Of course, the main issue was the Central African Republic.
This is the link to the recording of the Twitter Space:
DISCUSSING THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC MAKING BITCOIN LEGAL TENDER
Quote
Alex Gladstein and Fodé Diop join a Bitcoin Magazine Twitter Spaces to share updates about the Central African Republic’s plan for Bitcoin adoption.
My Friends at the BIP_Show decided to publish a little executive summary of that Twitter Space:
S04E18 - Delle due... LUNA Starting Point at 44:55
Quote
Rikki: "Dear Guybrush, what topic do you want to cover?"
Guybrush: “I would like to be interested in what is happening in Central Africa because I have seen some news. What is the name of the president of the Central African Republic? I saw that details emerged about his private life, about what he studied: it turns out that he is a math genius, then there are videos of him who despite being the president gives math lessons in the classroom. Do you know more? "
Rikki: So I studied the subject a bit. In reality, even on this story of the president's Twitter account, there is a whole mystery because he did not have Twitter before, then he became Twitter a few weeks ago, practically he is just talking about cryptocurrencies, plus he tweets in a rather ungrammatical English-French. So there are those who doubt the authenticity of who actually manages this account.
But let's do a little order, let's start from the beginning because interesting and worrying news arrive from the Central African Republic at the same time. Once again, Bitcoin Italia Podcast tells you about Bitcoin as nobody tells you, and therefore, unfortunately, we are forced to go against the trend for a moment with what is the narrative of the Bitcoin world in general that greets the law that, in fact, makes Bitcoin Legal Tender in the Central African Republic as the first step, the second piece, of that domino effect triggered by El Salvador that many blind bitcoiners hope has begun and is now unstoppable. In reality, as we had already said in a few episodes, the situation in the Central African Republic is very different from that of El Salvador is a largely depopulated nation, a large territory with 5 million inhabitants, an average salary that is one-third of that of El Salvador: the average salary of the inhabitants of that region is around 100 dollars a month. A region which, despite being rich in raw materials, is therefore very poor and which is experiencing a situation of violent civil war. My first concern, therefore, was to understand how the use of Bitcoin as a Legal Tender could work in a nation with these characteristics of instability and with a practically non-existent technological infrastructure: 11% of the population, I remind you, has access to the internet. So I used some of my contacts to document myself and the evidence I was able to find inevitably demonstrates that such a thing cannot work in the Central African Republic. Absolutely not. The situation is very complex, it is not El Salvador from any point of view. I spoke to a dear friend who is a doctor from Milan who has worked for Emergency for a long time and has been responsible for Emergency's projects in Africa for a long time and who has been in the Central African Republic for over a year and a half. He is a dear friend he is a collaborator, I was one of his collaborators I worked for him for a few years, and so I called him immediately to understand a little what his opinions could be. He is someone who knows nothing about Bitcoin, but he knows a lot about Africa and the Central African Republic. And he painted me a picture that to define in dark colours is really using a metaphor, a euphemism. In what sense? The sense that he spent a year and a half in Central Africa and then he left because Emergency closed the facilities and hospitals in the country.
GuyBrush: “If even Emergency can't make it, we're in bad shape”.
Rikki: "Exactly, because it was not able, the largest health NGO in the world, the one with one of the highest economic powers, and above all a logistics sector of unbeatable value, which has hospitals in Kabul, which has hospitals under bombs is left Central Africa because he had no guarantee of being able to ensure the safety of his personnel.
So this must already give us a fairly delineated outline. So a very difficult situation, when they were there, they lived isolated facts because they could not go around or leave the Emergency compounds or health facilities. He then told me of a situation, in addition to widespread violence, of endemic corruption at the political level and at the civil and social level. That is, the Central African Republic is not a poor country, it is very rich in raw materials, it is full of gold and diamonds, it is full of oil. What's the problem? The problem is that this wealth coagulates in pockets of corruption that are extreme which translates into a history of dictators, political instability and civil war, one of which, as I said, is underway. So it is not clear, in this very complicated context, what the meaning of a Bitcoin law is given that, and we will see it shortly, it is not a Bitcoin law. And this must be said very clearly. The question arises, however, as to what: it is the months that parliament actually faces, this law writes; a much-discussed law, which has had a rather troubled parliamentary process and is discovered by experts in the country and cryptography experts. There was a beautiful live, a Twitter Space indeed, from the Bitcoin Magazine account with Alex Gladstein who invited a whole series of activists from the country and neighbouring countries, therefore experts from the Central African Republic and Bitcoin experts, who told how there is evidence that the law was strongly supported through a large lobbying job by this obscure Cameroonian businessman who has on his resume a history of industrial scams, financial scams, full-blown Ponzi schemes and sought after in several African states. This thing sets off an alarm bell. For what reason? Analyzing the text, the text is very smoky, the text of the law as it was written is very smoky because the Central African Republic is one of those 15 countries that have the Franco Colonial. The law, which does not speak only of Bitcoin, but speaks in a generic way of cryptocurrencies in more than one article, effectively equates them to legal tender currency, therefore to the colonial franc. This is a big problem that has been raised by many experts from the Central African Republic because the suspicion is, in essence, that there is a scam behind the law - that these very wealthy people actually want a legal way to steal state money. as, trivially introducing useless tokens like Luna, demanding from the Central Bank the conversion of the shit-token created ad hoc into the colonial franc, and escaping with the colonial franc or in any case cashing in the colonial franc. Which is possible today by reading the text of the law. So this is a very serious problem because let's forget that most of the analysts and NGOs I have read comments and works about in recent weeks agree to the law, forget that the Central African Republic can use Bitcoins in the streets: it is impossible, there is no technological infrastructure for this to happen. So there are two cases: we can see the glass as half full and this is extremely interesting because if this were an attempt to escape the direct control of the French Central Bank; remember, the colonial franc is printed directly by the French Central Bank and is pegged to the Euro so it is their Stable Fiat Coin. And from this point of view it serves, for this purpose in 15 countries, 180 million people live in African states that have the Colonial Franc as state currency. So if this is an attempt to escape the direct control of the former colonial power, then this is certainly potentially very interesting because it can be a fuse: 180 million people 15 states, if this were, much more populous than the Central African Republic if this motion of rebellion was born in Central Africa and then flared up in the rest of these 15 countries, would be fantastic! And it would be a very interesting thing to see. The problem is that the other side of the coin is that this is a state Ponzi scheme. And unfortunately, from the information I was able to recover, it seems that this is more the case.
Guybrush: “I understand that there will not be a“ Central African Mission ”
Rikki:“ No, for the moment, let's wait to see what happens, I would say. “
Guybrush:" So the Twitter account of the Central African president who tweets all the time, that is, it's not official, but does the president know? Didn't he distance himself? "
Rikki: "Back then in this Space, a local journalist spoke who said he had confirmation from the staff that it is an official account anyway. But it was clearly created to talk about crypto because this account only talks about crypto when there is some other one too. problem in Central Africa. "
GuyBrush:" Eh, They wanted to replicate the Bukele model. "
Rikki:" Oh yeah, exactly. Probably yes, not understood. Bukele's account, but to a group of collaborators who, however, I repeat, you don't know who they are because you don't have to imagine a normal presidential office. Cartels of drug traffickers, or mafia organizations.
Guybrush: "Ok, so little enthusiasm for this move by Central Africa"
Rikki: "A lot of caution, if not little enthusiasm."
Guybrush: "This teaches us that whenever there will be an announcement of this type we must be cautious instead of this announcement here many had incensed, especially Samsung Mow: "Here the Domino Effect has already started" we must be very careful ".
Rikki: "There is a lot of propaganda even in our world, guys, things are complex and our path will not be triumphal, but it will be fraught with dangers and slips because unfortunately the world out there, to which Bitcoin must adhere, is complicated and full of complexity and enormous problems. To think that Bitcoin would have saved Africa without having to deal with African dictators, African oligarchs, international countries that have billionaire interests in Africa, guerrillas, African militias, African ethnic clashes, corruption and endemic poverty. Africa is just telling a fairy tale ".
GuyBrush: ”Ok good. Anyway congratulations for the investigation because I had not yet found all this precision anywhere in the various articles. I had tried to inform myself a little but it is all very confusing and above all, being sector magazines, everyone always talks about the Domino Effect, adoption level with nation-state adoption is the new of 2022 ".
Rikki: “Then not even net of analyzes that are not so much in depth objectively, there is a difficulty in having reliable news coming from there. That is, I will give you a stupid example, the connection from Central Africa of this Twitter Space kept jumping because this was in the capital and the internet in the capital is patchy, so we are talking about this technological infrastructure. Just imagine you guys ".
GuyBrush: "Okay".
Guybrush: “I would like to be interested in what is happening in Central Africa because I have seen some news. What is the name of the president of the Central African Republic? I saw that details emerged about his private life, about what he studied: it turns out that he is a math genius, then there are videos of him who despite being the president gives math lessons in the classroom. Do you know more? "
Rikki: So I studied the subject a bit. In reality, even on this story of the president's Twitter account, there is a whole mystery because he did not have Twitter before, then he became Twitter a few weeks ago, practically he is just talking about cryptocurrencies, plus he tweets in a rather ungrammatical English-French. So there are those who doubt the authenticity of who actually manages this account.
But let's do a little order, let's start from the beginning because interesting and worrying news arrive from the Central African Republic at the same time. Once again, Bitcoin Italia Podcast tells you about Bitcoin as nobody tells you, and therefore, unfortunately, we are forced to go against the trend for a moment with what is the narrative of the Bitcoin world in general that greets the law that, in fact, makes Bitcoin Legal Tender in the Central African Republic as the first step, the second piece, of that domino effect triggered by El Salvador that many blind bitcoiners hope has begun and is now unstoppable. In reality, as we had already said in a few episodes, the situation in the Central African Republic is very different from that of El Salvador is a largely depopulated nation, a large territory with 5 million inhabitants, an average salary that is one-third of that of El Salvador: the average salary of the inhabitants of that region is around 100 dollars a month. A region which, despite being rich in raw materials, is therefore very poor and which is experiencing a situation of violent civil war. My first concern, therefore, was to understand how the use of Bitcoin as a Legal Tender could work in a nation with these characteristics of instability and with a practically non-existent technological infrastructure: 11% of the population, I remind you, has access to the internet. So I used some of my contacts to document myself and the evidence I was able to find inevitably demonstrates that such a thing cannot work in the Central African Republic. Absolutely not. The situation is very complex, it is not El Salvador from any point of view. I spoke to a dear friend who is a doctor from Milan who has worked for Emergency for a long time and has been responsible for Emergency's projects in Africa for a long time and who has been in the Central African Republic for over a year and a half. He is a dear friend he is a collaborator, I was one of his collaborators I worked for him for a few years, and so I called him immediately to understand a little what his opinions could be. He is someone who knows nothing about Bitcoin, but he knows a lot about Africa and the Central African Republic. And he painted me a picture that to define in dark colours is really using a metaphor, a euphemism. In what sense? The sense that he spent a year and a half in Central Africa and then he left because Emergency closed the facilities and hospitals in the country.
GuyBrush: “If even Emergency can't make it, we're in bad shape”.
Rikki: "Exactly, because it was not able, the largest health NGO in the world, the one with one of the highest economic powers, and above all a logistics sector of unbeatable value, which has hospitals in Kabul, which has hospitals under bombs is left Central Africa because he had no guarantee of being able to ensure the safety of his personnel.
So this must already give us a fairly delineated outline. So a very difficult situation, when they were there, they lived isolated facts because they could not go around or leave the Emergency compounds or health facilities. He then told me of a situation, in addition to widespread violence, of endemic corruption at the political level and at the civil and social level. That is, the Central African Republic is not a poor country, it is very rich in raw materials, it is full of gold and diamonds, it is full of oil. What's the problem? The problem is that this wealth coagulates in pockets of corruption that are extreme which translates into a history of dictators, political instability and civil war, one of which, as I said, is underway. So it is not clear, in this very complicated context, what the meaning of a Bitcoin law is given that, and we will see it shortly, it is not a Bitcoin law. And this must be said very clearly. The question arises, however, as to what: it is the months that parliament actually faces, this law writes; a much-discussed law, which has had a rather troubled parliamentary process and is discovered by experts in the country and cryptography experts. There was a beautiful live, a Twitter Space indeed, from the Bitcoin Magazine account with Alex Gladstein who invited a whole series of activists from the country and neighbouring countries, therefore experts from the Central African Republic and Bitcoin experts, who told how there is evidence that the law was strongly supported through a large lobbying job by this obscure Cameroonian businessman who has on his resume a history of industrial scams, financial scams, full-blown Ponzi schemes and sought after in several African states. This thing sets off an alarm bell. For what reason? Analyzing the text, the text is very smoky, the text of the law as it was written is very smoky because the Central African Republic is one of those 15 countries that have the Franco Colonial. The law, which does not speak only of Bitcoin, but speaks in a generic way of cryptocurrencies in more than one article, effectively equates them to legal tender currency, therefore to the colonial franc. This is a big problem that has been raised by many experts from the Central African Republic because the suspicion is, in essence, that there is a scam behind the law - that these very wealthy people actually want a legal way to steal state money. as, trivially introducing useless tokens like Luna, demanding from the Central Bank the conversion of the shit-token created ad hoc into the colonial franc, and escaping with the colonial franc or in any case cashing in the colonial franc. Which is possible today by reading the text of the law. So this is a very serious problem because let's forget that most of the analysts and NGOs I have read comments and works about in recent weeks agree to the law, forget that the Central African Republic can use Bitcoins in the streets: it is impossible, there is no technological infrastructure for this to happen. So there are two cases: we can see the glass as half full and this is extremely interesting because if this were an attempt to escape the direct control of the French Central Bank; remember, the colonial franc is printed directly by the French Central Bank and is pegged to the Euro so it is their Stable Fiat Coin. And from this point of view it serves, for this purpose in 15 countries, 180 million people live in African states that have the Colonial Franc as state currency. So if this is an attempt to escape the direct control of the former colonial power, then this is certainly potentially very interesting because it can be a fuse: 180 million people 15 states, if this were, much more populous than the Central African Republic if this motion of rebellion was born in Central Africa and then flared up in the rest of these 15 countries, would be fantastic! And it would be a very interesting thing to see. The problem is that the other side of the coin is that this is a state Ponzi scheme. And unfortunately, from the information I was able to recover, it seems that this is more the case.
Guybrush: “I understand that there will not be a“ Central African Mission ”
Rikki:“ No, for the moment, let's wait to see what happens, I would say. “
Guybrush:" So the Twitter account of the Central African president who tweets all the time, that is, it's not official, but does the president know? Didn't he distance himself? "
Rikki: "Back then in this Space, a local journalist spoke who said he had confirmation from the staff that it is an official account anyway. But it was clearly created to talk about crypto because this account only talks about crypto when there is some other one too. problem in Central Africa. "
GuyBrush:" Eh, They wanted to replicate the Bukele model. "
Rikki:" Oh yeah, exactly. Probably yes, not understood. Bukele's account, but to a group of collaborators who, however, I repeat, you don't know who they are because you don't have to imagine a normal presidential office. Cartels of drug traffickers, or mafia organizations.
Guybrush: "Ok, so little enthusiasm for this move by Central Africa"
Rikki: "A lot of caution, if not little enthusiasm."
Guybrush: "This teaches us that whenever there will be an announcement of this type we must be cautious instead of this announcement here many had incensed, especially Samsung Mow: "Here the Domino Effect has already started" we must be very careful ".
Rikki: "There is a lot of propaganda even in our world, guys, things are complex and our path will not be triumphal, but it will be fraught with dangers and slips because unfortunately the world out there, to which Bitcoin must adhere, is complicated and full of complexity and enormous problems. To think that Bitcoin would have saved Africa without having to deal with African dictators, African oligarchs, international countries that have billionaire interests in Africa, guerrillas, African militias, African ethnic clashes, corruption and endemic poverty. Africa is just telling a fairy tale ".
GuyBrush: ”Ok good. Anyway congratulations for the investigation because I had not yet found all this precision anywhere in the various articles. I had tried to inform myself a little but it is all very confusing and above all, being sector magazines, everyone always talks about the Domino Effect, adoption level with nation-state adoption is the new of 2022 ".
Rikki: “Then not even net of analyzes that are not so much in depth objectively, there is a difficulty in having reliable news coming from there. That is, I will give you a stupid example, the connection from Central Africa of this Twitter Space kept jumping because this was in the capital and the internet in the capital is patchy, so we are talking about this technological infrastructure. Just imagine you guys ".
GuyBrush: "Okay".
