I am thrilled to share my new essay

"Stranded: How Bitcoin is Saving Wasted Energy and Expanding Financial Freedom in Africa"

I was profoundly moved by what I saw on a recent trip to Kenya and Malawi.

If this essay can show you even 1% of what inspired me, that's a win… here’s an overview:

We begin in Bondo, a small town in Malawi, a country where only 11% of the population has access to electricity.

The nation suffers 6-8 hours of blackouts a day, but the power in Bondo is consistent because of Bitcoin mining.

The town got its first electricity in 2016, and now is expanding its grid, thanks to Bitcoin, which is buying 100% of the electricity that the micro-hydro stations cannot sell, and giving precious capital to the power company so it can expand operations.

At night, demand dwindles, and in remote places like Bondo, there’s no one else to buy the consistent hydro power.

Enter Bitcoin, powered by internet services like Starlink. A datacenter from Gridless now saves the wasted energy and is powering the community forward.

The big realization: virtually all power generation, especially in rural places, wastes energy.

Bitcoin fixes this.

We are told Bitcoin is a waste of energy but the truth is the opposite.

NOT Bitcoin mining is a waste of energy.

And the kicker: Bitcoin miners create heat.

This heat will be used for productive uses.

General heating in cold climates, and in a place like Bondo? Drying tea, fruit, or cocoa.

Profit from mining won’t just be profit - cost, it will be (profit + profit from externality) - cost.

For context: Malawi is a country that just suffered an IMF-led 44% currency devaluation.

Already one of the poorest nations in the world, where most people save in cash, now citizens can only afford 56% of what they could a few months ago. Per the IMF, more devaluation is on the way.

The kwacha is a disastrous wage technology. Once again, enter Bitcoin, a vastly superior savings mechanism.

The first Bitcoin meetup is happening in the Malawi’s capital this month. We are very early with adoption in this region—2020 in El Salvador terms—but this adoption will turn from a trickle into a torrent.

Up north in Kenya, Gridless has geothermal mines, too. I visited one.

It’s a remarkable site: a humming hut on the site of a lake with a Starlink on top, eating all of the electricity that a water pump does not use: perfectly solarpunk.

Kenya is the world’s largest exporter of cut flowers. There are tons of sites like this, generating power for irrigation, all over the country. All of them waste energy.

Geothermal is beautifully consistent, but the demand is not. Bitcoin fixes this.

Gridless operations like these are generally profitable within the first two years. Now there's biomass, where the company has just launched data centers at sugar and sisal processing factories which before couldn't find buyers for excess electricity.

But now Bitcoin is buying.

This sounds great so far…

But for the hundreds of millions of Africans who don’t have internet access, how are they supposed to benefit?

Enter KG, whose company Machankura provides Bitcoin access to people with no internet.

This is done through USSD — a SMS-type protocol.

The user texts a number, then gets a decision tree, and can send, receive, barter, and purchase a variety of things, all without data.

This is a custodial service for now — but KG and team have plan to make SIM cards signing devices and even Lightning touch points so that people can self-custody and be their own bank without the internet.

A true civilizational leap forward.

Critical: there are 700 million women in Africa, but very very few use Bitcoin.

Marcel Lorraine aims to change that.

A Kenyan entrepreneur who has fearlessly helping schools in Kibera, two years ago she launched Bitcoin Dada, a program to educate women and girls about Bitcoin.

Marcel runs classes every week, with several cohorts per year.

The task is huge but she insists on pushing forward.

She argues Bitcoin can give macro freedom for communities and countries, yes, but also micro freedom at home for women who traditionally take a back seat in finance.

Finally: independence from dependence is a key concept

Femi Longe, director of BTrust Builders, is trying to make that happen.

He’s running a program to train African developers and help them contribute to Bitcoin, to take careers in the industry or become contributors to core.

As Jack Dorsey says, if Bitcoin is going to be used around the world, it has to be made around the world.

Femi refuses to accept a future like today, where cars are made in the West and bought by Africans.

The Bitcoin infrastructure needs to be made in Africa.

The way these pieces could fit together is astonishing.

Unlike in the West, where adoption might mean centralized pools and ETFs, in Africa adoption will mean off-grid mining and potentially millions of self-custodying users, powered by SIM cards.

Africans need Bitcoin, yes.

But Bitcoin needs Africa.

That was blazing clear from my visit last month.

At the end of the day, who is going to help bring electricity and high-quality currency — the building blocks of progress — to hundreds of millions of Africans?

Bill Gates? The UN? The World Bank?

No, they won’t.

But Bitcoin might.

Read the full story at Bitcoin Magazine: