Bitcoin for the People: How Machankura is Fixing Financial Access in Africa | Kgothatso Ngako

Live from Bitcoin Beach in El Zonte, El Salvador, I sit down with Kgothatso Ngako, the brilliant mind behind Machankura—a project that’s changing the game for Bitcoin adoption in Africa. We dive into how Machankura is enabling people without smartphones or internet access to send and receive Bitcoin using only SMS, and why that’s a game-changer for millions across the continent.

Kgothatso shares his thoughts on El Salvador’s leadership, energy policies, and Bitcoin adoption, and why he believes it’s a model of prosperity the world (and Africa) should pay attention to. We talk about the challenges of scaling Bitcoin adoption in Africa, from low internet penetration to tough regulatory environments, and how Machankura is navigating these hurdles while building for the future.

Plus, we explore the amazing grassroots Bitcoin communities like Bitcoin Ekasi and Bitcoin Witsand, where entire villages are operating on a Bitcoin standard. Kgothatso also gives us a sneak peek at his plans for self-custodial Bitcoin wallets, a new smartphone app, and how he’s working to bring entrepreneurship and innovation to the forefront in Africa.

This is an inspiring conversation about using Bitcoin to empower communities and bridge gaps in financial inclusion. Don’t miss it!

- Mike

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Follow and connect with Kgothatso and Machankura:

X: https://x.com/Machankura8333

Website: https://8333.mobi/

Nostr: primal.net/p/npub1nv4j840c5ugjjq7ym3sqkz5jcschjx8ulnaa90645av0rwdylm9qv9x0gr

Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:

00:00:00 - Introuction

00:01:09 - How Has Kgothatso Ngako's Bitcoin Journey Evolved?

00:02:11 - What Is Machankura, and How Does It Help Bitcoin Users in Africa?

00:02:42 - How Does Machankura Operate Across African Countries?

00:03:26 - How Can You Send Bitcoin Using WhatsApp in Africa?

00:05:35 - Why Is El Salvador’s Bitcoin Success Important for Africa?

00:07:13 - How Is Machankura Making Bitcoin Accessible Without Internet?

00:08:04 - Why Are African Currencies Failing, and How Can Bitcoin Help?

00:11:37 - Can You Use Bitcoin on a Feature Phone Without Internet?

00:12:46 - How Did Mobile Money in Africa Set the Stage for Bitcoin Adoption?

00:20:50 - What Are Self-Custodial Bitcoin Wallets, and How Do They Work on SIM Cards?

00:27:40 - How Could SIM-Based Bitcoin Wallets Change the Game for Users?

00:33:10 - How Does Regulation Impact Bitcoin Adoption in Africa?

00:40:45 - What Is the Adopting Bitcoin Conference in Cape Town About?

00:42:37 - How Are Bitcoin Ekasi and Bitcoin Witsand Driving Adoption in South Africa?

00:44:03 - What’s Next for Kgothatso Ngako and Machankura?

Live From Bitcoin Beach

Transcript

Kgothatso Ngako  
The main takeaway for me was the country has Bitcoin a good leader and a very interesting energy policy, right, or energy projection. And I'm like, it's very hard to find one African country that has any of these three, let alone all of these three together. So I think El Salvador is probably going to be the most prosperous country in the world in like, a few months. And yeah, it's really good to see everything that's happening down here. And I wish we had some of this stuff back in Africa.

Mike Peterson  
KG, we're back in the studio again. It's been two years, I think. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, it's been a while. 

Mike Peterson  
You were one of the first podcasts that we did, the first episodes. We did a Bitcoin Beach. We did three, I think in that day, one was with me, you Arman, and Greg Fauci, and then you and I just did a solo one. So so it's fun having you back here.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, no, thank you for having me back again.

Mike Peterson  
We missed you last year. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, no. Too much traveling, and I had to take a break this time around, either the right amount of traveling, and I managed to get here.

Mike Peterson  
So well, your father now.

Kgothatso Ngako  
So, and last year, the baby was still too young, yeah, sadly, I couldn't bring the family this time around. And now we wanted to have the whole family this side. But next year, next year, a good time. 

Mike Peterson  
Yeah, it's been fun having their mom and his family. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes, you know, would have been a great group of South African in El Zonte basically.

Mike Peterson  
Well, for those who maybe missed the first episode he did and or don't know who you are, would love to give an introduction of yourself, but then also Machankura and what you guys are doing. So maybe give a little back story. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes. So effectively, what we are doing is trying to give everyone the ability to send and receive Bitcoin, regardless of whether they have an internet connected device. So-

Mike Peterson  
Maybe start by letting people know where you're based out of and where these operations are focused, cool.

Kgothatso Ngako  
So based in South Africa, Pretoria, to be specific. Some people consider it Elon Musk's hometown. And yeah, so we building the server side from there, but the team is around African continent, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and, yeah, I think those are the three countries we sketched it around. 

Mike Peterson  
But you guys operate in like a dozen African countries, or something like that.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes. So the main ones are Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, and I think I'm forgetting one. But we also support every other African country value assessment via WhatsApp. 

Mike Peterson  
Okay. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
So if a person has WhatsApp number, they could still

Mike Peterson  
Anywhere in Africa, they can send

Kgothatso Ngako  
Anywhere in the world, but except certain countries, right? So, but in Africa, specifically anywhere in Africa, they can so 

Mike Peterson  
No like no Iran, North Korea and United States.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah. And, you know.

Mike Peterson  
Which is crazy? It's crazy. United States is on that list with those countries, but that they've done it for themselves. Hopefully with Trump in now, they'll change that.

Kgothatso Ngako  
It's a long shot. There's a long shot so, but yeah, hopefully they do actually make some corrective measures. But I think also the community is celebrating, because it was a very pro Bitcoin campaign, yeah, but you know, pro bitcoin is very close to shit coining too, so we don't know how far they will take it, yeah, but everything else so far has been good. 

Mike Peterson  
Well, it's, it speaks to the reality of the world, which is insane, but the US has so much dominion over the rest of the world, the way things work, that people, even though they're they're based somewhere else the world, they have to be worried about US politics.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah. Well, you know, if they're not worried the invasions are coming, so they have to pay attention to who's president that Yeah, and I think, sadly, a lot of leaders are also not interested in taking the lead doing something. That America hasn't done, which is, I think what El Salvador did quite well. 

Mike Peterson  
Hey guys, just a brief interruption. We'll get back to the exciting show here. But I just want to really ask a favor that you guys could make sure that you're subscribed if you're watching this on YouTube, if you are listening to this on a podcast, please take a second and review this. You know, you don't even have to write a lengthy review or anything at all. Just click the number of stars that you want to give us. It really helps us in the algorithm to make sure people are finding out about what's happening here. All right, back to the show.

Kgothatso Ngako  
And I think on my trip I think the airport is has been upgraded since the last time. 

Mike Peterson  
Oh yeah, airport's wonderful.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, it looks upgraded, and the country's infrastructure looks better. But the main takeaway for me was the country has Bitcoin, a good leader and a very interesting energy policy, right? Or energy projection. And I'm like, it's very hard to find one African country that has any of these three, let alone all of these three together. So I think El Salvador is probably going to be the most prosperous country in the world in like, a few months. And, yeah, it's really good to see everything that's happening down here. And I wish we had some of this stuff back in Africa. 

Mike Peterson  
Well, maybe they'll see the progress here, and you'll get a visionary leader over there that will want to rep. I feel like if you just had one or two countries there embrace that, then the rest of them would follow on.

Kgothatso Ngako  
We'll see what Botswana does. They have a new president who's quite young, too, and yeah, so I'll see if they are open to some conversations. Actually, that would be interesting to see what Botswana does, because it's also one of better African countries around, and they've been Bitcoin positive to pro Bitcoin with good legislation and regulation as well.

Mike Peterson  
Okay, so explain to the audience what Matchankura that you know, why it was developed and why, specifically, it's important in Africa to have this technology available to people. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, okay, so summary of it all is, I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. I came to the conclusion that as Africans, we hadn't gotten the option to pick our own currency for, like, over 400 years or so, and Bitcoin is probably the best opportunity to actually decide, oh, this is what we want as a money. And outside of that, all the other forms of money are not as good, because we across the African continent, there's like the CFA in 14 to 15 African countries- 

Mike Peterson  
which some people don't know, is controlled by France. France actually prints it, delivers it, and controls it and benefits from it.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah. And if any country in the CFA is sending money outside of that country, it passes through France first, and if that country is importing or exporting, France gets first dibs. Either decides, oh, I'll buy it before you sell it to somebody else, or sell it to me before. Oh, vice versa, right? And yeah. So other things, I think, while talking about the CFA, it brings into question the need for a stable coin, because it's technically a stable coin in the fact that most of the countries on the CFA have the most stable currencies in comparison to other.

Kgothatso Ngako  
But they've still been really devalued versus Well now the Euro over time.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes, right. And of course, at the end of the day, is not a sovereign currency. Yeah, right. So, yeah. So I don't know if we should apply the same type of lens when you're talking about things like tether or USDC. Do we see a future where a tether or USDC gets devalued for whatever reason, but at the end of the day, tether and USDC are not sovereign currencies-

Mike Peterson  
No well they do get devalued because back to the dollar. So-

Kgothatso Ngako  
The more extreme sense of those they did with the CFA, where I think they cut off a few zeros at some time, at some point in time, and yeah, but then outside of those, you also have other currencies that are prone to have inflation. The symbol of being one is the case of bad- 

Mike Peterson  
Nigeria recently.

Kgothatso Ngako  
So with the naira, and even places like Kenya, where it seems as if the leader is literally exporting the youth right for investment, and at the same time, why are you bringing all this investment in the country if you driving out the youth out the country? So it's part of the reason there were a lot of protests in Kenya early in the year. And yeah, so this is basically the environment that I feel Bitcoin was designed for, right? You don't necessarily need to depend on the decisions that bad leaders make. You don't need to depend on failing currencies that you may find your currency, your country using, and regardless of the history, there's still Bitcoin, right? And so I wanted to see more people using Bitcoin on the African continent, and hence, built out Machankura, because the internet penetration level, internet adoption levels in Africa very low at like 30 to 40% and if we are talking payments, and the adoption levels are that low for the infrastructure that the payment is on, then it's very hard for that payment protocol to pick up, because you need at least half of the population to actually participate. Both send and receiver. Need the ability to send and receive Bitcoin so- 

Mike Peterson  
they don't people don't have smartphones and they don't have internet access, so they're not able to make traditional Bitcoin payments using traditional wallets or lightning wallets. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes, right, so that's where we come in, because ultimately, we still have had digital payments across the continent thanks to mobile money, which got championed by MPesa in Kenya, which is also weird, because MPesa did so well that there's really no other form of digital payments in Kenya that has terminal velocity. If you visit different websites in South Africa that accept digital payments, you see bank deposits. You see God deposits. You see voucher deposits, even things like Bitcoin. But in Kenya, everything is mobile money, like you, all you see is a bill pay thing, or sometimes maybe a banking deposit. And I'm like, okay, that- 

Mike Peterson  
and the mobile money in Kenya, if I remember in right, it developed because people were trading phone credit, paying each other, and phone credits initially, 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, that is a story that they pitch it with, right? But from what I've seen, I think they just saw G cash in the Philippines, around 2004 which I think is the first mobile money implementation. It didn't do as good as what MPesa managed to do or South Africa managed to do in Kenya, but I think they saw enough of G cash to actually say, No, um, yes, there are people actually exchanging air time, but that G cash frame is a more concrete system and less just re implemented. And they did a magnificent job. Like within a year or two, they had millions of users. And one thing I think they highlighted is at the same time the country is the banking adoption is very low, similar to effective what it was like in El Salvador when Chivo came out. So you don't piggyback on the banks. You just say, we're going to build out our own system that's standalone. And what they also said is our users need to be able to on ramp and off ramp to the platform. So they implemented a mobile money agent network that people can use cash to on ramp, on and off ramp from right So, similar to Chivo with the ATMs, people use cash to get on and off the platform and yeah. So these are effectively the two main properties, or three main properties, of why mobile money worked, you are in everyone's hands, because if one has a phone, feature phone or smartphone, and you are able to on ramp and off ramp people because of cash, on ramps and off ramps, and I forgot what the third one is, right? So ultimately, though, what we did and what we looked at was the fact that there's a bitcoin exchange in almost every south, uh, every African country. So what if you just solve the problem of you are in everyone's hands, in the country, right, or in the continent? And would there be more people on ramping and off ramping onto Bitcoin? And yeah, then 

Mike Peterson  
The ultimate design of them not needing the exchanges, because it would just become the medium of exchange.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes, but, you know, that's that's also another push where they're like, oh, okay, this works way better than the cash, yeah? And there's a probability that you wake up with more money that you than you did have when you went to sleep. So, yeah? But you know, at the same time, this is also a new user segment where a lot of exchanges are, I don't think really focusing on the low to middle income users. So over the past year, we've had to figure out ways to better support the user segment, because it's also hard to start a conversation with a person who doesn't have disposable income about Bitcoin, or in the best aspects of Bitcoin, which is as a savings technology, and all of these different things, so what? 

Mike Peterson  
And just to make clear, because I don't think we've addressed this yet, so Machankura what it does is it allows people that just have feature phones, or dumb phones, as we had referred to them, to be able to send money using like a text tree type system, send bitcoin back and forth to other users, even lightning payments, so they don't have to have a smartphone or internet service in order to be part of the Bitcoin network. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes, right. And to do that better, we've integrated with companies like a steco who sell the Bitcoin vouchers, yeah, which I think a steco was probably due to the focus on consumer Bitcoin, one of the few companies that do support low to middle income customers very well due to the fact, yeah, you go into this very same corner store, you buy your milk, and you also pay for your voucher, and then you load the 16 digit on the on your phone. Now you have Bitcoin. And we've also integrated bit referral, which sells get gift cards to many different stores. Yeah, and bit refill also works, but not in all countries. Does it work the same? Because bit refill actually has to get distributors for the gift cards in each country, and if the country doesn't have good distributors, you won't get good gift cards, right? But they generally have airtime at least, so a person could buy airtime for Bitcoin. 

Mike Peterson  
It seems a bit of low hanging fruit. I'm curious for you, so you've had a lot of changes in the past year. You went from having this kind of revolutionary bootstrap company that you had started and were basically running by yourself, and you, you raised a funding round, and now have expanded. So I'm I'm curious for you, how has that been going from this solo entrepreneur to now managing a team and and having, you know, the on the good side, more funding and stuff to do stuff, but also a lot more responsibility. And I know at heart you're a coder and developer, and so now you're being pulled into the management tasks. So how has that transition been for you? 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Oh, it's been hard, I won't lie. And I think because, you know, with code, you just write code and then it works. But with people, you have to keep, you know, talking with the team.

Mike Peterson  
People need constant maintenance. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes, right? And ensure that everyone is on the same page. But I think they have benefited a lot because there's really a lot of content in the space, right? So you could almost create a reading list and give it to someone and say, okay, cool, just read this. And maybe we'll probably have the same vocabulary, and then we are then able to talk much more easily about what it is we're trying to do. But at the same time, some of this content is like, Yo, you throwing a person into the deep end of the pool, and you're telling them to do butterfly strokes or whatever style. Michael Phelps, like swimming and, yeah. So it takes time to get the vocabulary, or shared vocabulary, between the people,

Mike Peterson  
But well, even a lot of times, people who share vocabulary, they're still you got personalities that clash and different views on the way things should be done. And so when you have to manage all that, especially when you have a remote, distributed team across many African countries, yeah,

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah. But I think what's been good is. As if I think the raising the funding actually allowed us to be a little more ambitious, because we could then tackle problems that initially were a little too out of scope, like, Okay, how would the self custodial version of what we are doing work, yeah, currently, we custody the Bitcoin on behalf of the customer, and we are still trying to address, how do we want board the customer in the sense, what type of features would they want? And are the assumptions we are making actually valid, right? And each country being a little different from what you can do is one of the best ways to AB test. Oh, there's easy on ramping. In South Africa, there's no easy on ramping in that

Mike Peterson  
because, like in South Africa, they can connect through the banking system, but other countries, they can't. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Oh, no, no. South Africa just has a lot more digital payments. 

Mike Peterson  
Okay. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
So you almost always can find one that will let you do what you want to do, even though, if they won't let you do it for too long. But for us, it would be long enough to validate an assumption, and then they shut us down. And once it gets too popular, they shut you down, you know? And yeah, in Kenya, it's all in PESA. So even if yes, you can validate the idea. It's really Yeah, ramping and off ramping works. We've validated it, but it doesn't stay there long enough. So we need a cash based solution there, right? And yeah, but back to us being a little more ambitious is then we're like with the self custodial project thing. For the past year, it really has taken way a lot of our time, right? It's like a rabbit hole where everything you figure out leads you to two more things you need to figure out. But the beauty of it all is the SIM card is programmable, and we've already have Bitcoin hardware wallets that do Java card programming to sign Bitcoin transactions, and effectively the only missing element is, how do you send a blockchain data to the SIM card and have it process the blockchain data so that the user knows their balance, but then also have the user input where they're sending Bitcoin to and it, you know, do everything it needs to do to sign the transaction. And ultimately, SMS is the perfect way to do it. There's something called binary SMS, which ultimately is what we do need. And you can encrypt that too so that the telecom doesn't see what you're doing. But in South Africa, they filter the binary SMSs, so we cannot just send any messages to somebody else. But in other countries-

Mike Peterson  
They filter like they block them? 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes, okay, so for testing purposes, I can send SMS to myself and validate, oh, that this action gets triggered. I did get the blockchain data. I did process my balance. I did send out a Bitcoin transaction. But so then it's a thing of, do you know which country doesn't filter? Yeah? So yeah, that is a project we're gonna release. 

Mike Peterson  
And why do they filter? 

Kgothatso Ngako  
I think security. It makes sense, because if you then have anyone also sending binary SMS to SIM cards. Somebody may figure out how to send a binary SMS to take to trigger an action that does some logic that the telecom doesn't want you to do. Okay, yeah, but some telecoms are okay with not filtering, I think, in Taiwan. So haven't had the time to go to Taiwan yet and actually see how their telecoms do it. And yeah, so then it's a question of, okay, how do you put yourself in a point of privilege so that you can send these SMSs? And of course, either in a country that doesn't do the filtering, or as an MVNO, which is a mobile virtual network operator on top of the mobile network operators infrastructure. So it's almost a white label solution in Nigeria, I think they have fleshed it out way better than in South Africa. In South Africa, they just do the branding. They really don't give you as much of the infrastructure control as you would want to release an applet and do whatever else you want to do. But in Nigeria, I think there's a class of MVNO that on paper. Does the things that we need, but I haven't seen one deployed on that level, right? So, yeah, it's a question of, okay, cool. Do we have anyone in the team with the appetite to check on the paperwork that gets the application through, gets an MVNO, that wants to have us as an MVNO and so on and so forth. So yeah, it's, for me, one of the beauties of the funding. We could then explore more ambitious projects like that. If it does work, it's one of those things that, oh, theoretically, a telecom could on board all their customers to self custodial Bitcoin overnight and do not have the counter party risk and everything like that. But at the same time, you could then come out as a MVNO and what's an mobile virtual network operator, and have like a case study for the MNO to see if they don't want to put their reputation on the line to see that, oh, there's actually people who would pay to transition from that normal network into a bitcoinized network. And yeah. So at the same time, same time, same time, same time, you get projects like bitkey that then say, Yo, maybe the user doesn't need a seed phrase. Maybe you could have a recovery mechanism. And for the UX we have, which is mostly takes place if we don't have to export 12 word seed phrase or 24 word seed phrase, and we just provide the user with the recovery mechanism. I like, Oh, that would be much better. Because I think, you know, not having a person write down stuff sometimes is better than having them write down stuff. And yeah, SMS is also one of those things where you're like, it's really not that secure. If I have to send the 12 words, oh, but at least for a SIM card, the person can output them button and never need to send them over the phone. But it's still like, Yo, somebody may access your phone without, you know, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, that is the other thing. And we've explored other projects where we like, okay, cool. This works. This doesn't work. And being able to then do things like Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town, which we were part of this year in 2024 and we're also going to be a part of it in 2025

Mike Peterson  
So that's so we're at Adopting Bitcoin El Salvador right now, yes, and but that's adopting Bitcoin Cape Town is in the end of January, correct, third week of January, I think.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Last week of January I think.

Mike Peterson  
And last year was the first year of the conference, and much on COVID was very involved in sponsoring and basically making that that conference happen, along with Bitcoin Ekasi.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, Bitcoin Ekasi, Max. Well, Max is a Bitcoin, I don't know what his company is called. Ricky is also a part of it. Comal, of course, he's also really contributed quite a lot. And, yeah, it was a great conference. It had two parts. The thing, the first part was in Cape Town where we had the talks. One of the talks were enviable with Carol oh not Carol Craig Hall from Sparrow had an opinion on self custody, and yeah, I was like, Oh, he should have put a watermark on that video. But yeah, people knew that it was part of a conference. Actually got it. And we also had a few interesting speakers. My personal highlights was, My God, Wade, who over there, depending on

Mike Peterson  
she's she's great, yeah, I got, I got to know her at the HRF event in Nashville this year. Oh no, I was sitting that with her at dinner and and I didn't realize that I've been following her on Twitter all the time. But I didn't realize that was her. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm so glad to meet you. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Just sense the energy as she starts,

Mike Peterson  
actually, I know who you are, yeah, right.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah. So she's great. And I think she highlights one other thing that's also very important for Africa, which is entrepreneurship. Yeah, right. And she looks at it from a very interesting perspective, that we technically should be seeing more entrepreneurs is just that the legal structures are very burdensome for entrepreneurship in a lot of African countries, if you hire someone, you cannot. Inspire them. Sometimes you cannot even hire a person without getting an approval, and so on and so forth. 

Mike Peterson  
And I mean, with a few exceptions, it's kind of across the board in Africa, like the regulatory system is really holding the population back. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, right, and he's really doing a lot of work to tackle that. And it's one of the things I'm like, Oh, this adds to the ambition things to look at like, Okay, how do you better support entrepreneurs across the African continent, right? If you give them a wallet. Is that enough for them to be entrepreneurial, or is there a few missing elements to it, which I feel they are I feel with Bitcoin, we should have the same user experience as a mercury.com right? So to anyone listening, if you go to mercury.com they have a demo of their service. You could see the different accounts. You can see the different team members. You can sign a bookkeeper role. You can assign custom roles, have a person use cards which are effectively like a hot wallet in our world, but not be able to make deposits or withdrawals. And I feel like we need that type of user experience in the Bitcoin space, because it's very hard to use Bitcoin. I think we're going to be on a panel about being Bitcoin only company later today, and it's very hard to actually get an accountant to look at your books if you paid everything in Bitcoin, even if you don't need to pay capital gains, like that is not a requirement in El Salvador in hospital, but getting an accountant to check your books is going To be hard, and getting a wallet that exports the data in a fashion that the accountant can import it into whatever software that they are using without being a die hard accountant who will figure out how to, you know, present the data blah, blah, blah is also hard, right? So, yeah, I feel like we need something like a mercury that baits in some of these things. And, yeah, we are going to slowly work towards something like that.

Mike Peterson  
So what like in the next year? What are you thinking you're going to put your most focus on? I know we've talked before offline that the regulatory environment takes up a lot of your time, especially when you because you're operating in multiple countries. Hopefully, with the recent election in the US and the US kind of swinging back in a pro Bitcoin direction, that's going to push other countries to go the same way. But what are you facing now and and is that the majority of what you're focused on, or do you have some other exciting projects that you're focused on for this next year? 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, no, I think we have a lot of interesting stuff that's coming up. But, yeah, we are working on the regulatory stuff. Um, my personal conclusion was a one, even if we do get regulated, we will still keep the service alive. But I don't think it's wise to keep the branding. It needs to be rebranded presented as a regulated entity, because there's a lot of trade Bitcoin companies that are regulated and have to enforce regulations on their customers in the most unnecessary ways. And I always find it weird when the screenshot has a branded cartoon that is enforcing regulation, because I don't feel like that is the spirit for why you created the brand, right? So, yeah, we're gonna have a rebranded version of the service specifically for any country we get regulated in. Okay, and yeah, so it will have less features, because, of course, that's what regulation says. And even the weirdest thing, back to the conversations about the low to middle income earners, we really recognize that the easiest way to onboard a low income earner is through the whole group savings set up because it's also environment that you can talk about Bitcoin to a person who doesn't necessarily have disposable income, but from a regulator's perspective, they want you to still apply the same due diligence. As if you're onboarding one person at a time and then add them to a group. And the beauty of a group is, yeah, people are generally in, like a web of trust thing, so you could almost weed out bad actors quicker due to that, but the regulators don't want you to tweet every customer individually and so on and so forth. And I'm like, Huh, okay, that's something else, even though, fun fact, there's really no regulations behind that. They just want you to enforce what they think is it should be enforced. And I'm like, oh, first and foremost, do the work to get it on paper, and then let's have that conversation. But yeah, they want you to, you know, 

Mike Peterson  
they want you to enforce something that really isn't technically even in the law. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes, right, yeah, and yeah. So one, rebrand things. Two, we're gonna be rolling out the self custody version and parts. First part will be like the developer thing, which will just be like kit that you could use in any country to figure out what does the telecom support you won't be able to pull out, do a Bitcoin transaction, but you'll at least be able to figure out, oh, I can send an SMS to that number. I can send an SMS to this network. I can send myself an SMS, or binary SMS, that is, I can trigger these actions, so on and so forth, but you'd still need to use the components that are supported in each country to build out a new service, right? And yeah. So for me, it's, it's also just the way for me, when I land in a new country, to just go buy a SIM card and then start tinkering on the phone to figure out, oh, this is what El Salvador supports. Because I really don't know what El Salvador supports. And, yeah, so that is first part. Second part is probably going to be like an on chain wallet of it. I don't think we're going to do the lightning one next year, the self custodial lightning SIM card. I don't think we're going to do it next year, but since I won't be traveling. Maybe it's going to happen. And what else. Oh, yeah, the whole entrepreneur Mercury like system. I think we really need to see something like that. And, yeah, I also feel like it's one of those things where all the pieces are there, with frost being where it is now it's a little more matured because of music being a lot more matured. And yeah, it's like, Yo, if a person is in a company, can you emulate the org chart using a Bitcoin wallet and have rules that says, Oh, the board can override the CEOs wallet, and then the CEO can override their subordinates wallets. But the subordinates could also come together and override the CEOs blah, blah, blah, blah, rules such as that. And I feel like with like mini script and all of these things, you can emulate it if you drink enough coffee, but also you're going to have to figure out how to present it to a user such that they don't have to drink as much coffee to actually use it. And yeah. So we've had two developers join one actually spend some time looking at the phosphines, or also spend a lot of time looking at that. And yeah. So we'll see what we actually hold out for that part, but I spend most of the time with the self custody SIM card stuff. And yeah, oh, we also have an app coming out before the end of this month, so yeah, 

Mike Peterson  
for the smartphone users? 

Kgothatso Ngako  
yes, 

Mike Peterson  
Okay, yeah, because I'm sure you're seeing some of your users, especially maybe some of them as they're saving them Bitcoin and their financial situation improves. They're moving from a feature phone to a smartphone. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yes, right. So wallet of Satoshi and blink are the two favorite wallets in Africa from what I've seen. And yeah, so we're gonna have ours up and ready before the end of the month. 

Mike Peterson  
Yeah, awesome. Well, I don't want to take too much of your time, because I know you're here for the conference. You know you flew in for just a short time. But is there anything else you want to share that's going on with Machankura?

Kgothatso Ngako  
Let's see what else is nothing we cover most of the main stuff. Um. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think there's anything

Mike Peterson  
So they can follow you. It's machankura is your  Twitter handle, right? 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, a machankura8 triple three, okay, and then a triple trade on movies, the website, with all the other social medias at the bottom.

Mike Peterson  
And then Adopting Bitcoin, of course, is what's the Twitter handle for that is it

Kgothatso Ngako  
Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town? Okay? And, yeah, I think it's, if you move all the vowels you you'll get it okay? And yeah. 

Mike Peterson  
So definitely encourage people that that can to make it that conference. Cape Town is a beautiful city, and it's an amazing, you know, conference, and then to be able to go and see the Bitcoin Ekasi project afterwards, it's amazing.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, and it's a two in one. Actually, it's gonna be the Bitcoin Agassi and Bitcoin withstand, okay, my idea, Oh, yeah. Earlier I was did, I was talking about that when I got side drilled by talking about entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship. So after the talks, there was the road trip to between Ekasi and between with and effectively, one day was friend in between. Agassi went to the surf with the kids. Went into the township. It's one of those things we things where I never have the time, right? So, but yeah, next time I will. And had lunch at the local restaurant. So a lot of African cuisine was had been paid in Bitcoin, went to the Education Center, took a tour to all the shops that Bitcoin and nice pictures captured right next to the shacks with all the Bitcoin brand branding on them. 

Mike Peterson  
Did you see the Bitcoin Beach one? I don't know if it was there yet. I think I think that came afterwards.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Oh no, I think it was okay. But I'll check the picture to see what was there. And then, yeah. And then we went to Bitcoin with stand, which is smaller village. It's what's the sports you haven't been there before? No, no, okay, next time. And what's the sports part? I'm testing the making your own rum as well. And it was nice. It was like, really, one of the best experiences in the country. And everyone who was there enjoyed themselves. Yeah? 

Mike Peterson  
Mine was telling me that almost every business there accepts Bitcoin.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah in Bitcoin, it's not yeah as a small enough village that they could pull it off, and they were very die hard, because the guy who onboards them for Edwin is Die Hard, Die Hard, Die Hard, And he really takes his time on ramping each merchant, teaching them everything and getting them set up with all the wonderful software that's our business, BTC pay server and everything else. And yeah, so even if you want to stay there, you can stay there on a Bitcoin standard. Do your groceries, pay for your fuel directly at all the small businesses that operate there. And yeah, we also did a fuel top up using Bitcoin while we were there. And we were like, Okay, this is how to live life. And yeah-

Mike Peterson  
Sweet, no, I'm, I'm anxious to get there. Well, I appreciate you pulling pulling away from the conference for a little bit, and it's so, so good to see you here again. I was bummed you didn't make it here last year. But hey, I understand the travel, especially with a young kid.

Kgothatso Ngako  
Well, so next year is definitely going to be here with the family. 

Mike Peterson  
All right. KJ, well, hey, make sure that you're following Machankura, and that you check out the stuff for the conference. And yeah, be anxious to get another update from you next year. 

Kgothatso Ngako  
Yeah, no, most definitely.