The Frontier

Jason explains Tando is a translation layer between Bitcoin’s Lightning Network and Kenya’s mobile money system M-Pesa, enabling anyone to spend Bitcoin anywhere M-Pesa is accepted by converting a payment to sats.

Odell notes Africa leapfrogged bank infrastructure by adopting mobile money, creating a programmatic network that pragmatic Bitcoin tools like Tando can plug into for rapid utility.

Jason states M-Pesa has 40 million users in Kenya and is accepted by nearly all merchants, especially in rural areas where it and cash dominate over cards.

Jason says M-Pesa accounts have a balance limit of 2,000 shillings and a transaction limit of 250,000 shillings, with larger transactions requiring a bank.

Odell argues centralized payment rails like M-Pesa and Venmo enable private bank digital currencies (PBDCs), which pose similar surveillance and censorship risks as CBDCs due to public-private partnerships.

Jason describes Tando’s new feature where any Kenyan phone number can receive Bitcoin via a Lightning address, defaulting to M-Pesa shillings if the recipient isn't a Bitcoiner.

Odell criticizes phone numbers as a de facto digital ID with a dangerous network effect, enabling pervasive data linking across marketing, financial, and government systems.

Jason reports Tando has 5,000 user accounts that have made transactions, processing 112,000 total transactions to 31,000 distinct recipients across the M-Pesa network in eighteen months.

Jason says Kenya’s central bank will enforce crypto company registration by November, driven by IMF and FATF pressure to combat scams, moving from a previously unregulated stance.

Odell advocates for a two-pronged strategy of building pragmatic tools and fighting legal battles, noting governments won’t ignore impactful projects and eventual scale brings political leverage.

Anjan Sundaram launched the Stringer Foundation's inaugural award after receiving 776 applications from journalists in 129 countries and 14 languages.

Sundaram used a proprietary 'courage index' to select 25 finalists, a system measuring risk relative to resources that yielded a list that was 50% women and 75% from the Global South without quotas.

Sundaram secured a full-page announcement for the 25 finalists in the New York Times weekend edition on April 11, donated by the paper, which he cites as a key recognition tool for marginalized journalists.

The Stringer Foundation has raised a guaranteed $1.5 million for its prize fund over three years, planning to distribute it among one winner, two fellows, and five grantees.

Sundaram argues the current international news system structurally exploits frontline local journalists, whose deep reporting is often repackaged by major outlets without proper credit or financial reward.

In response to AI-generated content, Sundaram believes elevating individual journalists as trusted, subjective fact-based influencers is more viable than relying on opaque institutional editorial lines.

Sundaram developed a personal safety app called Kintab, which allows users to send an encrypted SOS with location and journal data to a trusted network, automating techniques used by war reporters.

Sundaram debated Odell on the security model of Kintab, defending a closed-source approach audited by a Cisco researcher against Odell's insistence that open-source is the gold standard for life-critical trust-minimized software.

Sundaram is writing a book about indigenous environmental defenders in Mexico being targeted by organized crime for industrial projects, set for publication next year by Chelsea Green.

The Stringer Foundation is building a network of 75 psychologists, primarily outside the US, to offer low-cost mental health support to its global journalist applicants.