THE BTRUST MISSION

So if Bitcoin is a tool that’s meant to be used all around the world, it must be taught by people all around the world, it must be developed by people all around the world. Our next panel is about BTrust, and these panelists are educating users and funding Bitcoin development all around the world. Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z started this initiative in 2021 and they’ve assigned a group of board members. We have some of those folks here with us today, so without further ado, I’d like to welcome:

– Abubakar Nur Khalil, the CEO and CTO of Recursive Capital and managing director and co-creator of CChub;

– Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Block;

– Obi Nwosu, the co-founder and CEO of Fedi, to lead our discussion.

[Obi Nwosu]
So, thank you very much for having me. For the attendees here, I used to live here and it holds a special place in my heart, so it’s great being back. Now, many of you had a bit of a rundown, but many of you might not actually know what BTrust is. So before we get into any more details, we should have a go at answering that question. So, for the BTrust board members here, what is BTrust? How would you describe it?

[Ojoma Ochai]
Thanks, Obi. So, BTrust is an organization first of all, that exists because of a very generous donation from Jack here and Jay-Z back in 2021, beginning of 2022, thereabouts. And we have coined this thing to say we exist to locate, educate, and remunerate developers working on open-source Bitcoin projects. Essentially, that’s what we do.

We support people in Africa and in other Global South locations to get involved with Bitcoin development, open-source Bitcoin development, and we remunerate them to do that. Femi was talking about that in the earlier panel about some of that work around educating those developers that we then go on to support to work on open-source projects. So, that’s the sort of short answer to describe what BTrust is.


[Abubakar Nur Khalil]
In general, the way you should think of it is: BTrust exists at the center of the heart of the innovation that’s happening on the continent of Africa. As a priority, when it comes to developers coming out, there’s still a lot to do with regards to the end-to-end pipeline that needs to be developed for developers, going from “I don’t know anything about Bitcoin” all the way up to “I can build for Bitcoin” and have a sustainable career in open source.

The majority of the work really is focused on ensuring the health and integrity of the open-source ecosystem in the Bitcoin space, specifically because we are Bitcoin-only, just to clarify. And at the end of the day, really for us, the aim is to make sure that we have: 

One, a healthy pipeline going from Zero to Hero. 

Two, we want to make sure that we have a sustainable means for developers to actually work on what we believe is the most important project in human history, which is Bitcoin. 

And at the end of day three, we want to make sure that all that extra potential on the continent is really channeled into something that could help alleviate a lot of the problems that we have on the continent, whether it’s from failing currencies, inflation, and things like that. 

So that’s kind of where I’d say the framing should be in terms of how you think about BTrust.

[Obi Nwosu]
Yeah, and the only thing, I mean, at the moment, our first market that we focused on was Africa, but we’re focused on what, for lack of a better phrase, we call the Global South. So it’s Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and more. But that brings me on to a question for all of you. Why is this needed? We’ve got Chaincode, we’ve got Brink, we’ve got OpenSats. Why do you actually need it, why do you do this actually? We start with the guy with a great cap in the middle.

[Jack Dorsey]
Just some context into why we did it in the first place: Jay is a huge fan of Bitcoin, and I’m a massive fan of Bitcoin, and we’ve been doing a lot together and just interested in having a lot more impact together. One of the things we did was to give Bitcoin to his home Marcy Projects and to attempt to create a circular economy in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, New York. That’s still ongoing. We started with education and actually giving people Bitcoin and then learning from them, and eventually, we’ll go around and figure out how to sign up these merchants so that we can have a true circular economy in Marcy.

With BTrust, the need we saw was that Bitcoin is absolutely amazing and it solves real problems, and the present problems that it solves for and the populations that it solved for, there’s not enough of those people working on Bitcoin and working on Bitcoin core in particular. And we wanted to solve that problem. How do we get more developers into Bitcoin, into Bitcoin core? How do we get them to build companies around Bitcoin? How do we get them doing more open-source?

So, we decided to do something super crazy and super big because Africa is crazy and big, South America is crazy and big, and Central America is crazy and big. And we gave 500 Bitcoin, which is, I think, worth a lot of money right now and will only be worth more, and we gave it with no strings attached.

We wanted to hire a board that took the Bitcoin and did what they thought was best with no input from me and Jay and no control from me and Jay. So, we went through applications for about 8,000 people and we found these amazing folks in Qala, who’s not here. And it was a very, very, very long process, but just like Bitcoin, we were slow but we were deliberate. And I think we found an incredible group of people who can really do the right thing for Bitcoin.

With this massive amount of money that will only increase, the reason we wanted to give Bitcoin is that we knew that Bitcoin only goes up and we knew that those resources will only increase if we’re using the currency that we’re trying to help at the same time as well. And we’ve been nothing but impressed.

We don’t talk a lot by design, but when we do, it’s amazing. And we give Obi a hard time as well, but it’s just been amazing what the board has done with it thus far and Qala and the BTrust builders and really focusing on getting people into Bitcoin core. And I think you all have had some success, which I’m not going to spoil, but you’ve had some early success and it can only be more.

So, I couldn’t be more proud, and I think this model is phenomenal, and I hope that other people do it as well, especially people at this conference. Even a little bit helps, but we need more people who will benefit massively from Bitcoin working on Bitcoin and building it for themselves and not just to be in the single point of failure of Western countries such as the US or Europe where a lot of the Bitcoin developers were, especially the Bitcoin core developers.

[Ojoma Ochai]
Yeah, just to echo that. I’m Nigerian, I live in Nigeria. There are many indignities that one has to learn to live with when you’re a Nigerian living in Nigeria. One of that is related to things as simple as travel, you know, visas and all of the things you have to go through, how much you have to pay, all of the questions you have to answer about, “yes, I am coming back home to my two children, I’m not going to vanish in this country of yours.” But it’s the same thing with participating in the global financial system. One of the phrases that you encounter the most living in Nigeria is, “this service is not available in your region.” And so for me, getting into Bitcoin and finding this thing that helped remove some of that indignity of just not being able to participate in this global financial system was a no-brainer.

But the more I learned about Bitcoin, the more concerned, in a sense, I got that this was something else that was being built for us. That’s another indignity that you have to live with when you’re a Nigerian. Everybody wants to help you, and on the face of it, it’s good, you know, but it’s just like, how can we contribute to building this thing that’s solving our problems? How can we be active participants in these things that are going to open up this whole world to us? So, for me, when I saw Jack’s tweet in 2021 saying we’re doing this thing to support developers in Africa and the global South and India, I think the tweet said, I was like, “Hell yeah!” Because if Bitcoin is going to be the thing that allows us to engage with these global financial systems, we can’t be just consumers of the solution. We have to be contributing to building the solution.

So, for me, that was really interesting. In my day job, I support entrepreneurs, initially working in the creative industries but now working across the whole of the digital economy. And one of the biggest challenges is around payments, cross-border remittances. And so, it was seeing that from that point of view, Bitcoin solves this. So for me, I think Femi was saying in the earlier panel about when we talk about Bitcoin, it’s not so much preaching the gospel of what Bitcoin is, it’s preaching the gospel of what it can do and just letting people see the utility of it in a very real sense, not in the future, today, things that it allows them to do today.

So, that’s a sort of long-winded way of saying for me, getting involved with BTrust was around seeing an opportunity for Africans, people in other locations like Latin America, Central America, India, to work on this thing that will make their lives better and not just be recipients of the benefits of it.


[Abubakar Nur Khalil]
In general, like again, back to the question you asked Obi, thinking of exactly why you need a BTrust to begin with is fair; it’s a fair question because at the end of the day, there are existing open-source providers like you said, but the problem is given how recent the space is in Africa and how much you have to navigate on the ground, it requires its own set of infrastructure that needs to be the base layer on top of which other things can kind of like leech onto to develop and grow into things that would be sustainable down the line.

And in general, the whole thing is with regard to Africa, like to Ojoma’s point and really Jack’s point at the end of the day, is we want to make sure that again, we already know what the stats are with regards to demographics of being the youngest continent so that means I don’t want to, two things either we’re a ton of rowdy folks in one cramped up place or we’re a ton of productive folks. So I think for us really it’s a case of okay with all this productive capacity or productive potential, how are you able to tie that into something like Bitcoin when it comes to developing the future of finance? And like Ojoma said again, one of the common things for us as Nigerians whether in the country or like in the diaspora is, you know, the sharing that feeling of being locked out of mainstream finance for a variety of reasons that honestly just come down to too stringent know your customer (KYC) rules that are mostly arbitrary to a certain extent.

But at the end of the day, it’s a case where we’re saying okay, we’re locked out of that financial system but here’s a new financial system where you have the opportunity to actually have a stake in that and not only have a stake in that but given the amount of developer talent on the continent, you actually are able to drive the development globally and be a continent where everyone else is able to look to you guys to figure out exactly what it means to build for Bitcoin, whether it’s companies or in this case, really with BTrust, there’s a case of what does it mean to be a Bitcoin developer? What are the main pain points that we’re trying to solve for?

Because at the end of the day, if you really want to help long-term with Bitcoin, you have to replicate exactly what the main pain points it’s trying to solve and that is uniquely seen in the African continent. So I feel the majority of the development that will come out of Africa as a result of some of the work we’ll be doing with BTrust and really the main purpose is to get those developers building based on the pain points that they feel which reflect the core solutions that Bitcoin professes at the end of the day.

So, it’s a case where we’re saying okay, these guys are able to channel all of their frustrations into something that they can have a seat at the table for the first time in terms of finance. So there’s no longer a case where we’re sitting back letting the International Monetary Fund dictate exactly where money flows are and even more broadly when it comes to things like mining but in general at the end, they all start with the developer base. So I say that’s one of the main reasons why you need a huge infrastructure like BTrust to sit at that table where it is able to get developers to be this anchor of moving forward, kind of monitoring how things should be in a more progressive and productive way.


[Obi Nwosu]
One thing I want to say is that there’s actually one other member of our team who couldn’t be here today, Carla. So she’s another amazing member of the team from my part. So we’ve got one person on stage who was born in the West and grew up in the West, we’ve got two who were born in Africa and grew up in Africa. I was conceived in Nigeria but just about made it to and was born in the UK, so you know I’m sort of in two camps here. But it was very interesting because when I was growing up, this is for historical reasons: my grandfather in his time, polygamy was still legal in Nigeria and he had many, many, many wives and therefore I have hundreds of cousins. And we’re direct relatives and I have many cousins who are in Africa in Nigeria, I have a few in the US, I have a few in Europe and the UK, and basically through just a lot of luck and a lot of hard work, a few of my uncles and aunts made it to Europe and I was fortunate enough to grow up here.

When I would be traveling back to Africa to Nigeria, I would see a stark difference: my direct cousins are about a foot, which is, I don’t know, 30 cm, shorter than me on average. Direct cousins, if I go to the US, they’re about two inches taller than me on average. So there’s a direct correlation between wealth and just because of where we were born, you can see that. But it went through everything else in your life. Now that is unfair but that wasn’t the real issue for me. The real issue was the realization that right now on this planet there are dozens of Einsteins, dozens of Nicola Teslas, dozens of Jacks, you know, there’s dozens of them. But if the seed falls in the wrong place and they’re in the wrong country and the wrong family, they miss out on achieving their absolute peak potential, which means the world misses out on them achieving their peak potential because just one of those people can change the world. And so we all miss out if we do not locate these people. We want to move towards a meritocracy.

Now, I’m also a geek and sometime later I came across Bitcoin and lots of people told me about it because it’s geekery combined with meritocracy and it was like right up my street. And that’s where I fell down the rabbit hole. But fast forward, I see this tweet from Jack and I’m in the middle of selling my last company and I thought this is it, this is the opportunity. Not only is it clear and it’s been clear to me for a while that Bitcoin can help the Global South, Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, Middle East, and LatAm for example, but it’s also the other way around as well that Bitcoin can benefit from the productive efforts and brainpower and energy and vibrancy of the Global South by finding these needles in a haystack. And with the resources that were being generously donated to us, I had to try and I’m sure there were incredible odds but I had to try and do my very best to support this so that we can find those exceptional people and the world can benefit from that.

But now we get to the hard bit. So no, it’s actually not just what’s happened so far, what’s been since the formation of BTrust. I remember the original meeting. We had this sort of hangouts or Zoom call and you were saying this is blind irrevocable trust we’re just giving you this 500 and if you wanted you can go off and buy a you know a castle in Germany with the money. We haven’t done that. I don’t think we would have been selected if we were the sort of people to do that. But what’s happened since then?


[Abubakar Nur Khalil]
In general, a ton has happened, as Jack alluded to earlier, and to highlight the key milestones, it would be good to give you a timeline. So, since the call, which was obviously very interesting given the fact that I’m obviously a huge fan, I’ve been following Jack and obviously Jay-Z, like come on, being a fan of rap, it was incredible to see them on stage. But at the end of the day, from that point till now, a ton has happened. 

Primarily, we’ve been looking at what it means to be BTrust. So as the inaugural board, one of the main priorities really for us is to make sure that one is kind of a rotating board at the end of the day. So it’s not a case where we’re going to stay here in perpetuity and kind of block off other folks who might have fresh and new novel ideas to kind of take this project to where it needs to be and become sustainable. A lot of that was really ironing out our principles, which just to go briefly, really is, again like I said, Bitcoin only free and open-source technology focused. We’re looking at transparency, integrity, and at the end of the day, really it’s making sure that the board is well defined enough for it to be able to accommodate any future board members so that they have a clear path in terms of what the core fundamentals are.

So it’s not a case where we started out, we do some great job and then the subsequent boards end up tanking the whole project and it becomes a whole mess and waste of time. That was the first part of BTrust, really setting that up and a lot of that had to do with setting up an actual entity, getting banking done, and the immediate thing really is obviously something that we should have had in mind.

Again, you’re dealing with Bitcoin, so it’s not a case where it’s something that’s widely accepted or even seen as something that is like dark money, for example. A ton of that has been navigating both jurisdictional hurdles really as well as banking hurdles. But without all those issues really, we’re able to navigate that and start deploying some of the capital. So that has been in the form of supporting the first Africa Bitcoin conference which started back in 2022, I believe, by Farida and an incredible team. And we saw with that really, we continue to support that because we feel it’s necessary in the sense that it provided a home for people who are looking to get into the Bitcoin space without necessarily being conned into crypto because a lot of that is popular on the continent.

Other than that, we’ve also looked at sponsoring other dev-focused conferences, things like BitDevs. In general, really since then, we’ve also extended that support to projects like BitShala as well as Liberated Satoshi because again we are set up to work on the Global South, but now the main focus is Africa given the makeup of the board. So it’s not a case where we’re trying to do too many things at the same time, but we are dipping our toes into that. So that has been really on those sides in terms of the funding.

Another thing that was useful is again we’re open-source focused, so that means really we’re looking at getting as many talented devs as sustainably and as carefully as possible to the open-source space, specifically Bitcoin core. That takes a lot of work because one, there are capacity limits to projects. So some projects like Bitcoin core have a ton of people who are one-time contributors, but then what ends up happening is they provide a ton of code that’s not necessarily well-maintained or they don’t really care and everyone is kind of stuck with sorting that out. And with other projects, they are able to have mentorship provided. So that’s another thing we have prioritized over time after learning from the work with Qala and then folding that into BTrust is you need to pair developers that are new into the space with mentors that have that time and capacity to let them have the ability to walk through the space in a way where they’re able to efficiently allocate their time and show actual growth. 

Part of that process has been the open-source cohort which we have, where we’re funding one developer called Vlad who has been working on the Bitcoin development kit. The plan with that is really to make it as ubiquitous and as easy as possible to develop Bitcoin wallets all across. Other than that, recently after the acquisition of Qala which happened last year, the whole point with that really is Qala kind of flipped its purpose into open-source, which strongly aligns with the aim of BTrust at the end of the day. So for us, it was a case where there is this really fledging pipeline that’s already being created by Qala and is a case where we only need to just adopt and further provide enough funding really and sustainability for that project to get to a point where we’re like okay, we have this pipeline internally as well as the work we’re doing externally to fund these projects.

So since then, again like I said, setting up the board itself, banking, getting some of that work into conferences that we feel are necessary, getting into the open-source cohort which will be onboarding a lot more developers moving forward, all the way up to the work through Qala where we now have developers.

We’re also giving grants to kind of test them that do work on Bitcoin core. Since then the idea has been, for a lot of us on the continent that we’re the few devs that exist, to get at least even if it’s one developer working on Bitcoin core. So far I’ve been able to do a lot more than that where we have Abubakar who is actually a namesake of mine who works on Bitcoin core, working on mempool and things like that. So for us, it’s a net win that has happened given all the hurdles we’ve had to go through and it’s a case where the future is bright, there are a ton of talented developers already working on Bitcoin core and all of that is the result of the hard work of people on the ground and BTrust. So expect a lot more of that moving forward and a lot more structure really and obviously communication as we narrowed in, you know, getting the CEO to kind of move this forward. So that’s really it at the end of the day. A ton of work to do but I’m glad we’re able to achieve all of this given all the circumstances.


[Ojoma Ochai]
I just wanted to build on that a little bit. One of the things that I’m most proud of really is our support for the Africa Bitcoin Conference. And that’s just because of the joy and the gift, I think, that the Africa Bitcoin Conference is. Again, I’ve seen too many things that are meant to be global movements, except it doesn’t happen in Africa. And so for me, the African Bitcoin Conference is this thing that’s supporting and nurturing an African ecosystem of people working in Bitcoin, whether they’re entrepreneurs building businesses or they’re engineers working on open-source or they’re educators supporting people to get into Bitcoin. I feel like just being able to support that, to be born and to exist where BTrust is the biggest supporter of the Africa Bitcoin Conference both in 2022 and 2023, I’m really proud of that.

Open-source developers are a microsubset of that ecosystem, and you can’t find them unless the ecosystem is thriving or less the ecosystem is not fragmented. So, I just wanted to build on that point about supporting the Africa Bitcoin Conference. I think it’s beyond a conference; it’s supporting this ecosystem to be born and this ecosystem to exist both in the construct of the conference but also the collaborations that come out of that, the people that go to that and see new possibilities suddenly, and they can imagine a future where this service is actually available in your country because you’re plugged into this global system that you can contribute to and benefit from.


[Obi Nwosu]
I definitely recommend this as it’s an incredible conference but if you get a chance go to Africa check out the Africa Bitcoin Conference. So you’ll be forgiven for thinking it’s been plain sailing with no issues and challenges but obviously that’s not the case.  What were some of the challenges that we faced for anybody else who’s considering doing something similar to this could potentially learn from it?


[Ojoma Ochai]
The biggest challenge for me can be summed up in trying to build a Bitcoin organization in a Fiat World. It just feels like everything conspires against you. Even something as simple as right where these four individuals that have been brought together to do this thing called BTrust and we have to create an entity right, that’s legal, and then you’re suddenly confronted with, okay, so where do we do it? Like where do we register it practically? I remember we had this massive spreadsheet that we created in the first month really enthusiastically, you know, it has to be Bitcoin-friendly, it has to be somewhere with some regulatory stability, it has to have strong human rights records and strong property rights records, and as you start to build the criteria, lots of countries started to drop off the list. So that was the first hurdle, just figuring out what jurisdiction can we register this entity. And then beyond that, even the simple fact that the four board members live on three different continents, just practically speaking, even for jurisdictions that had those things, in some countries you can’t register unless half of the board live in the country. So just navigating that took several months.


[Obi Nwosu]
And also a real problem if you try to avoid having Nigerian people on your board, it gives you so much, tell me about it. You Nigerians, you know, we could have had this setup in.


[Ojoma Ochai]
Absolutely, so that was one massive issue: registering it. And then, you do that, and then it’s the dependencies as well. So, you can’t hire a team or a CEO or anybody because what are you contracting them to? They don’t work for Obie or for me or for Abu or for Cara, they work for BTrust. But what is BTrust? It doesn’t exist. So, that was a dependency to then be able to hire a team. And we couldn’t do that until it was registered.

Abu mentioned banking. It felt like we tried to get a bank account at the worst possible time because this was the beginning of 2023 or something. Again, that was hurdles upon hurdles upon hurdles upon hurdles, and it seems really simple, but when you’re trying to do this across different continents with Bitcoin in your name and with these Nigerians on your board, it’s much more complicated than it sounds. So, I would say that has been the biggest challenge: the friction in navigating this Fiat World with a set of rules that just don’t enable the kind of work we’re doing. I think there was also, in terms of just figuring out a rhythm to working together as a board because again, we’re really diverse, come from very different backgrounds, have different perspectives. Literally, the only thing we probably have in common is that we all love Bitcoin. Apart from that, we all have very different views of what the organization should do on a day-to-day basis. So, I think that has also taken a bit of work to find that rhythm of working across very different backgrounds and different ideas of how this organization should work.


[Obi Nwosu]
I would also mention the other thing because different people had just different specializations. So, because I ran an exchange for a while, I had a lot of experience with banks. I’ve probably opened and had seen force closed hundreds of bank accounts over the years. So, I took on the task, and it’s an ongoing task. If you’ve got a Bitcoin business with large amounts, you have to always be opening bank accounts. But one thing was really interesting: when we can find partners or suppliers where you pay with Bitcoin, it’s so obvious why this is going to just destroy the existing system. One thing can take literally years of effort, and the other one is literally seconds to minutes. But you have to find, and this is where people need to go out there and orange pill businesses or service providers to businesses. It’s one thing with the Africa Bitcoin conference, for example, or the people that we’re working with to provide funds. Of course, they accept Bitcoin. But simple things, it’s very hard to find quality recruitment consultants or company formation organizations or accountants who accept Bitcoin, especially with understanding of law on an international basis. The more of those, the easier it becomes to just sidestep this incredibly inefficient system and just pay them in Bitcoin. And that would have been, we could have done this all in a matter of moments, and it would have been a complete side point if we could have found a few key suppliers. So, if people have an idea of being able to find people who are able to supply the services that are needed to form a company and run a company, and that are able to support multiple countries and can accept Bitcoin, that’s it. Seems like a simple thing, but it’s incredibly valuable.


[Abubakar Nur Khalil ]
A quick one as well, which has been an ongoing problem, but at the end of the day, that’s the whole point of having BTrust to begin with. Having been involved with Qala before BTrust, the immediate pain point we saw was kind of threefold. One, finding developers that are really good is very, very hard, especially when there’s no mechanism to sieve through that. Two, it’s very difficult for developers to measure the growth between understanding exactly what Bitcoin is all the way up to becoming developers that can be very meaningful in terms of contributions. They give out and maintain this map really of exactly where some of these developers can be coming from and how you can actually onboard them into this pipeline. So, having started with Qala and got the call from Bernard and got to actually meet Carla, which eventually also came onto BTrust, was very interesting. That was one of the main painstaking points that we had to kind of solve for, and it was awesome to see that that eventually folded into BTrust because that helped solve the problem too.

With BTrust when it comes to highlighting the developer landscape, ensuring that we actually have this fledgling pipeline. But one key thing I think that’s very useful that I’m happy now we have in BTrust and moving forward will be very, very useful is for you to actually appeal to developers. They have to feel comfortable enough for them to actually come in and kind of discuss and map through themselves. A lot of them are kind of shy, just super shadowy figures in their rooms. So, having some of these meetups in key cities in Africa has been very, very helpful in really highlighting some of that talent that otherwise would have been overlooked or most likely not even discovered in the first place. So, in terms of moving forward, that has been something that has been initially difficult but now that we have these bitdevs, which are the Bitcoin developer meetings that we have across these cities in Africa, it has started a kind of like a flywheel where people are able to not only start up developer groups and kind of meetups but to take it as their own.

So, it’s not a case where we’re kind of dictating what should be done. It’s more a case where they have a touchpoint in each strategic city like Nairobi, Lagos, Abuja, for them to touch base and also learn how to run some of these local ground movements really for Bitcoin developers. So, I think that was one of the main key points and kind of how we managed to navigate that I think will be very, very exciting moving forward. So yeah, if you’re in Africa, hit up one of the local bitdevs that have been as a result of BTrust and try to see how you’re able to provide value or really just help out with the space.

[Obi Nwosu]
So final question and it’s for everybody but I’ll start with you Jack.  We’ve done a lot so far but what is your vision for where you think or where you’d like to see BTrust over the next five years or more?


[Jack Dorsey]
Where I’d like to see BTrust over the next five years?

[Obi Nwosu]

BTrust and what you think we can achieve and what you would like to see happen on the continent or in the Global South.

[Jack Dorsey]
I mean one of the reasons I think this is important is that the global population predominantly is going to come from the Global South over the next few generations. Nigeria, in particular, will be the most populated country in the next two decades. We need as many people as possible to benefit from what Bitcoin provides, and that’s them owning the money and owning the system and being able to actually develop it at the same time. I mean, I’m a product of Open Source, I’m a product of my parents bringing home a computer and letting me run wild on it and the more of that we have globally to every single kid around the world no matter where they come from as you said, can just like… an idea can really change the course of our history for the better, and we just don’t know where it’s going to come from but why not increase the probability that it comes from as many places as possible.

And for Bitcoin core, the people that maintain Bitcoin, the people that look out for it, the people that protect it, that population be more represented by the world, I think is really critical because it just otherwise it creates a single point of failure and it creates a single point of failure on a particular civilization or a particular society that might be troubled in the moment and might be going through some things which are distracting or easy to attack in certain ways. Why not have as many different answers spread geographically and culturally and from a psychological standpoint as well because what we’re really here for is to make sure that Bitcoin serves everyone and that means everyone, right?

So, I don’t know what you all are going to do next but I’m really excited for it and I can’t wait to see it and I hope that as I said before I hope that others follow it I want this to be a model that other people take on and it doesn’t just have to be about Bitcoin. I’m really worried about artificial intelligence and the fact that it’s going to be locked up into effectively five companies and one massive government in China and it’s completely closed source and you have five CEOs and a dictator basically writing the answers for the questions that you and your kids and your kids’ kids are going to ask. That feels scary. So why not make sure that we build open alternatives and why not fund them and why not make sure that we’re covering the whole the whole planet and taking as much input as possible? So that yeah that’s what I hope for.


[Ojoma Ochai]
What I’d like to see is just more scale in the work that we do. We support the Africa Bitcoin Conference, we support a handful of developers to work on open source. We’re supporting BTrust builders to support cohorts of people learning to work on open source code. But it’s a drop in the ocean when you think about the possibility. So, in the next sort of months, years, it’s just seeing us scale that up massively where we are making a difference. I think it has been slow, although after today I’m going to say it has been deliberate and thoughtful rather than slow. It has been slow, so I would like to see us just pick up the pace a little bit and achieve a bit more scale in the devs that we’re able to support in the ecosystems that we’re able to support. I’d like to see a Malawi Bitcoin conference. I’d like to see a Nigeria Bitcoin conference that we’re supporting so that we’re building grassroots ecosystems as well as continental ecosystems. I’d also like to see us support developers outside of Africa even though we’ve started to support people like Bitshala and others. You know, the Global South, the global majority, it’s not just in Africa. There are opportunities to support work in Latin America, Central America as we’ve talked about. I’d very much like to see us do that work. And just in the immediate, I’d like to see us recruit a team of people that live and breathe and just work on BTrust every day. So, in the short term, my dream and what I am living for at the moment is to recruit a CEO and a team that will help us just accelerate that pace that we’ve started on.


[Abubakar Nur Khalil ]
Honestly, I’m first of all super proud of all the work that has been done so far and super humbled to get to work with incredible folks on the board, really. And at the end of the day, I think BTrust has the potential to be very consequential in terms of the trajectory of Bitcoin development on the continent for a variety of reasons. I feel it’s so early, like we’re so early, it’s hard to tell, obviously when you’re in the space and like in the meat grinder, but I think there’s a ton that’s going to come in terms of noise, differing interests, governments when it comes to mining and things like that,. Obviously that brings with it like geopolitical implications or heck even just political implications at a local level.

I feel for BTrust, really, one, we’ll need to ensure that we have all that infrastructure to handle all these adversities really that will be most likely facing moving forward, but more so ensuring that we’re able to empower this developer base at the end of the day to become just as resilient as Bitcoin is. And not only that but to ensure that we carry on that resilience in terms of how they’re thinking about building for Bitcoin. Really it’s a case where we want to sink into the background to a point where we’re more on the roots of the ecosystem as a whole. It’s not a case where in 10 years or maybe in 50 years the majority of the work is just coming from BTrust alone, it should be a case where if BTrust really works in the next 10 to 50 years, it will be a case of oh, you know, we were just the roots that grew this magnificent tree that blossomed into a ton of developers, a ton of creativity in the space, and is directly responsible to why we still have Bitcoin at that point in time.


[Obi Nwosu]
Yeah, I echo everything that we’ve just heard now. In summary, I would say that the end result for me would be like I would like to go back to that vision I had when I was young that we find these needles in the haystack wherever they are. Obviously, they could be in the UK, they could be in Europe, they could be in the US, but they could be the next needle in the haystack. They could be in Guatemala, they could be in Mexico, they could be in Indonesia, they could be in Malawi. But we will find them, and when we find them, all of us will benefit. Thank you.

[Jack Dorsey]
I just want to add one more thing. Speaking to the values of Bitcoiners, it’s pretty remarkable. These people on stage, including Carla, didn’t really know each other or work together before. They may have known of each other, but it’s like watching a reality TV show where we’re bringing together four people and giving them 500 Bitcoin to see what happens. And they’re doing the right thing. I mean, they’re really doing the right thing, and they’re going to help millions, if not billions, of people. So, congrats to you all, and thank you so much.

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