BREAKDOWN: Discovering Bitcoin Through the #EndSARS Movement, Feat. Yele Bademosi & Akin Sawyerr
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2020
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When the Nigerian government shut down protestors’ bank accounts, bitcoin and crypto became a way around.
This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com and Nexo.io.
Yele Bademosi is CEO at Bundle social payments app and the founder of investment firm Microtraction. Akin Sawyerr is involved across the industry and leads operations at BarnBridge.
Over the course of October 2020, the world’s attention became firmly fixed on a growing movement in Nigeria. With the hashtag #EndSARS, the movement was, on the one hand, about addressing police brutality. On the other hand, as our guests discuss, it was a broader awakening and a demand for generational economic opportunity. At one point, even Twitter founder Jack Dorsey called for people to donate bitcoin to help the movement.
In this conversation, Yele and Akin discuss:
- The state of the economy in Nigeria leading into the protests
- Generational differences in political action
- Why the #EndSARS protests exploded into action in October
- Why the movement turned to bitcoin to avoid bank confiscation
- How crypto can play a role in a brighter future
Find our guests online:
Yele Bademosi - twitter.com/YeleBademosi
Akin Sawyerr - twitter.com/AkinSawyerr
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | the trauma from that particular experience actually silenced that generation and impacted how they |
| 0:07.2 | felt about politics. Now, that's about 30 years, which is a whole generation, and then you now have |
| 0:12.6 | a new generation who are not necessarily affected by what happened in 93, and are now thinking |
| 0:18.7 | from the ground up with new tools that gives them that sense of |
| 0:23.0 | agency. Having things like the smartphone and the internet, social media, decentralized payment |
| 0:29.6 | systems like Bitcoin, all these things give us the tools that gives people the ability to think |
| 0:35.4 | that you know what, maybe this time you have a chance. |
| 0:39.2 | Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. |
| 0:43.4 | It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. |
| 0:49.4 | The breakdown is sponsored by crypto.com and nexo.io and produced and distributed by CoinDest. |
| 0:56.5 | What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, November 11th. And today we are diving into the world of |
| 1:04.4 | Nigeria and African Bitcoin and Crypto. And specifically, we're looking at how the recent end SARS movement has created |
| 1:13.7 | kind of an inflection point potentially for both economic action in the form of adoption |
| 1:19.6 | of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, as well as a larger belief in political power among the younger generations. I'm joined for this conversation first by |
| 1:28.4 | Akin Sawyer, who is something of a crypto-Defi Bitcoin Renaissance man. He's done a huge number of |
| 1:35.1 | things in this industry. He has a background in international development and management |
| 1:38.7 | consulting as well, so a really diverse perspective on it. And I'm also joined by Yale Batamose, who has been on the ground |
| 1:46.0 | in Nigeria during these protests and who is also the CEO of Bundle Africa, which is a cash app Venmo type |
| 1:52.4 | application for the African markets. Together, these guys help give a context for this |
| 1:58.8 | Nsars movement that's bigger than just one issue that's bigger than just |
| 2:03.0 | a set of issues and really helps us understand it in terms of how Nigeria and Africa as a whole |
| 2:08.4 | is changing. So I hope you enjoy it. All right. Jens, thank you so much for joining the breakdown. |
... |
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