How To Transform an Entire City’s Payment System

🔥Crypto Fireside #11 — Interviews with crypto people.

How To Transform an Entire City’s Payment System
Nathan Hubbard

🔥Crypto Fireside #11 — Interviews with crypto people.

🔥Hello! Who are you, and what do you do?

NH: I’m Nathan, and I’ve been entrusted with growing Bitcoin Cash City in North Queensland, Australia to be the world’s most envied crypto city and region. It is an amazing place to live. We expect consumers and merchants to use Bitcoin Cash for every transaction every day.

We are creating mass adoption of Bitcoin Cash by engaging with merchants and consumers to educate them on the benefits that a permissionless peer-to-peer electronic currency can unlock for humanity. We think globally but act locally because Bitcoin Cash is worthy of our efforts, and we all must share the burden of promoting Bitcoin Cash.

It’s an excellent place to be (North Queensland); currently, one can live in Bitcoin Cash City and obtain close to everything you want using Bitcoin Cash. It is an ideal forward-thinking and progressive place to be, and we hope to attract many more like-minded people to come and live here.

Something exceptional about this initiative is that our merchants accept Bitcoin Cash directly in their businesses without using the services of payment processors. This increases the speed of the transactions and makes it easier for merchants to get paid.

Our biggest claim to fame is that in terms of physical merchants that accept Bitcoin Cash, we have more here in Bitcoin Cash City per capita than anywhere else in the world…

🔥What’s your backstory, and how did Bitcoin Cash City come about?

NH: Most of my early life was spent investing in and researching the stock market. Eventually, I worked out that there was something fundamentally wrong with our monetary and banking system. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly but decided to quit trading those markets because I knew that it didn’t matter how smart I was and how much more research I did. There was always another party ahead of the game that was front-running and able to profit. Many more years passed before I fully comprehended the real grift of central banking and the money markets around it.

I started watching Bitcoin in 2014 when my friend’s coffee shop started to accept it from one particular customer. It had me intrigued, and off I rushed to do my research. I was interested; however, I had a few concerns. The biggest one is that I had seen plenty of great ideas that were just too early for their time, and rarely ever is the first generation of any technology the one that gains mass adoption. No one uses Netscape anymore, and Google was a long way from the first search engine ever produced, so why would Bitcoin be our new money?

I also needed to see that everyday people would accept crypto as a ‘real thing,’ and the bull run of 2017 proved that ordinary people do get it. Crypto has the potential to actually be an electronic currency for the world.

I actively promoted Bitcoin Cash to merchants and consumers in 2018 when a friend came back from living in Japan and was all over Bitcoin Cash. We were organizing meetups and got a couple of merchants on board in Cairns, North Queensland, and I’ve been active ever since then.

Nathan and Duca

🔥Take us through the process of what it is that you did to design and develop Bitcoin Cash City.

NH: The brand was born from a conference that was established for Bitcoin Cash developers and enthusiasts in 2019 (above). The whole vibe of the conference was to be the first crypto conference where the tickets had to be bought in crypto, but also the attendees would be able to do everything they needed to do around town using Bitcoin Cash. The venues accepted Bitcoin Cash, delegates caught taxis using Bitcoin Cash, accommodation providers, and tourism providers all accepted Bitcoin Cash and it was really well received by representatives.

The conference is slated to be an annual event; however, circumstances saw us cancel the event last year. With international travel still restricted, we won’t be able to hold it this year either. We are currently planning the next Bitcoin Cash City Conference for 2022.

A solid core of merchants was established at the time of the first conference, and although the world has had its challenges over the past 18 months, the time is right for Bitcoin Cash acceptance to explode in North Queensland, and I feel that I have come on board at the right time to make it happen.

Bitcoin Cash City Local Meetup

🔥Describe the process of launching Bitcoin Cash City.

NH: I’m not sure that ‘launch’ is the best way to describe the formation of Bitcoin Cash City. For an extended period, there has been a core collection of passionate people in North Queensland driving Bitcoin Cash adoption. Over the years, different education initiatives have been run for Bitcoin Cash throughout North Queensland. It culminated in putting together the conference in 2019, which really “launched” the brand and the direction that Bitcoin Cash City has taken.

I can’t claim to have been around for the launch of Bitcoin Cash City, but I feel that I have come on board at the right time to take the reins and ride this bronco. We are making the North Queensland region the most advanced crypto space globally, and that starts with getting everyday people to use it.

🔥Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers or users?

NH: In the early days, we had to constantly communicate with our merchants and nurture them. It’s essential for merchants that don’t have high traffic flows as it’s easy for them to forget that they are part of a team that is changing the world. We have to reinforce that they are creating change for the better and that their little contribution of accepting Bitcoin Cash actually makes a big difference. They need to fully comprehend that they are part of a team that at the moment is engaged in a David versus Goliath battle to free humanity from the slave chains of the banking system.

🔥What does your day-to-day look like?

NH: There is a lot of trawling through Reddit and Twitter, staying up to date with what’s happening with Bitcoin Cash. We have a team of contractors from Venezuela that I am in daily contact with that help with our graphic design work and creating videos of new merchants and the Bitcoin Cash City Tour series that showcases the merchants through North Queensland.

I spend a fair bit of time organizing meetups and communicating with our Bitcoin Cash advocates around the city. We try to hold a meetup every 2–4 weeks to keep everyone in the loop and up to date with the happenings of Bitcoin Cash and organize information nights for merchants.

There is the odd call for support from a merchant that might want to better understand something or have a new staff member trained, and then there is following up of new leads of merchants that express an interest in beginning the process of accepting Bitcoin Cash.

🔥How are you doing today, and what does the future look like?

NH: I have just set a date with a vendor for our next meetup, so my next task is to get in touch with our team to create the marketing materials to promote it.

We are working to create hot spots around North Queensland in shopping complexes where we can get a high percentage of merchants to accept Bitcoin Cash and send consumers to these complexes for a great payment experience.

We are also beginning to formally organize information evenings for merchants around the issues they face when accepting Bitcoin Cash. The next topic for these meetings is integrating Bitcoin Cash payments into their current accounting systems and how the Australian Tax Office would like to see businesses account for crypto payments.

Along with all of those jobs follows a long list of flyers and brochures to create and redesign our website.

Nathan Hubbard

🔥Through starting Bitcoin Cash City, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

NH: Mass marketing doesn’t work for this kind of operation, certainly not in developed countries where the currency system still functions. Getting consumers and merchants to want to change their ways when they perceive that the current manner in which they do things is working is a challenging task.

Instead, we turn our attention to finding pioneers of the business world who are happy to explore new ideas and go where no other business has gone before them. It’s possibly a bit like finding the explorers of yesteryear. I would like to know how anyone found Magellan, Christopher Columbus, or even Captain Cook and decided that they were the right people to hand over a couple of ships and supplies and let them go forth to explore.

It’s a personality subset that we are yet to precisely nail down. Still, it involves finding innovators in business and turning them to focus on the future of electronic payments while supporting them through the learning process.

Bitcoin Cash City Pizza Day

🔥What platform and tools do you use for your business?

NH: We couldn’t do it without Telegram to communicate with our team, Reddit is great for keeping you up to speed on developments with Bitcoin Cash, and the other significant socials channels that we use are Read.cash and Noise.cash which are Bitcoin Cash specific social channels which allow users to easily tip each other when they read their content. My basic photoshop skills have also come in very handy.

I source lots of services from contractors, and the talent available in a place like Venezuela is impressive. I have found many of these contractors on outsourcing sites like CoinGigs.com. And it just so happens that it lends itself well to having a cross-border payment system.

🔥What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

NH: Mike Maloney from goldsilver.com is a big inspiration with his YouTube series “The hidden secrets of money” being a godsend for anyone looking for an easy explanation and clearer view of what money actually is and what it is not.

G Edward Griffin’s book The Creature from Jekyll Island is an eye-opening read and one that is a must for anyone trying to work out how our monetary system has gotten to the point where it finds itself at the moment.

I like listening to many podcasters in the precious metals space as they have been onto how falsified our monetary system for a long time and researching the details of the discrepancies that appear.

🔥Do you have any advice for other creators, entrepreneurs, or developers who want to get started or are just starting out?

NH: For anyone that wants to help grow the adoption of Bitcoin Cash, just go and find a meetup, and if there isn’t one in your area, start one. It is the first step, and it’s not a hard one.

I’ve been at meetups that were organized by a friend and myself, and we were the only ones to turn up, so we spent the evening chatting with the bar owner. On other occasions, there might only be a couple of other people who turn up, but attendees always have varied reasons for showing an interest in Bitcoin Cash. I have never had a bad evening at a Bitcoin Cash meetup.

Talking to businesses about taking Bitcoin Cash as a payment option is a more challenging task, but starting the conversation in your favorite shop can be as easy as asking, “Do you guys accept Bitcoin Cash yet?”.

🔥Where do you see this entire crypto space going in the next 5 years, 10 years?

NH: We have been blessed with the enlightenment of distributed ledger technologies, and it truly will change the world, and whether that is for better or for worse will be up to how quickly we want to adopt it.

Speaking specifically about currencies, I know that mankind has a short window to start using crypto for payments and shift the power away from our worldwide central banking system. If we don’t take hold of this opportunity, crypto will be morphed into our current centralized system, and instead of freeing humanity, the blockchain will enslave us all like no other tool in history.

🔥Where can we go to learn more?

NH: Check us out on

Youtube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCITfFRIHm4RD2xv_RB378IQ

Reddit — u/BitcoinCashCity

Noise.cash — https://noise.cash/u/BitcoinCashCity

Read.cash — https://read.cash/@BitcoinCashCity

Twitter — https://twitter.com/BitcoinCashCity

Website — https://bitcoincashcity.com/

Odysee — https://odysee.com/@BitcoinCashCity:9

Telegram — Bitcoin Cash City

🔥Thank you, Nathan!

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