Building Bitcoin in Suriname

Transcript

Hi, good afternoon everyone. Uh, thank you so much for being here uh, today. My name is Maya. I'm from a small country on the northern coast of South America called Surinam. A country you've probably never heard of. Um, but it's a new hub for innovation. We're going to be one of the largest producers of oil over the next decade. Uh it's estimated that we have more oil than Qatar. Uh we're 93% forested. So we're a world record holder for the most forested country in the world actually. So if you want to visit the Amazon, Surinum is the

place to be. Uh we have a fairly small population about 600,000 people 4.7 billion uh GDP so it's a fairly small country uh and it's ripe for innovation. It's the perfect location for you to start from basically scratch because there's a lack of financial infrastructure, lack of development. Um so it's one of the countries where innovation is basically going to happen because you don't have legacy incumbents. You don't have legacy systems similar to what you have in the west or even in in other uh developed nations in Central and Latin America

because of the development gap. You can build from scratch and pilot with a small population with a small footprint and the cost of you know actually getting customers in a country as small as ours is actually fairly fairly low. So you can operate with a small budget in a country as uh Cerna. Uh we just had a change of government. So, we have a very um open-minded, progressive, hands-off uh approach to innovation. They're very um open-minded, welcome to investors uh to innovators moving into the country.

We have a lot of experts already moving in from the oil and gas industry. So, yeah, I I if you're investing into biotech, we have a very biodiverse country as well. So biotech, oil and gas, uh blockchain, anything in finance, capital market development, is the place to be. Uh I've actually been working on uh in lobbying for adoption of Bitcoin as the de facto currency of my country for almost uh a decade now and for a development of capital markets uh about for the same time. So we have a a a top

down and a bottom up approach. Uh I've been working very closely with with government uh for about the last decade uh to make sure that it's a good environment for companies to come in and innovate. Uh and we also have a a a grassroots movement in the country uh our little circular economy. We have our own uh little bitcoin conference that goes on every year and more and more bitcoiners are moving into the country as well and we have a a small community that's working on uh financial infrastructure. So uh we have a community that's working on uh POS systems using Bitcoin uh NFC cards. you have people working on um a wide range

of of applications on on Noster e-commerce uh real estate. I'm actually have a particular focus uh on real estate as well and innovation using Bitcoin as uh a storage of value in a diversified portfolio in a REIT um and building an application for that. So there's a lot happening on the ground, more than you would think or or I think even have even heard about. So it's definitely uh should be one of the places on your list to visit. And also if you're thinking about uh partnering with a local university uh local government building

um something new as Bitcoin becomes the reserve currency of the world within the next few decades um I'm hoping within the next decade um I think building native applications building applications with Bitcoin at its core um we focus very much on abstracting the complexity and making just apps that use the advantages of the technology and um of course the reserved benefit of it and working towards a world that will be more innovative and you know less of a dystopia as you can see what's happening currently in fiat world um and building a future that is open and shared with a

shared economy more decentralized with more wealth distributed fairly and equally Y and contrary to you know what we is saying we firmly believe that you will own everything and you will be happy. So help us build that future. Thank you.