An interview with Hermann Vivier on consumer adoption of bitcoin

South African non-profit Bitcoin Ekasi aims to pay salaries in bitcoin

Herman Viver is chairman of non-profit organization Bitcoin Ekasi and co-founder of “Surfer Kids”.

The Surfer Kids, a project that was established in 2010 by Hermann and his wife, started alongside a tourism business that they co-own and still operate. Founded with the purpose to 1) give tourists a unique experience where tourists can meet some of the local population in a constructive environment and 2) at the same time give a bunch of kids something constructive to do.

Bitcoin Ekasi is an extension of Surfer Kids and a project that aims to pay the salaries of their team in bitcoin. They have transitioned from fiat salaries over to bitcoin and onboarded shops to accept payment in bitcoin at the same time.

“In a country where illiteracy is very high it's often easier to explain things verbally rather than to provide written material”

With the purpose to educate about bitcoin in Africa; Bitcoin Ekasi produced a series of 10 minute video clips that explain bitcoin. The videos were proven very useful as people can understand their mother tongue but they can't always read it. The production was in collaboration with Exonumia (a translation project) and with backing from Bitrefill. The videos were translated into Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans, the three of the biggest African languages spoken in South Africa.

They have also built an education center focused on bitcoin education and offer a bitcoin diploma for which they aim to recruit as many individuals as possible from the community. The center is open and also welcomes people to drop in.

As prices are increasing they are seeing more interest from people walking in from the community, being curious and asking questions about bitcoin.

“Bitcoin is helping the unbanked in Africa”

Hermann recalls volatility as something that people question and worry about the most. “Typically from people who are more privileged and likely have a relatively high income. But it rarely occurs to these people that without a permanent address or a house you are not eligible to open an account with any traditional financial institution.”

“Currencies are depreciating in value. The local fiat currency is highly volatile over the long term in a down direction and bitcoin's volatile and upward direction and it's only if you cherry pick isolated timelines that the volatility seems like a problem.

“It's actually kind of miraculous that there is something like bitcoin where there's permissionless access to something that is a legitimate store of value.

“I tell those people; you shouldn't be asking me about the volatility of bitcoin being a problem, you should be asking me about the volatility of the local fiat currency being a problem for people who don't have access to anything else.”

“Adoption is not yet widespread. If that happens it could possibly bring dignity back into people's lives”

Hermann highlights the topic of imbalance of power between certain parts of the world.

“We have to remember that bitcoin was not created for large institutions to become wealthier than what they already are. It was created for ordinary people as a replacement for a system that is completely corrupt.”

He explains that South Africa, for example, has strict capital controls with the local currency depreciating a lot faster than other currencies which creates an imbalance of power and money flow between individuals that live in different parts of the world. It is more difficult for a South African person to move his wealth and use it elsewhere compared to a person from the first world to bring wealth into a country like South Africa.

“Because bitcoin is permissionless, an exchange of value between two people on opposite sides of the planet is a completely balanced situation if that value exchange is flowing through bitcoin.

“While there are pockets of adoption, it is not yet widespread. It is quite isolated and the idea is to see adoptions spread from those pockets out to a wider scope. If that happens it could possibly bring dignity back into people's lives.”

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