← The Peter McCormack Show
The Peter McCormack Show
Turning Bitcoin into Clean Water with Scott Harrison - WBD412
01:10:31
Location: Remotely Date: Monday 18th October Project: Charity: Water Role: Founder & CEO Non-profit organisations have used Bitcoin to accept donations for a long time. One of the most notable examples of this was Wikileaks in 2011. When Paypal,...
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- [00:03]
A
People would say, okay, I'm never giving you bitcoin if you're just going to turn it into this cash trash, right? But if you're willing to hold it, I'd give it to you. Now, we said we're going to call it the Bitcoin Water Trust and we're going to hold it all until at least 2025.
- [00:18]
B
Welcome to the what Bitcoin did podcast which is brought to you by Gemini, the only place I am using for buying bitcoin. I'm your host Peter McCormack and this week I'm kicking off with Ledger, the world's most popular hardware wallet. Now, for you new bitcoiners out there, a hardware wallet allows you to take custody of your bitcoin and I have been a Ledger customer since early 2017. I bought a Nano S back then and I'm still using that bad boy now. Ledger makes it easy for you as a bitcoiner to safely manage your bitcoin using their Ledger Live software which interfaces with your device. And if you are an Android phone user, you can connect that to your Nano S and manage your bitcoin on the go. If you want to find out more, please head over to ledger.com where which is L E D G-E-R.com Next up we have Gemini who I am using exclusively for buying and selling bitcoin. But I still not sold a single SAT through Gemini. We're in a bull market, why would I be selling my bitcoin Now I've started using the Gemini app for buying the dips but I also set up my DCA with twice monthly buys of bitcoin and I'm yet to see a better or easier interface of buying bitcoin. With a streamlined trading view you have access to all the tools you need to understand bitcoin and and start investing all through one clear, attractive interface. Now if you want to find out more, please head over to gemini.com which is G-E-M-I-N-I.com Next up we have my newest sponsor which is Compass Mining. But they're not just a sponsor. I am also a customer of Compass. I bought myself 5s 19s. Anyway look, it's good to be back mining. I really fucking love these guys. Compass makes mining accessible to everyone and as a bitcoiner I'm happy to be sporting the decentralized growth of hashrate it. It was so easy to get on boarded and anyone can now mine bitcoin. With Compass you just pick your machines, choose your hosting facility and they will do all the other work for you. If you are interested in mining and want to find out more, please head over to compassmining IO which is C O M P A S S M I n I n g IO and also, let's talk about BlockFi who recently announced the launch of the BlockFi Rewards Visa Signature Card. Now for people in the US who own or are interested in owning bitcoin or stacking more sats than the BlockFi Rewards credit card is the easiest way to do this because you get 1.5% back in Bitcoin on all card purchases and there is no annual fee. It is the smartest way to stack sats as you get bitcoin with every purchase. Not only that, in your first three months you get 3.5% back in Bitcoin and everything you spend over $50,000 annually, you will get 2% back. Now if you're interested in finding out more, then please head over to blockfi.com which is b l o c k f I.com Scott Finally. Finally we do this, man.
- [02:56]
A
Good to see you, man.
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B
Good to see you, man.
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A
I can't believe I missed you when you were in town.
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B
Dude. Do you know what? I really like Nashville.
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A
It's a cool place, isn't it? Great food, great music, great people. People are nice here, right? They're nice in the south, dude.
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B
Honestly, I'm a big fan of Austin. Look, got my Texas forever hat on and I always thought if I moved to the US I would move to Austin. And Nashville has thrown a spanner in the works.
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A
Okay, okay. It was a lot cheaper. Maybe not for long, but.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Well, I was in New York City for 26 years, so I could never imagine living anywhere else except Manhattan. Right? Raising my kids in Manhattan, fighting it out in the two bedroom apartment. And you know, in this post Covid world, somebody said the other day, they're like, you're doing the COVID shuffle. Because we moved out of the city to a farm and we had a really great rural experience and now, you know, we've moved to the south because it's, it's affordable and we wanted to try something new. And boy, I'm missing New York City a lot less than I could have ever imagined.
- [03:59]
B
It's funny you should say that. So I went to New York before Nashville and I'm a big, big fan of New York and it was much better than I expected. Right. I really liked it. I had a good time, had a good meal, saw some friends. But it didn't have the same buzz that I felt it normally had. And there was a couple of things I noticed. There was like a definite huge increase in homeless and there was open drug dealing around Times Square, which I was kind of surprised by. Not. Not like, I'm anti. Look, we're probably going to talk about drugs today because, you know, because that could be a topic that comes up. But, like, I had a big drug problem. I don't care if people take drugs.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I thought that was a. Interesting signal, the city. And there was just like a lot of boarded up places, but I still enjoyed myself. Yeah. And, you know, it wasn't like.
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A
And the neighborhood matters. Right. Midtown, I've heard, is just. Yeah, I'll be there next week for some meetings. And, you know, Midtown has definitely changed. But, you know, I always lived in Tribeca and soho and there's still a lot of energy there. Although I will say, my last trip to New York, I was with my wife, walking down West Broadway. We were staying at the Soho grand. And it's like 5:00 at night, it's not dark, and we just see somebody graffiti on West Broadway. Like, I haven't seen this in 10 years. You know, no police did. Just. Just the kind of the boldness of. And like, we almost didn't. My wife was like, should we say something? You know, it was like. It was kind of a group of three or four people and we just watched them deface storefronts on West Broadway in daylight.
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B
Yeah, but was it good graffiti? Cause if it was good graffiti, I would be cool with that.
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A
I don't know whether I'm a good judge of graffiti art.
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B
Well, listen, so from there I went to Nashville, not with huge expectations, but wanted to see a few people have said, look, you got to check out Nashville. And I went out that first night and I was like. I immediately fell in love with it. I was just like, this place is cool. The people are nice. I went for chicken. I went for a fuck, dude. I had the hottest chicken I've ever had. I went to Haddy B's.
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A
Okay. Yeah, I've heard. Holy shit.
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B
Yeah, I had a bad day the next day. And then I went to a whiskey jam, which at losers.
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A
Okay, okay.
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B
And that was.
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A
Did you go to the little speakeasy? I forget what that one's called. There's kind of a speakeasy. You can make reservations and have, you know, refined cocktails prepared for you by guys in tuxedos. And that's. That's a cool place. You stayed at the Virgin?
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B
Yeah, the Virgin.
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A
Awesome, right? Brand. Kind of brand new. Year old, I think. Yeah, a lot of creativity there. Yeah, it was cool.
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B
I just got a great feel for it and I was like, I just want to come back. I really liked it. It's like there in Austin are my, without doubt two favorite places.
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A
Well, while you were here, I had a breakthrough Covid case. So I couldn't see you or obviously didn't want to see you. You didn't want to see me. And we're all healthy now. That was a couple weeks ago and we were talking about it earlier. I feel very fortunate. I had flu symptoms for a day. My wife had a couple days and our kids were fine. They tested negative all the way through. So today is their first day back in school after three weeks. And oh my gosh, I mean, we have a five and a seven year. We barely survived. I mean, boy, you know, kids waking up like 12, trying to work, you know, kids up for 14, 16 hours a day. It was. God bless the teachers. God bless the teachers.
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B
It's funny you say that. I interviewed Erica Rhodes yesterday. She's the teacher here in LA who is a bit of a bitcoiner and she's running for congress against Brad Sherman. And I said the same to her. Cause I was like, there was a two month period where I had both kids home from school on the lockdown and I was trying to teach them and I was like. I was like, I have like so much more respect for teachers now than I ever did. The fact that you do this day in, day out with 30 kids, not one. I had one. And I wanted to. I wanted to, you know, probably shouldn't say what I wanted to do. I wanted to strangle her.
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A
I was like, every, every parent knows.
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B
Will you listen to me? But I was like, you. You guys do. You're like. You and the nurses are the most undervalued people in society. You, the nurses, the police, all the people that we. We don't realize we need to. We really need them. But look, good to see you better. I will be back. I'm going to be back in April. I bumped into some people involved with the Country Music Television Awards and I convinced them to let me and my daughter go. So me and my daughter are going to be coming to Nashville in April, so hopefully we'll hang out then and do some wholesome family stuff. But dude, this interview is long overdue. We bumped into each other at Pump Studio.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And we tried to.
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A
Thanks for sharing. Sharing the Trade secrets. That was fun to eavesdrop.
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B
You know, it's funny. One of the things, like me and Pomp do is whenever we see each other, we tell each other everything we're doing. That's working.
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A
Yes.
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B
Whilst, I mean, because he's like, the number two bitcoin podcast, I always want to help him.
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A
Yep. You're funny. You know, but that's probably not a perception that a lot of people have out there.
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B
Competitors.
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A
Yeah. I think it was very cool. So for everybody listening, that wasn't there. These guys were friends and they were sharing. Here's what's working. You know, platform tips. And this didn't work. It was really. It was very healthy to see. I think we need more kindness and collaboration in general.
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B
Well, Pomp's always been like that. Pomp's always been like that from the start. Ever since I've met him, he's always been like, I want you to Wimpy, what can I do to help you? And it's.
- [09:31]
A
And I cold emailed him about the thing that we're probably going to talk about, and he just said, hey, I'm in. You know, how can I help? Which is great. And not everybody. That has not been my response or the response from everybody. But he's a nice, sweet guy.
- [09:47]
B
Yeah. If I text him now and I told him I need something, he'd be on the phone within an hour and say, like, how can I help you? He's a really good guy like that. And he's always helped me. And so, yeah, we share what's working, we tell each other what's working. We help each other. And I think what people don't realize is we want each other to win, because if he wins, I win. Vice versa. I just want to win more than him. Love that guy, though, right? Dude, Important subject. You presented at the bitcoin conference as well.
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A
Yeah, it was an interesting speaking slot. It was in between Jack Dorsey and Floyd Mayweather, which tells you a lot about that conference. Right?
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B
Tough. Yeah. It was such a strange, strange event. Yeah. I mean, I was emceeing, so, yeah, I got to introduce you up. But, yeah, strange event, but, like, it was a good opportunity for you, man, just to get out there and tell people about what you're doing. Like, right, let's explain it. But then let's do the backstory so people know.
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A
Okay. So I lead an organization called Charity Water. I've been at it for 15 years. Very simple mission. We think everybody on Earth should have access to clean water. So we Think everybody alive should be drinking clean water every day. Unfortunately, 771 million people, or 10% of the planet, drinks dirty water every day. So that's been, you know, pretty simple idea. I wasn't very creative naming the thing Charity Water, a charity that helps people get water. And, you know, over the last 15 years, we focused on really building a concerned movement of everyday givers. So, you know, we haven't been going after governments or foundations or really the corporations. It's been. It's been everyday people. And we've raised about $600 million to help 13 million people around the world get clean water. Now, that's 156 of the problem. It's about 1.8% of the way there. But, you know, we've grown the organization. We'll raise over $100 million this year. So it's. A lot of people are giving from 150 countries around the world. We have a unique business model which I think resonated with some of the people at the conference where from day one, we have split out the overhead from the water projects. So we've operated with two distinctly audited bank accounts for a decade and a half, where a small group of about 120people pay all the nasty overhead. Staff salaries, flights, office, Epson toner. Right. And then millions of givers know that if they give a dollar or a million dollars, you know, a pound, euro, Bitcoin, which we'll talk about, 100% of that goes directly to build water projects which help people get clean water. And then we prove them. And we've located every single completed project now, over 70,000 on Google Earth, on Google Maps, so people can see where the money's going. So that's been one of the distinctives of the org. It's difficult. You could have too much money in the water project bank account and not enough for payroll or. Right. Well, you never really overraise for overhead, but that's just worked for us, having this kind of church and state between that because so many people are skeptical of charities. And then we got into the bitcoin space in 2014 and I'd gotten to meet Wences Cesares and Pete Brigger from Fortress, who were friends. Pete had hosted a dinner for me at his home and was explaining bitcoin and said, water, you guys are early adopters. We were one of the first in the virtual reality space. We've always. We were the first charity to get a million Twitter followers, first charity to use Instagram. He said, you need to be early and make sure you've got a way to accept bitcoin. So we did in 2014 and we started accepting bitcoin. And you know, I'll never forget, our first bitcoin donor was Tony Hawk. And he'd come to an event and he'd raise his hand and he'd play it. Pledged $1,500 and he paid it with five Bitcoin. So we're like, great, we sold the bitcoin. We were so proud of ourselves that we knew how to sell bitcoin. And we sold them for $312 each. And we sent Tony, ah, we sent Tony's $1,500 to the field, right, to help 30 people or 40 people get access to clean water. We're very proud of ourselves because we were accepting Bitcoin in 2014 and we were turning it into clean water for people in need.
- [14:17]
B
But you know, how would.
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A
Right. And Peter, let me just say this is a best practice because if you gave me Apple stock today, like who is water to have an opinion on whether Apple stock goes up or down? If you gave me Tesla stock, right, it could be at a high, it could be at a low. The donor is giving us an asset to turn into impact kind of immediately. So over that period of time previous to the bitcoin conference, we took in 569 bitcoin. It's a lot.
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B
Yeah, a lot.
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A
We sold them for 4 million. A little over 4 million. So not nothing. Not at $312 a coin. And that was enough. That 4 million was enough to get about 100,000 people clean water. So already kind of a bitcoin for tangible, good real life story over that period of time as people would give the money would go out, build water projects. 100,000 people. That's five staple centers full of people. It's five Madison Square Gardens full of people. So it's a big impact. However had we held, you're looking at an 8x impact. I call it 30 some million, 35 million. And the more we talk to people in the space, the more we kind of encourage them as bitcoins price appreciated to give. They're like, why would I give you bitcoin? Now it's going to go, it's going to be worth so much more in the future. And you're just going to sell it. It's the last asset that I would want to give you to fund water projects. So that kind of led to the idea of, well, what if we did take an opinion? Could a charity set up A trust that instead of selling the asset, promise to hold the asset for a period of time. And then if we set that structure up, would the donor allow the asset to appreciate with the charity? Would that be a strategy where people would say, okay, I'm never giving you bitcoin if you're just going to turn it into this, you know, cash trash. Right. But if you're willing to hold it, I'd give it to you now and let it appreciate with you. So that was really the pretty simple idea. And we said we're going to call it the Bitcoin Water Trust. Again, not, not super creative. And we're going to hold it all until at least 2025. So we're going to put, you know, we're going to get through the next halvening, kind of one full cycle and then in 2025 we'll be at least unrestricted in our ability to use that bitcoin to help people get access to clean water. And 100% of the Bitcoin would go directly to build water projects in 2025. And beyond that, we believe the bitcoin would have a lot more impact in the future than if we just sold it today.
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B
Okay, there's a lot to unpack here. Where do I start? Let's start with the water projects themselves. Yeah. How many people did you say live without clean water?
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A
771 million people.
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B
Okay.
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A
And 82% of them, Peter, live in rural areas and about 18 live in cities and towns.
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B
Okay. And primarily which countries are we talking about here?
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A
All over. You've got Sub Saharan Africa, you've got India, you've got Southeast Asia, and a little bit in Central and South America, although that problem has been solved faster than in other places.
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B
And the consequences of dirty water is disease, death.
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A
Yeah, I remember when I, when I started 2, 2 stats I remembered up well, the World Health Organization said half of the disease in the world is related to unsafe water, a lack of sanitation and hygiene. Right. So toilets, hand washing and then clean water. Half of the hospital beds in the world are occupied because of water sanitation, hygiene related issues. The other thing that I remembered was 40 billion hours were wasted just by women in Africa collecting water. So you've got health impacts, you've got time, wasted time and the impact on the economy. And then another powerful stat, one out of three schools in the world not only don't have clean water, they also don't have toilets. So imagine sending your 12 year old to a school without access to clean and safe water or a Toilet. So water has all of these negative impacts if you don't have it. And again, it's something we so easy to take for granted. You woke up this morning, you brushed your teeth, you used clean water. Some people use bottled water for their coffee, took a long shower. And that's just not a resource that 771 million people even know what that's like.
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B
And in terms of the unclean water, is it a mix of just dirty, dirty water from dirty sources, Is it also polluted, is it man made pollution a big issue as well?
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A
In the rural areas, most people would be using an open source that might be a swamp, that might be a river, that might be a stream, and open water is contaminated. And in many of these rural areas, people will be sharing that water with animals. So a typical watering hole in a rural part of Ethiopia, you might have the women and the girls coming and then also the cows coming. So that's. You don't want anybody drinking from an open. You wouldn't go in your backyard and drink from the pond there, no matter how beautiful that pond even would look. So that's kind of the problem. And then we've taken a solution agnostic approach. There are a lot of different things that work to solve the problem in a lot of different environments. So there is no one size fits all water solution. There's no silver bullet to this. But you can drill wells, you can purify water. We do something called bio sand filters throughout Asia. You can harvest the rain in some communities, you can move water using gravity clean water from one place to another. Lots and lots of different technologies. And when it comes to our work, it only costs about $40 to get a person clean water. So it's actually not, it's not that expensive.
- [20:44]
B
Is that over a time period, is that like an annual cost? Because I'm assuming there's a cost of building infrastructure, but there's maintenance cost as well.
- [20:51]
A
That's a great question. So we want a project to last a decade. So success is a Peter well is there 10 years later still helping, helping people get access to clean water or has been replaced by a higher quality solution? Right. Because if you think about this, let's just use a well in a village, maybe for 250 people. This is the bottom rung of water development. I mean we've got running piped water into our homes, into our showers, into our toilets. So sometimes we'll see progress where you know, somebody will go one step higher on the ladder, which is great, and improve water access and Water quantity. So, yeah, I mean, it's a solvable problem. And there has not been this kind of will or the resources allocated to make quite enough progress. I mean, it's kind of shocking that in all of the abundance in the world, right. We're going. Everybody's fighting to go to space and colonize Mars and 10% of the world is drinking disgusting water. You know, you could argue the most basic need for life to be healthy, to thrive. So that's what we've been working on for 15 years. And, you know, we've got a lot of people to care about this, but we still have so much more work to do, you know, ahead.
- [22:18]
B
Yeah, so I'm slightly aware of the issue in that I recently went to Guatemala and went to Lake Atalan.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And spent some time with people understanding the issues with Lake Atalan being the provider of water to the communities that live around the lake. But at the same time it's being used to dump all the sewage into the same water and they have issues with people getting sick around Lake Adeline. So I am. That was kind of like my first time I was made aware of the issue. Have you been out there to Lake Adeline? Are you aware of.
- [22:50]
A
I haven't been there. I know that that's a. And we talked about it a little bit. My, my head of water programs, when I told him that you had just gotten back, he's like, oh, yeah, that's a serious situation there. What you saw, you would have, you would have heard about a lot of diarrhea, dysentery. And one of the, you know, the terrible things about diarrhea is it is one of the leading causes of death among young children. You and I drink, which is unbelievable.
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B
Right?
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A
Right. It really is. You and I drink from a lake. Our immune systems at this point are mature enough. We're going to be sick. I mean, it's gross. We're gonna have stomach pains, we're gonna have diarrhea, but we are probably not going to die. And it's not uncommon that a woman I talk to will have stomach issues nine or 10 months out of the year that are often debilitating in pain. But if you're a fragile child, if you're a three year old or a four year old, what happens is you actually die of dehydration. You think about it, I have a five and a seven year old, my kids get sick and let's say they have a really bad stomach flu or diarrhea. We go to the duane Reade or the Walgreens. And we buy that blue stuff like the Pedialyte, which is meant to rehydrate them and put the minerals back in their body. I was just in Vegas last week speaking at a conference, and a lot of people there will get the IV drips right. They'll go out hard, and in the morning, some doctor comes with a bag and puts fluids and electrolytes back in their body. If you're a mom taking care of a young child and the only available source is a contaminated source that caused the sickness in the first place, you've got this cycle of death. So as you're trying to rehydrate your child, you're giving them the same poisoned water and they die of dehydration. And it's, you know, it's shocking. It's terrible. I've been with women who have lost five, six, seven children under the age of five. Not everybody knows that it's the water. Sometimes there is an awareness that this water that is their only option is the problem. But there's a human toll, and there's so much human suffering which you would have experienced again, just when you don't have this most basic need in your life met.
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B
What is the total cost to fix this? Because you said of 156. I can't remember the number you said.
- [25:13]
A
Yeah, well, you have a reverse economy. Yeah, you have a reverse economy of scale. So it gets more expensive the more of the problem you solve, because you've got a capital cost for whatever that water solution is divided by population. So as you knock out the most populated villages or areas, same capital cost, but far fewer people using it. The honest answer is no one. I mean, it's a lot. No one has it. No one has kind of agreed upon that number. Because, Peter, the capacity isn't there. So you've got to. Maybe a way to say this is. Even if you had, you know, $10 billion right now that you tried to invest in rural water supply, there wouldn't be enough drilling rigs out there. There wouldn't be enough capacity to absorb that 10 billion today and just kind of instantly solve the problem. You know, maybe look at this. As you know, there's probably a number of phones that Apple could sell greater than they could produce at any time. So, you know, they're out there making sure they have all the minerals that they need and the resources and the factories have capacity, and they're, you know, opening up new factories to make new phones. Right? You've got the the sales and then the service delivery that need to go in balance. So that's, that's the same thing. But we just, it's a complex problem to solve. And we've gotten in the business over the last few years of actually buying these million dollar drilling rigs and shipping them to Africa so that we can get more capacity as we continue to raise more money.
- [26:50]
B
Wow. Okay. Massive. Massive.
- [26:53]
A
I think sometimes it helps through a story. You know, I am, I mean, this is a tough story, but I've been to Ethiopia 31 times now and it's, it's a place that, you know, I'm really familiar with. I've been to 70 countries now in my travels. But a love for Ethiopia specifically and we've helped about 2 million people get water there. And it's a, it's a dry, arid region up in the north. Women actually walk eight hours a day, four hours out, four hours back, or you know, three hours out with their empty pod and five hours back with their 40 pounds of water. And I lived in a village once, Peter, where about 3,800 people were living. And there was a 13 year old girl who had lived in that village. And like the other women and girls, she would walk every day for water. And one day at the end of her eight hour walk, before reaching home with her water, she slips and she falls and she spills her water. So she undoes a day of work and she hung herself. She took the rope that she was using to tie the clay pot on her shoulders and she tied a noose around her neck and she climbed a tree and she jumped. And the village elders found a broken pot and a girl hanging from a tree who didn't want to go back for water. Who. The despair was just so great. And I lived in that village for a year. Sorry. For a year. I went to the village kind of a year after hearing that story just to see if it was true. And I wound up spending a week there and talking with her family and visiting her grave and understanding what true water poverty really looks like. And her best friend said, I was like, why do you think she really took her life? And her best friend said, shame. She would have let her family down because she was not bringing any water home that night. And she also broke the clay pot, which was a valuable asset. And I think that just, you know. Oh my gosh. Right. Like a teenager in such despair that she would take her own life, you know, out of shame because she slipped and fell. My kids knock stuff over like five times a day. You know, I have the clumsiest children and there's, you know, there's so much grace for that, right? So, you know, again, I mean, there's so many stories when you do this for 15 years, you're in such extreme environments. But that to me is just indicative of, like, why, like, that drives me.
- [29:28]
B
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- [31:55]
A
Yeah, it depends on the rains, Peter. It just depends on the rains. There are good years and bad years. This is a particularly bad year if the rains come late. If the rains don't come in the same way. Yeah. There are no agriculture systems in these rural areas, as you might imagine. Sometimes some drip irrigation, sometimes digging of ditches or ponds. That's actually one of the things that our partners do a lot of, is making sure the groundwater is replenished during those rainy seasons. So in many villages, they'll build a well, and then they will actually build trenches kind of on the perimeter outside so that when it rains, that water is recharging. Often they'll terrace. So that means putting up stone walls on the hills nearby so that during that rainy season, the water doesn't just rush all the way down, but it's, you know, it's being stopped and replenishing that groundwater.
- [32:53]
B
Yeah, I mean, Ethiopia is one of those countries I've been aware of for a long time, if you haven't been.
- [32:58]
A
It's an extraordinary place.
- [32:59]
B
No, I'd love to go. When are you going next? I'll just go with you.
- [33:02]
A
You know, there's a really terrible civil conflict going on right now, you know.
- [33:08]
B
Is that up in the north?
- [33:09]
A
Yeah, in the north, yeah. Ethiopia has been kind of this bastion of security for so long in the Horn of Africa, and now, you know, it's in a lot of turmoil. So our team just got back a couple weeks ago. I'll go next year for sure.
- [33:25]
B
Let me know when you go.
- [33:27]
A
I will, I will. I mean, it's the birthplace of coffee, Right? It's where they discovered coffee in the Kaffir region of Ethiopia. It's one of two countries that's never been Colonized in Africa, one of only two. Liberia. You could even argue when America sent our freed slaves in 1822 to Liberia and then named everything after US presidents, was sort of a colonial idea. But Ethiopia has this pride, this dignity. They fought Mussolini and sent him packing. Every time someone has tried to come in and occupy Ethiopia, they've thrown off the oppressor. And it's just. It's an amazing, amazing place and amazing people and then, you know, a huge amount of need there as well.
- [34:10]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, I was aware of again a few years back when there was the photographer, Kevin Carter, who took that devastating photo of a girl who was, you know, bent over, crippled by famine and he ended up taking his life.
- [34:27]
A
Yeah, there was a crow, right? It was a picture.
- [34:29]
B
Yeah. In the background. And. And it really stuck with me. And I was meant to be out in Africa last year. I was meant to go out with my guy. We were going to go to four countries. One of them was Ethiopia. So I will go with you. Just a side question on Ethiopia, though. I'm sure I read that due to climate change, there's a particular risk to Ethiopia, coffee crops. Is that true?
- [34:58]
A
It probably is.
- [34:59]
B
Probably beaten, yeah.
- [35:00]
A
Just from my travels over 15 years there, we have definitely heard, hey, things aren't like what they used to be and rivers drying up and floods and much more irregular weather patterns. I'm sure that would also affect coffee growing as well.
- [35:17]
B
So how do you pick your projects? Because that must be a tough choice.
- [35:20]
A
Yeah. So, first of all, we've got an amazing team that does that full time. There's about 22 people who wake up every single day saying, how do we spend waters money, how do we spend charity waters, Bitcoin, to get the most amount of impact in a sustainable way. So at the kind of first pass, we know where the people are without clean water. So you know where you can map the 771 million people. Our first pass is to eliminate conflict zones. So that. That would take out Yemen, that would take out South Sudan, that would take out just. Just active war zones where we just. We don't believe our projects could be sustainable. Not that there's not a need there, but that's just not our proficiency. Then we would eliminate hostile governments. So a government that says we don't want any help, any aid, any outside interference, we're not going to sneak into a country against the wishes of a government. Now, I would say most people are not hostile when it comes to water, because unless you're a despotic leader and a despotic government. It's kind of embarrassing, Peter. Right. If your country doesn't have the most basic need for its citizens. So we've actually found very little resistance when we work around the world on water. So that's kind of the second passes and then the third is really the lowest income countries. So you might have a Peru with some population that still doesn't have clean water, but much more of a middle income country than Malawi, then Ethiopia, then Uganda, then Cambodia, or parts of, you know, rural parts of India. So then we kind of start at the bottom of that United Nations Development Index and say we think we can help the most amount of people here. And then we need to find a local partner. So water only works with local organizations in each of these countries. So we just believe for our work to be sustainable, culturally appropriate, it's got to involve local job creation, local hydrogeologists, local accountants, local drivers. And then our role is really to come in with the money and support them and help them grow their organizations, help them get the support trucks and tools they need, help them hire more hydrogeologists and have the funds for that hiring and training. So we come in really in support of, okay, Peter, you can implement a million dollars of water projects this year, but you really have a need of 100 million and a vision of growing your organization 5x or 10x. How can we come and serve you to get you from the ability to do a million dollars a year in water projects to 5 million or 10 million? And then we've created thousands of jobs locally through that. So the team in New York and distributed is only about 90 people that'll raise, you know, over $100 million this year. So it's a lean team at the core. But then the actual work across 21 active countries is being done by, you know, heroes. Really Peter, I mean, just sorry to belabor Ethiopia, but I've been out with the drilling teams there. There's eight drilling teams, at least before the conflict, that were all active. And there's about an eight month dry season when you can drill wells and then four month rainy season. The drillers there work 29 out of 30 days a month. Okay, forget about work life balance or like Netflix and chill. They, they make the most of that eight month period of time and they maximize it. And then they see their families for four months when they can't drill. So you have these unbelievable, committed, unbelievably committed teams who are waking up at dawn drilling until night because they realized the urgency of clean Water, the urgency of maximizing this resource, in this case a million dollar rig and compressors and trucks to help as many people to save as many lives as possible through the pandemic. They were out there drilling with wells on, with masks on. So they were drilling wells with masks on. Socially distancing, building hand washing stations. It was amazing to see the work continue as many of our local partners went to the government and filed petitions for essential worker status and said water in a pandemic. Right. Hand washing, hygiene in a pandemic. Essential. Let us continue to go out there and do our work. And they did.
- [39:50]
B
And so when you're drilling for these wells, are there ways to identify where the water is? It's something I don't know anything about. Or is it like oil drilling? You're hoping. And maybe there is. And these wells constantly fill. I mean I don't understand how water contains itself in a well underground.
- [40:06]
A
Sure. I'm so glad you're interested in this. Yeah, there's a, it runs the gamut of high tech, almost electrocardiograph type machines where you're shocking the earth and it's giving you a readout of fissures and aquifers. And you know where, where you might find the water to a bunch of guys standing on a hill saying if there's eucalyptus trees growing in a bunch like that, there's water there. In the Central African Republic, I've been with a guy who divines and he's right more than 95% of the time.
- [40:37]
B
Is that the.
- [40:38]
A
And I did it. The sticks. Yes, the sticks. And I did it. And it was the craziest thing. I did it on my own. Absolutely nothing happened. He held my hand and one end of it. And it was one of the craziest experiences I've had. And that's just, that's how he finds the water. And he's, he's right. And I'm not gonna comment on, I don't really know how that works, but it's worked for that guy, the head driller in the Central African Republic. So yeah, there's a lot of different ways to find water. Now you've got to drill a well. You're typically going down about 200ft.
- [41:14]
B
Okay.
- [41:15]
A
So think of a 20 story building. So you're getting in at ground level and you're pressing negative 20. You're taking. It's a skyscraper inverted. And that's where there's an aquifer. Often sometimes 150ft, sometimes a little deeper. 220 it's a lot of water. Typically when you hit an aquifer, it's not groundwater. So it's not as vulnerable to rains or droughts. If you were just going to dig 20ft down, it's water that's trapped in rock. And for the purposes of drinking water, it's very rare that those wells would go dry. There's typically far more water than is needed just for the consumption of drinking. Now agriculture, very different. If you start putting in sophisticated pumps, you could draw out that water and dry up an aquifer very quickly. But what we're typically doing is putting on a hand pump, which is the most sustainable solution. It doesn't require energy, it doesn't require solar panels or anything like that. You pump the well and it takes about one minute to pump out five gallons, so about £40 worth of water. So, you know, you can, you can have a bunch of people line up and pump for about a minute, minute and 10 seconds and walk with five gallons of water, which is, which is typically what you know, a person would use all day.
- [42:35]
B
And do they do those wells refill with rainwater?
- [42:38]
A
They do, they do. Well, again, it's, it's, it's not as much the rainwater as this water that's trapped. So certainly the environment affects it. You can also hand dig wells. So some of our earliest wells were, and that takes about three months because the locals are just digging a big round hole. Sometimes they hit rock, you've got to blast the rock, or sometimes they'll blow them up with little sticks of dynamite. And then you've got to bring all the rock up and then you've got some water coming in at your feet, maybe 20ft deep. And then you've got to keep going deeper. So you got to pump that water out so that you go deeper. And now maybe the water's up to your knees or to your waist and then you've got a hand dug well. So a little less expensive because you don't need that big rig and the machinery, but a lot more vulnerable to drought because the water table could drop 10ft and now that well is dry. So we've really transitioned our earliest work, which were these much cheaper hand dug wells, to now trying to go down 150 to 250ft.
- [43:39]
B
How did you end up this becoming your life's work? Okay, my life's work's bitcoin. Right. Through a weird set of events, I ended up doing a bitcoin podcast. Totally not something I thought about as a kid and a Very troubled life before it for different reasons. You're here in your life's work now, clearly is until. Until you leave the face of this earth. This is obviously what you're going to do. And you're not going to work on anything else. I assume. So how did this end up becoming that? Because I'm gonna. I don't know, but I'm gonna assume you didn't leave college and go, great, I'm gonna start a charity water project. Assume you went to the city?
- [44:17]
A
Yeah. Not at all.
- [44:18]
B
Went corporate.
- [44:19]
A
Yeah. I mean, I was born in a middle class family in Philadelphia. When I was 4, there was a carbon monoxide gas leak in our house and my mom almost died. We had just moved into a new house. It was winter. Dad and I were just sleeping in the house. And mom is 24 7, unpacking boxes and breathing in total exposure to carbon monoxide. So she passes out New Year's Day 1980 on the bedroom floor. She was the canary in the coal mine. This led to the discovery of the gas leak and massive amounts of carbon monoxide in her bloodstream. And she just never recovered, Peter. So she became disabled for the rest of her life. What happened was her immune system irreparably shut down and its ability to fight off anything chemical like carfumes or soap or anything, just was eliminated. So I was kind of put into a child. Well, as a child, I was in a caregiver role. So I was helping my dad take care of the house and do the cooking and do the cleaning. And we would take mom from doctor to doctor. Nobody could help. And they just said, hey, avoid exposure to anything that could possibly make you sick. Which was everything. So for a period of years, Peter, she actually lived in a tile bathroom that was covered in tin foil, in aluminum foil. She slept on an army cotton cot that was washed in baking soda 20 times. If she wanted to read a book, my dad or I would have to bake the book in the oven to try to get that smell of new print out right so it could outgass. And then I would take the, sometimes the slightly charred book up to her bathroom and she would receive the book with gloves on and a charcoal mask. And then she would put the book inside a cellophane bag for extra protection, and then she would read. So just to give you a little picture of the weirdness of childhood, my parents brought me up in the church, kind of non denominational Christians. So I think they surprised a lot of people by not suing the gas company who had Installed this faulty heater. They didn't want to become bitter. You know, they were people that were praying for a miracle my whole life. And I was the good Christian kid who didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't sleep around, didn't swear. And I played piano on Sunday in church, and I took care of my mom. And I wanted to be a doctor so that I could help sick people like my mom. 18, I moved to New York City, and I went completely nuts. I went the opposite direction very quickly, you know, woke up one day. Now it's my turn. Down with the rules. You know, I want to smoke, I want to drink, I want to try drugs, I want to sleep around. You know, no one's going to tell me not to swear. And I wound up stumbling into this kind of bizarre occupation as a nightclub promoter. And, you know, I realized, boy, if you're interested in rebelling, you could do this in style in New York City. I mean, if you can fill up the right clubs with the most beautiful people, you can make a lot of money drinking for free, effectively drinking and partying in public. So I just fell in love with the opposite of my maybe sheltered religious life. And I worked at 40 different clubs over the next 10 years. And this is at the high end, you know, this is $25 cocktails, thousand dollars bottles of champagne. Ironically, I used to sell voss water for $10 a bottle. And, you know, and then this would be, you know, Jay Z at table one, Puff Daddy at table three. And then all the nightclub promoters with the models sitting at table two, thinking we were, you know, fabulous while we're spraying champagne, you know, the DJs playing the same songs, you know, the same night. So I did this for 10 years, and just vice after vice kind of just started to get darker. You know, spiritually bankrupt, emotionally bankrupt, morally bankrupt. Just turning into this decadent, selfish hedonist. And, you know, okay, but then I bought a BMW, you know, or then I bought a Rolex, you know, or I dated a girl on the COVID of a magazine. I would keep trying to collect these markers of success and significance. And I reached a point at 28 years old where I realized I would. I would never have enough. There would literally never be enough. Somebody always have more. And this. This absolute, selfish, hedonistic pursuit had left me hating myself, hating others. This kind of joyless, joyless, angry shell of the way I grew up. And I. And I realized, you know, just to put it maybe bluntly, if I died, and I probably would die young because we were doing lots of drugs and we were seeing people od. My tombstone, the. The best it could read would be, here lies a man who got a million people drunk. That would be my legacy. Thanks for that contribution to the world, Scott. You managed to get a million people drunk? Yeah, some of them were. Some of them laid, whatever. And I realized this. I was in South America, in Punta del Este, on this kind of decadent vacation, and I just realized I need to make a big change. And I don't need to make a pivot or a small course correction. I need to make a radical change. I need to basically do the opposite. And it was a little bit of like the prodigal son parable, you know, where I had walked away from everything I believed. And I found myself years later in this proverbial pig pen, basically eating crap and missing home, missing that spirituality, morality, and kind of value system, the faithfulness, the integrity of my parents, the loyalty, the love that they'd shown. So I sold everything I owned, and I said, I'm gonna start Life over at 28. The opposite of my life. The only thing I thought would be completely opposite would be one year of humanitarian service. Did I have any gifts or skills to offer people in need? Could I end some of the suffering in the world? And I applied to 10 organizations, famous charities, Doctors Without Borders and World Vision, and some of these big ones, Save the Children. Nobody would take me because they didn't know how I was qualified at all. And then finally, one organization said, if you're willing to live in Liberia, post war Liberia, and if you can pay us $500 every month, you can volunteer. So I was like, I'm in.
- [51:07]
B
Here we go.
- [51:08]
A
I'm in. What's more opposite than that? Living in the poorest country in the world at that time and paying to do it. And that year, where I served as a photojournalist, kind of a. I'd always taken decent photos and been a decent writer. I wound up spending a year that turned into two years. And that's where I saw dirty water for the first time in West Africa. And I learned that it was the cause of so much of the disease that the doctors I was there were trying to fight. And I just. I kind of had this unlock. Wow. If I really cared about global health, maybe I kind of could go back to that childhood vision of being a doctor. But I could do it through clean water by just giving the world the most basic need for health and for life. And I came back after two years. I was 30 I didn't know any better. I was living on a closet floor in New York City because I didn't have any money and hadn't saved and given everything I had away. And I just said, I'm going to start, I'm going to start a movement that helps people get clean drinking water and I'm going to help as many people as I can before I die.
- [52:14]
B
And in terms of going back to the projects then, so obviously that had a big impact on you and wanting to make change. You must have examples of, of the impact it has, have like communities where you put water in and what it's done for the schools, what it's done for the women, what it's done for the hospital. Like the economic impact. Give me some, tell me some of that stuff.
- [52:33]
A
Well, let me start with the data. The UN published an 88 page paper that looked at the economic benefit in a bunch of countries of clean water and sanitation. So let me just say these things do go hand in hand. You want to do water and then you want to make sure that people also have access to sanitation and hygiene. They found every dollar yielded four to eight times in economic impact. So by investing a dollar, you got a 4 to 8 x 4 to $8 economic return. And the big one, sure there were health savings, there were education improvements, but the big one was really turning lost time into income. I'm not exaggerating by saying that many women will walk eight hours every day, seven days a week, right? Because if you don't walk on Saturday and Sunday, there's no water for your family. So imagine then just giving a woman 56 hours back instantly when there's a water point near her home, five minutes away, 10 minutes away. And we see anecdotally stories of women selling rice at the market, building bricks, earning extra income, baking for the community, selling local beer and local brew. So there's a huge kind of data driven economic impact. There's also. Now we've got some before and after health studies in Nepal. We did a three year look back after we'd done a big water system. We found an 82% reduction in diarrheal disease. And that's just by going in. How many people were visiting the clinic in this whole region pre intervention for this, for dysentery and waterborne diseases? How many people post intervention? 82% drop. So huge benefits there. But the story that I think sums it up, you know, best is, is a story from Uganda and it's this wonderful woman named Helen Appio and this Is years ago, but interesting. Our team was just in Helen's village two weeks ago in Uganda with kind of an update, but as one of my favorite stories. So we, we had built a well in Helen's village in Uganda and we'd gone there just to, to see was the work done of a high quality, you know, where the partners doing a great job with the training and the water committee, all that stuff. We sat with Helen and said, how is your life now different after there's clean water? And she told us the story of two jerry cans, so two five gallon yellow cans that she would walk plastic cans and she would walk a far distance for water. She actually was getting clean water. She was going to a far away well, but it used up her whole day and she went twice now she had a huge family. And she said every day I was faced with the decision what do I do with too little water? And she said, here are my options. Do I cook for my family? Do I clean the house? Do I wash my kids school uniforms? Do I let them wash their bodies? Do I garden and grow food? She said, I always put my family's needs first because that's what Ugandan women do. And she said, now that there's clean water in my village right next to my house, she says this Peter, she says, now I am beautiful. We're like, honestly, we didn't get it. We're like, of course Helen, you're a beautiful Ugandan woman. What do you mean? She said, no, no, you don't understand. For the first time in my life, I have enough water to wash my face and my body and my clothes. And she said, now I am beautiful. Said, look at me. I am looking so smart. So you know, the dignity right here you have a woman who is stuck in a terrible situation, is trying to do the best she can for her family who is out there on the road walking for water, you know, walking probably an extra distance to a far away well so that it's clean water. And now she can be clean. Now her clothes can be clean, you know, and what she was using is still probably a fraction of what we would take for granted. You know, every single day coming out of taps and you know, out of our ice machines. So you know, there's stories like that all over the world. You know, we've seen schools where the girls rate of tuition will jump up after a water project because the girls don't have to walk for water anymore. They can go to school, they don't have to stay home four or five Days every month because the school has no water and toilets. Right. So these, these things you don't even think about, it's, it's just, it's an awesome issue to work on because everyone can stand for clean water. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or an independent or a libertarian, you know, everyone thinks people need water. Yeah. If you're a person of faith or, you know, you think like, faith is anathema and the stupidest concept ever, like, you can still stand for clean water. So it's actually allowed us to build a pitch, a pretty big tent and invite a diverse group of people who might fight about politics, social issues, fiscal policy, but can come together and stand for clean water if it's done in a transparent and effective way.
- [57:48]
B
Wow. Okay, so let's get into the numbers. Let's talk about the economics. Early on, you said you separate the operational costs from the project cost, which I think super interesting because one of my friends was working for a charity at one point, I won't get the number correct, but he told me something like, for every pound they raise, like 78 pence is used to run the charity. It was some ridiculous number.
- [58:11]
A
I was like, yeah, it should be about the opposite of that.
- [58:14]
B
Yeah. He was like, yeah, about 22% goes to the charity. I was like. I was like, that's a real disincentive to give because I would much rather just go and hand people money, like where I know it's going to go. So. So it's not. I'm not saying this is all charities, but I tend to find with charities it can be opaque, what the split is, where it goes. And I've heard of extremely well paid marketing directors at charities, like extremely well paid. And I'm not saying they shouldn't be, and perhaps they need it, but it's just the opaqueness of it. So the fact that you separated the two is super interesting. Does that mean you have to fundraise in different ways?
- [58:49]
A
Yes. And we do pay marketing directors. Well, because I'm trying to attract people from Square or Google or Pinterest. We're trying to get some of the best people. Now we can pay a fraction of what those companies can and there's no equity. It's not like you get stock in charity water. But there's a guy, Dan Pallotta, who says some really smart things about overhead and how charities are so starved often that they can just never compete. You know, we're trying to get members for. I'll just give an example. We Launched a new membership program called the Spring, which is like Spotify or Netflix or Disney plus or, you know, Hulu for clean water, where people show up every month, they give 20, 30, 40 bucks a month. We have about 75,000 members, and that allows us to help about half a million people every year. And those members across 147 countries. But we don't really have a marketing budget, Peter. Disney went from 0 to 100 million people in a year because they had a great catalog and product and they had billions of dollars of marketing. So, you know, I will say that the social sector is always at a disadvantage because we can't compete on pay. You know, we don't have these marketing budgets. I mean, people are very comfortable with Coke or Pepsi spending billions of dollars marketing like death. I mean, I'm just saying, you know, sugar, sugar, death, like sugar, you know, or Philip Morris or, you know, I'm not picking on him. I'm just kind of the construct. Even you could argue McDonald's, right? It's maybe not great for you, but they have, you know, almost unlimited marketing budgets to get people inside McDonald's to buy big Macs or to buy Coke or to buy Pepsi. Save the Children, you know, Doctors Without Borders, water. You could argue we're doing noble work right around the world. We're trying to provide life's most basic needs for people. And you're just. You're always at that disadvantage. So I think that's just worth saying that we've tried to solve that by separating the overhead and saying to the public, this will never be your problem. How much we pay our marketing director that we hope to recruit from Google will never be your problem. And we went to 120 people to pay for all that overhead. Most of those people, Peter, are entrepreneurs who have built businesses and they know that without the top talent, right? And then retaining that top talent, you just can't execute with excellence. So it's the founders of Spotify and Pinterest, you know, Jack was one of the earliest, you know, kind of overhead donors to water. It's, you know, Toby from Shopify, it's Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn. It's people who are happy to pay for the software engineer or the marketing director or the office, when we had one, to then allow this very powerful model to be offered to the public. That said, we still run at 80% programs, efficiency, and 20 cents on the dollar to run the org. So even though we're technically accountable, we're the opposite of what you just said. 20 cents on the dollar to run. And this is all audited. And you can go, we've posted 15 years of audited financials and KPMG actually comes in, in audits, the 100% model, every year and writes an opinion just so people don't think. And there literally are two separately audited bank accounts. So every, every single dollar we use for overhead has a paper trail that is audited behind it. You couldn't go on our website right now and find a single link that would stumble you into the overhead bank account.
- [62:28]
B
And you raised about 100 million a year. Did you say we will?
- [62:31]
A
This year we've done 600 million in total. We've been growing a lot because of this subscription program. To be honest, I was with the Spotify founder five years ago in Ethiopia and we were in the back of a Land Rover. And you know, I was just telling him where we were and how ambitious we were and how much money we would need to raise. And he's like, dude, your business model sucks. He's like, January 1st, your ticker rolls back to zero. All the money you raised last year, you have to go figure out how to go raise it again and then grow. Why don't you just get a bunch of people to show up every single month loyally and tell them where their money's going and build momentum there? So, I mean, it seems so obvious, Peter. Right? But I'm like, I guess I will.
- [63:13]
B
I guess retention's good on that though.
- [63:15]
A
Because it is, it is. It's actually better than Netflix or Hulu or Amazon prime. Even our 12 month retention. And there's just a lot of people that can give 20, 30, $40 a month, especially if they know that all of it is going to help without even feeling it.
- [63:32]
B
Can you pick your amount?
- [63:34]
A
You can, yeah. I mean, we kind of anchor at 40, which is what it costs to give one person clean water. But we have ladies in their 90s giving $10 a month off their pension. We have kids giving their allowance to their parents so their parents can donate on their behalf every month because they don't have a credit card. So it is. And we have people that give 100 bucks a month. I mean, it's all over the place. It's really more about the consistent participation and our ability to bring this community along. You know, one other just detail, we even pay back all the credit card fees. So we don't really advertise this. But for us to feel that there is total integrity in the 100% model, if you gave 100 bucks a month on your Amex, I would actually get 97, but the overhead donors pay that $3, and then we send your 400 to the field.
- [64:23]
B
Great. Okay, so let's finish off on the bitcoin fund, bitcoin trust that you're building here and talk about how people listening can help. And I'll help. Like, send me your bitcoin address afterwards. I'll send you $10,000. That's not a problem.
- [64:37]
A
Yeah. Oh, thank you, Peter. That's amazing. So the concept was kind of barbell approach. Could we find 100 people that would be willing to do one bitcoin? We realize depending on the timing of last couple months, that's, you know, 30. 30 to 40 grand, or it's 60 grand. And we were calling that the founding 100. And then I went and said, I wonder if I could get somebody to match that. So wound up getting the Winklevoss twins to match the first 50 Bitcoin that we got in that. And we're at 47 and a half. So we're about two and a half away from having 100, which is a great start to the fund. That said, we've seen people that have done one bitcoin, and we've seen a bunch of people that have done $100 in Bitcoin who just like this idea. I think your listeners will get a kick out of this. As I went to a bunch of people and said, hey, would you donate a bitcoin? Some of them said, I'll actually give you the $50,000 so that you don't want to give me the bitcoin. Bitcoin, yeah. So we had people who loved the idea so much, and they said, you know, I'm not going to part with my bitcoin, but I will, you know, how much? You know, what's the price today? I'll wire you $51,000. Please buy that for me and put that in the trust and lock it up. So, you know, we've been pretty flexible. There's a website. It's all transparent. You can see who's given. You can give with your name. You can give pseudonymously. You can give completely anonymously, and it is tax deductible. It's charitywater.org bitcoin. I'm good, and thank you so much. I appreciate it. So we're very close to unlocking this 50 Bitcoin match, which is 3 million bucks today, and I believe a lot more in the future. And I will say that, you know, while this is A simple idea. We're not messing with Defi and we're just, we're going to just put it, it's in cold storage. We're going to hold it and then release, start releasing it in 2025. But we hope to spend this money in Bitcoin in 2025 and beyond. So the thought is not to convert back to dollar or euro, but maybe even pay for these water projects using bitcoin four years from now or at the very least go from bitcoin to the local currency, kind of bypassing our fiat system. So I think we might be able to do some really interesting things. Putting an advisory committee together between now and that moment where it's released and it starts helping people get clean water in the future.
- [67:05]
B
Well, there's a chance that it appreciates as quick as you can spend it at times as well. That five year, well, four year halving goal is really good. Obviously we hope that Bitcoin does another 10x in that period and Bitcoin goes from 50,000 to 500,000 or something and that's going to accelerate your project. So I think that's a super smart idea. I've got the page open now, so I'm going to go and I'm going to go make a. I'm going to send you $10,000. I'll ping this out to everyone, everyone listening. Thank you, everyone listening. Go fucking check this out and donate. We're only two and a half. Even less.
- [67:40]
A
We're like 2.2, 2.3 Bitcoin away from unlocking 50.
- [67:45]
B
Yeah, we're 2.3 Bitcoin away from unlocking fifty. So let's, let's everyone donate. Everyone go and support Scott. This is an amazing project, dude. Like, keep crushing man.
- [67:57]
A
You're so kind. Thanks for letting me tell the story and you were so nice to me in Miami. I appreciate, appreciate the friendship and just your care.
- [68:04]
B
I would like this, I'd like to do this again though in person. I much prefer in person interviews. So maybe maybe April and we've got.
- [68:11]
A
Some huge news when you come back to Nashville or you know, I'm in New York next week. I'm in LA all the time. I'm in Austin.
- [68:17]
B
You're in New York next week?
- [68:18]
A
I am.
- [68:19]
B
What date are you there?
- [68:20]
A
26 and 27.
- [68:22]
B
I'm. Fuck sake. We could have done it. I'm there 26, 27 and there's 26 to 29. Look, just hang out. Let's grab a coffee. Anyway, if you've got Time.
- [68:30]
A
Of course, man. Thank you. Thanks for the kindness. Your community is great. And I guess the last thing I'd say is I really believe bitcoin can be a force for good in the world. And we're just trying to prove out a model here for maybe even other charities to take this super innovative thing, this resource, and turn it into water. I mean, if we can turn bitcoin into. Into clean water for people, I just think it's a good thing to do. It's an inarguable common good there and a really positive story.
- [69:05]
B
I couldn't agree more. Just tell people where to go again and tell them where to follow you as well.
- [69:09]
A
Sure. Charitywater.org bitcoin charitywater.org bitcoin and I'm just my name and Charity Water, I guess, wherever. Although I just post about my kids these days. But go follow Charity Water.
- [69:22]
B
All right, my man. Listen, stay in touch. Anything you need, you can always reach out to me. You got my number. And, yeah, like, maybe I'll see you in New York next week. And if not, I'll definitely see you in Nashville next year. Keep crushing it, man. It's an amazing project. Yeah. Just congratulations for everything you've achieved for so many people.
- [69:37]
A
Thanks, man. You're kind and I appreciate the friendship.
- [69:42]
B
Okay. If you want to get in touch, you want to reach out to me, you can hop into my telegram group or hit me up on my email, which is hello or what? Bitcoindid.com Outside of that, if you want to support the show, if you heard this message every week, you've never done it, hop onto Apple Podcasts and leave me a review. Hopefully you love the show and you're like, you know what, Pete? I'm gonna give you five stars. Maybe you hate it. Maybe you come every week and you hate it and you think it's shit and you wanna leave one star, that's fine. I take anything. All right, I love you all and I'll see you all on Friday.