Gold vs. bitcoin: Why there 'isn't really a comparison' anymore

Pascal, how you doing?

Hey Ross, how you doing?

I'm doing great. Now listen, man, I think we've all have heard that Bitcoin is digital gold. But recently, we've been seeing actual gold outperform Bitcoin. In fact, Bitcoin is down almost about 50% from its recent highs of last year. So why do you actually think that is, Pascal?

Yeah, so I I think it's just uh the natural order of things. I mean, let's not forget uh gold. there isn't really a comparison between gold and Bitcoin today. As as you know, gold has a very long history of being a store of value of choice and has matured over such a long amount of time, right? We're talking about thousands of years. Even if we considered from when it became, I would say legitimate in the global market, about 200 years ago with the gold standard. Um that doesn't compare to, you know, 20 years worth of Bitcoin, right? I think um these are just natural um um uh not the natural order of of of things in the financial sector. I still think Bitcoin has a strong position to secure itself as a digital gold. Uh I mean, if you go back and look at the historic charts, you would see that. But uh so it's very important to look at more of like the long-term uh narrative and trajectory of Bitcoin and uh to get a better understanding of what it's really going to to what position it will take in the general markets.

Okay. Okay. Well, listen, in the US, most people actually view crypto primarily as an investment, but in many parts around the world, it's actually used for payment processing and financial access. Can you actually tell us what the true adoption story is uh which actually happened out outside of the US?

Yeah, so I mean, it's uh really huge, especially when you look at the Sub-Saharan Africa. Uh I think as of 2024 to 25, Chainlink uh reports basically over 250 billion worth of uh crypto activities just in Sub-Saharan Africa. That's about 2% of its GDP and um and it it just shows there's tremendous activity there. I mean, we also have to consider that this is a region with very limited financial service, uh very limit limited access to dollar and dollar securities. However, a very strong dependency on import on on importations. So the need basically to have a lot of dollars circulating in the economy to facilitate importation. So there's a lot of stress there, which we're basically seeing um especially crypto, stable cryptocurrency coming in as an alternative to mitigating this scenario. Thus, the very high adoption. I mean, if we're looking at 200 and and and and 5 billion plus, that basically plays Sub-Saharan Africa as the second um largest crypto market in the world as it is today.

Okay, last question, Pascal. Canza is focused primarily on the financial infrastructure in Africa. Explain what you guys are doing.

Yes, so just back to what I just spoke about, what we're doing is primarily facilitating cross-border payments for small to medium-sized businesses that are looking to access US dollar securities, so primarily US dollars for uh settlement of their importation. So we deal primarily with the pharmacies, construction companies, any of the small to medium-sized businesses that have this uh the this dilemma of getting access to dollar at a fair rate to be able to basically do their import settlements. And we've been doing this for about four years now. Uh started with very low margins. Uh we're lucky enough to be to have very loyal clients and a growing network. and we're doing upwards of 200 millions per annum.

Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, Pascal Sama, CEO and co-founder of Canza Finance.