# Humans of Crypto #7 with Tey El Rjula - Channel: [CryptoCanal](https://streameth.org/cryptocanal) - Date: 2022-10-07 - Duration: 2:10:01 - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-fLcWeDtnZLY - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLcWeDtnZLY ## Description For the 7th episode of the Humans of Crypto Podcast, we have the utmost privilege to share Tey El Rujla’s journey with you all. Tey El Rujla is the founder of Fluus.finance and currently working on https://superstan.market/, connecting the Afghan and Lebanese diaspora and crypto to help people directly on the ground. This episode is dedicated to all the people suffering across the world from inflation and capital control. May Tey’s journey inspire others to embrace financial freedom. Highlights 00:00 Intro 02:04.19 Tey’s journey 11:56.14 The syrian civil war 15:07.53 Pride… 18:33.76 Apply for assylum 34:28.63 Bitcoin Pizza Day 45:12.65 Global moderator at Bitcoin.com 47:35.11 Private keys destroyed in Beirut explosion 50:28.47 Lebanon: inflation and capital control 53:20.54 Fluus Finance and construction worker 01:01:54.00 Picnic in Afghanistan 01:03:27.34 Superman afghanistan supermarket 01:15:59.66 The best way to understand Bitcoin is to use it. 01:23:21.14 Second life gamer to miner 01:44:56.60 Labeled a spy 01:50:43.31 Hope for Lebanon 02:03:48.70 Show: hoodie from Hcpp Conference 02:08:48.53 “To financial freedom to censorship resistance and to peer-to-peer Electronic Cash” Connect with Tey https://www.linkedin.com/in/tey070/ https://twitter.com/FluusFinance https://fluus.finance/ https://superstan.market 🎙Humans of Crypto https://cryptocanal.org/humansofcrypto/​ 🌳Support us: https://cointr.ee/blockblanc​ 💕Join our community: https://t.me/CryptoCanalCommunity​ 🎙Humans of Crypto https://cryptocanal.org/humansofcrypto/ 🎙 Odysee https://odysee.com/@cryptocanal:2 🎙 Anchor https://anchor.fm/cryptocanal 🎙 Breaker https://www.breaker.audio/humans-of-crypto 🎙 Cast Box https://castbox.fm/app/castbox/player/id4101862 🎙 Google Podcast https://bit.ly/2SHNoTj 🎙 Apple Podcast https://apple.co/3y2t8f8 🎙 Pocket Cast https://pca.st/4odg1x11 🎙 Radio Public https://radiopublic.com/humans-of-crypto-WwegzX 🎙 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/7JOFEdybzdhhIgDDZmCZ3v ## Transcript hello everyone and welcome to episode seven of the humans of crypto podcast this one is a special one i am joined by the one and only tai el rusla we dive into his incredible epic journey uh from living in the netherlands to mining to celebrating bitcoin pizza day and an asylum center here in the netherlands all the way to his current efforts today with fluz finance and super saiyan market by supporting the afghani and lebanese diaspora to spend their cryptocurrencies to help their family on the ground to get the basic necessities this is truly an honor to be able to have this conversation with him to share his journey and his mission with you all this this episode really was very special to record i hope you enjoyed as much as i did [Music] oh my god tay thank you so much for joining me for the humans of crypto podcast welcome it's an absolute honor to have you here really uh you're i can't wait to share your story uh with our listeners so thank you so much for joining thank you thank you for having me yeah i mean it's i i remember our our first encounter when i was you know diving into all your history there's so much to tell but when i think back at the first time i saw you on that stage we were at a permissionless meetup uh or blessed [ __ ] talks i can't remember which one it was but it was like a meet-up and you were talking about taikan at the time like you've done so much since true that was like i think i think we met at blockchain talks yeah in amsterdam yeah yeah yeah yeah pretty cool event uh at that time i think blockchain yeah it is still a buzzword but it was a big buzzword now we have seen big innovations in this space and uh things have dramatically changed at a very accelerated pace so uh yeah humans in crypto is usually under estimated but at the end of every talk like especially in my tedx talks i always say that this this technology is about humans and technology by itself doesn't do anything it's humans that do so uh i'm happy to be here again so tell us so yeah i mean you're so right about the idea of the what do we do with the tech and it's about people and just looking at your journey like can we just like roll back a little bit because i'm not sure everybody who's gonna listen it's gonna be like oh yeah it's hey i know who that is you have the most atypical story and we've we've we have pretty exceptional people in crypto but i think your your journey you know marks people more than anything um do you mind sharing how definitely definitely i mean the journey started in late 2011 beginning 2012. uh it was my first interactions with bitcoin and at the end of 2012 i decided to be a miner so i ordered my first batch of miners from butterfly labs i paid like top dollars for it and i was working in the netherlands we in the dutch terms it's called a canis immigrant or a knowledge worker so i was hired from dubai to come to the netherlands to the hague and train a healthcare company on a crm software called siebel that i used in dubai in my with my previous employer which was du du telecoms the first uh telecom provider in the new section of dubai they were using siebel as a crm system and this company in the hague hired me to train their employees who had exposure to the middle eastern communities here and the north african communities so they wanted an arabic speaker and this is when i came in touch with bitcoin and from you know i was paid to be honest a good salary so the money i saved i bought miners with it i wasn't interested at all in financial inclusion i wasn't interested at all in the things that i'm doing today mainly my interest was i'm seeing something that i can sell for a 20 30 premium and i can make good money out of it i didn't understand what is money i didn't know how to define money how to explain money um butterfly labs was a big flop for me i lost the money that i've put there as i said the machines didn't come the year late like a few months later i heard about the bit main in china that they were releasing new type of miners much more efficient much more cheaper and from the feedback i was hearing on the bitcoin forums that yes it's working so uh i ordered my first batch and i had a small student room in in the hague so it was a one bedroom apartment that usually they rent out for students why i'm mentioning this because the people who rent these type of units they know that it comes all inclusive with water electricity internet you just pay one price i see i'm starting to understand nice miners they need electricity and uh i said you know okay it's a good deal um i was using the miners in the winter as a source of heat so uh 2013 i remember it was the first time that i see snow and the first time that i touched snow and i was so pissed that on my balcony there was no snow at all the room was so like warm that the snow was not able to stick to the ground the noise was horrible oh my god it was unbearable although we were in february like midwinter and one of the neighbors actually complained to the police and said hey he is a guy who has a beard who's a little bit tanned and he keeps on going in and out and we hear a lot of noise so we think he's growing weed in his apartment yeah and there's no snow on his balcony he has no snow so uh the police like they directly took action and uh there was a raid on my house to be honest this was uh towards beginning of march uh 2013 uh the police raided my house and they came yeah they the swat actually came in the house yeah they were looking for ammunitions they were looking for weapons they were looking for drugs so i do remember that they nailed a paper written by hand on the door and they put a lock on the door as well and they said please come to the police station to take your lock to take the key to your apartment so you know i come from the middle east so going to the police is something like really scary and they gave me coffee they apologized and they said please give us your bank account because we need to pay you for the damage that we did for the door and it was a really lovely conversation that time i moved the miners from my home into a warehouse in eppinburg in nodorf [Music] there i like grew this business and i said you know what we're getting a lot of requests from people who want to mine but they don't know how so i bought a case an empty case an empty pc case i removed the pcb boards from the s1 miners at that time and i put them in this case put some light some fans a switch on off button and i started something called turbominer.com this was my first first entrepreneurial business i've never thought of myself to be an entrepreneur and uh because i lived in dubai i know a lot of people there so i started calling guys there and said hey i'm selling plug and play miners you can just put them in the electricity you switch them on and they make bitcoins for you that come into your wallet directly so you don't have to trust me with your bitcoins or with your money or nothing how did i sell them i used to put the miners on a table write the name of the client take some pictures with the date with my driving license next to it and send them when they when the clients see these things then they call me i think there are some pictures on bitcoin talk uh the bitcointalk.org the first bitcoin forum because there i was advertising for it and around that time bitcoin if i'm not mistaken was between fluctuating between like 300 to 600 dollars it breached one thousand dollar 1100 1200 the first time i said yes you know like i'm really smart i bought something at twenty dollars and i'm selling it at one thousand two hundred and i never ever even thought in my wildest dreams that we're gonna see bitcoin at 10k so you know not even to imagine now it it almost hit seventy thousand dollars uh it was good and uh you know as i said i'm just making profits not on the uh price of bitcoin going up my profits were basically on the price of the equipment i was selling and in towards the end of 2013 i get a letter from my previous employer in the netherlands who said you know what we are facing somehow a crisis in the healthcare industry the subsidies that the government used to give to the healthcare sector has been reduced and we cannot anymore employ skilled labor immigrants in our company and pay these high salaries so apologies we have to cancel your work contract now this was in exactly january 2nd 2014 and it i didn't really care a lot because yeah i had bitcoins i had my miners i had my business and i thought you know what i'm gonna just do my uh residency on my own business and here where i knew you know like you have to open abv you have to uh have a certain amount of money to open it i think it was at that time 18 000 euros in capital and uh you know my passport and here where my journey started my passport i'm syrian i carried the syrian nationality my passport was expiring in around uh one year so it was not impossible even to open a business or to renew my residency and as time is passing by we reached march uh 20 2014 and i realized hey my uh you know the time that they gave me to fix out my issue has already passed so three months has passed from january to march 2014 and now technically i'm illegal in the country although my residency card is valid till the end of 2014. so this gave me somehow some comfort to know that my residency is valid till the end of 2014 i still have around nine months to fix my issues to fix my residency issues and i've been in the netherlands since 2011 so almost five years i said yes i'm gonna get my dutch citizenship and my worries will be over yeah 2014 was the climax of the syrian civil war you started seeing on television you know long lines of syrians at asylum centers they're coming to ask for asylum the war in syria was escalating the borders were closing lebanon closed its borders dubai closes borders and they started enforcing visa requirements on syrians and you know it is almost impossible to get a visa due to the war of course so i talked to my lawyer and she said well tay you live in the netherlands you live in the hague you have a dog you have a car you have a scooter you go to cheer for ado our local football club in the egg every sunday you have a social security number you have insurance you have a bank account you have a dutch number you have an address you live in a place you live in a house i don't have any fines i don't have any issues with deal with the law so all these checks they will help you get asylum really quickly but because it is the climax of the syrian civil war and we have around 50 000 syrians coming to the netherlands well it might take you three months and here where it was a little bit you know my pride kicked in i'm living in my own apartment i'm having the best life that i can have clubbing in rotterdam every saturday going sunday having a beer on the adod stadium okay we were losing every time because the five was good by the way i think this is the first time that in this year i don't have they won five games after each other so congrats for them i'm one of their biggest fans and this you know this gave me the feeling that okay it it is looking like my life is coming to an end because i don't want to go to the camp i the idea of going to a refugee camp is an impossible thing it's a no-no uh because the imagina my imagination was playing there will be a tent i have to live with other people i have to live in open space and uh yeah uncertainty so what's gonna happen i said you know what i'm gonna go to uh i'm going back to syria i'm going back to syria although i've never ever lived in syria i have absolutely no clue uh how does syria look from the inside uh lebanon most of my time i grew up in lebanon i studied in lebanon beirut i graduated from the university in beirut so all my life i'm associated with lebanon with dubai although i carry the syrian nationality and you know my parents will definitely not accept that and somehow it was a suicide mission because i'm seeing you know isis and i'm seeing war and i'm seeing all these things on tv and i said you know i'm gonna go and i'm gonna fight isis and i'm i'm going i'm going to just end my life there september this is this was march like march this idea started to play i'm never going to apply for asylum this you know the pride the the the emotions that were explained that no this is not gonna happen march april may june july august i'm struggling in accepting the fact that i have to go to their apple to the northern part of holland to take just take a train from the hague central station to uh zwolle and from zwolle you take a bus to emen and from emin you take another bus to apple so it was relatively if i look at it now it's a it's a trip you know it's a vacation it is you're not going to apply for asylum compared to what people in syria had to go through to come to the netherlands i didn't know this some some people had to walk from damascus to netherlands walk so if you're missing a tram after 12 o'clock going home and you look at your google maps and you say what the [ __ ] i have to walk 40 minutes back home yeah some people are walking from damascus to netherlands literally walking and they use google maps for that you know they use their smartphones for that and we're gonna come to the importance of that point later so uh i decided to in september to ditch my plans going to syria and uh go apply for asylum now what triggered that thing and by the way this story i i wrote a book and i talked about it in the book i talked about the emotional struggle that i had going and leaving everything behind leaving my identity my we always somehow like struggle to explain the dutch identity and queen maxima herself said actually the dutch identity doesn't exist you there is nothing as a dutch identity but for me the dutch identity was going to watch football on sunday having a beer cycling to work driving my car on a weekend having a dog at home going to the coffee shop smoking a joint eating cup uh you know all these uh swearing in in diseases and yeah this is this was the the dutch thing for me you know yeah september september 11 to be exact i was sitting at home watching tv and i saw a big migrant boat boat full of migrants 500 migrants on board it synced in the mediterranean and there were only two survivors something snapped in my head and said they these people are risking all what they have they are risking their life they are literally they don't have any other option to stay in syria what are you doing you're sitting on your couch in the hague in a warm place in the safest place on earth and sorry for the word you're bitching about going to the refugee camp you just flushed your toilet with drinking water those guys they you know they sank in the mediterranean and the reporter was saying that the mediterranean sea today is the largest graveyard on earth from the numbers of migrants that have drowned it became a graveyard and many families have lost their children lost their wives lost their husbands lost their brothers their sisters trying to take one percent of what i'm having in this country so this was this switch i called my landlord and i said sorry mr landlord i have to go apply for asylum but please keep the apartment for me keep my things in the apartment i'll be back in three months because that's what my lawyer told me but when did she tell me that she told me that in march now from march till september the few thousand refugees were that came to the netherlands they were multiplied by ten and i told my neighbor please take care of my dog water my plants i switched off the gas switched off the water said i'll be back in three months i'll see you later guys i took the train to tara apple and i stood at the police station i said i want to apply for asylum so he looked at my residency card and said hey this is still valid till december 2014. what are you doing here i said yes this is my story i was working i lost my job i can't go back to syria i can't go to dubai i can't go to lebanon he said yeah but why don't you go to kuwait you are born in kuwait i said yeah i cannot even go to kuwait because i don't have the kuwaiti nationality i'm syrian look at my passport and my passport is expiring in less than six months there is no embassy to renew it all the syrian embassies were closed so i'm here i want to apply for asylum i said okay give us your phone give us your bag i had a small backpack just a few clothes inside it toothbrush toothpaste deodorant and [Music] my phone charger stand on the wall pictures fingerprints they took my footprints even and they gave me a garbage bag a blue big garbage bag inside it was a blanket shaving kit soap a pillow white sheets and they said well sorry we don't have places tonight for you you're going to sleep in the detention center so detention center is a room i think it's like 5 meter by 2 meters and there's nothing in it not even a chair just you sit on the ground and i stayed there my first night i slept on the floor the first night and then the next day they opened the door and said well uh we have a place for you inside please walk with us at that night i was thinking like the [ __ ] man i should have went back to syria and you know i was reviewing my thoughts say is this the best idea that i have done what i've done to my life what will i tell my parents now that i'm in a refugee camp you know again you have to understand the arab pride the arab culture of being proud of who we are and what we achieve and uh sharing this with the family was was difficult was nearly impossible you know my dad would get a heart attack if i tell him i'm in a refugee camp because he boosts about his son my son is in the netherlands my son is doing this my son is doing that so i enter in the refugee camp now remember i speak dutch i speak english my accent arabic accent is not syrian it's lebanese and in the civil war in syria there were lebanese militias participating in the war against the people with the regime with the russians with the iranians so hearing a lebanese accent in a place full of syrians it's like yeah how can i explain it like it's it's really it's fury it makes people furious if you go back in time and you're in world war ii and a german enters in a room full of jewish people they would eat him so this is the same scenario i'm in i'm coming in a room where eight people eight syrian males are inside double beds four double beds everyone had his headset on and uh looking at his smartphone dark room and i entered inside salaam alaikum nobody replies everyone had his headset on so i took the bed up and i slept next day in the morning we're lining up to take our breakfast and they hear my lebanese accent and like the whole next in the refugee camp was turning i was really scared the breakfast was two slices of bread if you go to any benzene station in the netherlands they have something called the flam tostis it's a you know two slices of bread with some ham in it and some cheese it was a flam tostibat without a ham and we got as well a small uh transparent plastic bag with two white plastic cups in it the one bag of tea two sticks of sugar and one stick of nescafe with a plastic spoon and you have to eat your breakfast in the food court and then you're allowed to go back to your room you cannot take food into your room because there is a chance of rats coming in or you know for for hygiene purposes you just take your plastic bag and you go back in your room there is a small water kettle where you can warm up water and uh yeah you can drink a cup of coffee or a cup of tea lunch was two boiled eggs with a cup of soup and dinner was half cooked rice with some vegetables so after two nights of being hungry i said man this food is amazing you know i should i should have tried this food when i was in the hay then after like two three weeks i was saying man okay i ate i think i ate a lot of cups alone in my life so this is a good diet i i'm looking at the mirror hey i'm losing weight i'm really happy then i think a month and a half passed by and i said no way i'm gonna put this food in my mouth anymore so i went to the management of the camp we called the camp the koa i went to the management to the goa and i told them listen we have here in in this place around i think at that time we were around 400 and many of them can cook so can we cook breakfast or lunch ourselves in the kitchen and they said no because you are not now you are an asylum seeker you're not a refugee yet an asylum seek the difference is an asylum seeker his identity is not yet verified and processed so you are in a process of verification where you go through three interrogations from the immigration services with the police with the secret service with the the whole chain of security in the netherlands they have to verify who you are before they give you a permission to stay in the netherlands i said again what does this mean this this means if something happens to you we cannot really take care of you you're not insured and i said huh how like they said yeah you just came now so this is the food that you have please you have to eat it so i said okay and uh there was no internet in the in the camp so we had to use our 4g or 3g at that time as well so i started you know i i my bank my bank account was closed uh my ids are with the government now my syrian passport my dutch residency uh even my ov chip card i gave it back so literally all what i had with me was my smartphone my charger internet connection from a sim card that i had at in the in the previous times i had a different number even than what i have now i had a number that ended in five sevens so my number was zero six five four seven seven seven seven seven so uh i used what i used to do is this was what we call an oven meant so you have unlimited internet on it and i started telling the syrians in my room hey if you give me two pieces of sugar i will open my mobile hotspot for you and we can share the internet this was my first trade in the canada sugar for internet because i love my tea like really sweet okay seriously they drink they don't drink sugar with the tea they put tea in the sugar you know so it was a good trade and uh yeah time passed weeks months we're in that same situation uncertainty every time you ask okay when we will be processed i have to wait it's too busy the asylum procedure is on paper so you do the interview they give you your interview on paper and many of those interviews that happened happened with translators that were non-syrians so moroccans iraqis sometimes even somalians we do share the same arabic language but different dialects so everyone was afraid of lawyers they didn't trust them they didn't trust the government they didn't trust the ind they didn't trust the translators so they used to come to me and ask hey please can you read this document for me and tell me what i said if it's written the same i do remember there is a guy now he's he has his dutch nationality he has his own business is really successful in the netherlands he had a saudi residency on his passport so he used to work and live in saudi arabia before and then he went to syria and then from syria he came here and in the interview they mentioned that his saudi visa is still valid so when i ask him hey here in the report it says saudi visa still valid is that true he said no it's expired long time ago so we had to go back and correct it that that incident changed his course of asylum or else he would have been in a different category with with more time and more waiting time and more uncertainty this is the first time that i felt i'm a little bit loved i'm a little bit appreciated and a little bit respected just a little bit but when did this whole thing blew up and change uh it was may may 20 i think may 2015 we were like really fed up from from the food and we moved from terrapil into zwolle and zwolle was a camp uh that they like set up really quick it was a the place was a showroom they used to do dog shows in it so they bring dogs and they make nice shows for them the place there it was a showroom for such events they were kind enough to not do a show in 2015 and turn it into an asylum camp in order to host refugees at if you watch back in time 2015 at mossdry the dutch television you will see me the first guy entering in the camp they brought cameras to show how the camp is really brand new from inside new mattresses new beds new kitchen table air hockey new showers new bathrooms splinter new i was the first guy to set foot in this camp and we were all doing like this hiding our faces with the jackets and the mayor come some people from the government came and now i'm with a new group and again i have to tell my story my name is tay i'm born in kuwait i lived in lebanon i worked in dubai i came to the netherlands i lost my job and now i'm applying for asylum this was a record that i was playing every single time newcomers came in the camp and every day we had newcomers so the news spread in the camp that hey this guy speaks dutch he speaks english he speaks a lebanese arabic accent so there is two possibilities he is either sent by hezbollah and by to spy on us or the dutch king is sending spies in the camp to spy on the syrians there was no other option you know because nobody would believe such a story and in swallow there was no uh food court like we had in terre apple so there was a table with bags of food on it the people of zwolle were even so kind they started donating fruits and vegetables so in the bag you might find an orange a banana an apple yeah i don't eat apples so if i had an apple i would trade it for a banana and but again the same scenario you know the food is we're really thankful that they're offering food but you know we're used to you know the how lebanese have breakfast how syrians have breakfast olives lebanese cheese tea milk deuce the olives in three different uh swords yeah you threat the hot bread four or five people on a table yeah this was not there in the camp so as i'm sitting there it was the bitcoin pizza day and i was remembering hey you know like they ordered pizza and paid with bitcoin and did the transaction between united kingdom and the united states can't i order pizza in the netherlands with my bitcoins on the phone that i mined between 2012 2013 and 2014. i said yes i can guys bizarre no you did it yes yeah yeah and i ordered it to the camp wow in zwolle there were as well some uh people who didn't want refugees so they were making some troubles with the camp management so they had to put a black like a a plastic black curtain on the whole sides of the camp there were a large fence that's what the police usually uses when they want to seal a location so they sealed the whole location in the camp with these black drapes and there was a guy at the door holding the pizza and i hear shouting with the security and i hear shouting in dutch and the guy the security guy is telling him you're not allowed to enter in the camp when this the bizarre was the delivery guy was telling him yeah someone ordered pizza from inside he told him it's impossible these are refugees inside no one can order pizza you know there's no internet even at that location yeah yeah why came to him i said no i would disorder this pizza i paid by bitcoin i said what is bitcoin i said yeah it's new type of money digital money and and the pizza came in the cam the smell of the pepperoni we were 380 refugees in one hall open space double beds so one bed down one bed up and there were beds next to each other in rows the picture is always the picture that you see on my tedx talks from the refugee camp this we took it there and it was exactly the same i'm holding the pizza i'm moving inside the smell is spreading like i had a big circle around me and everybody you like was how did you do this i said yeah i use the bitcoin what is bitcoin yeah bitcoin is a wallet you download it you can use it as money you can order things you can order pizza you can say hey can we send money to syria yeah of course you can can we work and get paid by bitcoin i said yes of course we can and the questions came on coming and coming and coming until we started making circles in the indie camp every i think it was every thursday evening we sit and we talk about bitcoin some of the refugees were going outside the camp like they go into the camp was in the center of zwolle they go into the supermarket they take plastic bags and they come back to the camp and you know in the netherlands when you take a plastic bag you have to pay for it so this 50 cent they didn't have they didn't pay it even and it started making problems with the uh with the surroundings of the camp and this is where we added to the bitcoin what i call the integration 101 so i started telling them yeah in the netherlands you have to pay for your plastic bag you have to pay for going to the bathroom you cannot take just ketchup like this from mcdonald's like what we do in dubai and in lebanon and in syria and take it with you know you have to pay for everything and then i realized hey like people now are trusting me more i'm making their life easier not only with digital money but as well living in the netherlands so i started telling my stories living in the netherlands what i used to do the freedom the safety uh that you know you can ride a bicycle you can you have to you know limit yourself to some speed limits in certain streets you you know you pay high fines for it and this event the pizza event with bitcoin turned me into the king of refugee camp so next day in the morning i wake up i have my food ready like the youngsters the 19s the 20s and the 21s and those young guys they come and they say mualim is like uh know boss hey we we know that you like bananas so hey we have some bananas for you we got this fresh bread before before it was distributed and you know can you uh can we get another bitcoin lesson today well we loved it i said yes yeah we can so some of those people were good in uh like they were teachers back in syria so they were good in translation and this is one i applied to be a global moderator at bitcoin.com and i applied there and i told you guys listen we are in touch now with reporters who want to report about the syrian crisis they want to report about cryptocurrencies and they want to translate articles we can get paid in bitcoin for that so i had like a group of translators i get the the we can't touch the object i get the the work and then i give it to the people they translate it on paper i type it back on my phone and i send it back and the university of nicosia started their mooc program yeah the introduction to digital currencies i registered for it and this is when i met andreas antonopoulos online in the courses and i was fascinated by his vision on money and the history of money and what is money so this is when i had the change in mentality looking around me it is not only me now without an identity it is 400 people in a camp with no identity with no single proof of their academic certificates land titles birth certificates driving licenses and there you can use bitcoin as a proof of existence by time stamping the signatures of these documents on the bitcoin blockchain and you can use it as a way to transfer money that doesn't ask you for your first name your last name your country of honor origin or any other document so the news started spreading among refugee camps that hey there is some sort of genius there who has is working with this new technology bitcoin bitcoin uh by coin so they for us as a syrians our interaction with the english language is very minimal because it's not taught in schools and if it's thought it's only for the private privileged schools so as a public school you don't have this strong english art like you're not articulate you can't read and write english so it was there was something special there one day we get a visit to the camp from a dutch somalian girl and she said well we have tickets to start up weekend in utrecht and we are looking for talent to join whatever you want to do you can just come here are the tickets now i thought hey we can go there we can eat we can drink we can meet people and maybe find a job so that i can get out of the camp get a work contract get paid and i never in my wildest dreams thought that i can participate in such an event startup weekend is a techstars event and i went with [Music] two refugees there and i called one of the guys that was on the bitcoin.com forum his name was abdullah and abdullah was a student in the united states with the saudi origin and i told him like there's an event in utrecht tech stars so uh can you come he said yes i'm in saudi arabia now i will talk to my university and see if they would allow me to come and participate most of the bitcoin people that you know from roger ver to uh let me see david mondras um even like abdullah mustafa all these now big names in the middle east around the world they were they started from those bitcoin forums they started from the facebook forums i was one of the first guys to set up the bitcoin community in lebanon bitcoin community in egypt and we were talking and meeting on forums most of the time there was no coinbase there was no uh you know gemini there was i think cex dot io which was at that time doing uh subscriptions for miners this was the most hot topic at that time cloud mining lots of scams yeah job was yeah just to like make make sure that people don't fall in scams in the forums and moderating moderating most of the time so my responsibility was the arabic section in bitcoin.com i was promoted to be a global moderator and i was so happy you know just uh i am feeling feeling an accomplishment so abdullah came to uh to to the netherlands we participated in startup weekend in utrecht with an idea to use bitcoin as a proof of existence for academic certificates since in the middle east there is a lot of fraud in the middle east there is a lot of fraud when it comes to academic certificates we won we won that event we won the first place i met oscar knappers from rockstar the founder of rockstar one of the gifts that we got was to go and pitch and rock start our startup at that time to us tycoon and we won as well in rockstar we joined the accelerator we raised 1.5 million dollars for that and abdullah told me you know i have to go back to saudi because i need to study i need to finish my studies and abdullah started rain dot bh which is today the number one middle east crypto exchange uh the first regulated crypto exchange in the middle east and rain.bh today is backed by coinbase ventures is backed by the biggest names in the industry and in 2021 they did their first billion dollar in sale in crypto so this was how uh you know this was how small the world was the bitcoin world the crypto world and this was the from a pizza order it it flipped my life upside down i mean i'm just remembering now and getting like emotional and goosebumps because i mean yeah it's uh looking at where we are today and maybe the viewers or the listeners are asking okay why they are you saying all these details i'm saying all these details because in 2021 the dots were connected and i realized why did i have to pass through this journey why did i meet abdullah why did i meet the dutch somalian girl nasra why did i have to spend two years in the refugee camp why did i came into bitcoin and all these wise wives wise wise that i struggled to answer from 2014 till 2020. it the the answer came in 2021 and the answer came when lebanon actually went through a very difficult uh situation with the big explosion in august in august 2020. uh in august 2020 the big explosion happened in beirut and deport and many lives were lost many businesses were lost and many houses were lost unfortunately one of our houses was i don't want to say fully destroyed it was heavily damaged and i had my bitcoin private keys written on paper i didn't have copies for all of them some of them i was able to retrieve some were were lost and it was that day that i realized hey you know am i unlucky or am i unlucky even when i like take the the best security measures to back up my wallet and write my keys on a piece of paper and i live by the code not your keys not your coins and i've lost a lot of bitcoin in my journey simply because there was no one to teach us that if you don't save your wallet.that so there was not even yet a private key that you can write in words your private key was a folder in your laptop called wallet.dat that you have to save and some of them were saved on usbs i lost some of them on laptops that i lost so i did the best i could to live by the code not your keys not your coins and i saved my keys on paper some of them i made copies some of them i didn't and this was the the result but this was not the learning curve that i had you know level on went before 2020 in a huge inflation right capital controls uh people lost their life savings they thought they were smart by not trusting the lebanese lira and putting their money in dollars in bank accounts well guess what the central bank said the lira and the dollar they're for us now they're for the government they have to continue paying subsidies on the basic necessity items in the country like fuel like food like wheat so my uncle who worked in qatar for around 30 years he came back to lebanon and he put his life savings in the bank in dollar value and now he has to live on fifty dollars a day sorry fifty dollars a week withdrawal withdrawing money from an atm uh the lebanese currency went from being a peg of 1500 lebanese dira to a dollar until 25 000 lebanese lira to a dollar so with western union not functioning with moneygram not functioning with banks not functioning and you have an explosion that that was felt in cyprus 200 kilometers away some people say it was a mini nuclear explosion it wiped half of the city it changed the demographics of the city it changed the the landscape of the city and ngos were rushing to help the international community was rushing to help but they can't send money there the only thing that worked was bitcoin the only thing that was able to transact value to lebanon was bitcoin and this one it hit me that we can't go back in lebanon to what we used to do in traditional finance there must be a new way of building the financial sector in lebanon and crypto is at the heart of it our community that was around i think shy of 7 500 people turned into thousands in matter of weeks because now everyone has burned their hands using and trusting the traditional local financial system of lebanon and they're looking for another alternative so this one uh i think my like again the big why was right in front of my face and saying i have to start something and then i started flu's flues finance but the timing of starting flu's finance was not the best because uh we were in the not the first lockdown in the second lockdown so between let's say july and uh december 2020 no work there is [Music] no jobs there is no public appearances there is no workshops there is no possibility of doing what i was doing before and all what i was thinking of is flues and how can i fundraise for it now you know how can i go to an event and stand and pitch in front of 100 investors and try to close a deal for it you know i believe in it i believe in the product i believe in the product market fit i believe in the target market it's tested we have some traction we're doing transactions we're using what we have in our hands our network in order to build this platform but yeah how can you now talk about it how can you promote it there's no blockchain events there's no bitcoin wednesdays i can't go there and and do what i'm doing so i had to find a job i had to work my neighbor is a construction worker and he told me today in construction we always need cleaners and we call them in dutch bow or primers construction cleaners they start the shift from five in the morning till three in the afternoon i said yes that's perfect because now i can wake up early i can go earn my money i can close my bills i can put food on the table and in the afternoon i will work on flues and this is what i've done so from september 2020 until april 2021 i was every day five in the morning in schiphol in the airport opposite to shreveport there was a big bum construction site and i was the cleaner there it was winter cold dark i said no problem my headsets were on i'm listening to bitcoin podcasts and yeah there were no humans in crypto at that time but i had my bitcoin post podcast i'm just being updated on uh what's happening in the market you know the new innovations that are coming out the d5 space that's flourishing and uh i get my money end of the week so i said hey it's perfect i don't have to wait till end of the month to get paid and nobody gives a [ __ ] what i'm doing so i can between between the cleaning times i can text the people i'm working with continue doing my crypto to cash cash to crypto transactions in lebanon and in the afternoon i can uh you know continue working on flues so one day the owner of the construction of the cleaning company that hired me uh he saw on my linkedin a post that i've written so the cleaner of this company company is called [ __ ] the cleaner of [ __ ] in the hague broke her foot so they called me and said hey you live in the hague our head office is in the hague can you come and clean your offices today i said yeah sure i can say yeah we will pay you for that work so i went there and i think it was two or three times that i cleaned there and one time one of the employees went to lunch and he left his screen open he left his laptop open unattended i was thinking to myself hey if it was someone else maybe he would take a usb with him he will plug it in the laptop he can spread the virus he can take the whole system as a hostage and ask for a bitcoin ransom you know it can happen yeah so i went back home and i wrote a post on linkedin and still there and i said i'm now i'm working as a cleaner i'm not ashamed of it and here are the lessons that i learned one is greet the cleaner when you see him because you make him feel better and if he feels better he will clean better and if he cleans better you have a better environment to work in it's nice to work in a clean clean space second lesson is when you leave for lunch or when you leave your desk unattended lock your screen the ceo of the company he saw this post and the next day he he came and tell me hey you work in crypto right i say yes said where's your lambo i don't have a lambo i have my bicycle down and this is my story again i had to tell my story from the time i was born in kuwait until this day and he told me can you teach me how to buy crypto i said yes we went on a session i taught him he loved it and we became good friends 24th in 2021 in april when the markets started to pick up i was lucky enough to have both in a dca strategy from september till april every money i'm earning on cleaning i'm putting back in crypto and i said to the ceo of the company i really appreciate the work that i have here i love you guys and we will stay close friends forever i thank you for the opportunity but i have now to go and you know build flues a few months later the us army withdraws from afghanistan and one of the guys that was in my circles in the refugee camps he called me and said western union is not working in afghanistan monogram stopped working in afghanistan our currency is devaluating at an alarming rate we are in a similar situation as lebanon i have been following what you were doing in lebanon can we do the same in afghanistan yes of course we can but why would you need to do this he said well we need to at least feed our families and i have my trusted network on the ground and i used to work with usaid with unhcr and he's a software developer so he knows basically the local area he is in the money transmitters the shops the supermarkets and they are all willing to learn and to go on this learning curve and use crypto i said let's do this so we started talking to the afghan diaspora in the netherlands and telling them hey if you are worried about your families back there and keep in mind that the ministry of foreign affairs and all most of the dutch-based ngos they had to leave and leave the people that they used to work with back in afghanistan i think the minister resigned due to this incident so we started talking to the diaspora and telling them now you can purchase crypto locally from the netherlands you can send it over to afghanistan and we will help you change it into local currency and we will distribute this local currency to your families and they said you know they i would love to give money to my family but can i give them food instead yes of course you can so we started going to the supermarkets purchasing the food putting it in plastic bags and knocking on their family's doors and giving food to them this evolved into a supermarket and i was inspired by picnic and daniel their cto there is somehow a personal relation with daniel i've met met him in person a couple of times we had breakfast very lovely guy and it was always in my head you know how picnic started and i think it was it's not i'm still vain it's a similar similar city with a similar name it's close to zeist in in utrecht and this is where they they started and they started like a very very small pilot and look today they are a multi-billion dollar industry so that story always stayed in my head and i thought hey can we do a picnic in afghanistan and can we do a supermarket in afghanistan but this needs a superman you know this needs somehow to carry money from one place to another and you need to fly you need to break barriers you need to be strong that's why you called it superman exactly this is how the name superstand came it's superman afghanistan supermarket wow i didn't know that that's okay yeah we have today an online supermarket in afghanistan yeah the purpose of this marketplace is to serve as a place for the afghan diaspora to buy crypto in their local areas in europe in us in canada in australia in london wherever they are and send it over to superstand and we take care of the rest we take care of the conversions we take care of purchasing the products putting them in superstand bags and delivering it to people the latest product that we launched was the maha packages they are packages dedicated for women where you have sanitary pads you have creams you have shampoo you have soap and you have a thick blanket today in kabul for example it's -5 degrees and we are happy to have shipped more than 100 blankets today to families in need we've reached more than 100 families with we've distributed more than a thousand item in a span of almost six weeks and it would not be possible without using crypto impossible there is no paper they deny services western union they deny services monogram they deny services the whole world turned their back on afghanistan the moment there was trouble but there is crypto working fine working like in the best way remember in 2012 and 2013 everyone used to talk about breaking barriers financial inclusion it didn't mean anything to me it didn't resonate with me until i lived that situation so again sorry for this like long story no don't apologize never apologize i want everyone to feel how the dots were connected everything i said was for a reason today to see how the dots connect and thanks to crypto we're not we don't say we're changing the world no we are doing it today it's going to take me a while to absorb everything you've said listen this is this is the community this is not the president of a country saying we're gonna use bitcoin as a legal thunder no no this is a pure bottom-up approach people by themselves organizing as a decentralized organization they have a common goal they have a focus and they have an incentive i'm not an angel i'm not a non-profit guy i do things for money and for business and there is money in this way of work but the money is being attached to an impact by default we didn't aim for feeding families in afghanistan we didn't aim in bringing basic necessity items for women so that they can keep their hygiene they can keep their pride they can keep doing what they do best we didn't aim for that what we aimed is you have crypto here you have cash there how can we make this bridge and how can we make sure that it is not used by bad people it's not being used by terrorists it's not being used for uh money laundering it's not being used by taliban they might be using crypto i don't know i don't care yeah you know my goal was you are in europe so you have a european passport you have a bank account you have a credit card you have verifications on who you are it's not my job to verify you it's the job of satosh.edu it's the job of coinmers is the job of betonic it's the job of all these licensed crypto exchanges around the world they can buy crypto from there they move it into their own wallets from their wallets then comes my job to verify my people on the ground there and how do we do that well as i said the guy is a previous usaid employee so as an usaid employee you have an id number we have a copy of that we have a copy of his passport we have a copy of his previous company that was working with unhcr usaid and many other companies and we did like an interview video call with him and the people who are ordering again they're verified from there from the source so my first mile and my last mile is clean all what i need now is to bridge them together and this is where crypto comes to play a perfect role in being a good system of escrow a good system of transferring value and a good store of value because now we can tell those people if you have a little bit of extra money keep it in you know maybe bitcoin keep it in ethereum better than your currency becoming worthless because in afghanistan the central bank money is confiscated by the international community so what can be you know better reason to wake up every day than this type of work [Music] day day what a story and it's not even a fictional one it's real you know if we had to hire student spielberg or you know any of those famous directors and ask them can you write such a story it's not possible and this is again not it's it's not believable i think people are actually lost in the plot and like wait what exactly it's not believable and you can't put such a plot together but today the dots connected seven years later from 2014 until today it's the first time that i really feel happy i really feel alive i really feel okay my my purpose and my vision and the things that i used to talk about in ted talks and and all the meetups and then all the closed and open meetings now they're coming you know now they're falling in place it's happening i can see it i can feel it you know you can feel the energy of those people miles away sending their good vibes because we made it possible for someone to have a blanket for someone to have milk to have diapers to have oil to cook and you know mothers are calling me saying you know thank you god bless you we're praying for you and i i'm not i wasn't looking for that it it happened it took time but it happened you you did you know you you put in some sweat and some tears into this but it's i i just i'm still trying to imagine like the tires result delivery bitcoin guy you know that scene and now today it's yes it's you're there you know you're one action that you know one action and uh [Music] ty's bizarre was accepting bitcoin from long time ago yeah they seemed if i'm not mistaken they stopped very wide and then they went back to it yeah they still do they use bitpay yeah it's a big giveaway yeah like it's just i love your story i'm looking at my old phone here on the table yeah my old phones still have those transactions you know and it will always be there they'll always build a blockchain it's not going away it's a reminder for me not to pay pizza with bitcoin anymore but because the price is like every pizza i paid for one pizza i think 30 euros like we paid i had one receipt for 30 euros and today it's worth 1 500 euros yeah but it's nothing that way that's not that you know that's what i was supposed to think yeah it was verse 30. bitching at that moment was 30 and that's why i'm telling you yeah it took seven years to overcome that feeling spending but it's not just you i think the whole ecosystem is a bit on the fence like i remember when i started in crypto in 2017 met people like you and and people that had been in crypto earlier and there was a some of them were uncomfortable because they had spent crypto and then they were very bitter about that one night which now was worth a couple thousands instead of a couple hundreds or some or you know much much more and i was like no but thank you like if you hadn't spend it then this would not even exist today and the narrative of spending crypto got killed i was actually just talking about it in an interview the other day and i was saying yeah the netherlands were early adopters like we had utrecht now arnhem sorry aren't in bitcoin city like with 300 merchants accepting crypto and the idea of spending crypto died since like whatever you want to call is it due to the the block size debate other things you know store value medium of exchange all those things at play um and we've we've talked several times since and you know that i'm a i'm an advocate for using cryptocurrency so if you had to come full circle it's fine i think it's it's about keeping that alive crypto is not just a to the moon limbo thing i can't i don't i don't believe in that i don't want it to be reduced to that even though for anybody just stepping into crypto and not knowing about the story that's what they see 99 of the content out there is i made this much money this is how much you missed you missed that opportunity you know all that fomo and fud and it's only through projects i think like super stan and others that it just gives me a little bit of hope that this space is not just you know just money driven you know and huddle to no no we're not hobbling we're using it it's making a difference today and let's not forget that it's it's so important and and i'm so happy that you okay i'm not happy you had to live all those things but i'm happy that you're there today and that your journey can inspire i'm really happy i i always say i'm blessed i'm blessed to go through this experience and go through this journey because if that pizza order would not have been done the chain reaction after it may not have happened no absolutely not no bananas on your bed no bitcoin.com translation articles can you imagine the adoption you've done in all those years those you might not those get some of them you're connected with some you're not but the impact you had the thought of how many talks i did about crypto and i tell people raise your hands if you don't have bitcoin and then they come to me and i just give them five dollars two dollars one dollar and some even transactions like i give a five dollar i pay three dollar transaction fee i say it's okay this was this was the the message from andreas antonopoulos all the time the best way to understand bitcoin is to use it just don't explain hashing and cryptography you know the the amounts of hours and months and days and years i've spent reading about cryptography reading about canadian economy yeah reading about game theory reading about all these buzzwords that are were used in explaining bitcoin and i'm i graduated with a degree in business economics right right able to exp to define money and few words it took me four years yeah it takes a while i you know my first couple of years in crypto there was no way i was teaching anything i had to also absorb all these things and same as you i also went through whatever union they never taught us about money either like i can't even believe how close i was to the subject but always so far you know what i mean like it's like how could i have gone through this level of education and not understand the system every day and what i'm using 100 what do you think of andreas today i have so much admiration and i think his talks it for anybody listening and who doesn't know juan renaissance go check him out his early talks are spectacular and he inspired so many people um and and so eloquent and a great you know he speaks very well great educator do you feel though that the narrative of spending crypto also got a bit lost with andreas do you think something of less on less about that how what happened what happened in your opinion why is spending crypto now so new or is it you know i feel like your project is so different i think it's a price related issue it's an issue where they're seeing this technology growing growing in value growing in terms of economical numbers dollar value a user adoption and now when you're living in a world that is driven by being the best getting the best living the best suddenly you want to have what you you know you have something that is constantly giving you more and more value you start with one bitcoin at nine thousand dollars or even march 2020 the start of the pandemic bitcoin four thousand two hundred dollars okay yeah let's say you bought one a month later it's growing a year later it's 40 000. you're not gonna spend it you're gonna maybe spend a little bit of it because you have the hope that this will be a million and then you're gonna spend it there is always a higher satisfaction it's like exactly when you smoke weed when you take your first puff you're like you sleep you know you can't stand up you're directly knocked out and then your body builds tolerance you want more you want more as more as you smoke as less you get high yeah always the first high is the most spectacular one the first cigarette the first glass of wine the first glass of whiskey the first ecstasy the first mdma this is always the best experience and in bitcoin it's the same you're getting your first crypto you're seeing how it's growing more coins more exchanges more dollar value for it more adoption banks talking about it your your dream whatever your dream is you think you can achieve it by just holding this thing now when will it change it will change when you burn yourself it's like a five years old that you tell him or you tell her maria don't touch the oven it's hot what will maria do she will come and stick her hand to the oven and she will cry for days because her hand is burned and she's five years old we are like this five-year-old maria you can you will tell those people you know bitcoin is not just your store of value you have to spend it you can use it to pay stuff they won't listen what they will listen they will listen once their bank got gets busted once their uh money is confiscated once their single currency among 28 countries fails or they reserve world reserve currencies suddenly starts to crumble down and more and more and more of it is printed and higher debt ceilings and then they will realize hey i've been holding on to something and i didn't spend it maybe perhaps now is the time to spend it because if i had spent it a few years ago i would have bought more stuff than what i have now people always forget that the crypto is related to the fiat is related to the dollar value is related to the iran is related to lebanese lira it's not out of this world so better use it now and transact yeah transact use and and replace i'm not saying exactly buy everything spend on your crypto never look back i'm saying spend and repl this has to be a circular economy if it just sits on wallets we are just not changing anything it's not as well to add on the circular economy by the time you reach the level that you want to transact some other people were transacting with it years before you they have more experience they have more technology you know they have more uh resiliency they have more use cases for problems that are in certain cryptos and you won't find solutions for them because you're not using it you're it's like your car you buy the best mercedes out there and you put it in a garage for 20 years for 50 years you try to turn it on later it won't turn while around you people are flying with cars i like the analogy except the moment you buy a car it depreciates right whereas with crypto there's a chance that it would appreciate so but it's i think it's fascinating you've seen it you've seen a lot it's so interesting that you started with mining not caring about all the whatever we're talking about nothing at all i'm a second i'm a second life gamer eleanor i used to play second life and inside the game there were gamers asking for bitcoin you know wow and uh they used linden dollars uh and there was a platform called verwax fairwax vir vox wox this was the first crypto exchange in the world i think before empty box even so fair works the london dollars were sold there and people were asking for bitcoin because they can change bitcoin to london dollars quickly and the premium was 40 percent premium so i came to the market and i said hey i want to create i want to know the source of this bitcoin this the source of this thing that is sold at the premium for 40 percent if i'm able to get to the source of it then they will earn a 40 premium so by the time that i got to the source the premiums were going the less and less and less when i entered the second life bitcoin trade with london dollars the premiums were around 20 dollars and this is when i came to know about mining because this is how you create bitcoin so i i read the white paper and i said you know this is uh this is just someone who like on a typewriter he wrote something i i google satoshi nakamoto with the [ __ ] satoshi i mean there's no pictures for him there's no linkedin for him he's not on facebook he's not on twitter so uh yeah i said just forget this whole thing now you're earning 20 on your 100 investment just continue doing this and uh yeah that's how would you go back into the would you go back into sort of the mining game at all uh to be honest not uh i mean uh this is how i met alejandro del toro wow he was living in delft at that time wow so he used to sit together in the hague and have like morning coffees talk about mining and he used to help me with with mining a little bit some configurations some making it more efficient uh it was even at that time alejandro was working on his first product i think was block trail if i'm not mistaken the name of the startup he was doing something similar to blockchain.info where you see the transactions and the public registry so uh this is when i i uh like i knew how time consuming is mining how costly it is uh and the industry simply changed from from that time you know in the two years that i spent in the camp from 2014 till end of 2016 yeah bit main came to open offices in amsterdam they acquired the startup of alejandro and alejandro was the vp of uh sales at bitmain at that time that no sorry was vp of business development yeah it was uh for btc.com which was my first which was my first crypto company right and it's so like this it was such a small world yeah exactly so uh this was uh he's still in the he's still in the mining industry yes i think the world will make a statue for him in years from now because he loves that on taproot he's the guy to be the engine behind the taproot and because of alejandro we have today top roots successful and taproot is bringing the best you know vision that we could think of for for bitcoin smart contracts more privacy cheaper transactions so uh thank you alejandro for your work i'll make sure to send him this uh this link love to catch up with him but day what what is next for super stan what are you looking at how can we help you [Music] of opening superstand in lebanon superstan was a pilot for what we believe in that crypto can be not only a store of value it's a good example of store of value in lebanon in afghanistan in venezuela in el salvador in countries in zimbabwe in countries where their local money is weak it's non-existent but we cannot tell people just buy bitcoin or buy whatever coin you want from the 11 000 coins that exist in the market and just sit on it you know people need food people need to work they need to earn money they don't need to take a boat risk their lives go to other countries looking for better opportunities whether it's economic refugees or war refugees this shouldn't happen in the age of bitcoin this shouldn't happen in the age when money is immutable borderless open neutral and decentralized this shouldn't happen in an age where i can take my smartphone and google how to walk from damascus to the netherlands and i can't send a payment from damascus to the netherlands the way why because money is a way to communicate value today the internet is a good medium of communication so we can use it to transact we can use it to send value from one country to another just today we heard that consensus has barred iranian students from taking their courses which i think what big shame yes today consensus shame on consensus yes they they are uh they shouldn't learn about solidity in iran what are you talking about to be honest uh it was really a sad news to hear from people who are advocating for the future of finance people who are advocating for an open world they're stopping the people who need it the most from taking it that's true what do we i wonder who at consensus took that decision who are they trying to please exactly which vc doesn't you know what i mean like what the hell which regulator they're trying to to please uh to be honest and superstand for us was a pilot was a use case for flue spay we want people in lebanon people in hirat and afghanistan who have like here at four million people in population lebanon four million people yeah the country the size of a like is a state yeah and we want for this state and this country to use crypto as a way of payment so if you have a shop put your qr code on the window let the diaspora pay for the products directly let the diaspora pay for the electricity pay for your internet pay for your landline pay for your bills instead of using western union to send this 300 back to your family so that your family can go pay for these services no why don't we pay it immediately with crypto we have stable coins we have coins that preserve the value they do not fluctuate so you don't have to be afraid from that this was the idea of flu spay but we realized as well that if i give you as a merchant crypto what are you able to do with it you have to convert it back into your local money so that you can put more shampoo on your shelf you can pay the electricity for your refrigerator where you store your meat and your drinks so that people can come and buy fresh products this is where flu spay is not just doing payment processing but as well convergence in addition to the spay on superstand when you check out you have the option to pay with your wallet it's not active yet but my vision for crypto wallets will always be non-custodian you shouldn't trust a bank with your money in lebanon and you will not trust the bank with your money in lebanon and you will not trust an exchange again it's the same experience so non-custodial services in certain areas and certain scenarios in certain countries states they are needed the factor of backing up your wallet on a piece of paper bitcoin is a trillion dollar industry and you're asking people back up your key on a piece of paper yeah what if an explosion happens and wipes the paper out oh this will not happen this is the extreme scenario yeah hello it happened in lebanon 2020. so don't tell me it's an extreme scenario lebanon is an extreme scenario and it happens so we we believe biometrics can play a role in backing up your keys and this is where the flu swallowed and the flu spay come together in a community driven initiative and it powers uh do i still get my private keys and i have to give my biometrics yes you have your privacy both it's both your private keys because like with um i use edge do you know that wallet yes and it's like non-custodian multi-asset everything and and it's they only take your username and password so no email no kysd and you do have biometrics um and your and your private keys so is is that kind of the same model for fluis yes it is the same model in flues it is more with a uh user experience from uh our communities yeah it makes sense yeah uh like uh something to read in the wallet it's all pictures it's all just things that you click with your finger the wallet is still in development so my ask from the audience here is if there is talent to help us build this wallet and accelerate the pace of releasing flues wallet on android android phones please come talk to us next to the wallet in lebanon and afghanistan we know a lot of what we what we call as otc traders so these are the people who can convert your local currency into crypto and crypto to local currency we want to bring them all in the flues wallet and use them in the flues pay payment processing so when a shop is accepting crypto as a payment they don't have to worry about what they can do with the crypto they can immediately change it into dollars into physical money why physical money because banks unfortunately are out of function so they cannot put that stable currency into a bank account and use the money in the bank account to replenish the stock in the shop it is only possible today with cash money we have some measures on making sure this money is not used in money laundering and financing terrorism but here again my call to the community is if there are people who worked on kyc standards who worked on cft aml please come and touch and let's try to make this verification system driven by the peer community and not by the by the government so we're looking for talent we are looking for uh human capital which i think is the best uh type of capital in the crypto space and it's missing to be honest there is shortage of it uh but i think with with your network illinois from this lovely platform it is about humans in crypto and we're looking for humans in crypto i might be able to help just a little bit on that side but it's are you working open source what we have the plans of being one of the first dows in the middle east and launching our fluz token for fundraising many people ask me at a why don't you go to avc and take money well try to go to a vc and tell them hey we are working in afghanistan we will tell you here's the door yeah yeah no we talked about this the other day that it was very difficult uh for normal vcs to trust any or they don't like basically uh the fact that you're on the fringes yes um and we mentioned maybe the idea of launching fluis but like in a stable coin which would that be more with that that is i mean this is all open to uh the discussion and this is why we need the humans in crypto because we need to talk about this my personal opinion on it is we have enough stable coins in the market we don't need another one but if you can have a place where all these stable coins can exist they can uh like be exchanged with each other we keep the preference for the user whatever stable coin he wants to use we can accommodate that um and we work with non-profit sector as well so we do process payments for large ngos in afghanistan and yeah it's going well so far we're happy with it but there is some innovations that we can work with that can help the non-profit sector that can help corporates as well in their declaration of taxes and in getting tax returns and tax backs on their donations right you mentioned um that so for now you're using like usdt usdc and but they all have their downfall right usdt you know shady usdc centralized die very expensive to use right now um so there is there are stable coins out there but it's it's it's difficult there they all have their drawbacks as watching your own stable coin as well is not that uh you know easy process no um and it gets messy the moment yeah at the moment you're a a crypto project with a token it gets co-opted you know and then it's and then it's like well i want to just use the crypto i have why do now i have to purchase this other crypto to to use it so it's it's tricky i there's no straightforward that's why we i mean from my perspective as a dao if you were having the incentive to earn revenues on the services that you're providing payment processing conversions wallet transactions and you have the community to vote on which coin you want to add to the wallet where do you want to see flues how much marketing you want to pay on flues it shouldn't be taste decision for this to survive to grow and to be really powerful to be really based from the community you need some sort of organization behind it i love how maker dao today grew into this real decentralized autonomous organization i had the chance to meet many times with the head of growth jennifer sinhaji who has lebanese roots in her family so we talked about lebanon we talked about how maker dao and she's a person that didn't come from the crypto space she went as well into a very painful learning journey to be today the head of growth at maker dao and die is simply an amazing example of how a dao can really create impact i wish that it's not a wish we're working on that for fluids to create a similar impact in our region so this is now set in stone the only thing that we are looking at now okay the token yeah you just cop you might just need to copy the model that maker that has maker and the the double the double token solution and just then choose a blockchain that has cheap transaction fees because right now the only thing really hindering die is the underlying blockchain because goddammit ethereum just true hasn't figured out the transaction fee yet from now i said now we're saying uh what is most used in level it's usd drc right that's everywhere you go everyone you talk to i'm afraid yeah i'm just a friend that's that's what they say but usdt is i'm afraid it's going to implode like i'm sure that it has uh i mean i i share this sentiment with you uh and that's going to be a black day for crypto i mean the moment that thing implodes we're like you know what i mean like that's going to be that's going to be you know this is going to have an effect i saw anti-gox good load and i had as well coins on empty [ __ ] and this empty box was the reason that my business in dubai crumbled down directly because we were at one thousand two hundred dollars per coin anti-gox closed down we went down to two hundred dollars we lost seventy seventy five percent value of on on that on that day and i hope and i wish it won't happen now but if we see bitcoin let's say at 100 000 per piece and usdt falls down then bitcoin is back maybe at three thousand dollars five thousand dollars so uh this is and yes these are all like dreams and scenarios it's not gonna we cross fingers not gonna happen but crossing fingers doesn't solve problems so we want to serve afghanistan lebanon syria iraq egypt morocco algeria countries where we're looking at pakistan they do not have the resiliency now to suffer one more time the people are suffocated the people are they say in dutch they're sat there there it's enough you know it's it's still it's not even till here it's still here they're under water yes the real we yeah we can't miss we can't mess this up anymore we can do this do you have any and we again i'm i'm taking from our previous meeting but can you just mention quickly the situation on the ground and of current organization maybe in lebanon and afghanistan and how you're also that's you know you're changing the system right yeah how do they feel about you coming on the ground changing stuff bringing money from abroad there are other institutions obviously in lebanon that have a different agenda um how will that affect you do you think will they try stopping it true i mean so far it's uh the the the the viewers have to understand when you are bringing change into such environments the first stamp they will put on you is you are a spy you are you're used to that right you're already assigned um again that's why you know what i'm saying everything we said in this session although it was although it was a little bit long but it comes back to a full circle now we are not yet labeled as foreign agents or spies but is there a possibility that this can happen yes if the current players the big players on the ground they feel threatened as funny as it sounds those same big players they're using crypto yeah because they have been sanctioned from i think 10 years ago and they cannot process transactions they cannot transact globally they cannot fund their operations they cannot talk to their supporters outside without money and believe it or not i mean they're using crypto crypto is used by everyone will they label us as foreign agents i don't think so because and somehow and as ironic as it sounds we're helping them indirectly by keeping the people happy by keeping the people calm by making their business continue as usual their monkey business is going as usual simply not because the diversion is different but here's the differences in politics when you want to go to the parliament and be a politician the previous time you have to pay money for people to vote for you by keeping the power of money connected to the state for more than 50 years 60 years in lebanon afghanistan you always the people were always the sheep following those bad leaders why because they kept them with the carrot here is your hundred dollar come and vote for me here is your hundred dollar come on vote for me here is your five liters of gasoline here is your 50 liters of diesel come vote for me yeah in 2020 in 2019 2020 and 2021 this changed because now this carrot is rotten nobody wants it anymore it's falling apart and those sheep they're learning how to be dependent they're learning how to make their own money they're learning how to own their money and they're connected financially with the rest of the world their eyes are open their ears are open their minds are open their hearts are open and this what we're betting on the change the moment that you separate money from the state positive things can happen and thanks to crypto we're able to achieve this goal it's not going to happen on sunday it's not going to happen in 2022 it's not going to happen in 2030 it will take some time and it might take 20 years 30 years 40 years even 50 years but it's important when to start it's not will it happen if it will happen when will it happen and the when started in 2019 when the banks collapsed yeah no it's a lebanon sadly and other countries in that region have been a a wonderful horrible example of when fiat collapses when your central bank is a institutionalized ponzi scheme basically and then and then all your dollars are locked in and are called now lolars right because they're there but you can't access them and of course and like you said going back to previously when we were saying about people spending their crypto you kind of have to feel that pain of the current and that's what i maybe i'm too hopeful of thinking well people might learn before getting too hurt but i think human nature is we we really adapt when we when we have to when it's a question of survival and just to to go back to lebanon because that's the country i also know very well we had the the civil war and it ended in in the 1990s and we had like this is why we're now calling out to the diaspora right 4 million people 16 million abroad for the lebanese community um do you think and i have this conversation a lot with you know friends from lebanon and and abroad there's another brain drain happening right people are leaving lebanon they're like this is it i can't stand it i'm done and people and and people i mean and it's giving me like you know getting also a bit emotional but thinking like can these type of initiatives like yours you know help a bit you know so that people don't want to leave again or is it just a cycle of the same country and no guys yeah this guy is you know the jesus of lebanon but i mean i hope i just i just hope our work gives a 0.0001 improvement as small as it can be yeah talking about lebanon and talking about how people are i don't want to say they're suffering but they're losing hope and it's the worst thing in life when you lose hope i mean who can blame them the situation is so dire how would you feel if you lost i mean you went through crypto so you know the ups and the downs yeah but no one expects their bank account their fiat bank account to get locked lose 90 value or more like their dollar bank account your lebanese lira it's fine you know we know country is there is a lot of corruption there is a lot of uh you know theft and delira we don't trust it but the dollar no we trust the dollar yeah we love the us dollar yeah everyone has us dollar yeah who survived this like people paid in dollars people paid people who saved dollars in their mattresses and their pillows you know how many dollars are in lebanese houses according to the central bank there is an estimate that there is between two to five billion dollars lock in people's mattresses and pillows and walls under the carpet this even this dollar is not safe today in in its physical paper form it is not safe you know inflation is eating it as well you go to change it into lebanese lira and you go to buy your goods and services from the supermarket it's still expensive yeah so the diaspora today has a big role to play and i won't say saving lebanon just bringing hope back that's it it feels like it does that seems like a an impossible task i was trying to look back at the article i wrote i can't remember like i think it's 40 of the gdp to lebanon is the diaspora it's like a couple billions you know why today there is lebanon why the country is still standing on its feet people they always think okay 40 banks in lebanon 40 really population 4 million 40 banks in the country they're not functioning you can't withdraw money you cannot go to the bank and take your money out how are people living and it's not happened yesterday it's happening since 2019 how our people continuing how are people going from a new year to a new year it's the diaspora they are sending money they are sending money back home there are transaction fees being paid on western union with the highest it's the it's the most highest money corridor in the world i think is lebanon it's like to send 100 euro to send 100 to lebanon cost 20. like something insane because you have to pay western union in lebanon and you have to pay western union in the country of origin so you're paying double the fees and you're lucky if western union in lebanon is going to give you u.s dollar he might be giving you lebanese lyra and tell you sorry i don't have you as dollar go complain go complain where today or today the central bank changed the rates of the dollar the central bank the central bank today announced a new rate for the lebanese lira 8 000 lebanese lira for one dollar they're trying to catch up to the mar they're trying to catch up to the black market mark my words humans in crypto in december on christmas lebanese lira will be 50 000 lebanese lira for one dollar well it's i'm looking at it now it's it's 25 fifteen i mean but it's funny that the central bank is still like not central bank was giving three thousand nine hundred lebanese lira for one dollar today before i joined your session in one hour a new circular came out eight thousand lebanese lira for one dollar and you are allowed to withdraw three thousand dollars per month only wow if you have ten million dollars we don't care you can withdraw three thousand only did you did you see that news maybe i'm i hope it's not fake news that i'm spreading but uh one of the lebanon's uh neighbors is syria right and uh i i believe uh the assad family has like 40 billion in lebanese banks the problem with assad today is that most of his wealthy circles that back him up they have their money in lebanese banks lebanon is considered to be the swiss i know swiss banking the swiss financial system of the middle east not dubai not saudi arabia not bahrain 25 000 pound for one dollar and he still says yeah lyra is fine yeah do you think he's in denial like how how can he still be there again again it's the it's the mix it's a very dangerous mix of politics and power and money together those things they need to be separated in areas where corruption is high where theft of public money is high and there is no accountability there is i cannot look and see where is my money spent as a taxpayer you know yeah in europe in holland you do have corruption we're not saying corruption is doesn't exist here it exists but it doesn't affect the way the country is built it doesn't affect communities as it affects it in lebanon at least here there is electricity there is internet there is roads there is somehow safety and safety brings investments it brings economic prosperity we don't have it you know which company will come open an office in beirut when an explosion happens and it's felt 200 kilometers away in cyprus what do you think is going to happen to lebanon really like i'm looking for this by far the story i think in lebanon people will increase their adoption to usdt to bitcoin to ethereum to all these cryptos and slowly because now of the pandemic as well you're studying online you're working online you're transacting online the communities will change and there will be a new mentality coming up that is taking a little bit from every other country and forming a new type of lebanese identity and this new type of lebanese identity will not be voting for the same politicians that have destroyed the country for the past 40 years they will be perhaps inspired in a new governance system in a way to govern themselves as what we know as well in this space as delegated proof of stake so imagine a delegated proof of stake for lebanon attack government system for lebanon where communities delegate the experts in the field to come together and run and govern the country in the history of lebanon it happened it happened when we got the independence from the french colonization the communities came together and they picked the best experts in the community to help them get their independence it happened at that time when there was so much pain from the french colonists and unfortunately today the colonists is one of us and in order to get rid of them we need to reorganize we need to have a type of organization that is not only decentralized and not only autonomous but it is as well delegated to the experts because this is how we can move lebanon forward the experts need to step in they need to fix the economy they need to fix the society they need to fix the education fix the health care fix the import fix the export fix the electricity fix the roads it's the only way we can at least at least at least that dow will have work for the next 50 years you know if they figure it out if they figure the good governance they will have work and a mandate uh for for for generations yes i hey there's only one way up right i i just hope lebanon doesn't go further down that's the only thing any other startup and any other business the only way that you go up is when you reach the bottom once you touch the bottom once you feel it with your hand once you know okay this is the bottom i am in it cannot go any lower it cannot go any worse then the next logical thing is to go up you won't go immediately up but take it step by step and that's what we are doing now in lebanon step by step with the efforts that we've been working on since 2014 uh randa omar all those great guys that have you know they as well have their own stories and they as well risk their jobs their risk their lives what people don't know randa was called randa is the first person that started to advocate in lebanon on bitcoin she opened the whatsapp group we did it together we both we both started this this thing in lebanon but she put more risk than what i did because i was happy back in the netherlands i can have a big mouth and i can talk okay she's there on the ground and she's a banker and they were about to fire her if she didn't stop working in bitcoin back in 2014 the isf the internal security forces of lebanon called randa and they they they brought her to the security offices asking her what she's doing with bitcoin people don't know these stories they think that you know it will just flourish there bitcoin will just like it will grow in lebanon it needs humans ladies and gentlemen and at that time they took risks more than day and their stories need to be heard more than day share build the same thing omar the same thing they all started by taking risk and today the reward is there so this is why we believe there is still hope because there is good humans still in lebanon they're still there they're still fighting they're still pushing this crypto battle forward while someone is sitting in the base office in new york there are people making sure that mr coinbase you're going to have clients because of our work on the ground you are sitting in your very tower where your soldiers are fighting on the street and today consensus bans iran yeah and what do you hear today yeah we're gonna back without your students i mean come on yeah good stuff guys good luck good big brains big brains yes day i like to ask my guests to show something would you like to show an object maybe what you're wearing on today with us definitely tell us more what are you wearing i'm wearing one of the hoodies from hcpp conference i was i am still a big fan of this great conference where the real crypto cloud comes there the real power of crypto isn't in that house with all the hackers will all the you know innovators with all the people that really broke barriers and really did amazing stuff in the crypto space uh amir taki was is one of those guys who huge guy check him out hcpp big shout out to amir taki amir taki isn't lebanon he is yes he is in lebanon he's as well on the ground on the fight so we sell with him and i was so blessed in 2021 after one year of not seeing a stage of not being in an event to talk to people to share what we are doing in lebanon in afghanistan i was invited this year in 2021 to be one of the main speakers at hcpp and i had a blast of time so i met my co-founder there mark evanson who's one of us well the brilliant software developers in bitcoin from the united states is based in vienna now we're working together on flues and uh that's what i'm that's what i'm wearing it's a good t-shirt i always love their name it's such a good name institute of crypto anarchy we need to bring i think uh your spirit back products where we use cryptocurrency and the idea that all of this is possible due to a free internet due to the cypherpunk ideals and we need to fight for that and i'm happy you mentioned that it wasn't easy to talk about crypto in lebanon in 2014 or even now today and that a lot of people are sticking their neck out i always felt that's why my platform is here is because i do this from the luxury and safety of a european government which will not storm into my house because i'm talking about crypto to people online you know um and i i think it was snowden i mean it's not it snowden says a lot of wonderful things but uh about the idea that privacy is not just to be fought for just oh i don't want to misquote him i don't want to misquote him but it's the idea that basically people like me can can advocate for privacy because those who really need it they can't true those who are silenced by default they can't stick their neck out and say oh i need privacy no it's people like me that have the luxury of safety of being in a regulated environment where i have water and fresh air and hey electricity like i had people the other day that couldn't join the talk that we had with about lebanon because they don't have electricity or they have like you know 10 minutes a day or they don't have bandwidth and it's like yeah so i have that luxury of being able to just host people like utah on this platform and we'll continue continue to advocate for for cryptocurrencies really and for lebanon and and all these countries and i wish you all the best um i'll make sure to leave all the links below for people to reach out to you if they want to support if they want to contribute their time their knowledge their software development skills um that's that's what i can offer and it's been an absolute honor today the honor is mine closure is mine as well and as you said you know we're talking in this safe space here i'm in the hague my own office and i can have a big mouth and talk about everything while many in lebanon and afghanistan they can't even you know put a tick-tock video outside or in egypt you put a controversial tick-tock video you sent to jail five years seven years so the freedom of talking about humans in in crypto is a blessing by itself i thank you for the platform i thank everyone who will watch this to the end and uh i hope i see you in person yeah and inshallah big events and we share more good stories more good vibes and we inspire more people to really use crypto and show others how that the change is coming yeah on those wonderful words to financial freedom to censorship resistance and to peer-to-peer electronic cash today thank you very soon [Music]