This is a transcript from the YouTube live AMA on 5th of January 2022

Anita Mlakar: 00:29 Hello everybody, dear participants, dear members of our community. Hello and welcome to our weekly AMA. I am Anita Mlakar and since this is the first live AMA in the year 2022. Let me just start with a sincere wish for all of you to have a magical, successful, and of course a happy year.

00:52 Welcome to our first 2022 AMA which we have decided to dedicate it to all of your questions. So, this is your opportunity, your chance to ask anything, you just have to go for it. Okay?

01:07 Thank you again, for being with us and thank you for being a part of communities on telegram on Twitter, and discord. It’s amazing how they’re growing everyday thanks to you, of course.

01:18 I’m inviting you again. To get involved, you can click like if you like this AMA Of course, you can hit the bell icon to get notifications and don’t forget to subscribe to YouTube channel or invite friends if they are interested in this subject. Sandi Bitenc the CEO of three arrow will be with us soon. But first, a short introduction is in order.

01:43 With 3air millions of people and businesses in African cities will have access to high-speed internet, digital work, banking, education, health, and entertainment solutions will be accessible immediately. Right now, the situation is different. Africa is home to more than 1.3 billion people but only about 30% are connected to the internet. One reason for such low broadband internet adoption rates across the continent is that government and telecom companies have been struggling to invest heavily in infrastructure. So, the solution is broadband internet. 3air platform will bring affordable high-speed broadband to sub-Saharan African cities. Using a technology solution with partner K3 Telecom, up to 1 million users are being predicted to come onto the 3air platform in the first three years just from this partnership. We believe that businesses and individuals in developing countries should have the same opportunities to communicate and transact online like we do in developed countries in order to grow their local economy.

02:54 So 3air blockchain based platform will allow easy access to digital services, identity management, payments, and credit line building. This is a project that will make a big change and you can be a part of it, and we are talking about it in our communities. And in weekly AMA where Sandi Bitenc is always with us. I would like to welcome him today too.

03:19 Hey, Sandi.

Sandi Bitenc: 03:21 Hello. Hi, Anita. Hi, everybody. Hi 3air family. How are you?

Anita Mlakar: 03:31 Sandi. Hello, and welcome to the year 2022.

Sandi Bitenc: 03:36 Thank you. welcome to you, too. So, we are all here now and I think 2022 is going to be awesome. Really.

Anita Mlakar: 03:50 Yeah, I’m sure it’s going to be awesome. I mean, I know it’s going to be just to remind us of 2021. A new article is out, a short review of this first year.

Sandi Bitenc: 04:02 Yeah. We spoke a bit about it on our last AMA, but I think Ruba wrote the article actually, for us also. So, it’s there now on medium.

Anita Mlakar: 04:18 It’s a very nice one just going through everything that was happening in the last year. And I really like it. And I saw a lot of people who read it also in our community, we’re talking about it. And now we are getting into next year, Sandi new challenges, and we were also talking about them but today is a special AMA dedicated to all the questions that are coming up in our community, which means that it’s time for you to ask questions to write them down in a chat. I will also be checking telegram and discord for your questions. You were also sending some before that so we will get to them too but Sandi, for starters, how did you get into the new year? Did you celebrate? How was it?

Sandi Bitenc: 05:11 Yeah, we did celebrate. It was kind of crazy here. They closed down whole downtown in Dubai, and they have zones and like really know the whole alphabet of zones and then you can enter only those zone and need to be pre-registered and our building is actually in one of those zones. So, nobody that we called up could actually come and visit us. So, we needed to organize everything up front. So, we had people coming in at 2pm already. So, we spent the whole afternoon with them till the morning and we started a party in our apartment. But just in the elevator, we met some other crypto guys that actually had a bigger apartment than me, but it was kind of mostly empty because they were too late inviting people, they even invited a DJ, but he was then stuck in somewhere in the car and he couldn’t get to it. So, we were like also DJing a bit ourselves. And it was quite a big party, and it was like totally a crypto party. The guys actually have a crypto vending machine in their apartments. Really crazy. So, it’s a vending machine. You can get out all those soft drinks and some chocolates and so on and you can send and pay with crypto pretty amazing. I actually have a video somewhere. I’ll post it later on.

Anita Mlakar: 06:48 Nice game. Maybe this is the opportunity to ask what kind of music do you like Sandi since you said you were also DJ.

Sandi Bitenc: 06:56 I didn’t say I was a DJ. I said I was DJing, so I didn’t say it was good.

Anita Mlakar: 07:04 What kind of music are you listening?

Sandi Bitenc: 07:06 I’m mostly listening to electronic music. I can listen to pretty much really hardcore, minimal techno. I like house. But I like if it’s good music, just before I was listening to some classical music, so I was listening to Vivaldi, for instance, when I work, I like to listen to classical music. So, I listen to quite a lot.

Anita Mlakar: 07:33 That’s good.

Sandi Bitenc: 07:35 What I don’t like it is mostly I don’t like the Latino music. So that’s not really my thing.

Anita Mlakar: 07:41 Okay, I will not then buy a CD with Latino music. Okay, we have a lot of questions coming up, since we said we’re going to be answering them this is the time to start it. Just to make sure Sandi, you said that we will also give some award, right? One-time 1000 tokens?

Sandi Bitenc: 08:04 Yeah, we’ll give away 1000 tokens for the best question.

Anita Mlakar: 08:09 For the best question, guys.

Sandi Bitenc: 08:13 Or the toughest.

Anita Mlakar: 08:14 this is the challenge. Okay. So, let’s start.

Sandi Bitenc: 08:17 I don’t think they can really ask such tough questions that I had, like, the last time I was on a call with kind of an accelerator VC fund. And they were throwing questions at me for one and a half hours and then in the end, I was like, they were saying like, that was really a good interview that we had like, for a long time not so good and I was really like YES, I did a good job.

Anita Mlakar: 08:50 I’m not surprised because you always have answers. I don’t think there was a question till now that you didn’t have an answer to. So, we will really see what kind of questions will come in today? And what kind of challenge that will be, but I’m sure you will answer them all.

09:04 So, let’s start Sandi, this is the first one, I will really try to go through them, look for them in all of our communities and also here, so bear with me today. This is the first question. What do you consider are the main advantages main outstanding characteristic of this project? And how do you demonstrate its transparency and efficiency? This is from Kuldeep.

Sandi Bitenc: 09:04 So, the main advantage for sure is that we have a working solution to provide broadband internet and digital TV to places where nobody else can actually build them because there is no cable infrastructure laid in the developing countries mostly, so big cities. They didn’t think about this when they were expanding and right now you just cannot go there and stop all the traffic and everything that’s going on dig trenches, lay cable so that you can provide a really stable and fast internet and the mobile solutions that are not there yet and probably won’t be there for quite some time. So, this is our main advantage and what was the rest of the question?

Anita Mlakar: 10:19 About transparency. How do you demonstrate its transparency and efficiency?

Sandi Bitenc: 10:24 Well, transparency, you can ask us anything. So, we don’t hide anything at all. There was really an extensive white paper, and we moved the white paper right now to the docs. So, it’s actually searchable and easy scrollable on our website, there’s so much information there. And as I said, I’m not shy of answering any question that there might be, but about the efficiency. If we look at the technology, again, in the white paper, there are some graphs and some numbers that we can provide. And it’s just on comparable to anything else. In Africa, we are by far the best ones getting out, the fastest and the most stable internet right now.

Anita Mlakar: 11:25 Okay, thank you. This is another question. Dave is asking, is there a target milestone dates for the Nigeria rollout?

Sandi Bitenc: 11:36 Yeah, we are ready to start building in Nigeria, the moment that we get the funding. And then the milestone is actually of six months. In six months, we need to be ready and connect the first clients. So, this is going to be our first milestone and we think that we can connect a million clients probably in Nigeria, probably in one and a half to two years, something like that, just in Nigeria, possibly even faster but that would be our milestone. So, million clients in two years should be a sum, a target that we want to achieve.

Anita Mlakar: 12:18 Okay, let’s go on. Is the upcoming DEX listing on the schedule, and which will it be?

Sandi Bitenc: 12:26 Yeah, it’s on the schedule. We didn’t decide yet because we do want to launch on a native really, how I high quality DEX? So, if Sunday swap is operational, we’ll probably list there else we will look for something else. But in regards to DEX listing, you don’t need to decide really upfront because a DEX listing can be done at any point in time by anyone actually and anyone that is willing to provide the liquidity. So that’s why it’s the centralized solution. So, we’ll just decide in the last moment where exactly we want to list by the time, for sure it’s going to be a reputable DEX.

Anita Mlakar: 13:09 Okay. How is presale going? Do you think it will run until the end of the month or finish earlier?

Sandi Bitenc: 13:17 Well, to be honest, it is a bit slow in regards to the public presale. So, the current market doesn’t really help us the sentiment is quite low right now, but I have something else in play. So, I’m speaking to some potentially bigger investors that are going to also bring their community with them. And once that happens, we’ll probably just close the presale immediately. So, it could potentially happen that this runs within a 10 days or two weeks, and then it’s just close. I hope so. it’s not a done deal. We are talking and those talks are taking quite long. And also, we didn’t talked a lot during the holidays. So, we are starting now this week again. Hopefully it works. If it works, everybody will be so happy, and I would be probably the happiest.

Anita Mlakar: 14:19 Okay. Joel says my questions were asked ahead of time in Discord and I did write them down. So here they are. He also said they’re very good and important questions for investors and the first question coming from him is. As much as possible can you tell us what types of industries and or businesses you are talking to about investments?

Sandi Bitenc: 14:46 So in regards to them invest into us. My first focus right now, in regards to investments is a big gaming platform, you know, play to earn thing. I think it’s a really good match for us because we can provide the users. we will connect a lot of users and we actually have the working solution we’ll be connecting users within six months, I don’t think that they can get new users that are not connected to the internet anywhere else, then with us so fast, so it should be a good match, but we need to really find a good deal in between us. So, this is our main focus but I’m also talking to some other Metaverse projects. I’m talking to local VC funds here. I might go to Saudi Arabia on Monday to also talk a bit about the investments, so no industries, right now, specific besides the metaverse and play to earn games, and everything else is mostly like VC funds that we know through my contacts or through our advisors.

Anita Mlakar: 16:16 Okay. This is another question coming from Joel. What’s the ratio between retail investors to VC businesses?

Sandi Bitenc: 16:26 Right now, retail is, I think it’s going to be half, something like that. If we would say, if we would just compare the presale, the private presale to the public presale, the private presale is still a bit bigger than the public one but in the private presale, it’s not only VC funds, it’s mostly actually private, bigger private investors. So, I wouldn’t put everybody into a VC fund.

Anita Mlakar: 17:04 How many paying customers are actually using the service right now?

Sandi Bitenc: 17:09 So, in Sierra Leone, on our testing round there right now around 2500 paying customers there.

Anita Mlakar: 17:18 And another one, what countries are you currently operating in and what countries are next in order?

Sandi Bitenc: 17:26 It’s only Sierra Leone that we’re operating in right now on a smaller scale, just because it’s a testing ground there. And next one up is Nigeria, then we want to go to DRC. So Democratic Republic of Congo, then we actually have pretty, easy access from Congo Brazzaville, because they’re just a river across it, we could potentially even use the same infrastructure there. Ethiopia is one that we are talking really deeply about, and we have good contacts there. Kenya is a big one also but there is a list of all the countries we are looking into in our docs.

Anita Mlakar: 18:16 Okay, Joel, let us know if we have answered all of your questions. And now here’s another one. This is from Neeloky, how do you see the future with 3air? Do you think it will be a great deployment?

Sandi Bitenc: 18:31 Of course, I think it’s going to be a great deployment and else wouldn’t be working here. So, I’m all into 3air with all my heart and my soul and my money also. So, I do think it will be a great deployment. So, about the future. Even with K3 partnership, we will probably grow into millions of users. So that’s already big, but what we are doing in the future is providing a platform that’s going to be suited to the general telecoms. So, we know the pain points of modern telecoms right now because we are kind of bond with K3 and there are some privacy issues always you know, some data sharing. There are the bandwidth sharing models right now that don’t really work if you include the ISP telecom into it. That’s all that we are trying to also solve.

19:36 The biggest thing probably that we want to do is in regards to telecoms is trying tokenized bandwidth. So that can be a really big game changer in the industry and whoever manage this first it’s going to be probably the main player in it. So, we are already doing some work, some research work on that one.

20:00 To be honest, the success of our project is not dependent on this. So those are just, you know, the cherries on top that we’re looking for. And even without that, what we already have in hand and what’s really, I won’t say easy to do, it’s probable that we’ll be able to do it, we are now really probable, is getting the infrastructure up, because we’ve done it before. So, we just need to copy paste it, everything else is an addition to it, and we’ll just make 3air bigger and bigger.

20:43 I think also, with time with more telecoms on board, we’ll create a big and nice roaming community and roaming infrastructure, so that you’ll be able to connect to internet wherever you would like. And it’s also an on our roadmap, internal is also becoming a telecom, so a mobile provider with time, with good connections already, there are it’s a really natural pairing, just providing some mobile solutions in the future also. And there is a lot of other things we want to do. So, we want to be a big contributor to developing the African continent. So, wherever we are, we are going to fund local projects that are good for the communities, good for everybody. We want to provide some internet connectivity, free for schools and so on and that gets me back to the previous questions, but I forgot to mention it that we’re actually looking into partnering up also with a UNICEF project, a big one. That could also potentially provide us some funding in the future. So, we have a lot in the works. Just nothing is right now finalized but yeah, I really think this is going to be one of the biggest blockchain projects up to date.

Anita Mlakar: 22:18 That’s great. Here’s another question. Blockchain world is growing very fast and becoming more competitive. What are your tricks to attract more community? Do you have a good marketing team? What events do you prepare to attract investors?

Sandi Bitenc: 22:37 So, we talked about investors quite a lot in the previous questions, I don’t think that we need to right now prepare events to attract investors. I really want to do this personally, talking to bigger investors, and what we have in plan is actually one of those things falls into place is going to be a solution to what we’re looking right now into, then what we actually need to do is really grow the community. So how we want to grow the community right now is partnering up with good projects. So, if we partner up with the gaming solution that we’re talking to right now, we will grow our community tremendously. And just to attract more people to it, we’ll get millions of people on the internet. So, they will need to go through us. There’ll be our community just from the start. So, with time, I think and with connecting more and more people will really grow our community to the largest possible extent. So, I’m talking to four millions of community members, it’s just natural.

Anita Mlakar: 24:06 Nice number. Okay, JC 72, a monthly broadband package cost 64% of the average income in Africa, what will be the average cost? Considering a 3air’s broadband package?

Sandi Bitenc: 24:22 Yeah, that’s kind of hard to say because it depends a lot on country to country and we are talking here about averages. But in the end, you’re dealing with real people, and not with averages. And for instance, in Nigeria, the income is far higher, and the costs of internet are actually low. So, the whole Nigeria look at it will be a different average than that.

24:50 But also, the big question is how much do we need to pay to actually buy the internet from the backbone. So, we don’t get no ISP, or no telecom actually gets the Internet for free and that’s usually the biggest part of the of the costs. And I can tell you that in Africa, buying back internet from the backbone, it’s on a scale of minimal 10x. So, from 5x to 10x, difference in prices, so we are talking about 500 to 1,000% difference in prices. So, it’s hard to say how much. What I can say is that we will for sure be cheaper than the current providers, because our OPEX and CAPEX, providing infrastructure building and out is far cheaper for us than a traditional telecom. And in regards to comparing us to a mobile solution, we need, like 1/5 of the base stations that they do. So that’s also then 1/5 of the investment and also 1/5 of the maintenance. So, we will be cheaper. And right now, in Sierra Leone, we could go far lower than we are right now. But to be honest, if we do that, and we try it, we actually get a lot of threats from other telecoms and so on. So, let’s see with time the prices with us coming into Africa prices will drop that, I’m sure.

Anita Mlakar: 26:40 Okay, thank you for all your questions. Let’s go on for the next listing with 3air be partnering with the DEX to provide 3or tokens for liquidity, or will the DEX listing only include liquidity from unlock presale tokens?

Sandi Bitenc: 26:56 So, you don’t need to partner up with a DEX to provide liquidity and that’s or is not. So, it’s our decision, how we are going to list. If you look at our token omics, you’ll see that there is 50 million of 3air tokens set aside for providing liquidity. So, this is the liquidity that we will provide. And those are going to get unlocked in the beginning and you need to have so it’s not that you partner up with a DEX, and then they’ll provide you with tokens or something like that, it’s usually not like that they could potentially be an investor and then buy the tokens and list it themselves. But with DEX, the beauty of the DEX is you just go to a DEX and just create a pool, put your 3air tokens in and then you add the additional corresponding amount of the token you want just have it exchange to, and then you have a payer and that’s it. And you provided liquidity, and everybody can go and buy or sell their tokens. Everybody else can also provide liquidity and earn some fees off of that. So that’s the beauty of the DEXs but the ugly things because then really every shit coin can actually list on the DEX. So then usually there is more shit coins than good coins.

Anita Mlakar: 28:34 Okay? Are you going to be supported by the media to promote your notoriety and your advantage?

Sandi Bitenc: 28:46 I think once we are in Africa, the media will pick it up. They did pick it up in Sierra Leone before, but in the end, you always need to pay for promotion, and we are ready to pay for promotion. So, we have set aside funds for marketing and for promotions. And we already did it with 3air and we will do it, again, so it’s going to be for sure ongoing and once we open up Nigeria, this is going to be a different level of promotion so because we’ll do like some regular stuff not only online and regular what’s usually in crypto. So, we’ll also go into other promotional materials that usual telecoms use, and that’ll also get us more users and more attention to the 3air token.

Anita Mlakar: 29:44 Richard and has a question. Why standard telecom companies like Vodafone are not able to bring the same concept towards developing countries?

Sandi Bitenc: 29:55 Because they don’t have the technology. So, our technology is patented. it’s in house developed and they just cannot use it. So, I think it’s a straightforward answer, right.

Anita Mlakar: 30:13 Okay, apart from K3 will 3air partner with other telecom companies in countries where K3 is not available?

Sandi Bitenc: 30:22 Yeah, we are for sure aiming at this but first, what we need to do is, we need to develop the platform. And once the platform is developed and tested with our own users, then we are onboarding other telecoms not before. So, we want to really have a robust and working and proven and tested platform, then we’ll be ready to talk to other telecoms. We don’t want to do any mistakes there once we have the first outside clients connecting to the platform.

Anita Mlakar: 30:57 This is the question, interesting question. What can the community do to help to buy more? buy more?

Sandi Bitenc: 31:06 Yeah, they can buy more. That’s always good. But spreading the word supporting us. That’s something just talk to people about what we’re doing. I think we’re still on a noble mission, although, it’s going to be profitable for everybody involved but I think in the end, most profits will be for the actual internet users in Africa. So, we are on a noble mission, and we do want to help people. And we’ll provide a lot of free connectivity to the ones that really deserve it or cannot afford it, and so on. So just spread the word. That’s the community.

Anita Mlakar: 31:55 Yeah. Why do you think Discord is the best tool to serve the community?

Sandi Bitenc: 32:03 I think that Discord is a bit more transparent. It’s a bit more structured, so you can a bit easily, more easily find some answers that you’re looking for, you can join the conversations that matter to you. And the other tool is mostly telegram where you can interact directly with the users. And there’s just one thread everything falls one below the other. And, I think, 3air is such a big project that it cannot be in one thread. So, there are so many aspects to it, and I think that the telegram was fine, and it’s still fine. So, the community is not so big right now that we couldn’t handle it in telegram but in telegram there’s always repeating and repeating questions, you get less of this in discord. It’s also more secure. we had a bot attack a while ago on Telegram, and it was so hard to manage really hard to manage. Those things don’t really happen on Discord, it’s better to implement some bots and adding some additional features, and so on. So, I think it’s a far more comprehensive tool than telegram and of course, there are other communities like Twitter, and we won’t neglect those. Or Reddit is also there. Although we haven’t been working a lot on Reddit, but I think for direct communication. I think Discord is right now the best in my opinion, but I’m always looking, if somebody has any better alternatives. We’ll look into them for sure.

Anita Mlakar: 34:00 Okay. Do you have plan guys to join some major Cardano events in this year?

Sandi Bitenc: 34:11 Well, to be honest, we didn’t look into it right now. I don’t know what’s happening but I’m eager to join any event possible. So, we are joining some events but right now on our radar. They weren’t really some Cardano specific events right now.

Anita Mlakar: 34:31 Somewhere was a question. I’m not seeing it yet now, but there was a question about if you’re planning AMAs with partners such as K3.

Sandi Bitenc: 34:41 We had already AMAs with partners. So, we had Davor. Davor is actually part of both So Davor is the CTO in 3air and he’s also So the CTO of K3. So, you need to know that it’s kind of a mixed team. So, a lot of people that are working in K3 we are also working on 3air and vice versa. And just if you look at our Christmas Special, there was a lot of people from the team on. So, we actually had the President of the Board of K3, so the top man of K3 in our chat, on the AMA, in live call but yeah, we’ll bring them on again, for sure.

Anita Mlakar: 35:42 And if you didn’t watch the Christmas AMA, you should do that. Right, Sandi? it was great.

Sandi Bitenc: 35:48 That was epic. Really, everybody loved it.

Anita Mlakar: 35:51 It was really nice. Richard has another question. Will three air work in phase two with private nodes like Cardano world mobile in the future?

Sandi Bitenc: 36:04 we will have nodes because we are aiming to create our own side chain, but we are not creating our own side chain just for providing some internet connectivity, that one is more aimed at providing some privacy layers and just going deeper into broadband tokenization and fraud prevention. So, this is where we think that a lot of transactions will actually happen but to be honest, just for bandwidth sharing, I don’t think that you actually need your own blockchain. It shouldn’t be so many transactions to be honest. Because I don’t think that it makes sense to have all the information, everything that goes through the bandwidth just somehow stored on the blockchain. I don’t think it makes sense. So, in that regards, no. So, there will be nodes and there will be the ability to stake into nodes. But in a different sense that what role mobile is doing. And there will also be the possibility to stake into the access points that we are using to share the bandwidth but it’s not a chain, it’s not a proof of stake system is just going to be an insurance system that’s going to provide insurance to the infrastructure there that is going to be needed to share the bandwidth.

Anita Mlakar: 37:43 Okay, thank you Sandi, Thebigdid is wondering if there any more info on early staking?

Sandi Bitenc: 37:49 Early staking is how it was set out to be and I don’t think there will be any changes to it. So, there will be early staking and that early staking is set out to be at least three years long, or to the most three years. But you know early staking will stop once we have our own side chain and you can actually stake in a node or validator or however you want to call it. Then early staking, we’ll stop, and we’ll just continue with regular staking but for the time being in between we have the early staking rewards. So once you get the tokens, I think it’s set three months after token generation event, you will be able to stake your tokens in our early staking pool and you’ll receive rewards out of those ones and the staking rewards are set out linearly. So, this means that in the early stages when not a lot of tokens are actually issued, and they’ll also not be so many tokens staked and when they’re less token state the rewards will be higher the API’s will be higher than afterwards so that’s why early staking rewards will probably reward the first ones in more than later on.

Anita Mlakar: 39:20 Okay, another question. Who team lead from the team will arrange the groundwork in Africa?

Sandi Bitenc: 39:27 so, the groundwork in Africa is K3’s part so they have a team that’s doing this already for years. So how this works is once the funding is there, we get all the hardware that we need. So, we do need to order some parts and then those parts needs to come in and then they need to get this assembled and we can order some bars also in Africa but most of it we need to bring actually from Europe or wherever. So, for the most part, we are working with standard parts that are produced by Siemens or similar. But the core thing, that the little secret that’s produced in Maribor actually in Slovenia. So, we are taking that to Africa, then. Also, in the meantime, a team is already there that’s starting to get some employees there and started training them. So that within six months, everything is ready, the structure is set up, the infrastructure is set up, and we have a team that’s actually being already trained and able to work immediately. Once we start.

Anita Mlakar: 40:53 You know Sandi that more than 40 minutes are gone by. Can you imagine how quickly time flies?

Sandi Bitenc: 41:00 We are like really like answered five, six questions, and it’s already, I think we will be answering a bit more.

Anita Mlakar: 41:07 So, here’s another one. Will 3air have any collab with adax?

Sandi Bitenc: 41:12 Right now, we don’t have any collaboration with them, but I’m always open for some collaborations.

Anita Mlakar: 41:22 Okay, here’s another one. Are you going to pay big YouTubers for promotions? If yes, when? If no, why?

Sandi Bitenc: 41:32 I’m thinking. So, we are thinking about this really thoroughly with our marketing department. So, you cannot imagine what the big YouTubers actually charge. So let me tell you, so yesterday, we were on a call with a marketing agency that can also provide connections to those big YouTubers and so on. And they have a package that costs you $1,300,000 plus $82,000. And you get 27 YouTubers on. So, it’s like crazy money. so, a $1,300,000, it’s almost $2 million for 27 youtubers that just either you have an AMA there. But to be honest, every big YouTuber, the costs are above $50,000 for an eight-minute video. So, it’s not that we are not ready to pay this, but we really want to know what we are getting for this. So, if we do it, we really want to know what we are getting for it.

Anita Mlakar: 42:47 This is crazy but okay, maybe this question is also connected in a way? Because a Free Connect is asking. What are the main characteristics of ambassadors, and how to be a 3air ambassador? Is it just on social media?

Sandi Bitenc: 43:06 Right now, we are having this only on social media and I am not really the right person to ask this. We have Leon and Samo that are doing the work on this, and they can tell you all about what the ambassadors actually have to do but if you see them, they’re mostly on our social media. And they’re answering some questions. They’re also posting a bit on their channels. So, it’s just people that are really believe in what we’re trying to achieve and what we’re trying to do. And I think those should be also awarded properly, because they’re doing a lot of work inside the community. And they’re in supporting you since the early beginnings. And those beginnings are always tough. And I really value everybody that stood by us since the beginning.

Anita Mlakar: 44:07 Yeah, there’s so many people really wanted to be a part of this movement and really, with heart in this project. So, it’s nice to see them sharing and talking about it and it’s really nice.

Sandi Bitenc: 44:22 But it’s not only believing in us, it’s also doing a bit extra work. So, believing and doing the work behind it also. So, nothing comes for free. Everybody can say I’m a believer, but only a few guys and really only a few people are there that stood out and were there for us also in tough times and helping us out and coming up with ideas and so on and just doing the work. I wouldn’t expect them just to do out of the blue. So that’s the real ambassadors. If you ask me.

Anita Mlakar: 45:04 Yeah, really nice. Will end users also need tokens? would this negatively affect them?

Sandi Bitenc: 45:13 The end users will need. So technically speaking, really no. So, they could potentially come into our offices and pay with cash, and we would then take the cash and buy the 3air tokens for them and process it through our platform. So that’s a possibility but we actually really don’t. So, the main thing, why we’ve done everything, why everything started with 3air is because we don’t want people to come into our offices each month, it’s really tough for us to, you know, each month, instead of serving the same client over and over, we can be out and connecting new clients. So, this is what we want. So, to scale up, but for that, we actually need to provide them a good solution. And holding tokens is going to give you benefits not negatively affect you. So, if you hold more tokens, you will get more discounts. So, this is how it goes and not only that you’ll need to use 3air for payment and we will provide other options so that you can also pay with our payment methods, but everything will be converted through 3air and then process with 3air through the platform. So, this is going to be work like this but if you hold additional tokens, you will get additional discounts.

Anita Mlakar: 46:41 For this next question Sandi, you will have to reveal a little more about yourself. Now the question is, how do you decide to turn your career as a bodybuilder to high tech company CEO, this is a big turn as you don’t have a tech background. Could you provide us some information of yourself?

Sandi Bitenc: 47:03 Oh my god, I’ve done so many things in life. I don’t know, I have the luck that I can always do whatever I kind of want to, I don’t think that I was ever in a job that was hard for me to do or that I didn’t want to do. My tech background started. I don’t know probably when I was six years old when I got my first Commodore 64 computer. So, I was always a tech person, a tech child. So I was always behind a computer, I was quite a sick child, to be honest. So, I didn’t go to the gym. I didn’t work out anything. I actually didn’t go to our school gym classes because I was just sick. And I didn’t play with other kids. So, I was just behind a computer all the time. And then with time I got the PCs that came out the 286/386. So, I got those ones always broken down and then I was just watching everybody who was repairing it and in no time, I was the one repairing the computer. So, my job as a 13–14-year-old was going around and fixing other people’s computers.

48:27 Then my first company that I co-founded with some friends from school was actually when I was 19 years old and we set up a- and actually, to be honest, Laura was a part of that company also. So, Laura, our designer is with me for years and years. So, we actually had some servers, and we were probably the second biggest domain registrar in our area, and we had a hosting solution. And then we started building websites when mostly nobody else was building websites. So, I was doing websites in 1999 and 2000 so there was not a lot of people doing websites back then. So, I was already doing some software development in that time.

49:24 But then afterwards, I actually- and my educational background is actually in economics. So, I kind of think that’s a good pairing economics and like development and computers together to become a CEO of a tech company but I’ve done many things afterwards, not the only bodybuilding that was in the time that I had my own gym. And just because I always go all in into everything that I do. So, I had a gym I said look I need to get it in the best shape possible and to be in the best shape from everybody else that’s coming into my gym, and I just did that. And maybe I’ll share some pictures at one point in time, but I was really in good shape.

50:18 In the meantime, I was actually working as a CEO of a casino. That was also something interesting for me. I was in a construction project that didn’t work out well. So, it’s not that everything that I’ve done worked out well all the time. And I think I’m getting a bit of a slow connection right now, but I think I must be boring or something like that, because the connection is going down. But yeah, so the last eight years, for instance, I was doing a lot of work as a functional medicine practitioner. I was doing a lot of work as a functional medicine practitioner, because it made me a big change when I started working out and eating properly for me, and I said, “Man, if it is what works for me, and I actually got rid of all my health issues. I could help a lot of people with it” and I did help a lot of people, with what I have done in that area but I kind of felt I reached the top. So, when I think I reached the top, I just switched.

Anita Mlakar: 51:47 Well Sandi, interesting and we could go on and on. And I’m sure that you will tell us more about yourself in some other opportunity because I know you were active in doing so many things. So, thank you for this. Now, there was a question in the community.

Sandi Bitenc: 52:02 Another thing maybe that I can say is just to tell you how much all in I am. So, I actually started my sports career kind of started with freediving. So, I started freediving and within a few years I just set a world record there and the world record still stands I was doing 24 hours diving on my breath from one side of the 50-meter pool to the other one I was doing this for 24 hours I did 51 kilometers and 100 meters underwater in 24 hours.

Anita Mlakar: 52:41 Oh my god.

Sandi Bitenc: 52:42 so, I’m telling you when I go, I go. I don’t look back and I’m all in you don’t stop me.

Anita Mlakar: 52:48 You are dedicated, right?

Sandi Bitenc: 52:50 Exactly.

Anita Mlakar: 52:52 Bravo! This is great. Oh my god. Sandi, a question came up in our community but also here I can see now that someone is interesting, Neeloky. About the new website is it true that the new website is preparing, and you see, a sneak peek of the new website?

Sandi Bitenc: 53:14 A sneak peek would be possible. Laura already designed it but it’s just a picture. it’s nothing so it will make it really a difference we were integrated our 3 as a 3d model inside of it and there will be a lot of animation so it’s going to be far better looking and more modern style than it’s right now and I think the concept is ready and it’s already in production is just going to be a one pager and the landing page and everything else will be in the dock, so the docks is already up. Right now, we need a front page, the landing page for it and then we’re good to go and I think that should be ready within two weeks maybe 10 days, two weeks something like that.

Anita Mlakar: 54:17 Okay. Now will K3 also arrange the necessary local governmental permits?

Sandi Bitenc: 54:25 Yeah, K3 is already doing this. So K3 did it in Sierra Leone. It did any country before that also, and Nigeria already has some licenses, not all of them but it has most of the licenses that we need to operate, and the other ones are waiting for us once we come in. And there are already some licenses. There are all licenses in DRC. One of our partners we are also holding an ISP license in Ethiopia, and there are quite a lot of licenses already acquired or in the process.

Anita Mlakar: 55:11 Lawrence Arabian says, what assures that K3 continuous working with 3air, can they provide internet independently without 3air?

Sandi Bitenc: 55:22 Yes, potentially they could but as I told you, it’s a mixed team. So K3 has a stake in 3air and 3air has as a stake in K3, the separation is strictly out of two things. So, one is legal stuff. When you want to do business locally with an ISP, you need to have licenses, we just talked about it. So, you need to comply with local regulation. And some countries aren’t really keen on getting in a company that’s working with crypto. So that’s why the companies are legal wise separated. So K3 is operating not with crypto, they’re just using a third-party solution for it. So, this is not the same company in that regards. And the other thing is that we want to actually open up 3air to other telecom. So, if I would be a telecom, I don’t want to go to another platform that’s owned by another Telecom, right. So, this is also why it’s kind of separated and nothing else. Else 3air was born out of K3 needs.

Anita Mlakar: 56:47 Thank you. Ayele has written, Sandi you are quite knowledgeable about the tech and how it will bring change. Can you tell us the mentality and readiness of African countries? Did you research on that apart from your video promo?

Sandi Bitenc: 57:05 Yeah, we’ve done quite an extensive research in Nigeria, and we are already present in Sierra Leone. So, we do know, out of our experience that they are ready for sure. And just to tell you some statistics, it’s crazy, the people that we asked, and yeah, to be honest, it is a bit biased research because we asked through internet, so everybody who answered it kind of had at least a decent or half decent connection to the Internet already but people that are ready to accept crypto as payment 92% of people said that they’re willing to pay with crypto.

57:56 So once you’re in Nigeria and you have an internet connection, you are almost certain to be using crypto already. So, 70% of people said that they already did a crypto transaction. And I can just tell you, if you go to a school, each school will just be so happy to get a decent connection there. And yeah, it’s ready. And I think we also spoke about this with our advisors, Hilina and Markos that we had on our previous calls, and they all said that, and they’re present there and working in that area, and they say, Yeah, look, we are ready and Africa for sure is ready. And they’re looking for those solutions. And they’re looking for it because they don’t have any other option. So, the adoption there is and will be far faster than in any other developed country. Just because they need it.

58:53 Right now, where we are. We don’t need it so much. We can go on with our lives without any really big, I don’t know, impairments. You know, we have our credit cards, we have the internet almost everywhere we walk. So why would we look for new solutions. Also, Blockchain doesn’t bring us so much difference, but to them, it’s a big jump. So, they’ll just jump over one whole generation of technology, banking and everything and they’re ready for it. Yeah, just the infrastructure is not.

Anita Mlakar: 59:32 Okay, Sandi. Now we’re in an hour. Do we have time for another question?

Sandi Bitenc: 59:42 Yeah, I don’t think we’ll close down before an hour because it’s only 10 seconds left. So, Let’s take another question and then we’ll just get one person the 1000 tokens, and I’ll get the burden on choosing it to you today.

Anita Mlakar: 1:00:02 Thank you very much. Oh, so many good questions. Now let’s pick the best one or the hardest one, I need to thorough it. This is another question now. In the meantime, how many customers is your target for 2025? All in target.

Sandi Bitenc: 1:00:19 We will fight for 4 million customers, in 2025.

Anita Mlakar: 1:00:33 Okay. There’s something about the T-shirt design contest.

Sandi Bitenc: 1:00:39 Yeah, that one is coming up and Ruba needs to tell me how far along is she? But she said that I think she said Monday will be the date to kind of go public with it. We are doing the T-Shirt contest.

Anita Mlakar: 1:00:56 Richard is saying that maybe his daughter could do something there. Thank you, Richard. Now I have to choose someone right? you know what, I will be now going through this. These questions, but in the meantime, you will also give me an answer to what was going on the January 1st, with the game and the giveaways, please just tell us in short, what happened.

Sandi Bitenc: 1:01:25 So, everything actually was live. We had the gleam ultimate New Year’s giveaway where we gave away one iPhone and a lot of 3air tokens and there was a more than a month ongoing gleam competition. And there was I think 160,000 entries actually. And on January the first we had the draw, and we did the draw online and everything is actually recorded and also accessible on YouTube. I missed you there, Anita. So, I know that when I’m alone on the call, I don’t do a really good job, but it served its purpose. So, we did get our winners, and the winners are online, and everybody can see who won. You can also go and check if you’re one of the lucky 100 winners and we already sent out all the emails and we need some information from you to actually get you the prizes. So, you need to reply on that exact email so that we can verify you and then you just get the prices from us.

Anita Mlakar: 1:02:59 Okay. I went through all those questions, Sandi. And I think that the one that gave us really a lot of questions here and also before that in our communities, Joel Wiehe.

Sandi Bitenc: 1:03:19 Okay. let’s see. Did you see him anywhere on our Discord? Or?

Anita Mlakar: 1:03:28 Yes, he was the one asking so many questions on Discord and we went through them before so he’s there.

Sandi Bitenc: 1:03:38 Okay. Joel if you are still here, present with us. Drop me a DM on Discord and we’ll sort it out, but I see already there.

Anita Mlakar: 1:03:52 Congratulations and thank you for the questions.

Sandi Bitenc: 1:03:56 Congratulations.

Anita Mlakar: 1:03:58 So, Sandi, one hour and four minutes, we four minutes too long but that’s okay because there were so many interesting questions here, also in the community and I would really like to thank you all, for being a part of the community for asking questions for commenting, for sharing this information with your friends. This is really something that we are so thankful to you for being with us today. And now I think it is time to say bye.

Sandi Bitenc: 1:04:26 Yeah, you said like we were five minutes late, we’re always at least five minutes late so but I’m surprised that we actually managed to fill out the whole hour just with questions. Really crazy.

Anita Mlakar: 1:04:43 A lot of questions and a lot of interesting questions. You know, really that they go deep into the project and deep into the whole 3air thing. So, this is really nice to know that you’re interested. So, thank you. Congratulations again to Joel and course you will receive this giveaway this award.

1:05:03 Sandi, thank you for being with us for giving us all the answers to all the questions so many of them. And I see that there’s nothing that can surprise you.

Sandi Bitenc: 1:05:15 Yeah, I like to think that, but I also actually would like to get a question that will surprise me because then I can actually learn. This is always my thought. So, I really like tough questions because always it’s me learning out of it.

Anita Mlakar: 1:05:33 Okay, so that’s a challenge then for the next time. Okay. We will be together again next Wednesday at 5pm Central European Time, as always. And in the meantime, of course, we will communicate in our communities. So, thank you again for being with us. And have a wonderful day. Bye.

Sandi Bitenc: 1:05:51 Thank you, bye.

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