I set out to bring one Kisumu merchant onto bitcoin every week. We're already at four, and it has been amazing.

Shop no. 4 is Lake Basin Mall Hotel, run by Nancy. It's my favourite food spot: delicious local traditional food. My usual is fish and ugali, but if there's omena, my day is made. Today her poster went up on the wall, next to the chapati on the board.

What Altradits is doing in Kisumu

Altradits is my open-source bitcoin learning project. Its first product, kTown, is a QR code that lets any local shop take bitcoin and receive Kenyan shillings in M-Pesa.

  • The customer scans the QR with any Lightning wallet and pays in sats.
  • The shop gets shillings in M-Pesa. No new app, no exchange account, no jargon.
  • The payment runs through my own Lightning node.

The community I'm building for is ordinary Kisumu: food vendors, small hotels, kiosks, and the people who buy from them. Most of them have only heard of bitcoin as a scam or a gamble. I want them to see it working at a till they already trust.

How shop no. 4 went

  1. The poster is made for her shop. Shop name, her own QR, "Bitcoin accepted here".
  2. It's laminated so it survives rain, flour and busy hands.
  3. I carry it across Kisumu and put it up on her wall.
  4. I pay first. I convert part of my own shillings into sats and buy something with the QR, so the merchant sees the money land in M-Pesa.

That demo is always the moment. Every merchant is amazed, and every one asks why more people don't use this.

Register your shop (it's free)

If you run a shop in Kisumu, or anywhere you have M-Pesa:

  1. Open https://altradits.com/ktown/
  2. Enter your M-Pesa number, shop name and the M-Pesa name as M-Pesa shows it, and set a 6-digit PIN.
  3. Your shop QR is ready. Print it, or message me and I'll bring a laminated poster.

Merchants don't pay me anything.

Sponsor the next shop

Each QR poster costs me about $1 to make. I have no sponsor. I pay for it myself.

  • Donate in sats (straight to my own node): https://altradits.com/donate.html
  • Sponsor a shop onboarding: $1 covers one poster. More covers my transport and the sats I spend in the demo.
  • Collaborate: if you build on Lightning, run a bitcoin community, or employ people who could be paid in bitcoin, talk to me.

The honest part: my nightmare

Today was hard. I'm balancing class work, learning to contribute to open-source bitcoin projects, and looking for a paying job so I can keep this dream for Kisumu alive.

I'm not stopping. I'm using everything I have so merchants have what they need to take bitcoin.

But one question keeps me up every night: where do people in Kisumu earn bitcoin? A shop that accepts bitcoin needs someone who spends it. Right now that's mostly me, with sats I bought with my own shillings.

So I need help on the other side too:

  • Remote work, bountiShop no. 4 takes bitcoin in Kisumu. Now I need people who earn ites or gigs that pay in sats
  • Employers or projects willing to pay Kenyan contributors in bitcoin
  • Developers and educators who want to teach people here to build and earn

It starts with one merchant and one bitcoin spender. We have four merchants. Help me find the spenders.

Earlier in the journey

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