This was one of the best bitcoin and/or bitcoin adjacent conversations I have ever had. I'm still so happy about it 48 hours later.

I needed to take an uber home from the airport the other night. It was late and I was tired. It took forever to get off the plane once we landed. I got in the car and started talking to the driver. He had an obvious accent, so I asked where he was from. He told me he was from Zimbabwe.

Now, for some reason I have been fascinated with Zimbabwe for years. I made a post a while back about all the memoirs I had read about the country:

#556628

I had never met someone from Zimbabwe, so I was very excited to speak to him. He was in his early 50s. He had memories from childhood about the war, the curfews they were under, the excitement in the early 80s about Mugabe, etc. He was a great story teller. I was glad we had a long ride. Of course we eventually talked about the mess Mugabe made of things as he consolidated power, and we talked about the destruction of the Zimbabwe dollar. He laughed when I told him I have a 1 trillion dollar (or something like that) Zimbabwe paper bill as a collector's item.

It turns out he worked in the past as a business procurement consultant in Harare. One of his businesses required him to write reports for the IMF and World Bank. He became very disillusioned because they would edit his reports and change his conclusions. They would just say, "no, this is what you meant to say"when he objected. He just assumed that, as a US citizen, I would think the IMF was a great organization. I talked to him about Gladstein's books and the HRF. He was very interested and wrote down the names of the books. As many of you may know, I'm also a big fan of Anita Posch, so I started talking about bitcoin in relation to her work in Zimbabwe. His wife and children are still in Harare, and he is planning to return home in the next year or two, so I offered to put him in touch with her. It tuns out that he had just bought his first bitcoin around six months ago. He is holding it, but is very disappointed in the price drop. He bought it at around the peak. I did my best to explain to him why this doesn't matter. I got his contact information and we began texting the next morning. I sent him a bunch of links, then talked to Anita about him getting in touch with her organization. I put him in contact with her co-worker who is based in Harare.

I don't know where this all will lead, but he did offer to show me around Harare once he's back home. I always wanted to visit that country, so I plan on taking him up on the offer.

P.S. Yes, I will try to get him on SN.