Some mid-trip thoughts from Kenya after @btcplusplus. There are smart bitcoiners all over the world working on things they believe are important, and that often are important in principle, but the work is frequently disconnected from activities that affect real users. (e.g., End the Fed, cypherpunk citadels, abstract sovereignty debates, etc.) After a while with no real progress, it starts to sound pedantic/shrill. The difference in Kenya, partly enabled by the ubiquity of M-Pesa and the problems it brings, is that the ideas and solutions people come up with here have immediate and substantial impact on the lives of people around them. The hackathon projects were full of remittance apps, developer education projects, and tools aimed directly at the communities they actually know. And when people see those projects come to life, they immediately connect them with people they know back home who desperately need these solutions. (Hence the massive cheers and applause during the hackathon finalist presentations) That creates a flywheel of enthusiasm, urgency, agency, and mountain-moving energy that is hard not to be inspired by. I think orgs like @btrustteam and @HRF understand this deeply, which is why they’ve focused so much effort on this region. I’m grateful for the first half of the trip, and looking forward to the rest, including @btcnairobi_conf this week.