Stafford Masie: Why the Rest of the World Gets Bitcoin Wrong

**Stafford Masie** (0:00)
We always say, we think Bitcoin was made for us, not for you guys. Because when you guys talk about Bitcoin, you talk about Bitcoin in a way that we don't fully comprehend. We don't understand what your issues are. You guys are number go up, number go down. You're worried about the price. We're like, have you forgotten what this thing is? It's immutable, it's decentralized. It gives me power that I've never had before. So if you go back to Africa, I think you go back to what Bitcoin was made for.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:26)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Joining me this week is Stafford Masie. He is the Executive Chairman and Director of Bitcoin Strategy at the Africa Bitcoin Corporation, ABC. Stafford, thanks so much for joining me here in New York.

**Stafford Masie** (0:40)
Finally, Africa's here.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:41)
Yeah, you just joined me from what? South Africa's where you're based?

**Stafford Masie** (0:44)
South Africa, where we flew in and New York's freezing. But what a privilege.
We are huge fans. And I think the impact that you've had in South Africa and Africa is significant. You've orange pulled a lot of us and so it's surreal to sit across you and to speak to you and thank you.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:59)
That means the world to me. I can't wait to talk to you because I feel like so much is happening on your continent. You actually have the youngest population, right? A lot of people getting into Bitcoin. So first, just share your backstory for those who aren't familiar with who you are, what you do. Share with us your backstory, how you got into Bitcoin and what ABC is.

**Stafford Masie** (1:17)
So my backstory is I've been in Bitcoin since 2014 I got in when I was building a little device that plugged into a phone that converted the phone into a card acceptance machine. It was more or less the same time Jack Dorsey was doing it. But when Square was doing it, he was plugging a little white dongle into the phone and he had an easy job because you guys in the United States were doing only MagSwipe. Where we were, we had adopted EMV. So I had the chip and pins. I had to actually do a secure card across a non-secure device into a banking fabric. So when Bitcoin came along, I was very deep in building banking fabric and actually energizing a chip on a card to go through a phone into a PCI DSS data center. And then the whole acquiring and issuing and switching. And someone came along and said, this thing allows you to convey or transmit value, no intermediary, more securely than we've ever been, than it's ever been done in the history of humanity. And I looked at it and I went, this is absolute rubbish. And it took me some time to get to it, but we all approach it in the skeuomorphic way. And I looked through kind of the traditional banking lens, but when it finally dropped, it dropped. And I've been a Bitcoin max ever since. And I joined the board of ABC before it was called ABC. It was Outface Capital. And the reason I loved the business, it's Warren Wheatley founded it, that's our CEO. It's a business that was a private capital business, a private credit business that deploys capital into SMMEs in Africa. And it's had a huge impact story and what he wanted to do with it. And I saw the evidence of it. And what I loved about it, it was skewed towards African females. So, if you're an African female and you apply for a private credit loan, you actually get biased in a positive way, so it's cheaper. And I loved that story. And I thought, let me be a part of it. I became the chairman of the board and with a lot of board changes, etc. And then I tried to do the Bitcoin maxi thing with them for a while. It took him a little bit, but then he got it. And when he got it, we sat down and said, how could we take a private credit, traditional private credit business, and shove a Bitcoin nuclear weapon into its engine and do kind of what Sailor did. What Sailor has done with digital credit, we thought, why can't we do it with private credit in Africa? And that model works better for us over there because our market is completely different from your market. Your markets are, you know, you guys have low yield, high capital, like lots of capital, low yield. So your yield starved. I'm the exact opposite of that. I have huge yields, but I'm capital starved. So what are we doing with the Bitcoin is not generating yield. I don't have to generate yield. I take Bitcoin and I harvest yield, right? So I've got a light saber. I have the capability to take a private traditional credit engine that gets money from fixed income allocators, like pension funds, and it's weighted average cost of capital is about 12 to 15%.