Ian Foster, EconoKidz.com, Bitcoin Boma
EconoKidz was created by Ian Foster and narrated by two of his sons, Theodore (10) and Max (8), collectively known as The TedMax. When the banks were bailed out in 2008 followed by endless money printing and interest rate manipulation ever since, Ian realised that even those in his own profession – an accountant with a degree in economics – were blind to the problem. So he set about creating EconoKidz to help children around the world have sufficient understanding of economics and money to avoid falling into the fiat and CBDC trap.
For the past ten years, Ian has lived in Malawi, Southern Africa, where he founded a company to help startups and small businesses strengthen their financial management and raise capital. He has been an advocate for bitcoin adoption in the country since 2014 and continues to support grassroots adoption and education through @BitcoinBoma.
Session
Could a small country in Africa be the next bitcoin country? Like El Salvador, Malawi is a small, densely populated and mostly unheard of agricultural nation. It is also one of the world’s poorest nations and, with an election next year, is in desperate need of ‘New Ideas’. Bitcoin Boma was founded to educate on and advocate for bitcoin in a country where the currency can be devalued by 44% overnight, savings interest rates are capped at 4% and dollars are scarce and highly regulated.
I have lived there for the past ten years and founded a business to help companies succeed in this challenging environment. In this talk, I will share my experiences of this beautiful and peaceful country and my realisation that the donors who pump in billions of funding miss the underlying cause of the poverty trap - fiat money. Through Bitcoin Boma our aim is for bitcoin to fix this and for Malawi to be an example to the rest of Africa as El Salvador is to Latin America.