Nonprofit podcast host and educator Anita Posch talks about her mission to travel the world and bring Bitcoin to those who need it most.
As an American who grew up in the South, I am ashamed of the lack of financial knowledge I had as a young adult. Bitcoin didn’t make any sense to me until I understood the history of money and what it means to have an apolitical peer-to-peer monetary system. This knowledge has opened my mind to the many things that Bitcoin can achieve in regards to the elevation of human rights around the world.
Every day more human rights violations are reported in the media. From the rohingya genocide to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a thousand more in between. The world we live in is corrupted by greed and by those who misuse their power. Fiat currency is often used by the power-hungry as a means of control. That being said, the case for Bitcoin to improve human rights is the number one reason I care about Bitcoin.
Enter Anita Posch: Podcast host,, author, nonprofit founder and Bitcoin educator. Posch has more than 20 years of experience in web design and online entrepreneurship, and it has become his life’s mission to educate the people who need Bitcoin the most. She has been working tirelessly on the ground, emphasizing the need for everyone, specifically women, to take control of their financial literacy through Bitcoin education and entrepreneurship.
I trust you will be inspired by your responses to my questions about how you are using Bitcoin education to empower more people around the world.
How did you first learn about Bitcoin and what specifically Did it attract you?
The first time I heard about Bitcoin was in 2011, I tweeted about it, but I didn’t really get into it, because I read an article and came to the conclusion that it’s just another PayPal.
Well, it must have been a bad article.
In April 2017 I heard a talk at a conference about Bitcoin and open blockchains and their future impact on society and technology. This time, he was open and ready to learn something new. I had been an online entrepreneur and web designer for 20 years and was looking for interesting new topics to base my work on. I immediately understood that an uncensored, collaborative, permissionless, and open protocol for sending value is a tool that can provide a level playing field for anyone around the world.
I definitely couldn’t verbalize this back then, because I had no idea how Bitcoin works, but my life experiences and knowledge as a creator of online stores and marketplaces acted as a kind of internal compass to feel the revolutionary importance of Bitcoin. This time, I wanted to be a part of the development and decided to put all my effort into understanding and learning to become a Bitcoin educator myself.
How do you see Bitcoin positively impacting youth in the countries it serves? Ghana, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe?
I have been working with my initiative, Bitcoin For Fairness, and from what I have learned, many young people realize that Bitcoin gives them a choice, a chance to participate in a global economy, to break free from financial oppression and lack of access. to financial media in their countries of origin.
Take the people who live in Bitcoin Ekasi, for example. I visited and worked with them in May 2022. Bitcoin Ekasi is a township in Mossel Bay, South Africa where 11 shops and one taxi driver are now accepting bitcoin after community members onboarded them. Many of the 5,000 residents do not have access to bank accounts or opted to unbank due to high fees and red tape. Young people who live in the municipality are supporting their community with knowledge and practical education on how they can facilitate Bitcoin.
Trainers there earn their salaries in bitcoin and spend it at local stores. Recently, another store applied to be added to the Bitcoin economy due to the high degree of security Bitcoin offers compared to holding cash. A few months ago, the neighborhood supermarket, Pick n Pay, also started accepting bitcoin. That means store owners can use their earned bitcoin to restock their stores without the need to convert to the national currency, saving fees and hassle.
A growing number of young people are seeing how they can earn bitcoins through content creation, like on our BTC podcasting platform. It’s free to host a podcast without losing copyright (as in Anchor) and at the same time, anyone can start earning bitcoins through Value to Value Podcast without the need to run your own Lightning nodes.
Value4Value means that listeners can freely decide how many bitcoins, if any, they want to send to the host while listening to a podcast. As a podcaster, I saw a need for a platform that doesn’t charge around $10 a month for podcast hosting, because it excludes a lot of people from sharing their voices from the ground up.
During my travels, especially to Ghana speaking at the first Pan-African Bitcoin conference, it was amazing to meet and witness how many young people are starting educational groups, for example, Bitcoin Cowries in Accra, Bitcoin Mountain in Cameroon or the women. He centered Bitcoin Dada in Kenya. I am currently working on an online tutorial program called “Crack The Orange” for newbies and community leaders to gain a broader understanding of Bitcoin to share with their community members. With my non-profit initiative, Bitcoin For Fairness, we support young women to start their own educational group in Zambia.
The four African founders of Qala, a program designed to train the next generation of African Bitcoin and Lightning developers, are inspiring young people and visionaries. All these initiatives contribute to job and wealth creation and will have a positive network effect on the ground.
How do you normally respond to those who are dismissive of Bitcoin, especially those close to you (like close friends, etc.)?
In recent years, I have been trying to educate detractors on Twitter or other media platforms with arguments, facts and sharing experiences of African and South American Bitcoin users on my podcast “The Anita Posch Show”.
I realized that it is not easy to win an argument if the defendant has already made a decision. Each answer you give will be contrasted with opinions and your own perception. I never tried to convince anyone. If people show up and are interested in the topic, I explain and support it. If not, I won’t touch the subject. The same is true for my friends. Most of them have their own ideas about Bitcoin and don’t take the time or interest to learn. A handful of my close friends have sought my guidance and have done the work. I think they are very happy today.
In your opinion, why is it important to close the gender gap in interest and adoption of Bitcoin?
At first, let the numbers do the talking. Of the 1.7 billion unbanked people worldwide, 57% are women.
According to the American Economic Association:
“In the US alone, approximately 8.4 million US households are unbanked, with an additional 24.2 million US households classified as unbanked. Black women are significantly more likely than Black men or any other group to of being unbanked or unbanked. In addition, we find limited wealth is cited more often by black women as the main reason they don’t engage with the banking system.”
and according to wtw:
“There is a significant gender wealth gap between men and women at retirement. Upon retirement, women worldwide are expected to accumulate only 74% of the wealth held by men.”
Seventy-five economies worldwide “still limit women’s rights to manage the assets. There are countries where women are not allowed to own or inherit property, they will never own land that can be used as collateral to apply for a loan or support their informal businesses. This occurs mainly in countries in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific.
While women have gained equal rights in many societies in recent decades, overall, women still face massive discrimination based on gender. This inequality leads to exclusion from the financial system, due to lack of wealth or because women cannot present identification, which is necessary to be banked.
Bitcoin is fair to the extent that it does not discriminate. Anyone can use it without the need to show ID or need to be rich. There is no minimum limit to use bitcoin. Anyone can earn bitcoins through their work. Earning bitcoin will become the standard.
By educating women and girls about Bitcoin, we can help them close the gender wealth gap, when we consider that Bitcoin’s value has only appreciated over the long term. However, Bitcoin may just be a tool, it will not magically close the wealth gap, because men now have more resources, that is why they can also earn or buy more bitcoin. This is why it is imperative to educate women and girls as soon as possible while Bitcoin is in its infancy, therefore providing education to the Global South, especially for women, the queer community and human rights activists, is a strong focus of Bitcoin For Fairness.
With the recent shutdown of the peer-to-peer (P2P) platform Paxful, what other options for buying and selling bitcoins have you found successful in countries where there are no centralized exchanges?
There are several other P2P options to buy and sell bitcoins without having to show your ID, which is an important privacy protection. They may not be accessible globally, which is why real, on the ground, peer-to-peer exchange is the number one option in African countries. Another option is bitcoin vouchers or gift cards. And the best thing is to earn bitcoins, either by asking your employer or clients to pay you in bitcoins or by creating valuable content online like a podcast or other medium.
But a list of P2P sharing projects that I have found successful includes:
- He intended He intended
- Biscuit
- AgoraDesktop
- RoboSats
- bitcoin peach
- Nobody
This is a guest post by Becca Bratcher. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.