An interview with Lorena Ortiz from Fedi

Transcript

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tania

Hey there, it's Tania from Azteco. Now, there is a time and place for strategic thought leadership. However, in this video series, we would like to focus on action leadership: the people who are driving bitcoin consumer adoption by making it easier and simpler to use.

And so I am delighted to welcome here today, Lorena Ortiz, the community manager from Latin America for Fedi.Link to: https://www.fedi.xyz/

Lorena, thank you so much for joining us!

Lorena

Hi, Tania. It's a pleasure for me to be here. It's actually Community Master of Latin America for Fedi. Yeah, I know that position is kind of weird actually. I think that position doesn't exist in any other company.

But Fedi is a startup that has a very different point of view to approaching communities. So that's why they made up this position for all of us masters that are in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Tania

Thank you. And so just please go ahead, introduce yourself, tell people who you are, how did you get involved with Fedi? Tell us more about your background.

Lorena

OK, so I discovered, well rediscovered, bitcoin about 2017, right before the last last all-time high.The all-time high back then was about $20,000 and we recently hit the $100,000. So it's a very exciting moment to be in bitcoin.

And then I started building a project with a partner of mine that was the Bitcoin Embassy BarLink to: https://www.instagram.com/bitcoinemb/ in 2018, December 2018, we opened this project to the public. It used to be a bar, like a place just to hang out, to get together, meet others with similar ideas.

And especially for me, it was like a revolutionary hub for minds to get together and start working on this revolution that is bitcoin. After that, I started doing content creation in 2020, I started participating also in different forums and congresses and other public places all around the world.

And about one and a half years ago, Fedi contacted me because they were searching for somebody like me to be in touch with the community, to be able to bring support, and also to work in different marketing strategies. So that's what I do in Fedi and I think that is very passionate for me.

Tania

And so for the people who don't know, what is Fedi and what is its main goal?

Lorena

OK, so Fedi is a super app and the goal is to make bitcoin easier to use. Also, it's for people that are not very technical, so they can trust in their leaders, in their own community to help them to keep their funds safe.

So before we used to have just two options that were self-custody or the custody of a third party. And the custody of a third party, it usually is somebody that you don't know, right? Like the developer of a wallet that you have. You don't know who that person is.

So Fedi has this new way of custody that is helping you through the community to keep your funds safe. It also works as an open source protocol of bitcoin, that's called FedimintLink to: https://fedimint.org/. And this open source protocol is another solution for scalability of bitcoin.

Tania

Very, very interesting. And so would you say that these and other tools are the main, main differentiators from Fedi from other bitcoin apps? Are there other characteristics that you can speak on, that Fedi the super app has?

Lorena

Well, Fedi also has a chat that you can use to send and receive money with no need of issuing an invoice. That's a very different thing that you can do inside the app. You can also set up communities inside the app so you can have your own community like all around you.

You can also customize something that are called Fedimods that are like mini apps inside the app that help you to use bitcoin. Like you have, I don't know, BitrefillLink to: https://www.bitrefill.com/, BTC mapLink to: https://btcmap.org/, or BTC company.

There's an AI assistant that allows you to top up with SATs and ask questions, and then it charges you in SATs. You can pay AI with bitcoin. And other very, very cool features that we have. So if you haven't tried them, please go.

Tania

Absolutely. And so I want to dive a little bit deeper and how is Fedi helping people in Latin America use bitcoin through these features in the Fedi app?

Lorena

OK, so for now, we have just supported two federations in Latin America. One that is placed in Lago BitcoinLink to: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/09/30/a-bitcoin-beginners-travel-guide-to-guatemala/ in Panache, Guatemala, and the other one that used to be in Suriname. But because the guardians had some things to work around, they asked us to close the federation. So for now, the only federation that we are supporting is the one that is in Lago Bitcoin.

But actually anybody could open their own federation anytime that they want. They just have to approach us and we can help them to set that up.

Tania

And so in your opinion, what is the biggest challenge that Latin America will be facing in order to create mass bitcoin adoption?

Lorena

OK. I think having people that doesn't still have the basic services. I mean, we are talking about technology, we're talking about cellular phones, we're talking about bitcoin. But in some places in Latin America, they don't even have water, right? Or they don't even have electricity. So that's a very worrying thing about the situation in Latin America.

And I think that if we are trying to build this hyper-bitcoin world, we need to also be ready to help others, not only with bitcoin but with some other projects and some other strategies that will allow people to actually be able to approach bitcoin.

There's a project that I really love. It's called GridlessLink to: https://gridlesscompute.com/. It's operating currently in Africa and they are providing energy to communities that are very far away from the towns. And they are also mining bitcoin with this energy. So it's a win-win. They generate or they help to generate the energy that the town requires and they also have this profit of mining bitcoin.

So I think we as bitcoiners need to think more about these kinds of projects that are also very useful for these kind of communities. And also their regulations are sometimes not very clear. Like the situation in Honduras, that is not very clear. How and why, do people have these kind of restrictions?

When I was recently there, somebody told me that because they had some interaction with an exchange, the bank closed their account, right? So we have this kind of situation in different parts of Latin America and we need to start, maybe even if we don't really like it, but maybe start working with the government in search for a better regulation, a more clear one and a more friendly one.

Tania

And how is Fedi helping develop everything to do with like education? Is there like a special role that every community master has to kind of like go through?

I saw that you had some kind of relationship or partnership with My First BitcoinLink to: https://myfirstbitcoin.io/. Please tell us more on how you're trying to reach different parts of Latin America and how you're trying to bring in the most optimal way of educating people.

Lorena

Right now, well actually the purpose of Fedi is not education because that's why there exists some other projects, like My First Bitcoin, right? My First Bitcoin is all education.

But what we are doing is that we are trying to push this kind of projects a little bit more, a little bit farther, right? Because there is so many people all around the world that has no idea that this kind of projects actually exist.

Librería de SatoshiLink to: https://libreriadesatoshi.com/ is also a very great project about education but more in a technical way. And we also need more bitcoin developers. So what Fedi is doing is that we are collaborating and we are getting partnerships with this kind of projects. So we can include them inside the app as a Fedimod.

So every time that you and your community try to open a federation, you can pick and choose the mods that you think are gonna be useful for your community. So if you want your community to be more educated about bitcoin, you can choose the Fedimod for My First Bitcoin, right.

And also we are trying to provide education but more like experience about bitcoin through the Fedi workshops. Every time that we travel or we visit a conference we try to not run these regular workshops where you sit down and you take notes, like in a classroom, but more like experience what bitcoin is and how you can use bitcoin through the Fedi app.

Tania

Very, very cool. And how is Fedi making it easier for people to use bitcoin without using the traditional banking system? ie. give us more details on how the app works and when you're doing one of these workshops, just kind of run us really quick through the process and then let us know what are your favorite reactions are?

Lorena

Well one of the the first things that we do is we show them around how the app is. We show them on the top we have regular bitcoin wallets. You can also choose and change through different federations.

There are some public federations that you can use, even if you're not invited to a federation or another projects in Africa and Asia, you can just click on a public federation to join.

You can set up a username that not necessarily has to be your real name. That's another cool stuff about Fedi. You don't need to make any KYC to use it, you don't need to provide any email or any cell phone. You just put a name, it doesn't have to be your real one, and then you're done.

And after that, we explore a little bit more about the mods and how you can actually use bitcoin because most of us bitcoiners took a lot of years to actually realize that there are projects like Bitrefill or Bitcoin Company or BTC Maps to help us use bitcoin. So imagine that now you have a place that there is all together, all the experience that took us bitcoiners so many years to get, to just have it here, right?

So you don't need to like go and ask and start exploring in Twitter. "Hey, how can I use bitcoin?" Or in Reddit. You just have your app and you can also add your own Fedimods. If you have a very favorite YouTuber that you like to watch and talks about bitcoin, I don't know, like BTC Andreas, you just add the URL of the YouTube channel to your mods. So now you have a direct link to go and watch the videos every time that you want.

Another thing that we do in these workshops, the "playshops", actually we call them Fedi playshops because we are playing right? We show them how to use the chat. Now the chat has improved a lot you have anything that you will have in a regular chat, like WhatsApp. You have emojis, you can send gifs, you can send files, you can send pictures too.

You can start just connecting to each other through a QR code. So you generate a QR code, the other person scans it, and now you're connected and you can send each other bitcoin by just clicking a button and there you go. One sats, 10 sats, 100 sats, whatever you want. And it's as easy as that. And that's why I really love working in this company.

Tania

Very, very cool. Very, very simple, most importantly. What advice would you give to other leaders who are trying to grow bitcoin adoption?

Lorena

So one of the most important things in being a leader, I'm trying to impose a bitcoin adoption, is to remind yourself who you were at the beginning. Always keep in mind how hard it was for you to understand a lot of stuff, how hard it was for you to find another person that also knew about bitcoin, how hard it was to find friends that are bitcoiners too.

So if you keep that in mind, then you will be simple and you will try to be more polite and friendly with the newcomers because every time that somebody asks a dumb question, I really hate when the rest of the people start saying "Oh, you're stupid. How didn't you know about this? " So keep in mind who you were at the beginning.

Nobody was born knowing how to use bitcoin. So if you are trying to build your own community, be polite, be friendly, and that will also provide a safe place for the community to grow.

And if you do it as a leader, then your community will start like growing and blooming and everybody will be friendly and the leader sets up the mood of the community. If you're a toxic, angry leader, your community will be like that.

But if you're a friendly, kind person, your community will act like that too. And there will be more people joining because they feel safe and they feel fine. So that's a thing that you can do and it's not applicable only for bitcoin.

It applies for any kind of community that you're trying to build.

Tania

A hundred percent. I fully agree with everything you said. And as our final question, just to finish off, what is your vision for Fedi's future in Latin America?

Lorena

I really am so hyped about the place that I work. I mean, I just see a lot of potential in everything that we are doing because we are working very hard to deliver a great product that you can trust, that you can use, that can be simple for you and your community.

So I think that in maybe the next year, we will see a lot of federations start popping up in Latin America. We are working right now on the market feed, so we are getting ready for the next phase that will be the growth.

Tania

Lorena. I really appreciate you joining us today.

Lorena

Thank you very much, Tania. I really had a great time with you and I appreciate what Azteco are doing. It's a great service and I have tried it several times and congratulations, it's a very good product.

Tania

Thank you. And likewise.