Maya Parbhoe, co-founder of Daedalus Labs, discusses their startup’s focus on replacing mortgages and rethinking real estate investment using Bitcoin.
They use Liquid to increase liquidity in real estate investment trusts and make it more accessible for investors.
On the user side, they buy an equivalent amount of Bitcoin when an asset is purchased, creating an overcollateralized asset.
Maya shares her orange pill moment and her dedication to Bitcoin adoption in Suriname.
She also discusses the challenges Suriname faces in economic development and how Bitcoin adoption can address these issues. Suriname has vast resources, including gold and oil, but corruption hampers development.
Bitcoin is seen as a solution to prevent corruption and stabilize the economy.
Suriname aims to become a breeding ground for open-source technology and decentralized protocols, empowering its people and removing foreign entities’ control.
The country has the potential to create a debt-free system by building a capital market on a Bitcoin standard, allowing companies to raise funds without high interest rates. Interested individuals and organizations can join the Bitcoin Sranan Telegram group to contribute and support Suriname’s Bitcoin adoption. https://t.me/bitcoinsranan
Watch the interview:
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Chapters
01:07 Rethinking Real Estate Investment
06:25 BTC Prague Pitch Contest
07:47 The Orange Pill Moment
09:36 Early Exposure to Bitcoin
12:30 Challenges in Building Infrastructure
16:03 Suriname as the Next Bitcoin Adopter
26:35 Unity Among South American Countries
32:42 Bitcoin Adoption as a Solution
32:58 Bitcoin Adoption: Eliminating Corruption and Creating an Economy of Abundance
35:44 Privatization and Decreasing Bureaucracy: Streamlining Government Services
37:04 Innovation Free Zone: Fostering Open-Source Technology
38:49 Suriname: A Perfect Pilot Environment for Bitcoin Adoption
45:56 Building a Capital Market on a Bitcoin Standard
55:50 Suriname’s Potential: Abundant Resources and a Small Population
Takeaways:
Daedalus Labs is focused on replacing mortgages and rethinking real estate investment using Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is used to increase liquidity in real estate investment trusts and make real estate investment more accessible.
Maya Parbu’s orange pill moment was when WikiLeaks started accepting donations in Bitcoin, which made her realize the potential of Bitcoin.
Suriname faces challenges in economic development due to corruption and government mismanagement.
Bitcoin adoption can address these issues by providing transparency, eliminating corruption, and enabling economic growth. Bitcoin adoption in Suriname can eliminate corruption and create an economy of abundance.
Replacing the Surinamese dollar with Bitcoin as the main currency can prevent inflation and increase the value of salaries.
Privatizing government services and decreasing bureaucracy can lead to more efficient operations.
Establishing an innovation free zone can foster the development of open-source technology and challenge centralized tech giants.
Suriname’s small population and abundant resources make it an ideal environment for Bitcoin adoption and technological innovation.
Building a capital market on a Bitcoin standard can provide funding opportunities for companies without relying on debt and create a system of abundance.
Full Transcript:
dani go (00:02.426)
Welcome to the Heartbit Podcast, where we HODL around our Mempool campfire and talk about the exciting things we see. I’m Dani, your fellow Bitcoin explorer, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Maya Parbhoe, whose expertise ranges across business administration, entrepreneurship, and Bitcoin. Hello, Maya. How are you?
Maya Parbhoe (00:23.112)
Hi, Danny. I’m good. How are you?
dani go (00:25.753)
I’m excited to get to know you better and learn a little bit about your Bitcoin journey. Would you like to start by telling us about maybe what you’re working towards at the moment?
Maya Parbhoe (00:39.048)
Well, we recently launched our startup Daedalus Labs, which is just focused on building real -world applications. So just solving real -world problems for people. I think the technology is there right now and the industry is there as well. So we’re focusing on replacing mortgages actually and rethinking the way that people invest into and people acquire real estate.
dani go (01:09.633)
And how does Bitcoin come into play in that endeavor?
Maya Parbhoe (01:15.432)
Well, we use on the one side on the investor side we use liquid to increase liquidity into the real estate investment trust. So it’s the first of its kind Bitcoin real estate investment trust. And a real estate investment trust is basically just a vehicle that’s traditionally used for investments into real estate. And traditionally, it is very skewed towards the top 1%. It’s
It’s crazy, just if you look at Blackstone, for example, which is the world’s largest real estate investment trust, it owns almost, I believe, 70 % of the assets in the US, which is insane for one institution, right? So we wanted to rethink how we move away from needing a bank for a mortgage because we’re all
dani go (02:03.417)
Yeah.
Maya Parbhoe (02:13.512)
in the team, we’re all Bitcoin maxis, and most of us still have a mortgage. And unless you have a couple of hundred K lying at home, you don’t just want to, you know, pay that off in one go. So you’re still kind of stuck with the bank. So we were thinking of how would a system work that is not, you know, based on debt.
and it has Bitcoin on it at its core. And then I basically just dove into my skillset because capital markets and capital market infrastructure has been an obsession of mine since I was a kid and just tech stocks and technology companies and following how they grew over time. So I just took my skillset from Yale, from Oxford and then applied that.
to solving this problem together with Judy Bars, who was at Rabobank for over eight years, also dreaming about doing the same thing. Like, how do we get rid of mortgages? And then moving away from a debt -based system where you’re just basically paying almost the same value of the home, like the underlying real estate assets, you’re almost paying the entire value of that home over the duration of the loan.
Right? And mortgage is basically just, it means death pledge, literally translated. So it’s, you’re basically paying it off 15 to 20 years to 30 years on average. So by the time you pay it off, you’ll most likely be either in your fifties or in your sixties. So it takes almost your entire lifetime to get rid of that debt. And we use Bitcoin on the one side enabling
dani go (03:39.417)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (04:07.464)
easier investment into real estate and commercial real estate, for example, all piled into one portfolio using liquid. So traditionally you’d need also a high amount to be able to access a traditional read. You’d need at least a hundred K. Some of them are started 250 K for you to be able to invest into. So on the investment side, we make it easier and it’s more accessible.
because we can actually fractionalize it all the way down to one dollar using liquid. So it’s more accessible on the investment side for people to create more wealth and have community ownership of real estate. And then on the user side, we actually make it so that when you purchase an asset, we buy an equivalent amount in Bitcoin of that asset. So it’s kind of…
similar to what MicroStrategy is doing in shares to kind of explain it simply. You know, they’re issuing shares and they’re buying Bitcoin and holding it in treasury in a company, right? A publicly traded company. A REIT can be publicly traded. And in the same way, we accept fiat, we purchase the real estate asset with that fiat, but we also buy Bitcoin. So you have an over collateralized asset.
where the amount that we purchase in Bitcoin actually we believe, you know, it keeps increasing over time in value and the fiat value keeps shrinking over time, to put it fairly simply. So we’ve created a vehicle that just absorbs fiat, absorbs real estate assets and converts it to what we think is what real estate needs to go back to. It’s its utility value.
Right, because right now prices are inflated, it has lost touch with reality. It’s just inflated over the years and it’s been used as a speculative asset because of the way that the system has been structured. So to fix that problem and bring it back to its utility value, that’s why we’re building Resin.
dani go (06:18.297)
huh.
dani go (06:28.129)
So, did you guys, are you already in BTC Prague or are you still in the competition process?
Maya Parbhoe (06:37.129)
Yeah, so we’re actually in the BTC Frag Pitch Contest. Last time, look, we were third place. So we’re trying to get more traction to get us back to top one or top two.
dani go (06:53.209)
But I think it’s like the top eight that get in.
Maya Parbhoe (06:56.424)
Yeah, but I’m a bit of an overachiever, so I want to go for number one.
dani go (06:59.189)
No, that’s great. That’s totally fair. But it sounds like you will probably have a chance to pitch it there as the next step for the project.
Maya Parbhoe (07:10.28)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, we’re still, we’ve already raised pre -seed. So we’ve been working on this for a while now with the team. And we just, you know, pitching at BTC Prague is an amazing opportunity because it’s, you know, one of the largest conferences in Europe. And we love the organization. We stand behind their ideology. And, you know, it’s truly diehard Bitcoin only and very maxi.
So we’d love to be able to pitch on stage and share what we’re building with the rest of the world at BDC Prague would be a great launch.
dani go (07:49.721)
Well, hopefully that pans out for you guys. So, I wanted to, well, changing subjects a bit, going a little bit more to the basics and I wanted to talk to you about what was your orange pill moment? Like what was that experience that made you go all into Bitcoin? That moment that you were like,
Maya Parbhoe (07:54.12)
Okay.
dani go (08:13.305)
This is it.
Maya Parbhoe (08:14.12)
So, well, actually when I read the white paper in 2012, I was stupid. I didn’t invest at the time and it was very cheap. But I was just, you know, I just read it and I was like, okay, this is a solution to the 2008, what happened in the 2008 financial crisis. And this is the answer. And this is gonna be huge. But it wasn’t actually until Wikileaks started accepting donations in Bitcoin.
that was my aha moment, like, okay, this is gonna blow up, it’s gonna be insane, and it’s unstoppable, it’s gonna scale globally, and just Metcalfe’s law, you know, network effect, it’s gonna keep scaling and keep scaling and going exponentially until it’s reached, I think, the largest part of the population, which it still hasn’t.
dani go (08:50.137)
someone.
Maya Parbhoe (09:11.112)
So we have a long way to go still, but it’s very exciting. But that was my moment where I decided, okay, I’m gonna dedicate the rest of my life to helping Bitcoin adoption, especially in my own country, because I see it as a solution for the problems we face in our economy here. So I’ve been advocating for it here, and I just wanna help adoption in whatever way I can.
dani go (09:40.537)
Very few people were aware of the Bitcoin white paper in 2012. What was like your life trajectory that allowed you to be exposed to this so early?
Maya Parbhoe (09:53.)
Well, in 2012, well, I had definitely an obsession with tech and 2012, it was actually a friend of mine, Ed. He showed me like, hey, you need to check out this Bitcoin thing. It’s going to be huge. And I’m like, what is this Bitcoin thing? I’d never heard of it before. And he shared the link actually. And then then is when I started looking at it. And what made me be able to go all in?
dani go (10:12.793)
Okay.
Maya Parbhoe (10:23.88)
Well, it hasn’t been easy. Definitely. But I have two other companies. So I have an import export company and a infrastructure company. So we built roads, dams and dikes. And at the time, the economy was doing very well. And so our company was doing very well. And that allowed me to be able to invest into something else. And civil engineering is not my skill set or.
forte or passion in any sense. I built the company with a close friend who’s a civil engineer and he’s actually one of the most prominent civil engineers in the region. His family has been in civil engineering for generations so it is his passion. And then when it came time for us to decide like okay what are we gonna diversify into or what are we gonna be working on next.
Then basically I came up with, okay, I wanna focus on Bitcoin. I wanna focus on developing Suriname on a Bitcoin standard. And then I thought I was very smart by figuring out some sly roundabout way to get Bitcoin adoption in Suriname because our Minister of Finance at the time wasn’t very pro Bitcoin.
So I thought, you know, let’s focus on the capital market and capital market development and the exchange because I figured we need an exchange, you know, fiat on and off ramp to Bitcoin to be able to get the people to the ability for them to purchase it. So we focused on the exchange. And I also saw that as an opportunity to issue assets on Bitcoin. I just hadn’t figured out how that would work exactly.
because it was still pretty early. I think it was 2015, 16 when we started ideating about it and it was 2017 when I went to New York to actually talk to companies that had exchange infrastructure and were developing exchange infrastructure at ConsenSys. So it took a while to get the tech just to launch an exchange and then.
dani go (12:36.505)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (12:45.032)
How would you represent a portion of a company on a Bitcoin standard or using Bitcoin technology? There was no root stock. Sorry, taproot. My bad. I said root stock. That’s horrible. No, taproot, taproot. There was no…
dani go (13:04.793)
Okay. Okay.
dani go (13:10.873)
but you’re good.
Maya Parbhoe (13:14.248)
There was, I’m sorry, there was no taproot back then and no liquid. So there was no technology already available to be able to issue assets on Bitcoin or how to figure out how to trade it. There were no DEXs or things like that. So how would you create that capital market? How would you create liquidity in that capital market on a Bitcoin standard? So it took us actually quite a while to…
dani go (13:17.721)
Amen.
dani go (13:26.201)
Ice cream.
Maya Parbhoe (13:43.656)
to get that up and running and not quite a while, about a year to get it up and running and to do all the lobbying with the central bank. I got a sandbox at the central bank specifically for financial inclusion and to build support, the launch of the exchange and then our central bank governor got locked up and then it got put on the wait list while.
dani go (14:07.673)
Hello.
Maya Parbhoe (14:12.232)
We had elections in 2020 and then I started working with the new Minister of Finance to get it pushed again. And in the meantime I had already gone to El Salvador in 2021 to advocate for the same thing. I was like hey how do I get this what you guys are able to do here. How can I do that in Suriname. I’ve been trying to do this for years and that’s how the whole like my whole journey started last year actually with 21 .world.
at 21 .world is Der Gigi and Dennis kind of took the Aynan Swansukh model and then wanted to spread it or create a platform for it to be able to spread, you know, in an open source way to the rest of the world. So I got introduced to that and just started with that. Just try to create community here, try to share as much information about Bitcoin as I could and try to contribute as much as I could.
to this space and then just over time it just started growing here as well. Like we went from I think two or three people at a monthly meetup to our last one last month on the 21st. We had more than 100 people there and just the amount of people like pouring out to me and asking more information about Bitcoin and wanting me to speak more about it. It’s like it’s gone crazy in this country and.
dani go (15:26.617)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (15:41.16)
is now even part of almost like most political parties their agenda at the moment. There is I’ll be on stage on on Friday actually presenting a Bitcoin strategy for the people because I I want it to be not just legal tender I want it to be a unit of account here. People need to earn their salaries in Bitcoin pricing in the supermarkets need to be in sets. So actually implemented.
dani go (15:49.273)
Yes.
Maya Parbhoe (16:10.568)
as a replacement for the Tsunami’s dollar. So I’ll be presenting about that on Friday to the largest audience of one of the largest political parties here. So it’s actually become a topic for the next elections. So traction’s going well here.
dani go (16:27.801)
That’s wonderful. I have a bunch of follow -up questions to like different aspects of what you just said. Like, I think one of the ones we could start with is, what do you think that makes Suriname like the right breeding ground to be the next Bitcoin adopter as opposed to like other Iber -American countries?
Maya Parbhoe (16:54.12)
Well, the reasoning behind that is basically one, we have a very small population, about 600 ,000, and we’re 93 % forested, so it’s all in small rural areas. It’s not, you know, big cities like in other countries. Two would be the lack of financial infrastructure. So people aren’t transitioning from, you know, a system that kind of already works for them.
dani go (17:01.561)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (17:23.176)
or like this is easy to use like you have in in Western countries where it’s pretty easy to You know connect your bank account or your credit card or use your credit card for online payments. We have none of that Maybe 0 .01 percent of the population has access to a credit card You need a US dollar income You need to be able to pay it in advance because it’s not a an unsecured card It’s a secured card. So you need to have that money
for the bank, for them to be able to reserve it, to be able to use it online. Our debit cards don’t have MasterCard or Visa on them or Maestro, so it’s just a local debit card, which you can only use for SRD. You can’t use it online anywhere. You can’t use PayPal. You can’t use online payment methods. We’re zoned out basically by the entire world. All the major companies don’t…
allow CERNUM to use their services. So we’ve been isolated pretty much from all online payment methods. So websites, online payments, it never really took off here because we don’t have access to those services. So it’s pretty difficult for people to use just websites or online payment methods. There’s literally none.
Here there’s no payment service providers, no payment processors in the country. So we have zero financial infrastructure. We don’t have a capital market. We don’t have broker dealers. And like we have two investment banks that are foreign. It’s IDB and World Bank. That’s about it. So we don’t have the traditional financial infrastructure that developed countries have, but that is a
because that means we don’t have the legacy system that other countries have. So that is the second I would name, which is a big one, because that lack of infrastructure basically means that anything that is simple, like for example, Blink or Wallet of Satoshi, BDC PAY Server, they’re all very easy to use and implement. And it’s way easier for any company here to use that.
dani go (19:24.793)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (19:48.648)
than to get access to anything in the US or anywhere else in the world because we don’t have access to Stripe. We can’t use block. We can’t use any of the square, square, block, square, now block. We can’t use any of those services here. So basically, that creates opportunity. And other than the third.
dani go (20:01.945)
Mm -hmm. It’s good.
Maya Parbhoe (20:14.28)
The big one is the fact that there’s been so much corruption since 1975, since we’ve gained our independence. Like every political party since 1975 has done nothing else but steal. It’s all scandals back to back to back. The country doesn’t, it hasn’t progressed in a way where you can actually see economic development. It’s actually gone backwards.
dani go (20:22.009)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (20:41.8)
like government after government after government after government. And this is our third currency. We’ve had Surinamese Florin, we have Surinamese Gilder, now we have Surinamese Dollar. So it’s already our third currency and people don’t trust it. Like they don’t trust it now. It’s a pretty, like it’s mainly a cash based society.
In general, like most people just use cash. And in general, they save in what they think is a safer asset. So people don’t even save in SRD, for example. They save in US dollar or euros. So teaching them that Bitcoin appreciates in value in relation to euro and US dollar, and that it’s hard and sound money, and that it might even be
dani go (21:10.169)
of them.
dani go (21:21.241)
Yes.
Maya Parbhoe (21:40.04)
better for them long term, it might become generational wealth, right? If they save in Bitcoin. So teaching them that is small population, small, the small amount of square kilometers, or one, two, two square kilometers maybe, which is actually the city. So small footprint, you don’t have to go far, you don’t have to invest much.
It just takes, it does take, you know, like a small army. We think like with a team of 10 people here on the ground that we could actually have a pretty large impact if we just start orange -pilling vendors and merchants and showing, you know, street vendors how Bitcoin works and teaching them how Blink works or Wallet of Satoshi or any of the easy to use wallets.
that they’ll immediately see the benefit and they can see the depreciation of SRD in relation to Bitcoin. And that, I think, will teach them in a very quick way that it’s better than US dollar or euros and especially better than the suenemy’s dollar.
dani go (22:58.969)
Yeah, I was reading about the history and I thought it must be strange to be in a country where people who were present during the independence are still alive. You still have residents that were alive when you were still a colony. That has to be, what is the, that wasn’t one of the questions I had prepared, but what is the point of view or.
What do the older people think about the present situation of the country? Are they satisfied or are the older people not satisfied? No.
Maya Parbhoe (23:34.184)
I know.
No, everybody is dissatisfied with this government. Everybody is dissatisfied with how it’s been going. Everybody’s tired of old politics. People are living in survival mode. The average salary is between 150 -175 US, which is very low, you know, a month. So people are very dissatisfied. There are protests. At the moment, people are protesting.
dani go (23:40.537)
There’s not.
dani go (23:52.697)
Thank you.
Maya Parbhoe (24:04.968)
at multiple government agencies and bodies just protesting their salaries and protesting against their pensions being stolen because state companies have $140 million here, $40 million there, $20 million debt at the pension funds of these companies. So people are losing their pensions because of mismanagement by government. So.
They’re not happy with government at all and they want change, which is why I’m getting so much support. Almost no political parties here have a vision on how to develop this country. And I’ve laid out my vision for how I would fix the economy, basically how I’d fix the economy. It’s all…
dani go (24:36.057)
Okay.
Maya Parbhoe (25:02.376)
with Bitcoin at its core because I feel like that is how we make corruption impossible. Like even in my government, if we win the elections next year, it wouldn’t be possible for someone to be corrupt because it’s all happening on Bitcoin and it’s all transparent. So it can all be traced, tracked and seen by the public life. So there’s no…
you know, there’s no room for corruption. So people are very open to the idea. And actually more and more people are learning about Bitcoin and how it works and the ideology behind it because of, you know, me being vocal about it here in in Syria and most of the last two weeks, for example, I’ve been a whistleblower here on a massive government corruption.
scandal. So I’ve been on the news for the last two weeks a lot and speaking about Bitcoin a lot and I’ll be speaking about it in the next two weeks at most political party gatherings. And basically all of them want to incorporate it into their strategy for next year.
dani go (26:17.561)
I have a question that is a little bit beside Bitcoin. It’s like a personal curiosity question because as a Colombian, we learn nothing about Suriname. And I think that that’s by design because South America is kind of fragmented so that we can’t gain strength by engaging with each other and supporting each other. How is it for you in Suriname? Like how much do you learn about what’s happening in other countries in South America or like how much does the culture?
Maya Parbhoe (26:39.482)
I agree.
dani go (26:47.297)
get, do you get influenced? I know you have a huge immigration from different parts, but like, how much, how much brotherhood do you feel with the other South American countries?
Maya Parbhoe (27:01.64)
Well, we have a Brazilian population here. We have a Colombian, Venezuelan, Cuban population here. So we do interact with each other. We do see that there, like we learn about each other’s culture that way. But you don’t get anything about it in school. I mean, you do get it in geography, but that’s about it. Maybe a little bit of history, but not very deep.
So everything I know, it’s just online. Everything we learn about the region is online, primarily. And I think what you said is completely true. It’s by design. Because once Latin America realizes that if we all collaborate as one continent and we start focusing on developing our own continent collaboratively, that we can do it.
we have more strength than, for example, the US, right? We have more resources. We have more gold. We have more oil. We have double the amount of people. There are big economies here and big economies that are very dependent and held dependent by the US, you know, through the IMF, through IDB, just by debt. So once these countries all realize, hey,
you know, what Bukele is doing in El Salvador, it actually resonates and we should start focusing on a regional strategy for development. We should be trading more in between countries. We should have trade routes in between our countries. There should be transportation. You know, like I, right now I cannot drive to Columbia if I wanted to. Whereas if I want to drive from…
you know, from Belgium to all the way down south to to Portugal to Portugal. It’s it’s fairly easy to do without anyone stopping you at the border. We don’t even have roads connecting our countries. It’s crazy. We’re in twenty twenty four and we don’t have roads connecting our countries. It’s insane. We don’t have trains. We don’t have like leave. Leave high speed. We don’t even have like the old school trains. So.
dani go (29:05.433)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (29:23.016)
The infrastructure was never built. It was never strategized by our former colonizers to have us be one united body. And that is something that I feel in the next five to 10 years is something that we as a continent should be focusing on. And we should be more, yeah, brothers in arms, not the right choice of words, but we should be more of a family.
you know, as a continent, and we should focus more on like a familial bond between countries and formulate a strategy that is focused on a future that we want to be a part of. And I do think that Bitcoin is something that enables that and gives it power and makes it actually possible for us to do because it is a way for us to be rid of that debt, get rid of that debt.
and have a currency that we can freely trade amongst each other, you know, without needing a centralized authority like what the US is doing with us right now or, you know, Europe is doing with us at the moment. So, yeah, I agree.
dani go (30:34.297)
Yeah, I mean like a huddle together. And it has to be a little bit isolating to be in a continent where everybody else speaks Spanish because like there’s some unity between Peru and Ecuador and like Argentina because we can kind of understand each other. But like even as a Colombian, Brazil seems like a land like a.
Maya Parbhoe (30:41.256)
Yeah. Yeah. I like that.
dani go (31:03.577)
a land away. And so even more so, like it’s like a different world because we have no, like we have very little cultural exchange, very little information exchange, whilst the truth is that we go through very similar circumstances, very similar corruption problems. We have very similar histories even though, and could be able to support each other if we connected better.
Maya Parbhoe (31:05.896)
Yeah.
dani go (31:33.209)
So I definitely, in fact, I read something in your, when I was looking at some of the material, I became familiar with the 21 .world stuff and it really started to like spark in me this desire to have a more like South American or like South Central American Bitcoin community because nowadays if you look like for Bitcoin in the chats or in the social media,
Maya Parbhoe (31:34.12)
Yeah, I completely agree.
dani go (32:03.385)
in for the Latin communities, it’s very plagued with altcoins and also it’s very focused on underground markets, not really like empowerment and sovereignty. So I think it would be a really important cultural push to kind of come out of this cultural push to come out of this.
Maya Parbhoe (32:09.768)
Okay.
dani go (32:31.737)
like corruption and black market, Bitcoin environment and transform into this like new, the new birth that Bitcoin can bring to our communities and the true education that can come from it. But yeah, so continuing with some of the things that I thought about, what are some of the challenges that Suriname faces in terms of economic development?
and how could Bitcoin adoption address these issues? I know we’ve talked about it a little bit, but specifically.
Maya Parbhoe (33:06.824)
So.
Yeah, so our main major issue is actually corruption and government mismanagement because the people in charge don’t have the skills to manage a country. They don’t they barely have the skills to manage a company. So we’ve we’ve actually lost most of like there’s a lot of brain drain. We’ve lost most of our technocrats, for example, have left. So I have a
dani go (33:16.985)
Okay.
Maya Parbhoe (33:39.048)
you know, an entire community supporting me to bring change into that aspect because our main issue is corruption. That is what is hampering development because it is not a lack of money or resources because we have a vast amount of resources. We have a vast amount of gold. We have the eighth largest mine in the world here. You know, the New Month mine is the eighth largest in the world. We have oil.
dani go (33:50.393)
Thank you.
Maya Parbhoe (34:06.984)
repositories onshore and offshore. And offshore is estimated to be more than Qatar. So in terms of offshore development starting 2028, we’ll be receiving royalties in the billions, which is going to, you know, if it is managed properly, going to create a lot of prosperity for our country. So making sure that, you know, that
dani go (34:26.457)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (34:35.752)
offshore oil that resource isn’t wasted in the same way that gold and oil onshore has for the past decades is I see Bitcoin as the only solution because that you know it makes corruption completely impossible and what is happening with the Surinamese dollar 50 to 60 percent inflation annually that will not happen with Bitcoin being the
the main currency for the people, right? And once everyone starts earning in Bitcoin, so once next year after the elections, fast forward, everyone starts earning in Bitcoin. You just receive your salary in sets, you go to the supermarket, everything’s priced in sets. You’ll see the prices in the supermarket go down.
and you’ll see your salary increasing in value in relation to Euro, US dollar and every other currency in the world. I think that is what will push us over the edge into an economy of abundance and one that is not anchored in debt. Because we don’t need debt. We have enough resources. Our population is small enough.
dani go (35:44.473)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (35:54.056)
It’s literally what is happening at the moment is resources are funneled into government used to pay salaries and it’s just like a vicious cycle. So, replacing the SRD with Bitcoin, that prevents corruption, that’s one. We want to privatize as much of government as we can. So, decrease bureaucracy and government overreach. There’s no reason why, you know, most…
dani go (36:04.217)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (36:24.264)
of the ministries, for example, education, healthcare, there’s no reason why those things should be managed by government. It would do perfectly well in the private sector if just structured properly and given the proper incentives. There’s no reason for us in Suriname to have taxes. Like literally we don’t see any benefit from taxes whatsoever. It doesn’t go into roads or dams or dikes or any type of economic development.
And with the resources we have, we don’t need a tax -based system. So abolishment of taxes, creating an economic free zone. I want to call it an innovation free zone where open source development, things like NOSTR, things that are fighting this centralized status quo that has happened with big tech, that has happened in the tech industry, right? With Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, you name it.
The entire world lives on US companies. We all pay ads, like we all, most companies in all of these countries have been paying for ads to get some sort of exposure because that’s the main problem is discovery. Like your company will not get discovered or seen in these search engines or on these applications if you’re not doing a paid ad.
and all of these funds are flowing back to the US, to US companies. And they’ve made these companies turn into massive behemoths worth a trillion dollars or more. And what is happening to our economies? We’ve lost freedom of speech basically here. I can’t post something about Bitcoin on Facebook because some company in the US decided that…
that it’s not allowed? Like what do they have to say in our jurisdiction, right? So freedom of speech is the number one priority, decentralization, decentralized protocols that remove US power or whether it be US power, Chinese apps also, you know, TikTok, right, at the moment, but remove some foreign entity that has nothing to do with our community.
dani go (38:21.497)
Good.
Maya Parbhoe (38:48.136)
and give power back to the people. So we wanna create an environment that empowers technologies like NOSTR and use our resources because I am convinced that these applications and open source protocols are similar to the 1990s, how internet evolved are the future and that we use our sovereign wealth fund and our resources to reinvest into startups, into this,
dani go (39:08.953)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (39:18.152)
technology into the development of this technology and give it a breeding ground, you know, that is limitless because that’s nowhere else in the world, right? Like even in El Salvador, you’re still sort of limited because they’re still very dependent on, you know, on IMF. They have a big bit of a larger population. So it takes a lot more to implement, you know, new tech, whereas we have
We have 240 ,000 -ish people living in the city. It’s the perfect pilot environment for any startup. So we want to create a breeding ground for open source technology and freedom technology because we as a people, we value our sovereignty and we’ve been isolated from the rest of the world since the 1970s. They don’t care about us. We don’t make mainstream news. We have…
dani go (39:53.881)
Is that?
Maya Parbhoe (40:17.352)
almost no access to modern technology. We’re always like, even we don’t even have strike, like strike even doesn’t allow Suriname to use the app. Most Bitcoin apps don’t allow Suriname to use it. Like even in the Bitcoin industry, we’re isolated. Like we’re so, I honestly, I think it’s because we’re a small or people don’t, or people don’t know like.
dani go (40:34.713)
But why is that?
dani go (40:40.089)
soon.
Maya Parbhoe (40:43.848)
They don’t even know that we’re in Latam. Most people I speak to don’t even know that we exist. So I think it’s just they don’t know. But basically we’re so isolated from all financial infrastructure and the rest of the world. Anyway, we have resources enough to be a global force for change and a global power. Why wouldn’t we be a force for change that helps?
Bitcoin helps open source decentralized technology to flourish. Like I feel what happened to Samurai for example, what happened to Damos being pushed off the App Store, those are things that I feel can only happen in the modern world, in Western economies. These are things that it’s so far from where we are here. Like we’re so isolated that…
we could be a breeding ground for tech like that and scale it to a country -wide level, right? Instead of having our entire population, because our population, for example, is not on X, not at all. I maybe know five or six people that use X. So it’s not about the Deadbird app or whatever. These people are still on Facebook and they value Facebook more than that.
dani go (41:49.145)
Okay.
dani go (41:57.625)
Thank you.
Maya Parbhoe (42:12.072)
then they value news. We live on Facebook in this country. And getting them off of that and getting them onto Nostra, for example, and being able to internationally be able to sell products, be able to feel freely trade, and for them to be able to freely receive donations from wherever in the world or payments from wherever in the world, we’re isolated already. So.
dani go (42:13.881)
Mm -hmm.
dani go (42:18.073)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (42:42.088)
perfect for Bitcoin adoption, right? Let’s just use Suriname as the breeding ground for new innovation that’s gonna change the world, things that you would never think of in Italy or in Switzerland or somewhere in Europe where everything is already so easy, so easy that you take it for granted that you don’t even realize.
When you step your foot, like when you put your feet on the ground in this country, that is when you realize exactly how big the opportunity is for Bitcoin here. I’ve heard it multiple times from Bitcoiners that have come over the last six months. They didn’t realize how big of an opportunity that actually was until they came here. So this is the perfect breeding ground for new tech, new innovation and freedom tech.
because I will make sure that that is the only, that environment is available here and that it’s not altcoin or Web3 or VC hype mumbo jumbo, but actually a breeding ground for Bitcoin development. And I think as the rest of the world is closing its doors, because it’s such a threat to leadership, specifically here, because we wanna change leadership, we want,
more, we want it to be more decentralized. We want it to be more transparent. We want Bitcoin to be the unit of account and the currency. So I think here we can actually do something that hasn’t been done anywhere else in the world and hopefully can spread to the rest of the world.
dani go (44:27.577)
I have some questions about like the obstacles that you would face. One is a practical and one is regarding like the powers that be. The practical one is like, what are your thoughts on fiat backed by Bitcoin? Because in the sense that if your country doesn’t have a lot of financial infrastructure and you need Bitcoin points of sale, are you thinking about fiat?
that is backed by Bitcoin or are you thinking about like having internet everywhere or how in practice could this like come into free?
Maya Parbhoe (45:05.448)
Well, we actually have more than 80 % mobile penetration. The entire country is covered in. We have internet access everywhere. So that is not a limitation. More than 80 % mobile penetration. So that makes things with Bitcoin a lot easier. And honestly, fiat on Bitcoin, I mean like,
dani go (45:09.817)
So, yeah.
Maya Parbhoe (45:31.016)
Tether on Liquid is interesting because people are using Tether here, but they’re using it on Tron. So that could be an alternative for them, but I’m sorry. It’s going to be Satoshi’s salaries. Your salary is going to be in Bitcoin. Your pricing in the supermarket is going to be in Bitcoin. POSs and financial infrastructure will have to be a QR code payment easy BTC pay server.
dani go (45:37.049)
Mm -hmm.
dani go (45:59.577)
So you see it as fully digital. You see it as fully digital.
Maya Parbhoe (46:00.52)
using Bitcoin.
Maya Parbhoe (46:06.056)
Yeah, and for people that, for example, don’t want to use a mobile wallet or don’t want to use a phone, NFC cards.
dani go (46:16.985)
Mm -hmm. Cards.
Maya Parbhoe (46:19.496)
It’s basically, yeah, similar to like their debit card. Yeah. And they’re already used to, there’s this app here called SootyBet. It’s a betting app, but Jesus Christ, like the entire population uses that thing and they use it to send money to each other as well. So it is, you know, it’s not that far fetched to have them on a Bitcoin standard here. And it’s small enough even like you could have a team.
dani go (46:43.737)
Okay.
Maya Parbhoe (46:48.616)
of 10 to 20 people go out for a couple of months and explain this to people on the streets and have ads running on TV, education running on TV for a month or two, and you’d have the whole population covered. We’re that small.
dani go (47:01.245)
So my other question about the obstacles is the following. What challenges do you identify in achieving this vision regarding resistance from traditional power structures like the IMF? Because the IMF, well, there’s a huge debt towards them. How can they potentially become an obstacle in achieving this goal? And how could you overcome it?
Maya Parbhoe (47:28.552)
Well, actually, before we signed with IMF 2020 was when we were this close to having the exchange live and then we wouldn’t have needed them or been in this situation specifically with the strategy that I had with the central bank governor at the time. And honestly, the only thing holding back Bitcoin being legal tender at the moment is the fact that
Presidential advisor is mining Bitcoin since 2022 privately at the dams or halfway to the city from the dam. So he has a 10 megawatt mining facility already. He’s a presidential advisor. And the only reason why it’s been because we had Jan 3 here in November. And the only reason why it’s taking so long to…
recognize Bitcoin as legal tender is because this one person is mining Bitcoin since 2022.
dani go (48:32.697)
I would say benefit him to not make it legal tender because I would have thought it would be the opposite.
Maya Parbhoe (48:39.208)
No, because right now he’s using energy. He’s paying it in. Yeah. He’s using energy and he’s paying a subsidized price for energy and it’s going into a wallet somewhere, you know, God knows where it’s going. He’s not paying taxes or anything on it. Like that. He’s just like getting money from energy in his own like pocket. And he personally told me.
dani go (48:41.945)
from the pump.
dani go (49:02.937)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (49:07.848)
He doesn’t want public opinion about Bitcoin to screw with his operation because he wants to keep it small and low radar. He doesn’t want people to know about it. And this is something he told me, I think it was early January when he came out and told me that. And he was still promising, like, OK, there is a payment commission being installed and that payment commission is going to check.
whether or not this is doable, which actually doesn’t make sense at all because the only thing they’re doing is recognizing it as a foreign currency. Like our laws allow that because it’s legal tender in El Salvador. So in the same fashion as we use US dollar or euro, we can actually recognize Bitcoin as legal tender in the same way. And that is an executive order by the foreign exchange commission, something that can be done in two or three days. So there is the only thing holding
dani go (50:03.001)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (50:06.472)
Bitcoin adoption in Suriname back at a country wide scale at this point is one single person and that it’s only because of his own self interest. So I’ve been exposing that for the last couple of two, I think two weeks. So I think, yeah, I think our main concern at the moment is me fighting the powers that be, especially being as vocal as I am about the US.
dani go (50:21.945)
I see.
Maya Parbhoe (50:33.032)
Europe and you know the death trap and the IMF and talking about corruption here is like, okay I need to stay alive for this vision for this vision to actually happen next year, but other than that it
dani go (50:40.665)
Hahaha!
dani go (50:47.001)
I mean, it’s not a joke, it’s a fair concern when you’re a South American.
Maya Parbhoe (50:52.488)
Yeah, but it’s not something that that US citizens or Europeans seem to understand like, like, my life is actually in danger at the moment. And I’m laughing about it, because I’ve already cried about it. I’ve already accepted, you know, like, am I willing to actually die for this cause? And I think my mom, yeah, she’ll probably not be happy with this statement. But yes, I am. So I’ve already made my peace with it. And it’s fine. I think.
dani go (50:52.921)
Yeah.
dani go (50:56.729)
people.
dani go (51:07.009)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (51:22.152)
I think the groundwork has already been done. The vision is already out there. I’ve already said, you know, how, when, why, how it would work. I’ve already laid most of it out. So it would just be about execution. And I think whether I’m there or not, it’ll just happen. It’s just a matter of time.
dani go (51:44.665)
I wanna change the subject with something that I think you have a lot of expertise with, that for us who are not business people, I don’t know if we totally understand, which is the following. How can you create a debt -free system by building a capital market on a Bitcoin standard? Like what does that mean and what does it look like?
Maya Parbhoe (52:08.168)
Like right now, for example, if a company needs funding, all they have is either the local banks or the local investment banks or local, like World Bank or IDB. So for example, one of the largest companies in the country, let’s take Fernandez for example. Fernandez is, they own Coca -Cola here, they own Subaru.
dani go (52:21.049)
Okay.
Maya Parbhoe (52:34.376)
The bread factory, the McDonald’s here, they own basically a lot of large size companies here. And when they needed to scale, they wanted to build another factory or build a modern factory, they needed to go to IDB. So there’s no system here where a company can issue shares and people can actually invest into it.
dani go (52:40.921)
No.
Maya Parbhoe (53:02.888)
and get a return from those shares, from the performance of this company. So these companies are all, you’re limited to go to the bank, basically. And then you’re even limited even more by the interest rates that these banks have to offer, which is insane. It’s like the lowest it was, I think about two, three years ago was 8 % on US dollar or Euro.
dani go (53:12.121)
in it.
Maya Parbhoe (53:31.592)
and that’s for a commercial loan. Like the regular commercial loan is 18%. So just imagine trying to run a company and the average return that you have to generate just to cover your debt, like just to cover your interest payments annually is at least 18%. So any product that you’re trying to sell, anything that you’re producing, you need…
dani go (53:37.849)
Yes.
Maya Parbhoe (53:59.272)
to have at least an 18 % margin in there to cover your debt. So it is not, it’s not inducing to proper resource allocation, right? Resources need to be allocated properly for, and this is also true for the wealth gap, right? You can see in the wealth gap that the system in the US, for example, is rigged. Like the gap is so huge between the middle class and the top 2%. It’s insane.
dani go (54:27.481)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (54:29.032)
Like the U .S. capital market is completely fucked. It’s completely rigged to only benefit the top two. And in Suriname, we have a non -existent capital market. So you’re starting from the ground up. Bitcoin is the standard in which we earn value, earn income. Like I’m talking about next year or starting next year, right? Trying to envision what it’s gonna be like. So you earn income in Satoshi’s, in Bitcoin.
dani go (54:49.753)
Okay.
Maya Parbhoe (54:58.024)
you have companies that maintain their treasury in Bitcoin. So inherently, they’re gonna be on a Bitcoin standard. And then they can issue shares. So share issuance is equity. So you’re buying a stake in that company, right? So it’s not a debt instrument, it is ownership. And the way it was supposed to work,
dani go (55:22.425)
Okay.
Maya Parbhoe (55:27.08)
was that people that produce and produce for the economy, not everybody can be a successful entrepreneur. One in 10 startups fail. So these companies that are producing and are generating a return, the whole point of a capital market was to channel resources to these productive companies and
have them be able to generate return for the investors back, right? But because the system is so rigged in the US and it’s been like greed has fueled it, right? So it’s been rigged in such a way that valuations are not realistic anymore. It’s not tied to any fundamentals. It’s not tied to the actual value of that company or the actual return that it creates for its investors. So I believe,
dani go (56:21.369)
Mm -hmm, yeah.
Maya Parbhoe (56:24.776)
with an economy on a Bitcoin standard with full transparency, that it will bring the system back to how it’s supposed to function in a free and open market. Resources are supposed to flow to the companies that provide value and that should generate value back for its shareholders, its investors. And that would, I believe, create a system of abundance instead of a system of debt.
and poverty, what it is right now. It should be a system that creates more abundance for its people, it creates more wealth for its people. Because now you can invest into a company for a dollar, two dollars, three dollars, and instead of having some stupid, you know, fund manager decide what companies or what shares or whatever it’s being piled into, you have no control over it whatsoever.
dani go (56:57.433)
Mm -hmm.
Maya Parbhoe (57:21.416)
It is completely transparent and you can just select automate or, you know, it’s a breeding ground for structures to develop and evolve that have never existed before that are not based on greed, that are not based on that rigged system, but will be based on a Bitcoin standard that will be focused on just creating value and spreading value and…
you know, the same, we have the same thought for education. So not just for companies and that’ll be great for corporations or just companies or small medium enterprises for them to be able to grow and, you know, be able to operate more efficiently and better without needing, you know, 80 % debt or 24 % debt. We also believe that it’ll foster more, I think we wanna focus on, on,
giving our population tools that they need to thrive heading into 2030, heading into 2035, 2050. So we wanna focus on skills that cannot be replaced by AI. We wanna focus on creativity. We want to focus on an educational system that is focused on not creating like this cookie cutter person or type of like trying to.
fit people in a certain box, but that is focused on educating our people based off of where they can generate the most value. So it’ll be, I think, a value -driven economy, if that makes sense.
dani go (58:59.257)
Yeah, so like what you’re saying is like opening up the opportunity so that the companies don’t have to get in debt in order to be able to get funding, to get started, to give them back that competitive edge that you lose when you have to pay an 18 % interest because when you do that, like you lose your competitive edge completely against the people who are already established in the market. There’s no way that you can compete with Coca -Cola.
Maya Parbhoe (59:26.792)
Exactly.
dani go (59:28.089)
if you are paying 80 % tax. Sorry, not tax, interest.
Maya Parbhoe (59:33.352)
It’s just interest, and then you still have taxes. So it’s crazy. But yes, I think it, especially because of the amount of resources that we have and the small population, that gives us the perfect environment to actually be able to do this because it’s a combination of both. We have the resources, we have a vast amount of forest, we have a vast amount of natural resources.
dani go (59:35.961)
Yeah.
dani go (01:00:00.889)
No.
Maya Parbhoe (01:00:02.024)
So we have that. We have a small population. So it is the perfect breeding ground to actually to be able to do this.
dani go (01:00:10.521)
Yeah, after our conversation, it is more clear to me like why Suriname is a good candidate and has like important characteristics that make it to have the potential to succeed in this process of becoming, of adopting Bitcoin, definitely. Well, we’re reaching kind of the end of our time. So I wanted to ask you,
where like interested individuals and organizations who want to support you, how do they learn about your initiatives and how can they like find you and support your process?
Maya Parbhoe (01:00:52.072)
Well, I hang out on Nostr a lot Other than that so you can find me on Nostr or I have a profile on X But that’s just me personally We have a telegram group for Bitcoin Sranan which is the main group where we all gather and share information and anyone that wants to help join the Bitcoin Sranan telegram group and just like tell us what you can do like
Tell us where you can pitch in, tell us how you can help because it will take an army to do everything that we want to do. So we’ll need help in education, we’ll need help in financial infrastructure, we’ll need help developing financial infrastructure or bringing it here or implementing it. If you can come here, that’s better. All big corners are welcome.
I’ll give you a personal tour of the country and show you how you can help. And there are already a couple moving here. Just think of being on the ground in El Salvador before it became Bitcoin country and give us the same type of energy and the same type of help. And if you can’t, just hop on Telegram and contribute in whatever way you can. Everything is appreciated.
dani go (01:02:17.113)
We’ll make sure to include all the links in the description. So if you’re curious to find them, go and check the description now. Well, it’s been a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for joining us. And I wish the best for your endeavors and I hope everything pans out and the country does support you and does support change because we need courageous people to…
to lead this process of transformation.
Maya Parbhoe (01:02:52.104)
Great. Thank you for having me, Danny. I enjoyed the conversation a lot.
dani go (01:02:53.325)
It’s been a pleasure learning from you.
Maya Parbhoe (01:02:59.208)
Thanks.
