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First Crypto Payment in Tanzania with Metamask Today marks a small but exciting milestone: I just made my first in-store payment in Tanzania using my MetaMask card! 🦊🇹🇿 Surprisingly, Google Pay — which has never worked for me here before — went through flawlessly. The only difference this time? I was connected to a VPN set to Spain. 🤔 This moment feels like a genuine step forward in living on crypto and pushing the boundaries of decentralized finance in daily life....

My Problem with Alby and Nostr Zaps I encountered challenges while trying to use Alby and Nostr for sending and receiving zaps. Originally, Alby was a free custodial wallet, but its transition to Alby Hub has introduced changes. Alby Hub is only free if you host it on your own server, which involves additional expenses and a degree of technical expertise. Essentially, using Alby Hub now involves either financial or technical investment....

My Last Adventure of 2024 Yesterday marked the final day of 2024, and as promised, I’m sharing the story of how I closed out the year. The day began like most others on the road: shower, breakfast and a cup of coffee. While I was at the hostel’s breakfast area, a man from Switzerland approached me with an invitation. He and two others planned to hike to the waterfalls — a journey I had taken before....

Today is the last day of 2024, and it feels surreal to think how distant 2025 once seemed. Now, it’s right around the corner. In March 2025, I’ll celebrate eight years of traveling, and it’s incredible how quickly time has flown. While I haven’t visited every country on my list, I’ve had the chance to explore so many breathtaking places. This morning, I decided on a spontaneous hike in the Kilimanjaro region....

Last night, I installed Primal to explore its features. The Primal client has its own wallet functionality, but there’s a catch: it provides a lightning address that cannot be customized to your preferred name. To work around this limitation, I used Nostrcheck to forward the zaps from my Nostrcheck address to my Primal address. Now everything looks good on the surface, but the zapper still sees the odd Primal address....

Exploring Moshi: Cafés, Challenges, and Plans Ahead Yesterday evening, I found myself enjoying a late dinner at the Hostel Bar, followed by diving deeper into exploring a nostr client called Primal. While it promises a partial solution to the issues I’ve been facing with the Alby Custodial Wallet, it’s still not perfect. There are features I’d like to see that are missing, and uploading images — like the ones I’m working on now in a café at the foot of Kilimanjaro — remains a challenge....

Navigating the Changes in Nostr: Zaps, Sats, and the End of Alby’s Custodial Wallet Today, I want to dive into a technical issue that’s been on my mind lately. If you’re familiar with Nostr, you’ll know it’s a decentralized protocol somewhat akin to X (formerly Twitter). Unlike X, though, Nostr isn’t a platform — it’s a protocol, which means it’s open and flexible, with various clients to use. In Nostr, you can receive both likes and zaps (which are small amounts of Bitcoin sent using the Lightning Network)....

Back to Moshi: A Familiar Seat, Three Months Later Today, November 20th, I find myself in the exact spot where I stood three months ago, preparing to embark on a journey from Moshi, Tanzania, to Mombasa, Kenya. That morning, I took an early bus, crossing the Taveta border, winding through a national park, and passing towns and wild landscapes. The journey was mesmerizing. I love the rhythm of these long bus rides across Africa, where the wild beauty of nature alternates with bustling towns....