Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town

Abe is a clean energy and blockchain entrepreneur with an academic background in climate science and renewable energy. He was listed as one of ESI Africa's "African Energy Elites" and is a Top 40 Under-40 African Business Icon. The company he founded in 2014, Sun Exchange, was named one of the Top 10 Most Innovative companies in Africa by Fast Company for it's disruptive approach to solar finance, utilising Bitcoin to solve Africa's energy crisis. He is a renowned thought leader in solar and blockchain, delivering keynote speeches around the world, and frequently quoted in the media.

MD and Owner of Jabulani and Founder of Hoedspruit Elephant Rehabilitation and Development (HERD), Adine Roode has dedicated her life to supporting two of Africa’s vulnerable wildlife species, namely elephants and rhinos.

Adine is recognised in the conservation industry for her past work with rhinos at the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre (HESC), however, her most significant work has been in elephant conservation, which began in 1997, when HESC successfully hand-reared their first orphaned elephant.

With the growing number of elephant orphans and displaced elephant calves in South Africa, at the hands of poaching and human-elephant conflict, Adine saw a need for an elephant orphanage that would take in, rehabilitate, and integrate elephant calves in need of a herd and a safe home. This led her to establish a dedicated elephant orphanage, HERD, where orphans can be rehabilitated and eventually released into the welcoming embrace of a herd that they could call their own, giving them a second chance at life.

Adine will attend the conference to deepen her understanding of Bitcoin adoption and explore its potential contributions to securing the elephants' future through conservation efforts.

Frisco d'Anconia is a journalist by profession who discovered Bitcoin in 2011. He's written for several Blockchain news outlets, including Cointelegraph, Bitcoin.com, KryptoMoney, CryptoCoinsNews, etc. Moreover, Frisco has worked on several projects and protocols in different capacities. Since 2016, he's been traveling through Africa, living a nomadic life, promoting Blockchain tech, and engaging its communities. He has no bank account, lives solely on Crypto, and is a Blockchain agnostic. Currently, he's building Timbuktu DAO, a cooperative to expand Web3 Technical Skills in Africa. He's also the president of Africa Web3 Institute, formerly Africa Blockchain University.

I am a full time regenerative farmer raising chicken, cattle and goats. We direct market our meat directly to anyone that wants to eat clean, nutrient dense food.

Anita Posch is a renowned Bitcoin educator, author, and founder of the online academy Crack the Orange as well as founder of Bitcoin for Fairness, a non-profit organization that has a strong focus on Bitcoin adoption in the Global South through education, knowledge sharing and capacity building on the ground. Anita’s focus is on promoting Bitcoin as a tool for financial freedom and inclusivity, as well as educating individuals concerned with digital privacy and self-sovereignty.

Arsh Molu (@arshmolu) promotes financial freedom at the Human Rights Foundation (@HRF), an organization focused on defending human rights in Authoritarian regimes. The Human Rights Foundation uses Bitcoin as a tool to promote financial freedom globally. Arsh is also the Co-founder of Generation Bitcoin (@genbitcoiners), a community built to support, encourage, and inspire high school and college students to learn about Bitcoin.

COO at JAN3

Serial entrepreneur with a master’s degree in Computer Sciences, Economics, and Finance. Ben has over 25 years of experience in multiple domains, ranging from early internet startups to complex manufacturing in the coach, bus, and yacht-building industry.

A community-driven initiative, encouraging dialogue, spreading awareness and sharing insights on hedging against irresponsible monetary policy.

Hey! I'm Byron. 👋

🦀 I'm interested in Rust, Linux, Cryptography, Bitcoin, and Nix.
🌊 I'm currently working on Liquid at Blockstream.

Carel co-founded Luno and was an early engineer at Snapscan. He has been working on Bitcoin payment systems for the past 8 years and currently is the Director at Crypto Convert, a South Africa based company connecting merchants to Lightning with a Rand-denominated Merchant API.

southernbitcoiner.com

Craig Raw is the founder and developer of Sparrow - a Bitcoin desktop wallet with a focus on multi-signatures for distributed self-custody and privacy. In 2020 he started Sparrow out of the desire to build something with and for Bitcoin which can fill the gaps he saw within the existing wallets.

Former lawyer and host of The Why Bitcoin Show, a podcast focused on helping ordinary people understand why Bitcoin, not crypto.

Emmanuel is one of the founding members of Bitcoin for Fairness in Lusaka, Zambia. He is co-organizing regular meetups in the capital city Lusaka and doing educational work with university students.

Farzam is the CEO and Co-founder of VALR.com, Africa's largest crypto exchange, that allows customers to buy, sell, store and transfer one of the widest selections of cryptocurrencies. He was previously the Blockchain Lead at Rand Merchant Bank and the FirstRand Group, and was the inaugural Chairperson of the South African Financial Blockchain Consortium. He previously worked at McKinsey & Company in Johannesburg, Deloitte Consulting in San Francisco, the Baha'i World Centre in Haifa, and the United Nations in Nairobi. He studied economics at the University of California - Berkeley.

Bitcoin Rationalist, Entrepreneur, SocialInnovator, Dreamer, Teacher, Seeker, Changemaker, Son of Africa, Madridista

Building @Btrust_Builders & @PathFoundEN

Hermann Vivier is the co-founder of The Surfer Kids (est. 2010) and founder of Bitcoin Ekasi (est. 2021). Hermann first became interested in Bitcoin in late 2013 as a result of the banking crisis and subsequent bank bailouts in Cyprus. In May 2015 he and his wife adopted Bitcoin as a form of payment. They operate a South African tourism business, catering for the Eastern European and Russian markets, and the first Russian-Ukrainian conflict meant that Bitcoin was (in certain cases) the only form of payment available to receive money from their clients. Following the global covid lockdowns and the resulting slump in their tourism business they started looking for ways to become more active in the Bitcoin space. Hermann started writing for Bitcoin Magazine in January 2021 and a series of events followed that led to thes creation of Bitcoin Ekasi in August 2021.

Bitcoin For Fairness & Bitcoin Victoria Falls

Bitcoin Victoria Falls was inspired by The Hope House's Bitcoin Beach project in El Zonte, El Salvador. The Free Haven Community Initiative in Livingstone, Zambia is very similar in its philanthropic nature and community initiatives. These community and educational ties inspired a Bitcoin Circular Economy in Zambia with a focus on education and merchant adoption. This project will be led by two teachers who are a part of Bitcoin for Fairness Zambia, Mabvuto and Humphrey from Lusaka, Zambia. They will travel to Livingstone for 2 days each week to teach the My First Bitcoin curriculum, onboard merchants, and host Bitcoin meetups. We are ready for launch!

Janet has diverse professional experiences in the operations and administration in the technology space. Prior to Gridless, Janet has worked as the Managing Director recently in Azenia and also Andela which are technology companies that helps companies build high performing distributed engineering teams in Africa. Janet’s career has revolved around Strategy Implementation, Project Management, Operations, People Management and Administration. Other organisations she has worked include BRCK, Wananchi Satellite Ltd, NHS (UK) and Swift Global. Janet holds an MBA from Kingston University (London,UK), as well as a Bachelor in Commerce, Banking and Finance from Kenyatta University. She has experience in cross-functional teams and is keen on leadership that inspires innovation, motivation and transparency.

I'm a Russian living in South Africa. Co-founder and operator at Unravel Surf Travel since 2011. Born in the Ukrainian part of the USSR. Met my husband (Hermann) in Amsterdam in 2008, while studying. I'm one of one of the first Russian-speaking tour guides marketing South Africa as a destination in the Russian market. Mother to two boys.

Jesse was born in Hamburg, Germany, and studied energy economics before working in the energy access sector for several years. He stumbled across Bitcoin through problems relating to payment flows from West Africa to Germany. Jesse currently works as a consultant in the mining industry. He combines his experience in the energy industry, experience with start-ups, the technical aspects of Bitcoin mining, and the opportunities that arise from the innovative use of energy sources. With his company HashrateUp he runs a podcast with the same name and is advocating for more Hashrate to come to Africa.

Jimmy Song is a Bitcoin developer, educator and entrepreneur. He's a programmer with over 20 years experience, an open source contributor to many different Bitcoin projects and the author of Programming Bitcoin from O'Reilly, The Little Bitcoin Book, Thank God for Bitcoin, BItcoin and the American Dream, and Fiat Ruins Everything. Jimmy has been a lecturer at the University of Texas, an expert witness in legal cases involving Bitcoin and is an advisor to multiple companies. Jimmy writes a weekly newsletter, Bitcoin Tech Talk and has a podcast Bitcoin Fixes This.

John Endres is the CEO of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR). The IRR is a South African think-tank that aims to promote individual liberty, democracy, the rule of law, and free-market economics. Established in 1929, it seeks to provide research, analysis, and advocacy to address racial inequalities and advance the principles of non-racialism, freedom, and prosperity in South Africa.

Josef Tětek is an author Bitcoin: Separation of Money and State (https://braiins.com/books/bitcoin-separation-of-money-and-state) and the Trezor Academy lead.

Agricultural Engineer. Let's talk: Agriculture/ Farming & Energy. Fossil Fuels for Africa.

Kemal is a graduate of the Geschwister-Scholl Institute for Political Science at the Ludwigs-Maximilan-University of Munich and the Director of Marketing at Galoy, a company developing free and open source software for bitcoin-native banking infrastructure as well as the co-organizer of the annual Adopting Bitcoin conference in El Salvador. With the El Zonte-born Blink Wallet, Galoy are building the bottom-up bitcoin adoption weapon for communities around the world to make bitcoin payments accessible and secure for the masses. He is also the founder of the Istanbul Bitcoin Meetup and the Yirmibir Bitcoin Community, developing Bitcoin educational resources in Turkish language.

Kudzai is a Bitcoiner (Class of 2013) and entrepreneur in the crop insurance space. A passionate Bitcoin educator and financial inclusion advocate with Looking Glass Education, who is a regular Bitcoin Magazine Contributor. He was recognized by Fast Company magazine in 2017 as one of South Africa’s top twenty young entrepreneurs under 30 and he is also a Mandela Washington Fellow and an Obama Africa Leader.

Journalist. Building @BitcoinCowries, @MySatsFarm @BitcoinStreetStore & @BitcoinBrite

Leon is an experienced operator and expert in running company operations. He is an early employee at Fedi where he manages the company’s finance, HR, fundraising, investor relations, and customer service departments.

Leon has an engineering, technology and start-up background, founding his first company out of college 20 years ago − an IT services company servicing SMEs, which he ran for three years. From there, he stepped into freelance software engineering which took him to different markets around the world. While working in Australia, Leon dedicated his full time to the field of product management and development. He spent six years working at various start-ups across Melbourne and Sydney before returning to Cape Town. In 2018, Luno brought Leon onto the product management team to focus on multiple aspects of the customer-facing product. He founded Cape Crypto in July of 2020.

His first exposure to Bitcoin was in 2012, and he has been actively involved in the cryptocurrency space for the past 7 years. Kowalski says his vision is to realise Bitcoin's full decentralized potential for all South Africans.

Founder and the Project Manager of The Bush Babies Environmental Education Program. Lewyn Maefala joined Transfrontier Africa, the founding company of The Black Mambas APU, back in 2015 as a Tshwane University of Technology student doing her Work Integrated Learning for her National Diploma in Nature Conservation. In 2016 Lewyn started the Bush Babies Environmental Education Program with the aim to educate the local communities about the tireless work being done by the law enforcement team (The Black Mambas) and the research team (Rhino monitoring). The program started with 4 local primary schools and grew to adopt 6 more primary schools within the first year of operation. To date Lewyn educates over 2000 and 30 bush grannies in the rural villages of Phalaborwa area. In 2019 she trained 7 new Environmental Educators who has been working in Communities up to date. In 2023 Lewyn, as the Adult Leader at the Scouts South Africa, went to the Scouts training and upgraded her expertise, having received Wood Badge, which equals Level 3 in Scouts Leadership. Lewyn represented The Bush Babies EEP and Transfrontier Africa at the national and international events, including the recent Girl Child Conference in Johannesburg and The Global Gala for Rhinos at the Royal Geographical Society in London.

Marcel Lorraine is the Founder of Bitcoin DADA, a women centric entity focused on educating African women on the Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology. Her main goal with Bitcoin Dada is to close the gender gap, eliminate misinformation and accelerate Bitcoin adoption across the continent.

Luke spends much of his time looking for new deals as well as perfecting his Bitcoin thesis. Follower of Jesus Christ, Luke is passionate about spreading the Truth of the Gospel and doing everything he can to build a better world for his family as well as families in third world nations. Luke works at The Bitcoin Adviser, helping clients create secure multisig vaults for long term Bitcoin custody and estate planning services.

Community Project Lead at Bitcoin Ekasi

Magatte Wade is an entrepreneur, speaker, and visionary leader in the fields of African entrepreneurship and innovation. Magatte has been named a Forbes “20 Youngest Power Women in Africa,” a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum at Davos, a TED Global Africa Fellow, and “Leading Woman in Wellness” award winner by the Global Wellness Summit.

Magatte has spoken at the World Economic Forum, United Nations, Aspen Institute, Clinton Global Initiative, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Yale, MIT, and the TED mainstage. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, the BBC, CNN, Fast Company, Fortune, and the Huffington Post.

She is one of the most popular guests of all-time on both Jordan Peterson and Lex Fridman’s podcasts, with over 10 million views. Her passion for the role of free markets in overcoming poverty and the power of enterprise to tackle social issues and promote entrepreneurial education make her a sought-after speaker and thought leader at major conferences, events, and universities around the world.

Marthinus Grobler is a South African architect with a particular interest in economics and dedicated to advancing liberty.
Throughout his career, he has worked on and investigated many disciplines of the design scale and is mostly concerned with the networks of the city and its manifestations in urban form and culture.
Together with various groups, he is developing mechanisms allowing neighbourhoods and cities to evolve as a result of voluntary human actions. This is based on studies into the processes of emergent order found in nature’s distributed systems and the principles of Austrian Economics.
He is also campaigning for multiculturalism through political decentralization. He is currently the chief architect for Tipolis, a company establishing free private cities across the world.

Michael Strong - Michael Strong has been involved in creating alternative institutions to the state for decades. As an educator, he has focused on creating innovative schools to develop autodidacts and independent thinkers, most recently the Expat International School of Freedom and Entrepreneurship. As a leader of the free cities movement, he has worked with various governments to set up quasi-independent jurisdictions. More broadly, he is an advocate of the full parallel development of new and better institutions to replace failing state institutions around the world. He will provide a vision of how we can work together to accelerate the development and acceptance of higher quality institutions for all. Michael is the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice and Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Adolescent Flourishing Initiative at the University of Austin and serves on the board of the Seasteading Institute.

Modibe Matsepane: Modibe Matsepane
Modibe is the Africa Community Master for Fedi. He worked with different communities around the continent to educate and empower communities with Bitcoin use cases such as remittance, cross-border payments, and entrepreneurship among others. Prior to joining Fedi he worked with leading P2P marketplaces such as Paxful and Noones as Marketing Associate for Africa, with the mission to accelerate Bitcoin adoption in the continent.

I am a Bitcoin Maxi, Digital Entrepreneur, Published Poet & Social Commentator born & raised in Windhoek, Namibia. I hosted the first African Podcast to be listed & streamed Bitcoin to via Podcasting 2.0, named #FromTheJump & I am also the Chief Bitcoin Officer at both EasySats & Bitcoin Mining Namibia. Bitcoin Education & Experimentation are truly some of my many passions.

Oliver is a Senior Lightning Infrastructure Engineer ad Lightning Labs. Previously worked as a software engineer for a Swiss bank before joining a smaller software company in Bern focusing on Open Source. During that time he discovered Bitcoin and Lightning and started contributing to LND and related projects. Falling deeper down the rabbit hole, he realized that there really was no alternative to working on L2 full-time. His B.Sc. with focus on the HTTP/2 protocol and his experience as full-stack developer help him build infrastructure for Lightning Loop and other backend services of the Lightning Network.

Currently working full-time on the engineering team at Fedi

I am a software solutions engineer operating on a #bitcoin standard and focused on solving problems involving technology education, technical skills training, and FOSS development. Other interests include information theory, thermoeconomics, and construction.

I have been writing code for more than a decade. I am currently the CTO at Swordfish Software the largest cloud debt collection in South Africa. I have been studying Bitcoin for more than a decade.

Known for creating OpenTimestamps and contributing to Bitcoin Core, as well as giving a lot of conference talks.

Ray Youssef is the newly appointed CEO of NoOnes, a financial communication super app connecting the Global South to the world’s financial systems. Youssef is renown for building of one of the world's largest peer-to-peer platforms for buying and selling Bitcoin. He co-authored of the CivKit white paper, a decentralized open source protocol of Civilization 2.0. A passionate advocate for financial inclusion, Youssef believes that Bitcoin can play a major role in liberating the global south from poverty. He is also a vocal critic of centralized financial systems and has called for the creation of a "decentralized world order." Youssef is a serial entrepreneur and has founded several successful startups, including Paxful, which grew to over 7 million users in over 190 countries. He is also a member of the Built With Bitcoin Foundation, which is working to build schools, solar power systems and other infrastructure in Africa using Bitcoin. Youssef is a visionary leader in the cryptocurrency space and is working to build a more equitable and inclusive financial system for all. Here is a quote from Youssef that sums up his mission: "I believe that Bitcoin is the most powerful tool for financial inclusion and liberation that the world has ever seen. I am on a mission to make the poor rich and to liberate the global south from poverty. This is why I am sharing CivKit with the world."

Renata Rodrigues is the Head of Marketing and Community of Fedi and has as main mission promote the massive adoption of Bitcoin. Her academic background combines Marketing, Journalism, and Programming and she has extensive experience as a Growth Hacker in emerging countries. Renata has over 15 years of experience in global markets. Prior to Fedi, she led a global team in Paxful on the implementation of educational and strategic marketing initiatives for Bitcoin across key markets.

Riccardo Giorgio Frega (aka Rikki) is an Italian author, speaker and a progressive libertarian activist.
Passionate about technology and its use in protecting human rights around the world, he focuses his activity on Bitcoin, which he considers to be a crucial stronghold in defense of civil rights and individual freedoms.
He is the co-author and co-host of Bitcoin Explorers, a project that chronicles Bitcoin adoption around the world, and of Bitcoin Italia Podcast, the first and most popular podcast on Bitcoin in Italy.

Ricki owns and operates a Bitcoin consulting and Bitcoin hardware firm, focused on self custody and long term Bitcoin planning, called Bitcoin Only. He also is the founder of a local Bitcoin podcast called By The Horns, which investigates Bitcoin stories, individuals and companies from a South African perspective. He has been involved in numerous Bitcoin startups and projects and has a passion for Bitcoin education and utilizing the tools at hand to make Bitcoin useful and accessible to the average man on the street.

Russell is an executive director at Sakeliga - a business organisation creating scalable solutions to state failure.

At IBEX Ry leads Business Development efforts in the USA and Africa, focused primarily on our IBEX HUB lightning infrastructure service. Clients include exchanges, wallets, payment processors, payments stacks, neobanks and any app that wants to add LN functionality to their product. Ry has over a decade of experience in the legacy software industry focussed on industrial ERP (Oil&Gas, Industrial Supplies) and active Angel Investor since 2016 in Fintech. BTC class of 2017. I like to say I was reverse orange pilled with LN

We're a couple travelling the world to learn about Bitcoin, help further its adoption and make meaningful connections with others. After spending a decade in our professional careers we decided to sell our belongings, our home, pack a 40L bag each and hit the road. Our goal? Visit as many Bitcoin communities as possible and lend a hand to further their cause and proliferate Bitcoin for the masses.

Tom is head of sales of Azteco, a company that makes purchasing bitcoin as easy as topping a mobile phone in countries like Brazil, South Africa and Mexico. He has extensive international experience in business development, sales and entrepreneurship.

He previously founded a Flemish ecommerce solutions and worked at insurtech leader Qover, a company that recently closed their C-series investment round and well on their way to become a unicorn. Tom caught the entrepreneurship bug in Taiwan where he worked on Linqapp, a language learning focused app. Before Tom lived and worked from Brazil working for a Belgian renewable energy company. He speaks 6 languages and when he’s not working you can find him exploring the worlds’ oceans with his surfboard.

Sergeant of the Crime Prevention Unit, The Black Mambas APU. Tsakane Nxumalo joined The Black Mambas APU team in 2019. In 2022 Tsakane was trained to command the drill, and received a designation as a Physical Training instructor. In 2023 Tsakane was appointed as a Sergeant to lead the newly recruited Crime Prevention Unit of The Black Mambas All-Women APU. In the same year she received bursary for Ranger Training at Southern African Wildlife College and successfully graduated. When not in the field, Tsakane acts as one of the Ambassadors for The Black Mambas APU and is represents the unit in media and at events. In between her responsibilities as a Sergeant, Tsakane studies Education at the University of South Africa.

Valeria van der Westhuizen is the Media Manager at Transfrontier Africa, a non-profit conservation company that runs The Black Mambas All-Women Anti-Poaching Unit and The Bush Babies Environmental Education Program in Olifants West Nature Reserve, Greater Kruger.

Originally trained in Anthropology (Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, University of East Anglia, UK), she is currently studying towards the National Diploma in Nature Conservation via UNISA.

Besides media and PR work at Transfrontier Africa, Valeria assists Craig Spencer, founder and CEO of Transfrontier Africa, with fundraising and currently helps Craig manage The Black Mambas Alliance, a group of organizations that fund The Black Mambas salaries.

Valeria and Craig found out about the Adopting Bitcoin conference through their fundraising partners Izindlovu Fund, and are looking to explore the ways Bitcoin can be introduced into their work with The Black Mambas and The Bush Babies.