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Sunlight to Savings: How One Zimbabwean Farmer Is Building a Bitcoin Businessanitaposch.com/bitcoin-business-zimbabwe
1654 sats \ 12 comments \ @siggy47 5h bitcoin
zaps forwarded to @anita (100%)
Anita Posch sent me this link this morning and asked me to share it on Stacker News. As most of you know, Anita is a tireless advocate for building bitcoin circular economies in places that need it most. This is another example of the good work she does.
Please also consider supporting her organization, Bitcoin For Fairness:
https://bffbtc.org/#menu
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36 sats \ 7 replies \ @jasonb 4h
This is so inspiring!
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50 sats \ 6 replies \ @siggy47 OP 4h
I immediately thought of you. You have inspired me to try a little solar project myself. I'm still researching.
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36 sats \ 5 replies \ @jasonb 4h
That’s awesome to hear! I hope you pull it off.
It has been WAY harder for me to find miners here than I thought it would be. I’ve been pretty down the last few weeks about the way my goals are totally slipping through my fingers. It’s been great to ride the coattails of the Bitcoin Ekasi project and plugging into all that they’re doing, but it’s looking like I’m going to have to return to Ohio a failure with my big solar mining ambitions…at least this time around.
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50 sats \ 4 replies \ @siggy47 OP 4h
You have already succeeded. It can't be easy looking for miners there. Can you use someone stateside to ship to you, or is it more complicated than that?
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144 sats \ 2 replies \ @jasonb 3h
It’s mostly about time right now. Almost anyone I’ve spoken with that was going to import them said January would be the earliest I could expect them. Currently, I’m going back to Ohio in November. :( I’d love to come back in January, but that will really be financially risky due to a handful of personal factors. I’m not risk averse, especially right now, but we’d be in an especially vulnerable position at that point. There are some other complicating factors, but I should probably get back to work right now. Haha
I’m currently teaching some folks how to 3d print QR codes for merchants by swapping out the filament on a single filament printer and uploading the merchant’s logo in the center. Lots of places here have employees that have to run and get the boss whenever a bitcoin payer comes in. We’re thinking about making flava-flav style necklaces with personalized wallet QR codes for servers’ tips as the next step!
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50 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 OP 3h
You are doing some good work. Maybe you should contact @anita. She might be helpful with advice and contacts.
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72 sats \ 0 replies \ @jasonb 1h
Absolutely, I’ve actually been meaning to send her the syllabus I was hoping to teach before applying again for an opensats grant to hear what she thought. However, I really want to present a proof of concept at varying levels before really setting something like this up and want to get that done before reaching out to her or opensats about it.
It’s actually as if I’m in this weird spin wheel (anti-spin wheel?) of things that can’t move forward. I need the miners for the proof of concept (I mean, I have an s9 currently controlled by a solar inverter through home assistant, but it’s not a true demonstration of how cool the setup would really be) and I need the proof of concept to get some funding and I need the funding to come back in January when I’ll have access to miners… Nobody’s fault but mine.
In the meantime, I feel like I’ve at least been helping out as best I can with the folks that are getting things done here and potentially will get things better sorted for tackling the initial goal/vision in the future.
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36 sats \ 0 replies \ @jasonb 3h
I should have led with, “thanks for the encouragement.”
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36 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatAttack 2h
Man Anita is a beacon of hope at all times. She brings poignant tears to my eyes whenever I hear her stories like this and I dream of traveling and championing bitcoin like she does. From her article:
There is a lot of demand for bitcoin in Zimbabwe that cannot be fulfilled. Due to international sanctions and pressure from the Reserve Bank and government, institutions and banks are banned from touching Bitcoin. As a result, there are no registered exchanges to buy bitcoin from. From a privacy perspective this is good - people obtaining bitcoin without KYC (identification), but the downside is that you need to know people personally who you can trust and who are willing to exchange US dollar to bitcoin and those are rare and ask for commissions of up to 20%.
Obviously going there and spending as many says in goods and services in the places accepting, using, and saving sats will be of huge help. But I’ve had silent apprehension about going to places like this and selling bitcoin for USD to the locals… it felt a bit dirty sounding. But as she points out, getting your hands on bitcoin is difficult, and if there really is genuine demand there, perhaps there is some real virtue to be found in providing that service. Zero mark-ups, KYC free if you pre-mix for them, or just use exclusively LN…
Putting bitcoin into these corners of the world is important for Bitcoin and thus important for all of us.
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36 sats \ 0 replies \ @lunanto 3h
Great awareness, I tried listening to Bitcoin can take down Dictator podcast but I couldn't so I had to download it. I suggest they should get on fountain.fm
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36 sats \ 0 replies \ @AG 3h
Thanks for sharing this incredible story, @jasonb proobably interested on learning about this.
Bookmarked for next TM7 update about ~AGORA P2P Marketplace, business and entrepreneurship.
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36 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 5h
It's always inspiring to hear stories like this.
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