 Allow us to call on stage Charles Hoskinson, who will also be joining us on the panel, CEO of IOHK, to give us his remarks as well. I think the mic works. Hi everybody. Okay, good. I'm a little tired, I apologize. I was out drinking last night with a Zulu guy. He's good. I didn't win that fight. When I was a child, I grew up in Hawaii. And one of my favorite things to do, how about that? Oh, that's better. Hi everybody. Okay, there we go. Okay, so when I was a child, I grew up in Hawaii. I grew up on the island of Maui. And one of my favorite things to do was walk to the library. It was a great experience. I was about six years old, braving roads. I probably shouldn't have braved, sometimes by myself. And I loved to read the books. See, when I was growing up, we really didn't have internet access. It was an academic thing, a university thing. And just a few decades earlier, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn were working on that protocol as a project that really had nothing to do about unifying the world. But then suddenly, a generation later, the cost of moving information went from something tangible, something real, where I had to walk to the library, and all of us instantly getting access to it. In a blink of the eye, we could send a communication to anyone, anywhere in the world. In a blink of the eye, anyone, anywhere in the world could learn anything they wanted to, permitting that it was in the web. So what this concept invited is a reimagining of some of the other institutions of society. So we look at how governments work, how banks work, how commerce works. We look at paper-based and siloed in a certain respect. And they tend to focus around things like coordination and trust, identity, reputation, representation of value and the flow of value, these types of things. These are the core purposes of governments. And when the internet came out, we started asking questions like, why doesn't value move at the same speed as information? Why should it cost something to move money from one person to another? Why should it cost something to have a commodity turn into a stock or a stock turn into a bond on a market? These things should be instantaneous. These things should be fast. Okay. So in the 80s and the 90s, there were many attempts to digitize such things, many attempts to represent such things. And the core problem of these attempts is that they were centralized. So while they could be very performant, and why could they work great and really well, at the end of the day, they were doing one master for another. Over the last 10 years, what we've witnessed is a tremendous revolution of thought, where people realize that we can get all the value that the internet has brought in terms of information for money, for value, for property, for identity, on a global basis. But we don't need gatekeepers. We don't need to give anybody control. We don't need to elect a leader and say, your idea is the only idea. Rather, we, everybody, have equal access to deciding how are we going to trust each other? How are we going to coordinate together? This can be a voting system. It can be a property registration system, a business registry. It can be as something as simple as, I'm a coffee farmer in Ethiopia who's trying to find the fairest price at a washing station. It doesn't really matter the scale. It can be on a national scale, not an individual scale. And everyone, for the first time in human history, regardless of where they're born, where they come from, their knowledge, will have access to the same technological stacks. And these stacks are fundamentally permissionless. So I'd like to believe the purpose of this panel is to try to have a discussion about given that we have these new capabilities, given that these things are available to all of us, what will we do with them? How will we use these things? For the good of everyone, for the good of some people, which is the way human history has traditionally worked. You'll hear a lot of terms like cryptocurrencies and blockchain, and to be frank, I couldn't care about them. I care much more about the social elements of things, because after all, money is just a collective delusion. So I'll close with a story. Has anyone heard of the island of Yop? Anyone? Okay, we've got some people. So there was a small island out in the ocean where most islands are. And apparently, they are famous for having the largest money humans ever created. Giant stone rings. The island wasn't blessed with the stones to make these big rings. They actually had to go to a different island and carve them, and very dangerously transport these giant stone rings back to Yop. So how did you own them? Through oral traditions. People would say, all right, Bob owns the ring. I'm going to give it to him. Or a house or a pig. I'll give it to Alice or something like that. Well, somewhere along the way, one of those stone rings sunk into the bottom of the ocean. And they said, well, you know, it's at the bottom of the ocean. Well, it still must be there. So let's just start assigning ownership to it. And that's really an amazing thing if you think about it. The whole point of these things, they're hard to make, they're hard to transport, and you can see them to verify them. So you have the sea stone, and it became a very famous one. That was the one everybody wanted to own, even though they couldn't touch it or see it had a good reputation. So in essence, it doesn't matter if you're talking about pieces of paper or pieces of metal or giant stones that you carve very bravely and hopefully somehow can get back home or stones sitting at the bottom of the sea. Money, in a sense, is a social artifact. Value is a social artifact. So that means that everybody in this room really gets to decide how you wish to represent that. The point of the technology of our space is to give you the best tools, the most open tools, the most royalty-free tools that no one in the world gets to tell you how to use, no matter how much they want to or what they're going to benefit. So I look forward to the conversation. I thank the minister for coming. I thank the unwanted government for being so incredibly friendly in my time here. And I'd also like to thank the people here. It's been an incredible experience. Two days ago I spoke at Impact Africa. There were people from 26 nations here. And the quality of questions I received was extraordinary. I spoke at MIT recently, and I got better questions here than I got at MIT. So thank you very much. Allow me to welcome on stage Dr. Munik and Sanzabha Ghanwa, deputy governor, National Bank of Rwanda. Kindly join us. Craig Steven Wright, I've just had him speak immediately after the selfie. Kindly join us on stage. Charles Hoskinson is still in the room. Kindly join us on stage. Tunde Adipo, VP partnerships for Stella. Kindly join us on stage as well. Antibolt, Verbius, partner at DS Advocats. I know I murdered the name, but kindly join us on stage as well. So let's get things started. I'll just reiterate what was mentioned at the top of the session. The idea of an African currency was first proposed a long time ago at the same time as the idea of a united Africa. One century later, this conversation resurfaces mainly by the fact that we've now engaged on one trade area, an Africa free trade area, that we are still wondering how exactly we're going to trade with the least amount of hindrance possible. So just that as the basis, I'll go and sit down and then we'll just hear from each of the panelists where we are with adoption and uptake and what they think should be the next step. For some of the different panelists, we'll ask a different conversation because they've already answered it in their openings. So I'll start off possibly here, being the host. So we saw a post recently about blockchain and what Rwanda was trying to do to incorporate blockchain maybe into land solutions but we're trying to move from that to the transaction bits, which is Bitcoin. Before we get into that, we'd like to understand as Rwanda has made strides on the same we've had a conversation with the central bank governor, the minister of finance and they said the room is open for negotiation for players to come, at least with the regulator involved to adopt some of this new age of cryptocurrencies. Where are we as the regulator in terms of the conversation on Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies? Thank you. It's a little hard to hear. Is it on? Is it on? Can you hear? I asked where are we? I really need to make sure all the panelists are on the same page because we might get lost in translation. Where are we with the adoption or conversation on cryptocurrencies? Are you asking a question as Rwanda or generally as Rwanda? As Rwanda, we welcome the technology DLT because distance opportunities to transform financial services just like mobile technology has been leveraged to improve digital payments and so on and so forth. However, we are saying we have to first of all understand what are the risks and what are those opportunities make our communities appreciate what this new technology is and the cryptocurrency that is really built on that technology is. I know that so far there is that anonymity around the same currencies that we have to be aware of the risks from the anti-money laundering and the converting financing terrorism. We have to look at how do you protect the consumer if there is that anonymity behind who is the issue of this currency and if you have a problem what does happen so all those are issues we still have to assess and educate the people so far they can really trade in those but we are saying excess questions so far because as a central bank who have not issued and they don't have legal tender here in Rwanda so we cannot really back you should anything happen but we know that digital evolution really is here to stay more better things are yet to come and we don't want to miss the train so we get ready we get our teams ready at the central bank but also at the ministry of ICT for instance and the policy makers institutions that really are in this space so that we can really learn what we have to do next in the meantime we have a I would say a stand box policy that is allowing really people to test ideas in a safe environment a live environment and we hope that as they come on board there is that room also for us to move forward with them as we continue to observe and understand better. Perfect, thank you. So at least you've created context let's throw it now to the digital offerings and then we'll get to practicality so the two gentlemen at least the third end on the extreme end Charles I'll come to you the idea of an African cryptocurrency at least let me hear it from you because you're looking inside and you've worked in Ethiopia you could give us your perspective on this because African cryptocurrency beats the logic that was behind the cryptocurrency generation in the first place we were supposed to have an element of equality not African, not US, not Asian, none of that so when we say an African cryptocurrency we're still limiting and we still don't see the elements of the modalities of the basis of any cryptocurrency being generated from the African perspective from ideas from outside so how can we now say we have something generated from outside designed in Africa for the outside just give us your perspective on this first off can everybody hear me the microphones are really low so I'm having a hard time hearing it's pretty low talk a little louder right into the mic there we go that's a little bit better okay first off I'm not an expert on Africa I grew up in Colorado and Hawaii I was in sugar cane but I can't tell you much about Africa which is why we actually have local partners we were just in Ethiopia and Addis Ababa we met with ministries and we're hiring local developers and we're working with a lot of startup accelerators such as Blue Moon and others so speaking from a position of ignorance and a cursory analysis I think before we even talk about cryptocurrency use issuance or adoption there are much more foundational things there's kind of like a three-headed hydra that has to be slayed the first is intermittent internet access if you're talking about money that requires you to be online or at least occasionally connect it's probably a good idea to make sure that's as universal as possible second there's the issue of computing infrastructure whether it's a cell phone a laptop or something if you're going to be storing private keys signing transactions you're going to be in charge of your own financial destiny you have to have some sort of reliable computing device and that's not ubiquitous yet finally there's the metaproblem of knowledge so there needs to be good systems in place to allow people to sort fact from fiction and these systems need to be localized to the needs of each culture so I think these are three barriers to adoption before anybody has a serious conversation about cryptocurrency adoption which is why we generally don't advocate cryptocurrencies at the moment in the continent of Africa it doesn't matter for most of the world the consumers just aren't ready for it however on the enterprise side we feel that there's tremendous opportunity things like voting systems property ledgers, business registries these types of things are obvious problems for a lot of countries and they have a mandate to solve them and the underlying technology that makes things like bitcoin good can be repurposed to try to resolve these types of issues and that gets much more government buy-in much more enterprise buy-in and then invertly it will gradually move its way into the consumer space as another point there is a huge financial incentive from some of the wealthiest companies in the world such as Samsung and Apple and Facebook and others to try to get cell phones that are internet connected in the hands of all people in the world because that's how they make money off of their products so I think we have the same advantage Tesla has with batteries getting better every year because people need lighter faster charging cheaper batteries that we have with the proliferation of internet infrastructure so I think that 3-headed hydro tube the heads will probably naturally resolve themselves without any intervention over the next 5 to 10 maybe 15 years it's on a country by country basis as for the final one I think the thing that governments ought to do all regulators all ministers I highly encourage them to start with the education side of things and there are many wonderful partners that can bring on board such as IC3 at Cornell we have a research group at Edinburgh and there are many others throughout the world who are a neutral objective they don't have a financial incentive to tell you one way or the other and they're perfectly willing to actually create great content that ministries can distribute amongst their people to at the very least prevent their people from becoming victims of scams like OneCoin or BitConnect Perfect, thanks a lot Thanks a lot Charles Craig now over to you I'd like to hear your view on contrasting statements all over the world in regards to we could touch now on Bitcoin as one of the cryptocurrencies so on one hand we had JPMorgan Jamie Demon say Bitcoin is a fraud on the other hand we had Goldman Sachs and Barclays as early as this week at cryptocurrency trading desks with of course Bitcoin as one of its major indices on the other hand we have Bitcoin surfacing all over everyone's conversation in Africa but we're also seeing people say that Bitcoin originally meant as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system is not the best for emerging markets because the rate of transaction and the fees that come with it might not suffice what we are used to on the continent so we need to hear what I know you're not so keen on awareness that everyone just learns as they go but you know what your journey has been trying to get us on board so basically all these things are out there by people who love to tell you what can't be done most of them are wrong there's a block cap that's being removed in Bitcoin cash I think we need to hear you properly there we go there's a block cap that's being removed the electricity use etc is all to do with number of transactions per block so with that we're funding a terab project which is a terabyte block that then gets us to 50 transactions per day per person on earth and we'll keep going further than that now the reality is you don't need internet there are ways of sending Bitcoin via SMS in fact there are other ways using a number of technologies we'll be talking about in the next week at CoinGeek and things like that we could even have some mnemonics so people could securely go to someone else who has an SMS phone and transfer Bitcoin and then it goes between their mnemonics now the reality is people say well this is bad, this is terrible, all the rest JP Morgan said that before they went on a massive buying spree after they said it there was a 20-25% dip and JP Morgan bought it so yay how bad it is wait for it to crash and then make profit who's defrauding who then we have Warren Buffett the guy who had to be bailed out in tarp because if he didn't receive money from Obama he would have been bankrupt who's now rich again because he received government handouts who has never invested in the internet because he thought that was a scam we have a few Nobel Prize winning economists who said the internet is worth less than fast machines telling us how this won't be of value now the reality is it's not about all these silly schemes and whatever else about crypto kiddies or anything like that and in the coming years we're going to show you just how much you can do on a system like Bitcoin in fact on Bitcoin not because people tell you it can't be not because I want to raise money or do some ICO or do a pre-dump or anything like that not because I want your investment that simple because if we enable people to trade one to one individual to individual that is where the world changes not because we want a whole lot of people to follow and have dictated what happens not because of old ideas and it's not legal tender not in this country legal tender means something that you have to take by law that's all that actually means I've got a law degree I'm doing my doctor of law at the moment in the UK and I can tell you quite simply legal tender means mandated means you have to take it doesn't mean you don't have to take it it means you can take other things that's why people will that's why people here take US dollars that's why they take pounds that's why people actually smiled at me and actually preferred some of them because you can say what you want and you might not like that but if you can trust the foreign currency because it goes up more great and over time people are going to see this in crypto not because of the we can't trust it but because of the currency if you can trade from here with people in Texas if you can do direct contracts that are secure where you don't need to worry about trust issues anymore where the money is only released on receipt that changes things that's where money is going not direct trade the way we have now but full smart contracts that is simple to sell we're giving them away thanks a lot we've had that perspective I have a sense that there's a lot of technical terms we just need to get back to the basics how do you get a bitcoin how do you transact it what's the applicability on the african scheme of things because you've engaged according to sources since 2009 since it was founded we're just encountering it some in the room and some possibly just the last couple of days or weeks so which brings us now to the issue on practicality and how it's applied Tunde you'll allow me to come to you you've mentioned that as Stella of course it's an open source network letting anyone build low cost financial products for the community but this has been designed outside the african continent so when you're trying to look at designing solutions for Africa first off where the low hanging fruits where should we look at this cryptocurrency's targeting first and how can the general public now tap into that as quickly and as practically or realistically as possible hello hello can you hear me thank you for the question thank you for the question you're correct Stella is open source and obviously where San Francisco based company but the platform allows you to actually build things on it you can have your own tokens on the platform so it allows you to actually customize things now in terms of low hanging fruits I would say that payments is definitely a low hanging fruit if you look at the stats in terms of intra-african trade it's about 13% Africa is trading more outside of Africa than within Africa and in terms of what we should do in terms of unity there needs to be more trade within Africa there needs to be a way in which I can pay somebody in Angola there needs to be a way in which I can pay somebody in Liberia easily I would share an experience with you I was in Kenya recently and please speak a bit closer to the mic especially since you mentioned Kenya a bit closer to the mic so we can hear you clearly maybe I'll just hold it, I think this is better so I would like to share an experience with you so I was in Kenya recently and I was in an Uber so the Uber guy dropped me and I paid him in cash but he didn't have change so he looked at me and said do you have M-Pesa? Can I M-Pesa it to you? and I was like no I don't live in Kenya I don't have anything to do with M-Pesa then it struck me and I was like why can't we Africa-wide have a coin or a token that obviously it's capped maybe 25 dollars in terms of the cap that can go to a wallet and when situations like this happen I can easily get paid back by the Uber guy for example, right? so it serves as an experiment obviously the cryptocurrency world the token world and all that is still quite new to Africa we have to take one step at a time so if we start with something like that which is like a cap we use it for change very small things then the three problems that I see in this which is the political side of things the economic side of things and the technology side of things can have a case study that they can actually look at because we are experimenting and we can actually use that experiment to say okay it worked or it did not work and if it does not work we can roll back if we keep talking about it and keep saying oh we want to adopt this we don't want to adopt that and we don't do something then we'll still be stuck we'll actually never move forward so let's pick something that a small payment is obviously eucubitus to it everything we do we make payment domestically, internationally everything essentially that you do and so being some kind of payment so I see that as a low hanging fruit but we can cap it and based on that we can obviously try experiment now in terms of crypto or fiat I would say that we still have the center bank for every reason right there's consumer protection there's investors protection there's a number of things right I will be thinking that it makes sense to actually have a tokenized fiat let's see how it goes before we then say let's then move to cryptocurrency and there's a lot of education that needs to be done in the process but we need to start small and then grow from there thank you maybe just for context fiat currency legal tender whose value is backed by the government that issued it for example the dollar euro or a few other currencies as well now the chairman of the international commission on law for cyber security mentioned something yesterday that was pretty clear that we were not taking account of as we talk about a smart Africa we also need to have a legal Africa and the reality of things is since most of these things are new there are a lot of loopholes in the legalities in some of the systems so we end up playing catch up years after things have been implemented so in that regard now I come to you Thibault to just guide us through what do you think are the risks when we're trying to adopt or adapt and what do you think now you could possibly advise younger economies for example should be able to be one of your clients to just guide them through some of these new age practices thank you can you hear me? sound is not that good sometimes just for the sake of clarity for this debate legally speaking the issuance of a cryptocurrency as such is not a problem when you issue through a decentralized platform like Bitcoin a unit of exchange like the Bitcoin it's not an issue for a regulator as such it becomes a problem when those Bitcoins are being traded using most of the time exchange platforms to finance terrorism or for laundering money and that's the priority number one for a regulator absolute priority number one is to regulate exchange platforms as long as they are centralized themselves and that's an apparent paradox in the blockchain environment is that blockchain is decentralized but the places where you trade afterwards the generated Bitcoins by the platform are centralized some of them are becoming decentralized and they pose a different problem syndrome regulation but today if you look at the African market there are about 15 exchange platforms which are officially let's say located in Africa none of them as far as I know are regulated this is the number one priority if you look at the United States or at the European Union the first regulations affected exchange platforms and that's normal because it's the sanitary market without the sanitary market you don't have real cryptocurrencies because they need to find a place to be exchanged and traded and as long as those exchanges are centralized themselves because they are just websites operated by companies making profits on the trade themselves they can be regulated it's possible to regulate them but you need laws for them and in most countries we don't have the necessary legislation to say those guys are like banks or they're like financial institutions and they're subject to AML KYC AML it's an obligation to verify the identity of the customers using the platform in most countries it doesn't exist if you don't create that environment you will continue to evolve in a situation where we will have a lot of distrust in cryptocurrencies because they say around there there are places where you can trade cryptocurrencies between anonymous people maybe they read finance theories it doesn't work like this but the second priority is the so called ICOs which are not sanitary market they are primary market and this is also a priority for the African continent you have more and more startups in Africa they are being financed or trying to be financed by issuing their own tokens so it's like their own cryptocurrencies they don't use either Stuller by the way or the Ethereum platform using a specific token and so they issue tokens they are not issuing shares like in any ordinary IPOs let's say they're issuing tokens and exchange they accept for selling those tokens either bitcoins ethers more of the time or just fiat the famous fiat currencies like local currencies they are not regulated either and again you can have some problems in terms of AML or money laundering schemes or just disclosure information for the investors you are buying tokens what are those tokens what kind of rides will you get from those tokens why can you sell them if there is a promise for a security market where, what platforms do you use and you have more and more countries many in Europe Europe is trying to find a balanced approach for crypto regulations and you have no new legislation coming up it's very important as well to have a clear framework for this and my last point is the second problem for states or regulators when you talk about cryptocurrencies apart from money laundering and the central bank's terrorism is a new competitor for your national currencies it's not necessarily good perception by the banks or the central bank so if something new which is completely apart from the financial system they cannot control and so when you talk about a single cryptocurrency in Africa you have first to break down the questions into different options first option is we have Bitcoin out there which seems to become a universal currency is it the right currency for the whole continent and first question you can have different opinions on that but you need to ask the question is Bitcoin which is universal today adapted to a currency, a single currency in Africa, it's a question the second option it's a completely new global continental cryptocurrency okay why? for reducing transaction costs between African countries maybe like the crypto ruble that's the objective of the crypto ruble reducing transaction costs between countries right? third option is you don't create a new currency you don't use Bitcoin but you tokenize reducing national currencies why? your use costs you make it more transparent more efficient maybe but this is the third option the fourth option which is never mentioned is to phase out that evolution in a more reasonable way might be to do something different would be to not tokenize not to tokenize you can see as a start in the very beginning because here it's also about educating people and states maybe it's too harsh to wrap it to do so another solution could be to tokenize state entity commercial debts into tokens and that's more reasonable approach it's just a personal opinion and there are some projects out there we saw some of the panelists they had when you asked one of the questions there you wanted to counter with something okay US dollars and euros fund terrorism and trade and they also fund drugs they fund 99.98% of the world markets in those Bitcoin used to be used for those until the feds busted people now very few people use anything like Bitcoin for the simple fact you have a digital signature After Silk Road the Americans went through all the logs and they arrested hundreds of people because there were signed evidence trails if you digitally signed something that's all they need to go to court with drug sale done no one uses it in their right mind anymore for that stupid thing to do you are signing I bought drugs here's my receipt that's why they don't do it now so if you want to do a criminal activity and sign something saying I'm breaking the law use Bitcoin now next part I don't want an equal Africa equality the way you're talking about is called socialism socialism I want a competitive Africa I want countries that compete the hell out of each other here and through the rest people competing because that's what naturally happens people don't want to be equal people don't want to be equal because the only equal is the lowest common denominator there is one form of equality in the world and it's called equally poor I don't want to poor Africa I want to see people work their way out of things by trading with the west and basically taking western money so that they can do better themselves perfect so there was a lot of eyes in the response let's just get the we perspective get the questions from the audience now generally, ordinarily oh my word I don't want to but just keep in mind the context of the conversation is cryptocurrency and African cryptocurrency what we need to be talking about and what are some of the solutions that you think could be worked on in your different countries because we know we have heavy representation in the room just feel as free as possible but ask your questions as quickly as possible 10, 15 seconds, 20 seconds then I'll cut you off and we'll get back to you my name is Ruggigana and I work in the crypto space as well and one thing that wasn't discussed here is in America and other places they're chasing cryptocurrency companies out and other countries like Estonia, Malta, Lithuania have small countries without resources are bringing companies in and I want to know from the panel what do they think about maybe Rwanda how they could attract cryptocurrency companies and bring talent here and then that way maybe it diffused down by bringing the smart people, bringing the energy and getting some of those exchanges that bring tax dollars to the country is that a viable option as opposed to I kind of see that as maybe the way to bring cryptocurrency here but I don't know your thoughts so I have a little bit of experience in this topic on the European side when we formed Ethereum we entered Switzerland as our HQ and at the time Switzerland had absolutely no cryptocurrency infrastructure you talk to the Swiss and you ask them, have you heard of Bitcoin and they say, oh just what we've read in the papers and it usually wasn't a positive impression and just four years later they're actually one of the most progressive governments in the world they have notions of security and utility tokens you could pay some fees in Bitcoin buy train tickets and you know there's a very strong cryptocurrency industry there well why was that well it's because the government was more than willing to have a dialogue with people in the cryptocurrency industry the professional services were willing to engage with them such as accountants and lawyers and for a time banking services were I wouldn't say easy to get but they were easier than let's say the United States so Rwanda has the luxury of being like Switzerland and it's small enough and agile enough that it certainly can create an incredibly friendly sandbox but one caveat to this that all people who wish to participate in cryptocurrency space are learning from Isle of Man to others is we live at a global marketplace so even if you create locally a very safe harbor for businesses to operate if those businesses are conducting global business selling to US customers European customers, Chinese customers unfortunately they're still under US regulations and EU regulations and so forth and they might not even be aware of that for example if you were to set up a company here at Rwanda and start an ICO and sell into the United States you could be inadvertently breaking US securities laws so that's the great challenge is that it's not just like it used to be like if you're in manufacturing or something and you say oh it's a great harbor for us to set up a hub and you'll pay low taxes and get great cheap labor instead it's a situation where no matter what the local government does they're just one voice and a broader collection of voices and so there does need to be some internationalization in the conversation about how these pieces fit together Thanks Charles Can I add something? And then maybe Dr. Monique as well maybe what the prospects are to try and bring in some of these investments into the country Can I add something? That's a very important point just bouncing back with what you said is that the United States and China are adopting an approach which is not very liberal towards crypto and ICOs You don't say Yes and the European Union in that respect is let's say I'm European myself so more reasonable approach and could be a source of inspiration for the African continent and there are new legislations coming up in Europe about crypto spheres, ICOs exchanges which are I think balanced and not that won't stifle innovation and at the same time bringing the level of protection that everybody needs and in terms notably of anti-money laundering etc and the big difference just to sum it up the big difference between today between the US and Europe is that every time you issue a token in the US I put it very simply every time you issue a token in the United States you're going to be seen as issuing a security very simply said it's more or less exactly the opposite way in Europe and when you issue a token and the so called utility token meaning that the token you are selling to your investors are not generating as such profits or dividends based on the business of the issuer but just the ability to consume a service that will be offered after the ICO and financed by the ICO proceeds and utility tokens are not securities in European Union and that's valid for the entire zone of European Union but at the same time there are legislations we are coming up to protect investors so it's not an IPO, it's something else that will be regulated like in Malta, like in Switzerland like in France, like in Estonia and soon at European level and so that approach which is more liberal but reasonable and protecting consumers at the same time which is a European Union approach I think it's a good source of inspiration for Africa Laura's law coders evidence there is no country on earth that doesn't regulate already Bitcoin is money it is always regulated the argument that is codal BS that people want to tell you is it's crypto so it doesn't need to be specially treated that they can go around and break the law not pay taxes not be regulated issue securities and say that they're special guess what law is law full stop let me tell you something Craig the issue with that sentiment though is that different countries in Africa are struggling with how to categorize it if you categorize cryptocurrency as an asset you can't tax it as such if you categorize it as a currency you can so that's where we are not on the same page and you need to be very wary of how we are working on it within our different borders it's very simple, it is a currency it's not a currency, it's a commodity it makes terrible currency it's as volatile as the Venezuelan money maybe to answer your question but also have a small question for Craig if you will I think to the point of the gentleman who asked the question indeed having a disposition to really engaging in a conversation and also involving the financial sector industry along the way I think there is a lot for all of us to learn about and also to make all the necessary steps that we cross the loop holes and we raise awareness and we make sure that consumers are protected and so on and so forth so really that is the way to go as far as I'm concerned really be open to these new ideas we can't pretend as regulators that we know all the technicalities involved and having that flexibility as a regulator and really making sure you don't kill that good or potentially good thing before it even happens and so that is the possibility we hold and as Randa is concerned we are ready for that and we hope that the discussion is going to be shorter than than than this one no, no, no I'll say take shorter time and not really drag things drag on the small question for Greg is he really focused on the currency thing there in the cryptocurrency just maybe to educate me because it is the opportunity having to sit next to you the really expert person in this we know that money it's really backed by the real economy it's production because if you don't then make sure that equilibrium is then either you stand to have hyperinflation or inflation moderate or a deflation so in this context of cryptocurrency so what is the backing of that I'm talking now from the monetary point of view and price stability and financial stability it's backed the same as any other currency trust at the end of the day people trust that the bills will be paid the US dollar is paid by basically treasury bonds being repaid by taxes people trust that the economy is strong enough that in 10 years time those treasury bonds will be repaid they trust that's the same with cryptocurrency they trust someone else will take it and they're going to be rich for goods and services right now it is very speculative it is at a stage where most people don't use it as payment systems where it's really a day trader job or type environment where people try and flip it for a little bit more money rather than using it as money it's a speculative asset that will change now I'm going to say something that most people in crypto don't go away because of even Bitcoin nothing I'm not a Keynesian but I can actually create a Keynesian monetary policy using Bitcoin in 1880 to 1890 there was a solid gold backed it was the strongest currency in the world at that point and the British had their strongest growth ever over 12% per annum in a major country basically the known world like it or not, that was Britain they had the biggest navy, the biggest everything they had a gold back pound that wasn't a gold exchange standard it was a true gold currency now the thing is, they had a central bank so you can't tell me that you can't have a pegged currency and have a central bank you can back before Neocainsian and all the ideas and all the silliness that tries to explain it Keynes actually said that governments in the good times save money in the bad times they spend to stimulate the economy why does that change? if you have Bitcoin, the government could basically save in the good times actually build up reserves show people that the reserves are there because it's transparent and open even the bad times when things actually do happen, because economies are cyclic, like it or not not just because of banks but because of disruption in technology in those bad times, then you spend and you try and release things to the economy so it doesn't change any of this you keep getting all these developers who have no idea of economics telling you Coda's law, which is total BS you have them tell you that it will change money and that's when it exists wrong you keep saying that it matters that governments can do whatever else and inflate governments want to control their monetary policy and they should, but at the same time it should be transparent so the simple answer to you is you can actually build a crypto based economy you can back it, you can peg it and you can even have something that people can trade internationally the gold standard worked British, Americans, French anyone knew the value of exchange anyone here who's gone into forex trading or actually engaged in international trade knows that they have to start doing things like hedging contracts they have to pay the difference between their local currency and the foreign currency they have to actually pre-do these things and there's an aspect of risk risk stops trade you want to be able to trade and if you can back it with something you have a benefit Thanks a lot I think we'll take three questions and then we'll let them answer so whoever is closest to the mic Hi everybody my name is Tanordya I'm from Senegal I just wanted to ask a question about volatility because when we talk about bitcoin or cryptocurrencies we know that there are very volatile money back to a couple of months ago one bitcoin was worth $20,000 now it's $8,000 something like that so how can we deal with this volatility in order to use cryptocurrency in a massive scale it's been touched on just a bit but hopefully he'll expand just hold on one sec please let's get as many as possible Thank you My name is Andile Trayla from Johannesburg this should not sound like we are in an exchange currency exchange session the reality on the ground is that currency is an exchange of value and we know that the majority of population of people in Africa don't have value to exchange so if you have value to exchange and you are worried about trading with someone in Dallas then the fees and the decentralization make sense what I would like to ask is how do we use this opportunity for the majority of poor Africans that don't have access to quality education don't have access to quality health don't have a means of accessing technology live in rural places have to survive every day just to put food on the table how do we use this opportunity to rally and make a difference in them Perfect, today I guess that's yours Next question Hello, okay My name is Shegno, I work for Car Programs International based in the UK I think what I would like to hear from the panellists is really about the simplicity of blockchain or crypto I think the average person finds it too complicated to get involved and I think it's more adoption and I think I second the motion about what the gentleman here said about how does that technology apply to the common man and I think if we can make it simple easy to understand, if I get a gentleman from the village now it will take me literally 10 seconds to explain to him what the Ruanan Franks is and how he can spend it if I have to explain cryptocurrency to him it's going to take me it's technology behind it, he needs to understand what all the crypto keys mean he needs to understand how to store it, how not to store it how to exchange it it's generally very complicated for the average person, thank you Charles, hopefully you'll take that one one more excuse Thank you very much for the floor given to me, my name is Jean Claude, I'm Ruanan Thanks really for this discussion mine is really quick talking of cryptocurrencies we probably need to see what kinds of cryptocurrencies should we adopt I talk from experience, I have a group of students who are using a cryptocurrency called Steam with a platform called Steam these people they are getting you can call it free money it is against the things that we post online we have a community in Rwanda and in Uganda and as opposed to mining of Bitcoin these people are posting their stories online and they get money so let's maybe look at how nationally and on the continent we can get the platforms that work for us, thank you right, thank you we'll take the microphone it is closest to the last one then we just answer the questions good afternoon everyone my name is Osama I'm from Egypt have a quick question if we consider Bitcoin to be a currency and we would be encouraging governments to save in good times at what interest rates are we going to be applying in case of a use to try and manage inflation for example okay my name is Linda I practice in Nairobi my comment will be to governments especially in terms of regulation I think governments especially African governments spend too much time thinking about regulation rather than education my advice especially in terms of blockchain will be that you will take this opportunity for instance and ask for instance Charles and say what commitment would you make if we are using maybe our citizens from Rwanda in Kenya to further this conversation and help developers for instance in Kenya let them find hackathons for instance find local solutions to problems that we already have for instance in medicine how can blockchain further the conversation for medical records for instance how do you help it in Kenya the governments spend so much time fighting M-Pesa the central bank for instance and I think M-Pesa had the same problems in Kenya as well please do not spend time fighting innovation spur up innovation let there be a space and a safe place don't ask about gold is it backed by any other thing give us the opportunity as young people to build to experiment we will make mistakes but eventually we will get there I like the comment you made about illegal Africa we have so many laws for instance around intellectual property I have to do something in South Africa then I have to come and protect it in Kenya why can't you as government sit down and sort it out at the African Union and say this is our policy and direction that will affect the whole of Africa rather than spend the whole time thinking regulation rather than innovation thank you thank you thank you very much alright thank you my name is Stona Twine and I am actually working on a blockchain project called Eversend and we are solving exactly Tunde's problem that he had in Nairobi where you could have a multi-currency wallet and pay Kenya shillings when you are in Rwanda quickly change it over into Rwandese France and possibly a token again based on now my question what I got from the gentleman the legal guy I don't remember your name was that currently from a legal standpoint it's okay for me to go and launch a token if I'm following anti-money laundering and CFT rules even if I don't have permission to go to the central bank what's the position of the central bank the question is directly to you if today we launch a token that we sell to people in Kigali to solve a problem that is actually a serious problem how would the central bank react the reason I ask this question is because this is exactly what we are going to do you can't directly ask the bank I think we'll start with the last question and then we'll go in order back so would you like to address that yes to address that and generally the comments on policy and regulation versus innovation and also way forward because I'm in Montresed in the way forward here we are talking for this continental free trade area and we have to make it work as Africa we know that technology has solutions to really improve on what we have today which we know is not very optimal we know that we still are dependent on the systems from other places through the corresponding banking and so on and so forth so we have responsibilities as Africans and also as the citizens of the world to think about a more efficient system than what we have today but still we have the responsibility of doing so in another manner that's why there are governments like no one can just do anything they want without a framework but the governments I agree with the point that really stifling innovation is not the way to go for policy makers and governments really partnership for me is very important because in the end of the day when things fire back and some people lose money then government is answerable to really protect the citizens so that's why consumer education is important so that they know the gentleman was saying I can't explain Bitcoin and cryptocurrency to a normal random so if then I can't explain in simple terms then why should I really don't I have the responsibility to educate to provide information so that the person engages like really they are there is no restrictions as to buying whatever cryptocurrency is here in Rwanda you can issue them even tomorrow what we are saying is let's really expose knowledge to the Rwandan citizens so that they make choices however if you do like so kind of scheme that won't fly definitely that won't fly because the minister of trade is going to come after you but if it's really something that is really for people to support their exchanges and so on and so forth I think you are fine so way forward I wish we could really have heard more insights especially for the benefit of the policy makers what are the institutions we should be seeing really to take this digital revolution forward we are lucky to have our ministers of ICT here can we have a conversation with the central bankers with the ICT ministers the ministers of finance I don't know ministers of trade really I agree with the point that we can union level have really to do something that is coordinated and organized because I don't see really the decentralization which is really the key in these cryptocurrencies if we have say a thousand cryptocurrencies across Africa are we going to solve the issue we are talking about here I think we need some kind of synergies and convergence which is really coordinated and institutions that are on the African continent we need to start engaging in this discussion at least at central bankers we have started but I know that there is a lot more to be done by other institutions but really that's what I think we have to do and I would really welcome any insights as to what's next what are the things we should be doing at the African continent level if we are to really advance this agenda forward Thank you there was a question that was asked on simplicity but so that we get that response allow us to throw it to the honorable minister from Cameroon the minister of ICT Libon Lily King to just give us maybe what's happening within the states within the borders if you could just guide us through what exactly is happening on that end get a microphone please you had the and then maybe Charles you could take on the issue on simplicity I'm also going to speak in French what I can say is that no it's not French it's English I think what I said today the subject is a unique crypto-money for Africa in terms of integration the discussions that we are coming to see you see that the crypto-money as it is a platform of concentration it's the initiatives of the individuals and it's as if we are going to erase the government so that consumers themselves are masters of trade but before they arrive there are dispositions that we have to take in different countries like Cameroon we encourage but the regulation we leave the individuals since the platform doesn't have borders if we find partners outside it's an experience more or less individual and it's the success stories that will push people to appropriate themselves so for the moment these are individual initiatives and I'm still on my own when we talk about Africa you see what it has to do with harmonizing with the level of education what are educated and what are not and with the digital economy it's everyone who wants to trade so I have a little problem I hope and I hope these hopes that have intervened tell us Africans how we can do to have a unique crypto-money in the meantime we encourage initiatives and then the success stories will end up being imposed but I'm going back because I realize that it's not for tomorrow we are free free exchange but the only money crypto or real money the guarantee and it's complicated the central bank just said when it works it's good but when there is a problem the population turns to the government that's why we can't say that we let it be especially when we want to engage in a whole country that's what I can add thanks over to you thank you sorry my French isn't too good so on the topic of simplification first I apologize I don't have a wheelbarrow full of degrees but I can teach people how to use digital signatures we at IOHK do teach people how to use digital signatures but we focus most of our educational efforts on developers we've done this in Greece we've done this in Barbados and we just signed an MOU with the Ministry of Science and Technology in Ethiopia actually requested the class be all women and suddenly we had a lot more interest than professors wanting to teach the course I'm not sure why but anyway it would be a heck of a lot of fun to do something in Kenya and the reason that's been committed is you have this technology that's floating around the concepts of commerce and reputation and trust and coordination and these are about markets and these are about assets and these are about choice and decisions and getting those put together was time stamping and immutability and auditability and really quantifying who is actually in control but unfortunately the killer application that brought this concept to the world was a currency or a commodity there's certainly debates about that so when people think about the underlying tech they have a hard time decoupling it from the first use case of the technology and they immediately compare a digital currency to their own currencies and their own experiences and the reality is that consumer experiences are getting really good behind modern payment systems if you look at Alipay or WeChat or you look at a lot of these modern systems they're incredibly fast and not too long ago I was able to use my cell phone to actually pay for a cab the first time I ever was able to do that that was amazing, it was a great experience so I think it would be counterproductive to try to encourage people to adopt cryptocurrencies especially already distributed cryptocurrencies because all you're doing is saying make people who are fabulously wealthy richer by having these surge of retail people come in thinking they too are going to get rich it makes no sense to me and look at their local problems like in Ethiopia for example we had a heck of a lot of discussions about coffee production because a million and a half people live in that industry and we talked about everything from how do you create incentives to stump trees which over the long term dramatically increase production but in the short term cost you money because you lose the production of the tree while it's being stumped or how do you get better rates from washing stations or find which washing stations actually have the best rates these are problems that are intimately familiar with people and if you sell them the tech this way and show how you can reduce waste fraud abuse or prove that supply chain and make trade easier for them then it's not too conceptually hard to then extend it and say the same thing that makes your coffee good can make your voting system or your property ledger or even your money itself good so I think that's really the key is to localize it to the experiences that they're used to have a dialogue instead of telling them you know everything and you're a genius instead just say hey teach me what your problems are and have some form of a feedback loop where you're able to trade and over time things will look good Thank you, thanks a lot Charles I'll take that as your parting shot as well Tunde, over to you there was a question on value exchange maybe you could couple that with what kind of crypto the gentleman at the back asked what kind of crypto we should be looking at and your parting shots so in terms of you talked about someone that is local how does he actually benefit from crypto the way I see it is there's a lot of conversation about as an example the engine of a car you keep trying to explain the engine of a car the best way to get you to appreciate something is take you first of all create the car take you in a ride in the car then you start to appreciate it so my point in saying that is this for someone who is in a local community if you bring a solution that addresses his needs and is based on crypto blockchain or whatever he would obviously resonate with it it's like M-Persa in Kenya you don't have to explain M-Persa too much because it's often problems for people there so the key is like like Charles had said is really knowing what the local problems are creating a solution for that problem and people adopted and also engaging the local people because they know their country they know their problems you can't parachute a solution from outside and expect people to just accept it so that's how I see it it's get to the root of the issue then education is obviously important but education has its place because no matter how much you explain an engine is better to show and then let them use the second question you talked about is in terms of what crypto to adopt I still am a firm believer that it should be a tokenized fiat the reason why I say that is they still need for control what we are trying to solve here is Africa doing business with itself that's the crust of the issue how do we go from that to 10% to maybe 50% so if we have something that works for us within Africa we strengthen ourselves then we can then compete with the world if you go and compete with the world right now just as a small nation you get slaughtered why don't we first do business with ourselves get stronger then we can then go out and look at what China did got stronger that's what the Asian Tigers did get stronger domestically then you can go compete with the world that is my take on it just give us your last words maybe sentiments on the same and your parting short I would like just to say that I'm very optimistic I'm very optimistic because if that whole thing works it's gonna work for everyone if you look back in time times in history, in known history where there was there was a lot of prosperity where the times of the great pyramids and the great cathedrals in Europe why? because there was then a dual monetary system where you had at the same time currency which was used by kings and emperors to share exchanges with their neighbors and local currencies being used by by people just for exchange goods and services and the coexistence of both systems both times of currency brought a balance to the system and that's exactly what's going on now with cryptocurrencies if do not just focus on national cryptocurrencies but also to more decentralized local uses of those currencies because both systems will reach a certain balance ICOs that's the good aspect and the positive side of ICOs many of them will fail like any startups but the phenomenon of ICOs is meaningful especially for Africa because it brings new types of units of exchange in circular circular economies and if you look at certain countries where local currencies which are not national currencies are being used they brought prosperity to poor people to very poor people when a florist doesn't have enough money to go to the restaurant but if they can use cryptocurrency that will be accepted by the restaurant owner automatically you increase the power of those people to purchase goods and services without having the need to get national currencies it makes a huge difference so in that respect I'm very optimistic thank you Craig there was a question on volatility interest rates managing inflation of course you've touched on it but just give us that in your parting shot the simple word is derivatives but if you look at the other currency you can hedge, you can set up options you can do all these things you can make smart contracts and as for things like interest rate well there's nothing stopping that but interest rate is taking a hammer to a patient who needs a scalpel it's well known in the last 30 years of monetary policy that it's a terrible terrible way of actually managing things and even the American government don't really do that anymore what is trading in Africa people don't trade in Africa because what is there to sell the world wants your goods but opening up to second layer development and actually having things that people want matters this idea rah rah let's sell in Africa sounds wonderful I'll tell you it's BS because quite frankly Singapore mosquito filled swamp started trading to the world and then backwater nothing traded to the world big now England a backwater bit of nothing opened up trade to the world and became the global empire and only fell apart because they decided they needed to actually put armies everywhere and become an empire instead of a trading system the Brits fell apart because of that I'm not thinking that this is about trading opening up the ability to trade that's what matters I sort of piss off a lot of people because I don't like people like Gandhi and whatever else Gandhi came out and told the Indians how to be self-sufficient basically taking their own country and saying that they could all do things inside they could all do it in their region he told people how to trade with a surplus with England and all the English give them is money guess what? money allows you to buy goods and services after that the economy crashed 20 million plus people starved to death because women having to work at home making cloth the removal of factories the removal of global trade killed it Nike people pick on them why? because they pay 280% of the global local wage and have people in the areas they're still there lining up for up to four years for jobs and we're in the west like to sit there and go oh how terrible these poor people get paid too little except they get paid much much more than they would have and because of that Nike's now moving towards lights out factories anyone any more because of the BS about these poor people who now put their children through education and that one is critical not in all these silly degrees that we see out there right at the moment so we can get an arts degree in Harvard now has one in scatology in math science etc a quick point I don't think you have any idea what happened in the 19th century in India so please yeah so I don't believe you were alive then either yeah just a minute I would imagine Mr Gandhi was not an economist but for you to tell that 20 million Indians died because they could have been paid more etc women were working please okay you don't have any clue actually I've studied all of that I could tell you the history of India Nauru I could tell you the change from when the different parts of the Dutch company came in let's try it you don't have any clue please because it's lovely to say socialism works is there any way to just lower the mics for everyone right please allow us to get the last word from the Deputy Governor please to just finalize this session we have a lot we could go on and on but the session has to stop for the next one to continue kindly give us your parting short sorry yes hold on hold on hold on please that will get into another session hold on please I think you had agreed that we are going to respect each other on the panel and we are going to stick to that and then close nicely I'm glad we are having a discussion and we are having it here in this very place where we a few days back our heads of state have really made history by signing the continental free trade area and I hope we are going to really further this discussion it shouldn't really die or be just the transform Africa 2018 thing so let's really create really continuing this conversation because we are seeing that we still have some distance between different positions but we all have an interest that some convergence be gained sooner than later and as I kept saying here in Rwanda we are really ready for that and we hope that we continue engaging this discussion at the continental level so that at least we see clear on how we can be first on finding a solution for the Africa and like the minister said, in the meantime people will keep innovating and as they innovate ideas will keep coming and eventually some equilibrium will obtain I think that's what I heard from you and we thank you for this Thank you very much please just a warm round of applause to the panelists of course the general sentiment is on a bit of structural change or behavioural change or awareness on the same we have some underlying issues that need to be addressed before we get to full adoption of some of these ideas let alone the cryptocurrencies themselves so this conversation doesn't end here but just a quick question for all of you who've stayed through the entire time by show of hands how many of you are getting out knowing a bit more than what they came in with alright follow up question how many of you would actually invest in cryptocurrencies given the information you found in the room alright that's pretty reassuring pretty reassuring although it's I will tell you full disclosure this is the only session I've never had so many conversations the word BS be used so many times but I will tell you that's I told you at the beginning that we needed to have some uncomfortable conversations to have a comfortable future later so hopefully we'll engage as we continue so again Dr. Monique and Deputy Governor BNR at the National Bank the Central Bank of Rwanda Craig Stephen writes Bitcoin expert of course we'll leave the rest otherwise Charles Hoskinson CEO IOHK at the extreme end I'll say the two of you together because you're the ones handling the digital offerings Tunde Ladipo VP for partnerships at Stella and of course Tibold Verbios partner DS Advocats telling us the legal perspective and I've been your moderator for today George Nirango please feel free to engage them as soon as they leave maybe not to the same level but just engage on what exactly is as Dr. Monique said he is the way forward thank you very much for your time Thanks everyone