in this sense, in a secret sense, to stay with conversion, we stand, we live to that promise. In the same way, vice versa, the same way. And I would say that’s what really has pushed us to convert us to something. What’s the most important lesson you learned about making your app easy to use for like data natives? It’s a good question.

37:50EUm, so I really believe that design is very, very important. So I really strongly abide by this rule called the mom test. And the mom test and the heuristic here is if your mom can use it in 30 seconds, then it means something that you can use, right? And so our motto is to make it as crypto as possible, right?

38:19FVery clear, no complexity, but very clear. You know, in terms of like, hey, you’re sending this message, you’re gonna receive this text. Having very clear dispatch reports.

38:35OHaving as much chain abstraction as you can. Setting your defaults to automatically like match whatever routing chains or networks that you guys are supporting without really having to burden the user. And of course, for the more sophisticated guys, having advanced settings like a tap away for them to do their own custom configurations. Maybe I want to move my stables through Tron instead of like, you know, BSC or ETH. Let them have that option, but still abstract as much as possible, make it as crypto hidden as possible. Because again, at the end of the day, people buy the outcomes, they really don’t buy the chase, right? Have you moved my Poly for me?

39:13FOr not.

39:14OAnd so making the UX as simple as possible is really the guiding principle. If your mom can use it under 30 seconds, then you’ve built something that is usable for the most broad audience.

39:25MThank you so much. Yeah, over to you, Nyambura, before we open to the audience to ask questions. Like, when users try to use the GoChapa app, like, what is biggest point of confusion that users have right now, and how does your wallet design help them avoid that confusion?

39:49ISo as I started by saying, Bunqapaa was built to basically eliminate the whole complexity that is when one is moving around buying -- you want to buy an asset or you want to to sell, or however you want to use your wallet. So what we’ve eliminated is basically just having a simple wallet. When you log in into the GoChapa wallet, everything is outlined. You want to buy, it’s very straightforward. You want to sell, it’s very straightforward. You want to transfer to another wallet address, it’s also very straightforward. There are options to also scan QR codes so as to make sure that you get the right wallet address. So basically just making the UI/UX as simple as possible.

40:43MThank you so much. I’ll give it up to the audience to ask 2 questions before I close.

41:00PHi everyone. Don’t want to be the Debbie Downer here, but I have to ask the question. I’m hearing the 2 panels that it sounds like we’re building our own prisons. Because if we all think back to COVID, we had to show pieces of paper just to get into buildings, to get onto airplanes.

41:24FRight?

41:24PWe’re building prisons for ourselves with these tools, where now you have to attach your identity to your wealth. And we live in a time when governments will abduct us. We live in a time when, if you look at France, if they know how much value you have, they will kidnap your family. They will chop your fingers off. They will kill you. And so we are tying our identities, to our value, and now we’re even tying it to where we live. That is insane to me. So I would like to challenge everyone to, instead of when the government tells us, here are the specifications that you have to build your technology to, push back against that. Because they are not our friends, right? They are trying to tell you how to build the prisons to lock you in. So take off the chains of the blockchain and Build for freedom.

42:13MThank you.

42:16KRonald, sorry, not to sound pedantic, I didn’t hear your question. So can I throw an extra question?

42:23PIt was more of a challenge to the developers in the room to build freedom technology, not build prisons.

42:30KNo problem, that’s fine.

42:32Daniel KimotoThank you.

42:38Bfrom Carbon Sink. We’re trying to democratize access to clean tech and to changing what happens. I’m curious to know from any of the panel, how do you decide, or what are the data points that you’re working on to decide which pain point you should address? And then how do you know that that pain point will translate into value? Because you have a pain point that’s common across everybody, but it doesn’t translate into value. So I’m curious to know how We decided this pain point, we’re going to address it. And after engineering, design, and all that, it took time. And then it actually came out to be, without the shotgun approach, it took 3 and a half months. Like he said, it’s a methodical thing.

43:15KAnybody else have a question?

43:19AYes, we do have a question.

43:20FGo first.

43:22KYes, don’t -- just give me one second. Is anybody who has another question? Or we can close it after this.

43:28FSorry.

43:29KLet’s take the 2 questions.

43:30QMy question is about the stablecoins.

43:41DSorry.

43:42QSo from what I understand, when you’re using stablecoins, you’re basically buying more of the US debt. And by using like stablecoins, It’s basically we are accelerating dollarization of Africa. So is that a foundation we want to build on for the future of Africa? Like, you know, we’re basically enriching the dollar. Is that what we want to do? And is it safe for Africa? Um, the other question is Now I’ve asked all my friends this, nobody has given me a great answer.

44:26FLike, why do we call them stablecoins?

44:28QThey affect the dollar, and we know that the dollar has lost its purchasing power at least by 90% since 1971. And this year alone, Q1, the dollar went down by like 11%. So is that really stable?

44:45LAnd should we really Challenge accepted.

44:57KWho wants to take that first?

45:00IOkay, let me take the gentleman’s question first on addressing a pain point, a pain point, and how you know if it’s gonna scale. So basically As I said, as we identified the pain point and built a simple-to-use wallet, and how we are continuing to ensure that we continue to address that particular pain point is also through education. And the education that we are putting out and through any kind of marketing that we’re using is also in a simplified manner, in a way that anyone who interacts with our content anywhere can be able to understand what crypto is, what Bitcoin is, what all these things that we’re talking about is, and also simplifying the jargon through the marketing content that we put out. So once we put out that kind of content, and now we are transferring our followers from different social platforms to our wallet users, they are basically encountering the same thing, a simplified platform through simplified content.

46:13OOkay, so I’m gonna have a crack at the questions and the challenge, if I may. So I’ll start with the gentleman’s question because it kind of gets me towards the why. what we’re doing, right? So the first question you asked was how to pinpoint your problem, right? I’ll be the first one here to say we’ve been doing this for 5 years. I want -- I don’t want to say we’ve tried everything. We have definitely not tried everything, but we have tried many things and we have failed spectacularly, most of them. But the ones that were a hit, we doubled down on it. And so I’m just gonna go back to the point of Pareto principle, the power law.

46:13OFor us, it’s always been optimize for what you have seen to work. As we speak right now, we have 2 products, for instance, in our company, but 80% of the value is still driven by one of them, right? So even every day, we are still optimizing on where should we invest most of our time in building better rails as we build a bigger and sustainable business to provide value for all all the other services that you provide. So keep your priorities straight, pinpoint your value, but there’s this thought process by Nassim Taleb called Via Negativa, learning through abstraction and removal, and that’s one of the things that I am very -- let me just say I’m very staunch about when it comes to our team and our engineering and our shipping practices.

47:43DRemove remove --

47:45Ofind the signals from the noise and double down on building on the signals. Now, the other 2 questions and statement, I feel like they are very philosophical. I am no Milton Friedman, for instance, but I am definitely one who leans towards that perspective. And maybe just to kind of paint a picture, I think for many of the people in this room, we are sold into crypto because of the vision of what, let’s say, the Bitcoin network made available to all of us, right? Purely decentralized, not controlled by a single entity, programmable, transparent, and we can actually move money. And I think it behooves every builder in the room to find out how do they build out or see that vision in whichever way they play come to pass in the world that they live in.

47:45ONow, I, I did start by saying our origin story was I just wanted someone to be paid BTC from Russia and have Kenya shillings here. That is genuinely how we started. But then again, applying the context that I mentioned to you about doubling down on the things that we found valuable, we found that the constraints of the market as we are, we We provide the most value by solving a very specific problem of international finance payments to businesses, right? And who knows? The people who are not shipping, the people who are not optimizing and learning with the times are bound to die. You know, the IBMs of 1970 are not the Googles of the 2000s.

47:45OSo in 10, 15 years in an age of AI, I think crypto payments would be dominant. I think decentralized payments would be dominant. And of course, we are all keeping an eye out to make sure, okay, let’s say we have the stablecoins payments layer already in place, how do we make it more decentralized? And then finally, on the dollarization question, again, I am no economist, I am no Milton Friedman, I am purely a designer and engineer. However, Um, I don’t, I don’t think I want to speak on like world economics with regards to the, the strength of the dollar against any other fiat currency in the world, but really the rationale behind stablecoins is to have it pegged, right, um, towards a particular local currency outside of the volatile blockchain native tokens.

47:45OAnd that can look like any particular fiat currency. However, again, the reality of business is that the power law applies, right? International finance is heavily conducted in dollars, and that’s why there’s a lot more dollar volume. I mean, you just need to look at the market cap. Um, outside of the $2.3 trillion that BTC probably holds in market cap, most of it right now is sitting on stablecoins, right? And that is to show it’s not to say that we do, we do not want to head somewhere. It’s more where every builder has to choose what’s the pragmatic path for them to build towards a future that they want to see.

47:45OAnd so yeah, I pray for us to get to a point where we don’t need to deal with shillings. I can transact with a Nigerian purely on BTC, and we’re building towards that. But there are so many Let me just say there are so many chips that have to fall in line, and we also as a community, we have to drive so much consensus to non-techies, to people who are not deep into the space, to find this consensus to allow them to participate in this particular philosophy as well of payments. It’s almost like we have to yank the world forward towards a different way of thinking about how to exchange value.

47:45OThank Value, you. right?

51:41MYeah, that’s really intense. Just final thoughts as we close, starting with you, Derek. Just for founders in the audience, like, what’s that piece of advice you’d leave them as Especially for folks looking to build the future of finance in Africa.

52:09DerekTake it like a jigsaw puzzle. There are a lot of the puzzles we move until we get it right. Please continue moving those puzzles. It’s the same same puzzles that are provoking governments to act. It’s the same same puzzles that. are provoking people to get kind of what’s really happening on the blockchain space. Keep pushing it.

52:33FThank you.

52:36MAnyone else want to go before we close?

52:45FOkay.

52:45OUm, I think for me, in terms of partnership, I’ll just say trust is important. Borrowed trust. Trust becomes earned trust. The more you become reliable, the more you do what you say you’re gonna do, and the more people can rely on you to provide a service consistently. So just work hard towards getting there.

53:09IClearly, great minds think alike. Also, my parting shot word is trust. And I’ll finish by saying, if we earn trust, we can definitely scale impact.

53:25MThank you so much. Have to put a close there. But yeah, I think for me, stablecoins, it’s that one killer use case that we found in crypto because like the barriers to entry are so low. And this is like a huge pressing need for people in different parts of the world, especially in emerging markets, right? Just go to devs in Argentina and most of them prefer -- if you don’t pay them in stablecoins, don’t even mind talking about the job. Like, they won’t be interested. Just visit our brothers in Nigeria and see How much they prefer to hold USDT and other stables over their own local currency. Thank you so much, guys.

54:17KRound of applause for panelists. Thank you so much, Ronald.

54:23LYou need to compete on the door. If panel one gave us the bigger picture, panel two has shown us the ground reality. Stablecoin as tools for saving, sending, and surviving in the meantime. That brings us to the biggest story: where do we go from here? Yeah, what I want to do is let’s actually take a step back first and look at the momentum of the adoption of these technologies to bring them to a point today. Let me ground this with 2 particular numbers: adoption of sub-Saharan Africa 52% year on year.

55:02KAnd today, 54 million Africans, nearly 1 in 10 people in every region, use stablecoins, right? So it’s not an experiment of any kind. This is now starting to actually become a very mainstream thing. And beyond payments, Ethereum is also funding what matters -- rewiring global Global giving to make support more transparent, efficient, and impactful. It reminds us that what we’re building isn’t just about money; it’s about resilience, access, and what we talked about just now -- trust. Now, there’s food coming. That made you all smile very much. But before we get there, as always, you have to wait a bit more, right? It’s not that long, actually. But before we move into our acknowledgments, that indicates we’ve.

55:02KPretty much at the end of the evening, we want to highlight one of tonight’s partners who has gone the extra mile. Commandora Designs has graciously provided gifts for our panelists and sponsors, um, this evening. It’s just a special token of appreciation basically for the leaders and visionaries who’ve shared their time, energy, and commitments to Africa’s fintech journey. So I’d like to invite all our panelists who are here, starting with Taylor, the guys who did the showcases as well, please. So you can give them a round of applause as they come up. Taylor, Ibrahim, where are you? Jordan Mudemba, Sev as well, please come up. I should have kept the other guys here on stage.

55:02KDuncan, where are you, Duncan?

56:41LI’m here.

56:43KNow, I know Timbo’s not here, but I’d like to ask Nav to come and pick it up on behalf. We’re going to give you a special one directly to your office. That’s how special you are. Um, Isha, stop hiding in the back trying to sneak food out. Isha, we saw you there. Um, could I also have Derek back on stage, please? Dominic, please come back. Uh, and Faith, I know I’ve made you walk up and down, but We just want to say a very big thank you for taking the time and the effort. So, Daniel, do you want to come and give these out? Or did you have somebody in mind? Okay. And the team from Commodore as well, please. This is a -- this is a great photo op. Yeah, by all means, feel free to clap.

57:32MThank you.

57:33KIt’s okay. And for the photo op as well. So we can give out all those. So this is entrepreneur -- English is failing me. This is entrepreneur behind Kamadora Designs.

57:50LHer name is -- my mind is in complete slip right now.

57:57MI’m sorry.

57:58KI’m so sorry. Daisy, that’s the one. And I know this because I went to her wedding. Yeah. So this is Daisy and I bought her products from her before, so they’re fantastic. So we can start with -- you have them in order? Anybody, basically, because we need to -- Ibrahim, then you’re going to stay up here, yeah? So we can go through. I’m saying when you get your gift, you’re going to stay here so you can do the mini thing.

58:31FAisha?

58:34KSo Aisha, thank you so much. Dominic?

58:43LThank you.

58:52BWho’s next?

59:03KDerek, that’s you.

59:04FThank you.

59:28KOkay, so we’ll take it. And then we’ve got another 2 here. Who’s missing one? 3 people missing. Okay.

59:35LI’m missing one.

60:00KSo Taylor started it off and gets the last one. So another round of applause for our panelists. Thank you so much, guys. We are just about to wind up. Have you finished the photos? Ibrahim, do you have a winner to announce or not yet? You have a winner?

60:24LOkay, so we have a winner for this 50,000. Yes, this one.

60:30FYes.

60:33LThe time that we put for the raffle was a little bit shorter than you would have wanted, but we do have a winner. The one who won the 50,000 NPH pump is Eddie James. We have to find the next one. Okay, let me check the next one. As we go take our final refreshments, if you came in to any places and asked for more cups or anything like that, Refreshments, please make sure you go back with them.

61:26KSo if you came with any glasses, or rather the cups for the tea, or if you came with any water bottles, could you go back and put them to the same area?

61:35LSo keep us updated. Make sure they’re here. So there’s Congratulations, Suhail. Overtime.

62:07KCongratulations, and thank you so much, Ibrahim, for that generous gift.

62:18LRight, we have looked at scale, we’ve looked at utility.