Legal to own.
Illegal to pay with.

Introduction

01:20 Marek So please say your name and what you do.

01:24 Dimas Hi, my name is Dimas, I'm co-founder of Bitcoin Indonesia and Bitcoin House Bali.

01:29 Marek Okay and where are you right now?

01:32 Dimas Oh yeah, I'm currently based in West Java in Indonesia

Q1 · Money before bitcoin

01:36 Marek So what was the money like in Indonesia before

01:41 Dimas Well when I was growing up I never understood why the prices are still are keep going up and up and up I still remember that have this coin like 100 rupiah use when I was little used to be able to buy like four candies but now 100 rupiah doesn't mean anything anymore right and then from when when i learned the history of money through bitcoin i found out that rupiah basically from the beginning was never backed by gold it was like uh and it was basically just a greenback, like trust me bro right, so it was released in 1946 that where the two rupiah is equal to one gram of gold. Now one gram of gold is equal to 2 .4 million rupiah in 81 years. and in between we have two times hyperinflation

02:44 Marek So what was actually happening in 1998 can you tell me what it was like if I never was there

02:53 Dimas Yeah so in 1998 we have the first the second hyperinflation that's where it was like the asian crisis asian financial crisis i think if i remember correctly it started in in thailand and it spreaded all through indonesia at the time i think i remember watching podcasts Soros was playing the game, like the currency exchange, so in Indonesia itself, it was like it's the end of our second president rules so we have our second president was called Soeharto, he ruled as a dictator for 32 years I mean, I have to admit, the good side of having a dictator everything, we can do long-term planning so there are a lot of things that he achieved prosperity and also growth and then security but at the same time we are we are not able to talk freely we are we are always constantly feeling fear of being censored and we are not able to gather we are not able to do anything and corruption mainly corruption is uh very high very rampant at that time so we had this the vision of this is trickle down economics if you don't know what is trickle down economics basically you created a group of oligarchs and then in hope that when these people already grow the economy will trickle down but it never been but the trickle down never never happened so it's just like get around him and also these things and then when during the 98th Asian crisis the Indonesian rupiah exchange to dollar was like two dollar two thousand rupiah for one dollar it showed up to sixteen thousand or seventy thousand something like this during one night so I remember it vividly I was like on my second year of my senior high at that time and we suddenly we are not we are not able to afford to buy rice for example and there are things that we have to postpone we have to rearrange i don't know about what uh what my mom did but i but she's very we don't really feel it that time but i saw a lot of chaos people demonstrating and people uh there is forest fire also el nino uh forest fire happening there also and at some point the indonesia is very diversified right we have more than 300 ethnic groups and one of them is like the Chinese Indonesians or we call it Chindo, they were known as the hard-working and they are also known as the most diligent and having a lot of wealth also right. During the 98 crisis they're being blamed as the root cause you know like if you see in Europe maybe they see similarities with the Jews, you blame the Jews for everything that's happening to your economy, which is basically what happened because of the mismanagement of the country, right? And it happens to us, so many looting, many also rape happened, and a lot of people, the Chinese-Indonesian traumatized, they exit the country, they left everything, the house, the cars, the businesses, people just loot, loot, loot, but 98 also is the beginning of our reformation because the second president resigned and his vice president was uh become the president and he able to tame the inflation the currency from 16 000 to 6 000 7 000 something like this in in short amount of time since that time we have like we call it reformation but since reformation until now things are not getting better because we have elections i mean i mean the the fruit of that reformation is that we able to elect our uh leaders directly right uh including president and first president but that also makes the election become very expensive, a lot of people wants to become when they campaigning they have to spend a lot of money maybe more than one million dollars something like this just to be recognized right and this happens until now so what we have now is not leaders by competence but by popularity

07:29 Marek So what where people keep their savings now like today in a gold dollars land or

07:39 Dimas Yeah so we have this kind of dogma when I grew up because people we have as I mentioned we have two times of hyperinflation the first one was in 1960s and the second one is 1998 and during the 1960s influenced a lot of people that became my grandma, the grandma and the grandfather, and they saw what hyperinflation did to them. At the time, they saw that people who own gold and people who own land can survive. And also for the profession, people who became the government officials like government employees and also who became the police and military having a good life so when i grew up people my parents my grandparents always told me become government employees become police become a military guy something like this because you'll be having a good life right it's true that government employees when when they they have to work like with meager salary but when they retire they they got uh salary for life something like that pension for life i think the old model the old model i think the pension benefits something like this right but as you know the the salary is in rupiah which is as i mentioned the rupiah purchasing power is declining at least 10 % per year so a 4 million rupiah pension now in Indonesia maybe can only sustain for one person but year by year it's become difficult more difficult so most people save in gold and land but people cannot afford to buy gold anymore people cannot afford to buy land anymore so they there's a new trend of the youngsters people in my age and below my age they try to to be investing yeah something like this

09:43 Marek Investing in what now?

09:46 Dimas In in anything investing in in in stocks investing in forex even the crypto so like like Bitcoin and crypto to be exact because the thing is in Indonesia our community is very communal so we follow the herd mentality from a leader so these leaders are usually influencers so where normally during the bull market of anything like the stocks or even like the Bitcoin or crypto bull market there will be influencers flexing having lambo flying private jets wearing nice clothes and the watch and everything right and and they buy class right on in the last cycle one people one guy uh sold one class one thousand dollars one thousand dollars is equal to three to four months of average salary in jakarta so people flock there because they promise being wealthy with trading something like this yeah at the same time yeah at the end of course you know you know where the these things led always like to zero even like minus but he's he was not being persecuted and things like that and at same time because of people at life is getting harder in Indonesia there's new trend also now we call it the paylater so yeah you can buy anything you can pay it later it's basically a debt trap that trap right you you pay like up to 20 or 30 percent interest per year or something like this and some people done it out of necessity because like for example they receive salary on the first and on the 25th they will on the 30th they will they will receive their salary again right but on the 20th or 25th of that month they already don't have any money so they need like a bridging loan something like this so a lot of people done it but another people has just like because this app is very lucrative if maybe you remember Shopee right so there's a Shopee paylater so one day one time my friend a friend of mine show me this UI, UX of this Paylater. It has a very interesting, right? You mentioned like you have 20 million rupiah to be spent. So imagine if you're like an online driver with monthly salary, maybe 2 million or 3 million. And suddenly in the app says you have 20 million to spend. What will you do? You will spend.

Q2 · When bitcoin arrived

12:31 Marek When bitcoin came to indonesia and who brought it

12:37 Dimas So indonesia bitcoin came in indonesia around 2009 2010 was like there are there were two guys, I think William Sutanto and also Oscar Darmawan, they were friends and they heard about Bitcoin. They started an exchange called Bitcoin.co.id in the beginning. At the time, I was still living in Germany. I only heard the stories. At the time, they even used the paper and then they announced with WhatsApp group, there's no really thing really a proper exchange or platform where people can buy and sell bitcoin and yeah and from that it become grew bigger and bigger now we have more than 32 33 exchanges but all of them chase the same user like age from 17 to 35 something like this they they they chase the same user so the the fish pond is small but the the yeah but they're looking from the same fish pond basically so it's very hard to run an exchange in Indonesia Indodax and then I think through them they also able to influence the government because at the beginning there were no regulation now I think we have one of the not good yeah good I can say good regulation about customer protection about anti-modern laundering, about this basic business practice, but at the same time if you're a Bitcoiner then you don't want this to have, you don't want to be KYC, you want to be free and everything. I think they shifted a bit because they focused on the business not on the liberty side of the Bitcoin.

14:30 Marek Did most people in Indonesia see it Bitcoin as the way how to like to for trading only or for also saving

14:40 Dimas Yeah so I think until now a lot of people see Bitcoin as a way to get rich quick so they trade why is this because we have a lot of exchanges and the exchanges are incentivized to make people trade a lot right when you buy when you sell you get commission you get trading fees and this is and this led to the communities and everything but before we came, Bitcoin Indonesia came, it was like this and then now since we are here, Bitcoin Indonesia for about three years, we have already shifted a little bit the mindset of people instead of you get trying to get rich by trading Bitcoin, why not just save Bitcoin so why not understanding about the money, how money works, where money came from and what is rupiah history and yeah that's why we are educating and we are spreading the meetups and then the materials to everyone

Q3 · What the state did

15:46 Marek What did the government do about Bitcoin?

15:49 Dimas Well in the beginning they ban it. So you remember in 2014, Bitcoin, before the Lightning Network, Bitcoin was flourishing in Bali. So we call it as known as the Bitcoin Island in Bali. And then the government became afraid of that. And a lot of businesses are closed down because of that but since the regulation says bitcoin is allowed to trade but it's not allowed to be used as a medium of exchange not allowed to use as yeah basically just money yes as money right so only rupiah so including the euro dollars you're not you're not allowed to spend your dollars euros here in Indonesia you have to use rupiah basically our currency so I see it as a form of control right because money basically has three forms of function first the store of value second is medium of exchange the third one is unit of account but we have the fourth one that only government has that is system of control right so we're going because if no one used rupiah then the government will collapse

17:08 Marek So you can own bitcoin but you cannot pay with it how do you explain to the people which they come to the meetup and ask about bitcoin

17:18 Dimas Yeah so we first when we started this movement with Bitcoin Indonesia we we started asking the question first what is money right and we explained type of money form of money the history of rupiah and the problems with the current system and at that time when we introduce bitcoin after they understand all of that it's very easy to to get bitcoin i mean at least from that perspective bitcoin is so vast until now i'm still learning i mean especially when this coldcard hack and also trezor ledger and everything what happened right the vulnerabilities so many things have to be learned from bitcoin but at least from that side people understand that bitcoin is the best tool for saving technology and also is a new form of money so but then i was mentioning in the beginning it's not allowed to use bitcoin as a as a payment but but we found this uh this kind of loophole we call it the closed loop system where if you think bitcoin as a community points for example like starbucks points for example or like air miles points, something like this. Within that network you can you don't pay with Bitcoin, you redeem your Bitcoin, something like this right. So we found Fedi at the time and we created a federation, we just onboarded people and within that we just exchange it, we just redeem the sats and people can also use the wallet as like their own bank account to save money, to save Bitcoin. That's what we do.

18:55 Marek In 2023 governor governor he said that tourists in bali they cannot pay with bitcoin and they cannot basically use it yeah so do you remember what what happened then did anything change like in this

19:14 Dimas Nothing changed actually but people this is like cat and mouse situation when government ban something and then they see what the government do even government do is that what they're being told not to do right and people just say ah yeah okay yeah yeah yeah yeah okay something like this right so this is just like a playing cat and mouse so and uh nothing changed you are not allowed a lot of people a lot of foreigners also being deported if they trade in crypto but i see a lot of p2p traders also in bali they bring usdt you bring something like and then you do it in cash for example uh some people brought like a duffel bag with rupiah cash and just trade something like this.

Q4 · The ones who stayed

20:05 Marek So the the price of bitcoin went down many times like who kept going in indonesia when it was hard like who was pushing the bitcoin to the people

20:18 Dimas Yeah, I think it was us eventually because we started in 2023, and was the beginning of the bull market before halving, right? and then in 2025, 2026 we have our first bear market and I can tell you during the bull market everyone felt genius but during the bear market it's crazy it's very hard on you or people left so we have people also left the community but a lot of people who survived I think we are now at the beginning of another bull market people who survived we become stronger and become more like more close right so we keep pushing with my first bitcoin program meetups and the number of meetups also during the bear market is like it's like bear market some sometimes people didn't came and yeah but now i mean it's okay i mean this is part of the first part of the process the price of bitcoin determine the meetup and everything so we just need to look inside what are the people need mostly right people need to as a as a tool people need a tool to survive people need tool to save money people need to understand about money and we offer that so yeah this is what we do

Q5 · The community today

21:37 Marek Very difficult i think to educate because you need to be very decentralized indonesia is big big very big country and so what what is bitcoin indonesia doing where do you have the meetups and how you educate the people in indonesia

21:56 Dimas So we in the beginning we were like having only one meetup in Bali and then we went to Bandung and Jakarta and when we started our movement and we open source everything on github building a nice great website and articles we just went to social media we use Instagram a lot and a lot of people turns out to be a true bitcoiner also they they want to contribute and they want to help because they felt the same thing so maybe as a bitcoiner you know that you often feel feel lonely, you often felt like you don't belong to anyone, misunderstood, sometimes people thought you crazy, even your mother maybe say you crazy, so when we showed up that this is a community, this is a safe space, people, oh I belong here, so I want to help, I want to contribute, I want to volunteer, so from there we are able to have 40 meetups happening every month in all across Indonesia, I mean during the bear market it's less, but still there are people who are true bitcoiners i mean there's still people who are really want to learn learn to contribute because this is the ethos of bitcoin right you you give you give you give you give you want to help people

23:15 Marek What does your community do that people outside of Indonesia wouldn't never guess?

23:23 Dimas Good question I think the community itself because we are unique we have very different diversified we have huge diversity in terms of people and also the the the characteristic of Indonesia is very different. As I mentioned, Indonesia is very communal and also we follow the influencer, the leader. Why is this? Because for hundreds of years, we have different kingdoms and people are very communal. So this type of characters are not found in Europe, for example. In Europe, everyone has become very individualistic, but in Indonesia, it's not possible to have that. so I think the community itself is the one that the secret source you can say of our success

24:15 Marek Um I mean not everybody will have Bitcoin but they touch crypto and do you know how many people like from the meetups use their own wallets or they holding them on the exchanges

24:29 Dimas Oh good question i mean our own member is about between 5 000 to 10 000 right so but people who really like having their own wallet self-custody i can really tell because if people are really self-custardying they will not tell they will they will try to stay private right i mean what do you think

24:50 Marek Um like I have I was lucky enough to be in few meetups in Bali and when people come and ask the like share their experience with Bitcoin or they were asking this I think around like 60 70 percent actually didn't have a self-custody

25:11 Dimas I agree I can agree so I went into self custody because of mistake also right so it happened to me in 2016, 2017, at the time I was into crypto not bitcoin at that time but I already understood the importance of self-custody and I ordered my first ledger and it arrived and then I just put it beside my laptop and because it was too complicated I said to me, wow it's too complicated, I'm too afraid to to move it because I and the next morning I I watch an influencer because that time there's no class there's community and the influencer gave me a phishing link and I was storing all my crypto at the time in in my laptop so I lost like 2 ,000 euros or euros it was the most amount of money I ever had in my life and it was my wife's money so yeah from there i i was like okay i have to learn i have to learn i have to learn right and then during the cold card i almost got hit also because i believe in coldcard i store a lot of i mean i a lot for me right not for you for everyone else and because i'm saving it for for something like next year i want to do something next year and yeah luckily i found out uh in the morning i was i was in the gym i skipped the gym i went back home and just like move everything

26:53 Marek So interesting like what do people ask on the meetups the most

27:03 Dimas Well what do people ask me how do i get rich and all and the typical fat

27:13 Marek Do you answer

27:14 Dimas Question yeah well how do i get rich i said to them go to work

27:19 Marek Okay uh you you want through bitcoin indonesia educate 100 million people like what what does it mean to you and also um i think indonesia has like 250 million people yeah is it correct okay so it's not

27:38 Dimas I mean we we have this this vision actually this is my vision so if we have we are able to empower 100 million Indonesian with Bitcoin at least one of these at least one of the people who own Bitcoin I mean being empowered by Bitcoin he has at least one guy or one person who he loves the dear the most right maybe his wife or husband or I don't know about our parents something like this right so that means with 100 million people, we can save 200 million, 300 million. So the population of Indonesia is 300 million. So 100 million is the core, and with that, we can save the country without having a revolution or crisis or everything, just through educating and empowering people to just save money, save Bitcoin every month. So this is the vision. We want to have a peaceful movement where 100 million people have Bitcoin, and that people who truly understand Bitcoin will save his lost one, he loves one, right? The family, the sister, brother, and everything.

28:55 Marek Yeah once you orange pill one he can orange build next to him yeah or her

29:01 Dimas Yeah, that's true.

Q6 · The last question

29:03 Marek Okay so if someone open this recording in 50 years what should they know about what happened here

29:14 Dimas So, hello from the past. So, what we can say this year is crazy year because number one, our stock market crash already 43%. from January to October. It is the worst stock crash, I mean slowly right, since 1998, the worst that we have. The second one, we have the largest ministry, 108 ministries, something like this minister, and none of them work. And this 100 minister have vice minister and the vice minister has special staff, special staff has assistant special staff assistant special staff has I don't know assistant special staff or something like this so very very huge this October marks we are recording on the 22nd of October on the 20th of October Prabowo the president Prabowo was two years of becoming a president. And today there are a lot of protests happening in Jakarta, in Bandung, in Kalimantan, in Borneo, in Java, and there are petro crisis in Bali, there are petro crisis in Malang, there are forest fires happening in Borneo, until now it's not resolved, and our neighboring country already complained, and government just said, yeah no worries we are big country we are very nationalist we are very strong typical and yeah we'll see what happens either this continues this madness continues and or Prabowo stepped down but I remember this framework right I learned a lot from other bitcoin especially a guy uh simon dixon he called this situation whole situation called manufactured crisis something like happened in paris right now in brazil in everything it's manufactured crisis why is that so it it keeps people emotionally engaged and become weakened that they don't so they were not able to fight back when the new control will come or the money is being debased right so this is just basically this is just distraction so to a lot of people people feel like exhausted people like felt like i don't know what to do i feel like hopeless and everything so this is why the education money education and then history education and then bitcoin education came a huge part because because i learned about bitcoin i know this is all this happen actually is an opportunity for me right i mean if if really crisis came and this time if i can prepare uh very nice then maybe i can help more people i can buy something i can earn something i can acquire something for all my own family so i know how to react i know how to save my family if things happen right because the product of manufactured crisis always the currency debasement and also more capital control reason to control and print money and i think two days ago i just read a working paper from imf it is titled the the coming great financial repression so they already knew that the debt is will be so high they cannot pay it the only way to pay it is to financial repression basically they will inflate everything they will print money but they will not allow people to take the assets take the money out of the system so for example it happens in 1940s i a lot of bondholders when they get their money back they still get the same nominal but the value, the purchasing power already reduced more than 50 to 60 percent something like this if i'm not wrong. So this is happening now in Indonesia that's why i think all over the world because we are changing we're having a changing world empire right from from America to multipolar world

Closing

33:41 Marek I agree I agree with this um like sometimes it can make you sad when you think about that because the other people don't know what's happening yeah but like what you can do yeah you can only spread the word educate and that's actually what you do so thank you for that and uh is there is something what you want to say and didn't mention till now I want to talk about

34:09 Dimas Yeah, I just want to say that if you are a Bitcoiner and you feel like you already achieved things in your life, maybe that you are having your more time, your time back, you have your house, your everything, and you want to help more, why not help us? why not help the global south because when i watch podcasts in in the west, it’s always about america focus right also about the ETF about the blackrock about michael sayler about uh treasury companies but it's not but never about how people in kenya are building their circular economy our people in El Salvador maybe on the underground right now but they're still building a circular economy. How about people like us in Indonesia, we have this lot of things happening, then maybe you should find your purpose here. You Marek, you have your own experience in Bali right? I mean maybe you can testify to that, maybe that the situation is true and then yeah I hope you you can contribute also here in Indonesia.

35:26 Marek Yeah that's nicely said I can I can agree it's uh the I spent seven years in Bali so I I I kind of understand a so they must thank you for joining it was nice interview I am happy that you share your experience and everything with me today and i wish the best to the bitcoin indonesia i hope that the viewers audience will support you somehow how they can find you how they can support

35:57 Dimas So you can find us on our website bitcoinindonesia.xyz you can find us also in Instagram, Twitter and Nostr basically @bitcoinindo21 and you can there in our website in our Nostr there's a donate button you can donate you can zap us and then you can also message me directly on Twitter for example so find me in @silatoshi_id so I have there so yeah we can put in the show notes also right and then we can chat we can help how can you contribute thank you very much Marek I mean very nice to catch up with you again alright and this is the true way of Bitcoin right we know each other and then we try to keep in touch and then try to help each other so thank you very much for the opportunity again