Crypto is Useless Unless You Need It | SheFi Summit Bangkok

Transcript

[Music] how's everybody doing today this is an incredible event I must say The Vibes are higher how are we today are we very hot are we comfortable sure of hands we're good amazing okay great so I'm here to talk about this new campaign that we've launched something that I think is very critical for us to talk about at a developer event is crypto is useless can I get a show of hands as to like how many of you have heard this from family friends whatever how many how many people have heard crypto's useless okay great I have heard all ever

since I've been in crypto everybody's told me you work for magic bean money are you crazy and I don't think crypto is useless and I'm going to kind of talk about like why I am sell Foundation doesn't think crypto is useless so for most of us I don't know I don't know where you guys coming from how many of us Europe are okay we have good representation America how many from Emerging Markets oh we have a few so for those of us who grew up or have lived in Emerging Markets traditional Financial systems are not something that we can take for granted right it's not like hey go to the bank put some dollars in it or hey I'm traveling to Thailand I would love some dollars to kind of like travel those are things that at least I didn't personally grew up with like to get

dollars I had to pay a lot of money right and but I'm still privileged in that segment right having a bank account is a massive privilege in some places right Financial systems is a massive privilege in some some places and so what about those folks that don't have these rails that we get we that we take so for granted like go to the ATM tap your card you get money right what if you can't do that and that's what we're talking about right for those folks crypto is super super critical when I say when I say this I mean I've been on the ground everywhere in the world I see this with like real life examples I'm going to talk a little bit more about that later in this present crypto is actually a lifeline and so let's talk about some numbers I'm a trafi girl I

came from trsh Finance I'm also accountant so I like numbers so let's talk about some numbers 1.7 billion that is 1.7 billion is the number of people that live in countries with super high inflation good example I went to Kenya in February of this year the dollar was at 160 I went to Kenya in September of this year and I'm Kenyan by the way um so I talk a lot about Kenya um the dollar was at 120 that's like 6 months right and we're not that's not even the country that when you think about high inflation that's not a country you think about when you think about high inflation you think about countries like Nigeria that kind of lose like 20% value of your currency in like four weeks you think about Argentina Venezuela Etc right that's the number of people that

live in countries with high inflation 1.4 adult four billion adults do not have a bank account they remain underbanked right and like the number of people that own crypto is just 617 million right that's how many people own crypto and I don't even know what this number looks like in terms of 617 million that is part of the 1.4 billion but if I had to guess that was a very small number right now so crypto is useless and I think this is something I want to kind of debunk and demit right crypto has amazing incredible use cases some of which to be honest I don't even think I know or you know right now like what is crypto going to do in like 2030

I wish like it would be completely in my mind completely different from what we use it for today right but it's also something that's like even relevant today right crypto's being really interesting use cases today and so I want to play this one little clip as and we asked a couple of ecosystem Partners what crypto does and why is crypto useless and so we have an app called mini pay and they were like if you want to send $100 to your family watch $20 disappear Mentor says if you lived in hyperinflation watch your money lose value daily pretium says if you run a small business where cash is the only payment you can rely on unless you've under banked and ask for a microloan to build generation Wells rable says if you're in Emerging Market artist try and get payments and

so these are just like a couple of examples from ecosystem projects right um and like I have experienced all of this when I send money home it costs me like what one time it cost me 25% right um and this is with traditional banking systems it took eight days to reach home right um and this is just my personal experience and I have access to Banks right and I keep saying this again and again because I just really want to tell you like how it impacts even folks like me but now we have systems that are available with stable coins so we have an app in the ecosystem called minay minay is a stable coin only wallet I'm giving you this as an example of what we feel how crypto can be useful in the future how where people are already

using crypto and so mini pay is a stable coin wallet that is used in currently seven countries in Africa and they're expanding globally and so you will have those of you that have an Android phone can kind of download that application now or use valora to kind of do this but in some of these countries now you can do use a dollar based stable coin and pay for every single payment we've given an example of Richie here who kind of uses mini pay to a he's a content creator and he used to lose like 30% value when folks outside of his country used to pay him and now he's able to kind of take all his salary and all his earning in his dollar denominated stable coins and he even able to kind of pay the little Tuk Tok guy using dollar

denominated Stables fun fact we were when I was in Kenya recently from the minute I landed to the minute I took off every single payment I did it with many pay using dollar denominated stable coins so my coffee my Uber my you name it like my hotel my every single payment using dollar denominated stable coins then Exchange any currency didn't exchange anything right and so crypto is becoming really easy to use and really relevant in some of these economies I went from Kenya to Singapore and I was like yeah grab takes usdc two payments I was so frustrated I was done sorry but in some of these countries the infrastructure that's set up this is being enabled by a protocol called pretium pretium lets you off ramp immediately with like a 2% spread only

from dollar to Shilling at every single wendor it's like tapping your it's literally like tapping your phone onto this vendor Merchant payment system or like they have mobile money in Kenya and it's like you use PRM put the mobile money account number and you pay Shilling directly you don't even think about it it's like how you use like Trad traditional Financial systems let me give you a couple more examples of how we are using crypto right now so I actually met Ahmed he's amazing by the way Ed took me literally wanted to get some groceries and he tells me he only uses dollar denominate stable coins now and I think I haven't explained why dollar denominated C coins are important right I talked to you about the fact that like inflation and currency debt devaluation

takes away value but all of these folks are now using dollar denominate stable coins to store their entire earnings for a specific period of time right and they're hedging against inflation they're hedging against like currency devaluation but what what is really interesting now and like we've done this before right like this has been happening for a few years they were're using different different products right the binance wallet is super binance is super super relevant in some of these countries but what binance wasn't able to do or so far is they weren't able to let you like pay in your domestic countries for what you actually use your money for right and so em up here literally took me to the store and it was like Isa let's get some coke and I was like yeah sure let's do it and like

he does all his grocery shoppings using dollar denominated stable coins right and so this is him like taking me to a store he bought his weeks books the groceries using dollar denom the stable coin I met Nick niik is great by the way again love these people Nico was telling me a really interesting story Nico went to Nigeria and lost his wallet I don't know if and if you've lost your wallet I have at some point and it's it's really scary but Nico had his phone and he had mini pay on his phone and so even though he was going from country a to Country B and had completely lost his wallet he was able to do like I said like every sing when I say every single transaction I wish you guys some of you if you get a chance go to Africa like it's so lovely

to be able to use crypto to like pay for every single thing right and so why am I here why am I standing and why do I work in web 3 I work in web 3 because I think like crypto is not useless I think crypto is something that we can use not not for just like yeah I mean there's appreciation of value and we're in a we're in an excellent time right now but I'm here because I think because of all of this right I come from here I want to build for folks like this that are like using crypto for everyday payments imagine a world where we come to Bangkok next time for Dev con where I mean and we don't have to use anything else except for our wallets to make all our payments imagine the collective ease it'll be for like everybody in this

specific room yeah so as something that I think we could all do is I would love we we're trying to we're got we're this with this campaign we're trying to say well we need more Fe people to say well crypto is not useless there is this small little nft and we are going to take the proceed from this small little nft it's really cheap to help you guys to help the to show the world that hey crypto is not useless we're all Builders we're we're all building in this community um yeah and then use it for like climate action um and make sure that like there's real world impact with yeah what we're all building towards yeah that's all I had thank you very much