Currently, 1 Bitcoin is equal to almost P1.3 million. Since Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper in October 2008, the cryptocurrency has garnered widespread popularity globally, both as a store of value and a speculative asset.
But in Botswana, despite efforts by regulators such as NBFIRA to license exchanges like Yellowcard, adoption remains low. This is the gap Ola Bitcoin, a Bitcoin education community founded by Josh Vasquez, aims to plug.
BW TechZone caught up with Josh to get more info on the origins of Ola Bitcoin, his thoughts on Bitcoin, its potential in Botswana, and what Batswana need to know to adopt this cryptocurrency.
Please tell us what Ola Bitcoin is
Ola Bitcoin was founded to give people access to free education about Bitcoin. We are Bitcoin Only, which means we discourage the ownership of any of the other millions of crypto coins and tokens out there that are mostly scams that go to zero over time.
We don’t sell Bitcoin or teach people how to trade it. We teach people that buying and holding your bitcoin for the long term is the best strategy to safeguard the value you have created for society, and we teach them how to self-custody their hard-earned Bitcoin and how to avoid scams. It acts in essence as a not-for-profit since nothing we do creates revenue at the moment, and it’s purely for the benefit of the country and community.
How did the idea for Ola Bitcoin come about
After attending a Bitcoin Conference called Adopting Bitcoin in Cape Town back in January 2024, my wife Kea and I decided to launch Ola Bitcoin to put a name to our efforts to bring Bitcoin awareness, free education, and adoption to Botswana. South Africa has many Bitcoin organisations, and I noticed there was a huge void in Botswana, and we decided to do something about it. We decided we needed to do something to give back to this amazing country, which we both love.
How receptive are Batswana to education on Bitcoin?
There is still a lot of scepticism when it comes to Bitcoin in Botswana, mainly because many people have been burned by scams in the past that used the name of Bitcoin to defraud people of their hard-earned money and time. The truth is, these scam organisations do not mine bitcoin, nor do they own any bitcoin themselves. They just use the name as a hook to entice people to play into their scam with promises of a “sure thing” and “get rich quick” lies.
How would you gauge the rate of adoption of Bitcoin in Botswana at the moment?
Honestly, it is not very high. There is still a lot of animosity towards a technology that is truly neutral when understood and studied. I read an article that stated that the use of physical cash is actually growing in Botswana, which is the opposite of what we see in other African nations like Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Ghana, which are all adopting digital currencies very quickly. Bitcoin is no longer a risky asset as many think.
Governments like that of the USA are now declaring “Strategic Reserves” of Bitcoin, and multibillion-dollar corporations in the USA and Japan are actively buying Billions and keeping it on their balance sheet for the long term. The individuals, countries and companies that have adopted the Bitcoin standard are all doing much better than before they adopted this strategy. Take a look at El Salvador for an example of a country, or at Strategy B for an example of a company in the USA that adopted Bitcoin for its treasury. They are both thriving.
Ola Bitcoin preaches the potential of a technology like Bitcoin in emerging markets. Some advantages include:
- Bitcoin eliminates the friction of cross-border payments that exists today in commerce in a region or globally. It allows any 2 parties to exchange value peer to peer without the need of any 3rd party. It is the native currency of the internet and AI.
- Bitcoin can protect people's savings, acting as an excellent “store of value”. This protects citizens, for example, in the case of Zimbabwe, from hyperinflation and capital controls that can sometimes be tyrannical in nature.
- The tiny country of El Salvador has been able to defy the IMF successfully. Despite many attempts and threats of the IMF to dissuade the country and President Bukele from buying at least one Bitcoin a day for posterity, the country has ignored the IMF, and its economy is thriving and is more independent and sovereign thanks to Bitcoin and its decentralised nature. Bitcoin is not controlled by any government or institution, and this gives individuals, corporations, and even nation states more autonomy and sovereignty inherently since their money is now independent of third-party agendas and control.
What challenges have you faced in promoting Bitcoin in Botswana?
Mainly scepticism and a lack of interest in this amazing new tech. This is mainly due to a large number of scams that have burned many people. What I tell people is that if a scammer tells you they are mining bitcoin and they promise you a guaranteed rate of return that sounds too good to be true, then you can be sure it is a scam, and they will take every single last pula you give them.
There also always has to be a degree of due diligence that the individual does and self-research before buying bitcoin. This is why education is paramount and why Ola Bitcoin is passionate about educating Batswana so they can then make up their own minds about bitcoin with solid information that can be cross-checked using Grok, ChatGPT or other internet resources.
How have you been addressing those challenges?
I have a WhatsApp group in which I post current affairs of big things happening in the Bitcoin space. People mainly just look at the price of Bitcoin, but that is only the very surface of everything. I discourage trading on the group and rather teach people that buying and holding bitcoin for the long term is the best strategy for building wealth.
I also bring awareness to what governments and institutions are doing since it highlights just how important Bitcoin has become in the world of finance and how this influence is growing over time. In the group, we also announce when we will have a face-to-face bootcamp that is free of charge and brings people up to speed in 3 separate 1-hour lessons on the basics of Bitcoin and self-custody.
I always encourage members to DYOR (Do Your Own Research) and not just take my word for what I post in the group.
For people who are looking to get into Bitcoin, what advice would you give them?
First, study Bitcoin. You can start with the free videos and audiobooks I provide on our website olabitcoin.org. Once you are convinced Bitcoin is here to stay, then buy some Bitcoin and then move it to self-custody. You will need to study self-custody to do it correctly, but it is not difficult; there are plenty of YouTube videos that will walk you through self-custody. I recommend “Swan Bitcoin” as a channel on YouTube for tutorials on self-custody and to learn more about Bitcoin. You can also attend some of our free bootcamps to learn all the basics about Bitcoin. If possible, read or listen to the free audiobook “The Bitcoin Standard” which is also on our website free of charge.
Once you study Bitcoin and are familiar with the concept of self-custody, consider buying as little as P200 from a licensed exchange like Yellow Card in Botswana. They are located across the street from the Daily Grind cafe, close to Main Mall. We don’t have many ways of buying Bitcoin in Botswana, so currently, Yellow Card is the best choice, in my opinion, but if you can travel to South Africa, there are many more options there.
Remember, you can buy small pieces of bitcoin called Sats. You don’t have to buy a whole Bitcoin since they cost over P1 million in the global market today.
Where do you see Ola Bitcoin in the next 2-3 years?
In the next three years, I see Bitcoin becoming one of the most important topics for every nation and corporation in the world. I want Ola Bitcoin to eventually become the organisation of choice that gives consulting services to corporations, banks, and even the government, since we understand the Botswana market better than anyone else when it comes to Bitcoin.
I still always want to keep education free and accessible to anyone and everyone in Botswana who is interested in learning about Bitcoin. At some point, we need to start generating income if we want to be sustainable and have longevity in serving Botswana.
Anything else you would like to share
Study Bitcoin for at least 40 hours using trusted sources. Feel free to contact Ola Bitcoin with any questions you have along the way or if you have questions about the validity of a source of information. You can use tools like Grok or ChatGPT to fact-check different influencers or YouTube channels when it comes to Bitcoin information. Follow the money, listen to what huge asset managers like BlackRock and its CEO, Larry Fink, are saying about Bitcoin, and listen to what the current Trump administration is saying about Bitcoin. Whether we like Trump or not, he will more than likely be in power for the next 4 years, and his policies will influence the digital landscape.
Bitcoin is no longer a “fringe” asset. Institutions like Tesla, Microstrategy, Block, Gamestop, MARA, Space X, Tether all own Bitcoin to the tune of Billions of dollars on their balance sheets and many more will follow. The USA has already declared Bitcoin a strategic reserve. Bitcoin is the best-performing asset of the last decade and is accessible to Batswana today via exchanges like Yellow Card. Bitcoin is permissionless and censorship-resistant resistant which makes it the best alternative we have to CBDCs. This is why the USA is currently not pursuing a CBDC since it is using a combination of both stablecoins and Bitcoin to react to the CBDC strategy of other big economies like that of China and the e-Yuan.
There are 2 options currently in the world: launch a CBDC or turn to Bitcoin, and I believe Bitcoin preserves individuals' privacy and autonomy and also eliminates borders for commerce,e making it much harder to weaponise currencies in favour of the most powerful nations. Every country that has adapted to the latest technology quickly, especially when it comes to money 2.0, wins, so it is so important not to get this issue wrong and not to fall behind the 8 ball.
The global debt is only increasing, and I believe that at some point, this becomes unsustainable,e and we need another system to reset the current financial order; this system could potentially be Bitcoin. If it is, then those who HODL bitcoin long term (individuals, corporations, nations) will benefit immensely. If we look at case studies like that of Nigeria, a CBDC was launched, and it was a train smash. Nigeria became the country with the fastest rate of adoption of Bitcoin and crypto in general in the world as a form of peaceful protest to the imposition of the e-Naira (which has been devalued significantly since its inception).
I believe bitcoin is the next cyber arms race, and those who accumulate the most of this absolutely scarce resource will win in the future. Bitcoin has outperformed every other asset in history in the last 15 years and can no longer be ignored. Bitcoin has an absolute cap of 21 million, of which 95% has already been mined and is in circulation today. It has a better stock-to-flow ratio than gold and has all the advantages of gold without the disadvantages of gold.
It is easy to store, easy to safeguard, easy to send anywhere in the world and has outperformed gold in the last decade by a huge margin. This is why it has been called “digital gold”. There will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins, but the amount of US dollars and fiat in general that can be printed is practically infinite. When easy money meets hard money, hard money wins. It can also be audited every 10 minutes, and if the government made their public address known to the public, anyone worldwide could see what amount of Bitcoin is held at any point in time.
This follows the playbook of “El Salvador” with such a degree of transparency that anyone, even if they are not a citizen of the country, can look and see that the government is accumulating 1 bitcoin a day and is not selling it or misusing it. I also believe that for regional commerce like the SADC region, or even the entire African continent, could trade with this amazing new neutral currency that cannot be manipulated to the benefit of some and the demise of others.
It could eliminate friction between countries and foster trade and commerce. I always have something extra to say about Bitcoin and why we as Bitcoiners believe that if you fix the money, you can fix many of the world’s problems we face today, including the incentives for war and violence. Fix the money, fix the world!