In a world that's seemingly going dark. It's bad everywhere you look. Attempted assassinations, coups in the government, the food's being poisoned, and there's no problem finding bad in this world. There's a glimmering hope, there's a there's a light coming from the most unlikely place in the world right now. And so rather than focus in all the dark, let's focus on the light, and let's think about a better future. Now.
Somebody who's been on the ground, boots on the ground, helping to spark that revolution, if we'll call it, that.
Is Michael Peterson.
Michael Peterson started a movement down there using the most unlikely tool, which is bitcoin, which is now on the global stage.
So, Michael, thanks for sitting down with me.
Hey, it's great to be here with you again.
Yeah. Yeah, it's been a while since we caught up.
The glimmering shining hope that we have of a little unlikely country. It's pretty amazing. Hopefully people can't pay attention. I mean, El Salvador went from the most dangerous country in the world to the safest country in the world.
You've been down there a long time.
How long have you been down there and how dangerous was it and how has it become a lot safer.
Yeah, so we've been down there for twenty years and it was actually when we first when we first bought our place down there, it was kind of on it seemed like it was getting better. But then after the housing crisis, that's that's when the gang problem really started to proliferate.
And it was for about ten years.
It would go back and forth between El Salvador and Honduras as being the highest murder rate in the world.
It was literally off the.
Charts, worse than a lot of countries that were, you know, officially at war.
Not a title you want, no.
No, it was, yeah, it was.
I mean even in our community, Alzante, which is a beautiful little beach community, I mean you would see bodies, you know, in the street and it was wow. It really felt like you were in a war zone. And it's crazy how much that has changed now. People who come can't even imagine that that's what it was like.
Now.
I spent a lot of time in Mexico. We're building the house in Mexico right now. So we're down there a lot and you hear of a lot about murders and death in Mexico as well, but from my experience, it's never really like in the towns. It's you know, out of town, it's the cartels they're fighting, so you the numbers are there, but you don't see it.
I'm curious.
I mean, you said you saw the body, so that's that's obviously a whole different story, was it. But was it really kind of just the gangs or did it really spill over into just like regular people.
No, it really spilled over into the regular people because the you know, unlike Mexico where it's it's mostly revolves around drug trade. There in Alsalvadore, it was about extortion, and so it was these the little mom and pop vendors that were being extorted and so when they wouldn't pay,
they would just execute them. And so you would actually see it, you know, in the street as you're you know, coming down the street, you'd see the body there and the police out there, and so it really was something that you couldn't get away from. And it for foreigners,
I mean, we never really felt in danger. It was one of those things that you were kind of off limits as a foreigner because the repercussions would be much longer if they were to kill a foreigner and so, and foreigners were just seeing as kind of more troublesome. They're more likely to fight back, they're more likely to
report if they're trying to be extorted. And so it didn't affect them directly, but you know, you saw it all around you and then you know you're friends with the local people in the community, so you saw how it affected them.
Yeah, how did it affect them? I mean it holds them back to they able to plan long term.
I mean, what were the kind of.
The mean they so for one thing, most of them, their their goal was to get out of the country. That was the primary goal was to you know, usually to come to the US illegally was the main thought. The other thing you'd see you often see people start up a business and then they would shut it down right away because they would come to them and say, hey,
you have to pay this much. And a lot of times they would make a rational decision, you know it can they stay in business and pay this They looked at it kind of as a tax, and so they would make that decision. But a lot of times what the gangs wanted to pay. It just wasn't sustainable, and so you would see these businesses come and go and shut down real quickly.
You also had these weird things.
Businesses would set up and you know, closed neighborhoods, there were behind gates and they wouldn't put up any signage. They wouldn't it was hard to even know. You had to have like an inside track to even know where the business was because they were always trying to stay one step ahead of the gangs, which obviously makes it very hard to run a profitable business if you can't even put a.
Sock out front.
Yeah, So then everything just kind of continues to spiral downhill. I mean there's less businesses being started, there's less money to go around, there's less jobs. People don't have as much money to spend with other businesses, and so it was like this is spiral that it started.
Oh, it was a cycle of destruction because then you have the parents leaving.
They'd go to the US.
So you have the kids growing up without their parents around, which then become prey to the gangs because they don't have any family there and so the gang provided family for them.
So as that as the gangs grew. That made it.
Less and less profitable to run a business there, which made more people flee. So it was kind of like that's so most people just felt like there was no future in El Salvador.
And I heard that they even preyed on the kids because of like the age difference and like kids couldn't really be prosecuted for crime. So then really those kids became a big target.
Oh yeah, it was usually the twelve thirteen year olds that were the triggerman. And for one thing, they couldn't be prosecuted as doults. It's another thing, you know, for them, it was kind of like a video game. They don't understand the repercussions of what they're doing. Yeah, and so they could get these kids to go in and you know,
just blast people away without really thinking about it. You know, as people get old er, even hardened criminals, they start to you know, think more about the repercussions of what they're doing.
But as a kid, it just seemed the game to them.
Yeah.
Now, obviously, you know with Bitcoin beach, you know, that's where the kind of the world a lot of the worlds are paying attention. But where did the shift, Where do you see now looking backwards, where do you think that shift in momentum started to go from this downward spiral the most dangerous country in the world, Like, what was the spark?
Do you think?
I think it was was two things.
I mean, I think, and I think they happened in a synergistic way. So I definitely give credit to the President bu Kelly. He came in and really was willing to shake things up. The previous politicians it had all been about getting in power so you could drain as much money from the state as possible, and he really shifted that where he wanted to see real change come.
Even people within his own party that were corrupt, he went after them, and he really made people feel like for the first time that there was potentially going to be a future in El Salvador. It happened to be that we had started the bitcoin project at that same time, and so they were seeing just the impact that bitcoin has.
You know, it's like a mind virus.
It shifts people's perspective, gives them a lower time preference, makes them think longer term, and makes them hopeful about the future. And so we were seeing this project that started as this very small thing and al Xante grow and start, you know, affecting the communities around us. We started like a lifeguard program. There was the number of kids attending high school like triple people were going to college. It was all these different not just saving in bitcoin,
but all these secondary and tertiary impacts of bitcoin. And so while the government was making these big changes on the national level, these things happening in Alzonte, and then they embraced saw what was happening there and said, hey, let's combine these forces. And so I think it was you know, all of these things coming together in kind of a magical way.
Yeah.
So, where there's no hope, the people perish kind of a thing. Right, So when the president came in and showed that there was going to be change happening, and then people were hopeful for that. And then as well as the bitcoin thing allowed people to think more long term, and that created more hope.
And also brings in business and opportunity.
And they saw tourists, you know, people cared about El Salvador all of a sudden, I mean really put El Salvador on the world map when he made that decision to make it legal tender people.
Yeah, but that was that was. I mean, that kind of came about. I want to get to that, but I'm just curious. So you were in the United States and you spent like half your year in El Salvador and half your year in the United States kind of thing.
We were there like nine months in El Salvador. In three months we'd come back for the summers of the US.
Yeah, so you were kind of one in, one out. And I guess the question that I'm thinking about or asking is it seems like it's sort of back to the hope in the air of the directionality, if you will, because I try to think about, like the United States is going in a horrible direction and things look very bleak. But at the same time, if I want to shift my perspective, it's also still probably the greatest place in the world to live, but the hope is kind.
Of gone because we see where it's going.
So even though it's still probably the best place in the world to live, it's heavy because of where we're going. Where's El Salvador is still one of the poorest countries in the world. It is like the services are poor, right, et cetera, The roads are bad, et cetera. But the hope is different, the energy of the direction is different.
And so really even though the.
Current conditions couldn't be more opposite, the directions they're going are different, and that creates a different energy.
Is that right, No, one hundred percent.
I think that's one thing people miss and or underestimate, is just the impact of the animal spirits in a population.
Like if the population.
Thinks that tomorrow is going to be better, more likely to save, they're more likely to invest in education, they're more likely to defer current purchases just for gratification, more for investment, and to think longer term, where if you think things are going to be worse in the future, you're just gonna live for the day. And so I think that is really what makes the difference between economies and countries that are on the upswing and those are
on the downswing. It's just that perspective and that that hope.
That's exactly right.
And so then you're around people who also have that, and so to your point, living for today versus living long term, and so then it's just the whole culture gets dragged down.
So so you.
You were there, you've been there for a while, and then one little sliver of hope in that.
Country that you said kind of start.
At the same time was then this project in Alesonte which has now been dubb Bitcoin Beach.
Give us the origin of that, like what was the spark for that.
Yeah, so we had you know that Alsante where a starter.
That's where that's where I live.
You know, my wife and I were working with missionaries and in the country. We moved to El Salvador to work with like a broad base of different missionaries there, and we were based on the beach, mostly because I like to surf and so I wanted to be on the beach. And you know, even in Alzonte, though there was this kind of quaint tourist town, the gangs ran everything, and so we had an opportunity to start some youth programs with some local leaders and really start to try
to change the mindset of the youth there. And originally we were it wasn't involved with bitcoin. I was a bitcoinner, but I wasn't really thinking that. So this was probably twenty sixteen did that happen that we started the youth programs there and then but you know, and I was in the bitcoin but I didn't really you know, you
think of that as like a separate world. And there were a lot of times where I was thinking, you know, as we were trying to bring money down to you know, buy vehicles for the project or things like that, and it was a headache using the wire system. I was like, man, if we just use bitcoin, but I never envisioned that
that would actually be. And so in twenty nineteen it was introduced to somebody that was in early in the bitcoin space that wanted to see bitcoin circular economies rise up, and they heard about the work we were doing in El Salvador and they said, hey, maybe maybe there's a connection there. They were supporting some other ministries that we were familiar with, and so I thought, hey, I doubt it's gonna you know, it would work, but let's take a chance and meet.
And so had this crazy meeting.
It wasn't even the donor, it was his representative because he wanted to remain anonymous, but heard the story of Hey, there's somebody there that really sees the bitcoin that they have from early days as not just the value in the monetary value, but the way using bitcoin as currency as it was meant to be used, will actually impact society. And so they kind of challenged us to think of a way to start a system that could begin to pull away from the fiat system.
Still there's still a lot of people that want to do good in this world. That's amazing.
So they gave you a bitcoin, you broke it down into the hundred million satoshi's that are available, and then what I mean, you start giving it to people to say, hey, I'm gonna give it to you, but you need to spend it, or you talk to businesses about buying and selling it, or how did that then get going?
Yeah, So initially we just used it in the projects we already doing. So we were, you know, we'd been paying the youth to clean the river and the beach, just you know, mostly just try to keep them occupied. It also gave us a chance to walk alongside them and mentor them. And when I say this, I mean more like the local team members there that were doing that. I tried to remain behind the scenes as much as possible.
I just I'm very much a.
Proponent that things need to come from the local level and from people that are in the community. And so
we started using bitcoin, you know, to compensate them. And it was Originally, we just thought it would be like, you know, paying them and it wouldn't make a difference so if we were paying them in dollars or bitcoin, but we saw when we just started paying them in bitcoin, it really changed the way they started thinking about things because they became curious about money, like what is money?
They thought about that for the first time, they started considering the cost of spending something now versus holding it for later, because they understood that this was most likely appreciating value over time, and so they for the first time understood deferred gratification.
And so we saw these things happened.
This was on a very very small level when this was happening, and then we had a podcast. Peter McCormick came in and spent some time with us, and then when he did some things, it kind of started to blow up. We started getting number of bitcoin tourists that started coming in and we were able to expand the programs. And then COVID hit and that really gave us the
opportunity to expand it to the whole community. Anybody who's worked in in any type of development work understands that, you know a lot of whelming people come in with projects and wind up doing a lot more harm than good, because you if you just throw a bunch of money at people a lot of time, you disincentivize them to work. You can distort the local economy and actually put local businesses out of business if you start providing free services. So it's it's always a balance, and so we wanted
to be very aware of that. But when COVID hit, everything was locked down, people were not allowed to work, people were going hungry, and the businesses were going on business because nobody had any money. So it gave us kind of the freedom to do like a community wide disbursement of bitcoin, and we started sending bitcoin.
To the stimulus.
Very much like a stimulus it was, and probably ninety percent of the families were receiving you know, I can't remember how many SATs it was at the time that we were sending out, but you know, it was enough to buy maybe half their basic food items for the month, and so but it wasn't distortive in any way because they weren't allowed to work anyways, and so it really kept these families fed and it also kept the businesses alive, and it made it very easy for us to onboard
businesses because it was the only currency circulating in the community, and so they were coming rather than us happened to come to them and try to orange pill, and they were coming to us like, hey, how do we how do we.
Get involved in this?
And so it really helped supercharge it and set the stage for you know, for what later you know, became this. It became ubiquitous within the community that the majority of the businesses are accepting bitcoin.
So was this happening.
So this you said, like when Hayley came in and started changing things was kind of around the same time, So around twenty nineteen ish is when you started kind of the project there and then right so that was kind of coming up to the seash.
So we started a little bit before he was elected, because I remember he was on the scene.
It was during it was campaign season, and I remember.
Actually when I did a podcast with Peter, I remember telling him, I like, there's this new president, and I think that there's a possibility that he could be the first president to adopt bitcoin as legal tender.
Like he has this sense of wanting to embrace new things.
Everybody thought it was crazy at the time, and I was like no, I see this happening.
And so it was funny that it actually came to be. We were definitely swinging for the fences there.
How was it that that became on his map like all of a sudden, was someone from his team alerted him he wanted to come take a look at it, or like, you know, did it just get so big and it made so much change in the country that he couldn't ignore it, or how did that work?
I think a couple things.
There was a Forbes article that came out talking about the projects, and it was probably one of the first articles about l Salvador that was positive that wasn't talking about the gangs and the violence, and it was talking about this new innovative project that was happening in El Salvador by a major publication. So I think that kind of put it on their radar. And then we really tried to engage the government from early stages because we didn't want them to hear rumors like oh, bitcoin.
Money laundering, drug, you know, all the.
Negative connotations that came with bitcoin, especially in the earlier days, and so we would be very open with them.
We were working with the.
Ministry of Tourism to promote tourism through bitcoin. We also established the country's first lifeguard program. They didn't have any lifeguard program in the country, and there would be probably about three hundred people that would drown each year, you know, some of them tourists, but.
Most of them locals.
And so we brought in a team to do the full I think it was one hundred and twenty hour course with the International Life Saving Foundation to get them internationally certified, and then the whole all the beaches in the surrounding region around Alzante. We paid these lifeguards. I
think there was ninety that went through the training. We were paying them in bitcoin to patrol these beaches, literally saving you know, dozens of lives just in that region, and so I think they saw like the impact of that. And then we were able to have a meeting with the Minister of the Economy, Miles.
Do you know Myles suit her. Yeah, so Miles was happening to.
Be in town, and so we got this meeting, and you know, we thought it would be a brief meeting, and she came in with all her for aids and we sat down for three hours and just really tried to show how adopting bitcoin could change the whole narrative
about El Salvador. Like it was really, from our point of view, the only way that they could flip the script about El Salvador from people thinking of it as gangs and violence to thinking of it as this innovative country that was leading the way way forward and so and of course we knew that Boukelly was somebody who had, you know, international ambitions. He wants to leave a legacy. I think he wants to go down in the history books. And so we were like, hey, this is the way
he can go down in the history books. Like there's coming from a small country like El Salvador. It's very hard to spark worldwide change. But if he is the first one to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, like nobody else will have that claim, he will be in the history books. So we kept kind of pushing from that angle. How much of that impacted it, I don't know. Maybe there was other things, probably very impact so it's hard to tell, but it was it was definitely on our radar.
We saw we never want to rely on government, but it's much easier if the government is going in the same direction as you than trying to fight you on things.
Yeah, you you know that's in this kind of space specifically, but even just overall, you have that balance of like, I don't really want to be in politics, but if we're called to be good citizens, then that means we are involved. Yeah, And so Jordan Peterson says that if you abdicate your power, then a tyrant's going to take it every time. So it's like most of us just want to focus on our family and our business and whatever. But if we don't take that responsibility, then we get
what we get kind of a thing. So if we're gonna you know, if anyone's going to run it, hopefully it's good representatives of that. Now, you started buying that started in twenty nineteen, so that was sort of coming out of the bear market. We kind of had this run up with thein in twenty twenty, the price of bitcoin, the US dollar value of bitcoin crashed really heavy. So I'm curious what it was like from twenty nineteen into
twenty twenty. Because you said people start thinking about long term preference, right, they probably saw the value evasion of Big One going up, the purchasing power of bitcoin going up, so they started thinking about saving but then it crashed in twenty twenty and very dramatically, so I'm curious what that was like. And then they started running back up again,
and then it crashed again. So how has the ups and downs been when you're trying to use it to like plan your daily food or weekly food kind of thing.
Yeah, so I think you know, these the people in Al Salvador kind of come into it the same way most of us have come into You have to go.
Through at least one cycle before you kind of realize.
You have to get punched in the face once exactly.
So you know, when when the first crashes were happening, you know, especially were like we had that big drop off when when COVID was starting. Yeah, people were freaking out because we had a lot of stores that had been accepting it, and you know, they're on you know, calling.
Us at two am, like when the world's happening.
So we had to just kind of handhold them, give them the allita, Hey, this is what's happened in the past. There were even in early days where we would personally sometimes like reimburse them.
For their losses.
So, you know, because you just felt a sense of responsibility, and it was you know, we're not talking about crazy huge amounts for them, it was life changing amounts. You know, for us, it wasn't you know, something that was going to be that impactful. So we would walk with them in that, but then also try to educate them and like, hey, this is the history of it, this is how this is normal for bitcoin. But over the long term, this
is the direction that it moves in. So if there's something that you need to pay next week, then yeah, maybe it's.
Better for you to hold that in dollars to be able.
To make that payment, But if this is something long term, it's going to be much more beneficial for you saving in this. But the other aspect of it is rather is the Bitcoin network kind of separating that from Bitcoin the currency. The network for them provided them this freedom to do electronic payments to you know, have basically a bank account on their phone, all these things that they
hadn't had before. So there was even with the volat utility, the benefits that it brought of actually being connected to a worldwide network for a lot of people made it worth it.
And you know, they were very innovative.
They learned to ride the waves we would see when when Strike came in. A lot before that people were using the Bitcoin Beach wallet. When Strike came in, they would use the both wallets and they would they would basically use.
Them as like a trading vehicle.
When they wanted to move the dollars, they would move it into their Strike wallet. At that time, strike only you could only hold it as dollars. You couldn't hold it as bitcoin. Yeah, and then they would move it back and forth, and so you know, they would figure out the ways to kind of mitigate the risk. But it's then we had the challenge on the other side.
When you have the upswing, people start to get that speculative fever and they're telling us, oh, yeah, I'm gonna sell my house and to buy bitcoin, or you know, I'm gonna borrow money to buy a bit. And so then we're on the other side like, hey, no, like this is super volatile, you could get wiped out.
Like just it's long term.
Just steadily accumulate, use it in your daily life as currency. Try to keep pulling back and removing yourself from the fiat system.
But don't become a speculator.
Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, I'm building a house down in Mexico, and I'm really seeing it firsthand because like the building materials, some are coming from America, some are coming from Europe, some are like so like we're getting invoices, but the invoices are shifting all the time from time I get the invoice of that time to pay because the exchange rates are constantly moving around.
And it's making me.
Realize for the first time how much everyone is forced to be a speculator, you know, being on a dollar standard. I don't really realize this, but now, like I'm buying stuff in euros and stuff in dollars and stuff in pesos, and like trying to manage that has been very difficult and more importantly for them. I see the people in Mexic with the people that are giving the invoices and importing, like it's like almost it's a nightmare for them and forcing them to be a speculator.
Well, how hard has it been just trying to get them paid too, to get money down there?
Yeah, luckily that hasn't been too bad. Most of them have American bank accounts I can wire into, so my general contractor as an American bank account, my main like appliance guy, which was a lot of money. You know, they have American bank so that's been a little bit easier, but you're certainly moving money out of the country is difficult. One thing that most people don't realize is that there's you know, approximately a billion, billion and a half adults
in the world that don't have access to banking. A lot of them don't have access to bankings they don't have permission to join so they don't have the right documentation or whatever it is, or a sanctioned country. When I came down to Bitcoin Beach and tried to get a little program off the ground that unfortunately didn't work, But I realized for the first time that a lot of people in ell Soalfimare didn't have access to banking because they didn't have enough money. So they didn't have
enough money to pay the monthly fee. And then merchants weren't able to get point of sell or merchant accounts because they didn't have enough transactions. So like there, maybe they were allowed to be in the system, but they couldn't afford it.
But that goes back to the problems with KYC and AM. They've put this high price on bringing people into the banking system. So we've locked literally billions of people out of the banking system because it just will never be profitable to bank them. It's not that they don't have the documentation, but it's expensive for the banks to do all these compliance procedures. So it really makes these people unbankable.
Yeah, and then if they can't get into the financial system, then they can't get into the world. You know, I talk about, you know, the invention of the smartphone. It's like now we could learn anything, meet anybody, do anything, and like you have kids now that have an Instagram account could make a hundred thousand dollars, but only if they can get into the banking system. And so Bitcoin was able to kind of give that to them. What
about the remittance thing? So I think about thirty percent of El Salvador's GDP comes for remittances, and so if I wanted to send money down there, that's very inconvenient for me. Western union't have to get cash, go stand in line, the whole thing. But then how do they get it down in El Salvador or how were they?
Yeah?
So they you know, they have offices there that they would go to receive usually they have to go in person to pick it up. You know, there's fees involved, it's right, but a lot of them don't. Yeah, they don't have their own vehicles, and so they're riding the bus. That's it's definitely very inconvenient in a lot of different ways. But you know, that's why there's so much promise with with bitcoin.
Yeah, yeah, but.
It's It's one thing you find with people is people are creatures of habit and so just because something's better doesn't mean people are going to immediately move to it. It takes there's usually a process of them discovering that, especially something very personal like money, People like, no, I know how to do this, and even though it costs me this, so they have.
To kind of be you know, aided along the way.
And we're seeing that gradually happen as people kind of gradually shift to that. The other great thing that we've seen, and this is something that people underestimate and that people that aren't even using bitcoin are benefiting from El Salvador's adoption of bitcoin, is Western Union and money Gram. All these companies see the threat and so they've all pushed
their fees way down. I'd say about they've kint them probably competitionty percent, and they've made the experience better because now they realize they're having to compete with somebody being able to send you know, from their phone to somebody else's phone and not having an intermediary. So it's really
forced them to step up their game. And so now you have literally you know, million plus Salvadorans and that are benefiting from bitcoin, that aren't even using bitcoin, but they're benefiting from the competition that the bitcoin.
Well economy is benefiting.
I mean, now there's more money in the economy overall, right, so that's a big deal. Now we talked about not everyone has act to banking. A lot of people who can't afford it because the expensive a kyc et cetera. And so one thing I think about, you know, in regards to a bitcoin adoption, you know, from a US centric lens, move some of your savings in there. We say, you know, don't invest what you can't afford to lose. If you can't, you know, lock it up for a
couple of years, et cetera. But people down there don't even have money to pay for a checking account. So I think out in these developing countries and I know you know, have ties down in Peru and other countries like that, so where people are living on like five bucks a day, like they're not really saving. So I think sometimes like how does bitcoin help people that aren't saving?
And so you mentioned, you know, some people are trying to be speculators, but if there's people that are so poor they don't really have long term savings, they can't think about the long term vie of bitcoin, I mean, is it really even helping them? I mean directly as opposed to indirectly or yeah.
You would be surprised.
And I went into this thinking that same thing, like these people make so little, there's no way that they'd be able to save. But the same time, you look around and there's you know, McDonald's everywhere and Coca Cola everywhere, and all these consumer goods that these people are buying. And so even though they're not making that much money, they are making choices every day where they could choose to save. But it's it For a lot of them, it seemed pointless, and so buying that coke was like
the you know, reward for a very hard day. But when they switched over to a bitcoin standard, they really start realizing the cost of buying that Coca cola because those SATs that they're going to spend on that are going to.
Be worth a lot more in the future.
And so we saw people that I would have told you there's no way we can expect them to save because their salaries too low, started saving and accumulated money and you would, you know, see on their phone. You're like, what you got like a month's salary in SATs, like on your phone and before you usually had your money spent before you even received it. And they're like, yoh, yeah, I'm saving up for to replace my roof, for to get my teeth fixed.
And so we've seen that.
Really, the the thought that a lot of us have that these people aren't capable of saving is untrue.
Like they are capable. The incentives just have to be aligned.
That's good.
Now Here we are about four years or so into this experiment. There's a lot you know, mainstream media has to your point, the first time was talking positive about it. We've seen a lot pieces come out talk about negative about it. So we've heard both both back and forth. Some reports come back and say that bitcoin isn't really being used there, there's really nowhere to spend it. It's not as as as proliferated as people would think it
would be. So we hear both sides of the story where we come in four years, like where is it at right now?
So it's much further along than I ever would have dreamed.
You can, you know, it's it's it's just and it really depends on where your what your expectations are of My expectation is these things are decade long transformation.
That's it's not going to happen overnight.
But there's many people living in El Salvador that the only live on bitcoin. You can you know, the major supermarkets take bitcoin. The you know, we've bought vehicles from dealership with bitcoin and not just in bitcoin ba No, not just in bitcoin Beach. It's now. If you want to be able to go to any store you want and expect to use bitcoin, that's not going.
To be realistic.
But if you there's a network of stores, like I said, the main supermarkets, their version of Costco accepts bitcoin and their Lightning payments.
Now, so it's super easy.
So you know, like when we were buying vehicles, we chose to buy from a dealership that accepted bitcoin that we weren't. You know, we maybe would have bought a different vehicle if they had. Other dealerships were accepting bitcoin, but we bought Mahindra pickup trucks because that was the dealership.
We wanted to support the dealership that was accepting.
So you do have to make some trade offs if you want to live on a bitcoin standard. So so for people that think that like you can use it everywhere, yeah, definitely not. But the rate at which it's growing is much faster and the adoptions much faster than when credit cards were introduced to Elsavador or even into the US. You look at credit cards when they were introduced, how
long it took before they were really taken everywhere. I mean, it took decades before it became common for you to be able to use a credit card, you know, even like a fast food restaurant or something like that. So I think it just you got have to have realistic expectations. But I think five years from now, people will be like, oh, yeah, of course it was obvious all the time. Once they adopted it would be, you know, be able to use everywhere.
Yeah.
I think as the bill Gates quote that people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what can come down in a decade. Right, And so I say that all the time with bitcoin, you you just expect way too much too soon. And especially to the point you made earlier about money, money is a whole different thing. It's one thing to switch over to a new social media account. It's a whole different thing to switch over your money. So from that perspective, I see that now.
The other thing I Joan Henter real quick was the role El Salvador has played in and pushing the tools and the resources forward, because when El Salvador made this adoption, there wasn't that many great wallets out there, or point of sale or even the way to spend bitcoin really
didn't work that well. And so when El Salvador moved in that direction, all these companies came in and they continue to develop better products, and it makes it much more easy to use bitcoin, where now if I spend bitcoin a lot of these places, it happens faster than if I try to use my credit card, where initially, you know, they were still doing things on chain, so you'd be sitting there in the supermarket, wait confirmation and hoping.
It made it in the next place.
Yeah, so we're seeing that, you know, Salvador be kind of a laboratory I think for the world to get bitcoin to the usability that it's going to need to jump and become the ubiguous currency that you.
Used around the world.
Now again, so here we are four years later, and there was two sparks, right, So we had buke Ley and then we had Bitcoin, and maybe they helped each other, right, the synergy between that. It's gone from the most dangerous country in the world, I guess now to the safest country in the world, which.
Is safest in the in the America's in.
The Americas, okay, so not like Luxembourg, but in the America's okay. So that's a big shift. Boukayley has done a lot. I've seen him announcing, like really trying to recruit people, like giving passports out to philosophers and thought leaders, things like that. I've heard a lot of investment capitals flowing in.
Businesses are flowing in.
I think around Alzonte, around Bitcoin Beach, the real estate has gone crazy through the roof. How much have you really seen that? I mean, is that really noticeable. Is that a big deal or is it just still that hope in the air.
No, it's definitely a big deal.
I mean the you know, ten years ago, the unemployment was off the charts.
It was very hard for people to find work.
Now, the biggest complaint I hear from people is like, you can't find any construction workers.
We can't find any restaurant workers. Like people are.
Moving their way up the food chain the jobs that pay more, which those are great problems to have. And so you see construction booming everywhere. I mean, it's it seems like every other lot is a construction site now, and you're.
Just concentrated in that area.
Though, No, not just you know Alezante, of course there's a ton of stuff happening there, and the prices have gone gone off the charts, but even the rest of you know, that pushes people out as it becomes too expensive there, people move, you know, up the coast or down the coast. The capital city is booming now. You see all these countries or these companies kind of pouring in.
They're looking for they're driving the price of talent up because there's there's limited talent in the country, and so the education system now is needing to catch up and to produce the type of workers that all these companies are looking for, and so.
It's it can be a little.
It can be a little haphazard at times, like you know, companies come in and they're like, oh, we can't find.
The workers we need.
And then but these things tend to solve themselves. Then the schools step in and start producing the workers that they need. And so it's it's a messy process, but you see the country just just continuing to build up.
It's such a small country.
It's a tiny country, so it's kind of like a very thinly traded stock. A thinly traded stock moves really fast, even like bitcoin when it was small, and so so Il Salvador was a very small country, and so you can really swing the balance of employment or things like that pretty quickly. Now, Mike, one thing, one thing that I think can talk about quite often is that I feel like this worldview and unfortunately I see it in the bitcoin community and I see it across the world overall.
In the United States, I should say that there's not really this spirit of like helping other people. And when I say that, not like holding a door open for people, but like donating money or time to go help other people, and I feel that that sets people's worldview. So, for example, I was on a plane with somebody not that long ago,
and you know, we're having this debate. We're sitting next to each other, and and he's telling me that, you know, he thinks that the government should continue to tax people so they continue to fund all these programs. And I'm saying, we don't need the government to take care of those people. We take people take care of these people. And he didn't see that. And then I just asked them this question,
and there's kind of personal question. I said, you don't have to answer this question, but I'm just curious how much of your money. We're in first class, so he's a good he's doing good business. How much of your money do you donate to good causes or people? Said, you don't have to tell me that, but he's like none. I was like, do you think that could change your worldview?
Right? Like?
And so like, we're out there helping you. You were down there helping even before bitcoin. I'm curious your opinion on that and people's worldview and being reflective of their actions.
No, I think, and you see this not to make it too political, but you do see it a lot of times it is politically aligned.
Like people that.
Are more on the left, they view that as the government should be taking care of people, and there's been lots of studies they tend to give much less to charity and to be less generous and to do less stuff on their own, where people that are tend to be more on the right or more libertarian view it as like, hey, this is my responsibility, not the governments, and I'm going to do it much more efficiently, and so I'm going to give of my own time and my own money.
And so I think that for a.
Lot of people, it's they feel like they can kind of check that box just by voting for somebody that says they want to give money to the poor, Like they can get it off their their conscience, like, Okay, I've done my deed by voting for the person that's going to increase taxes.
Of course, they hope it's not on them. Then they're going to those billionaires and give them. They're going to find ways to get around it.
And so even even the billionaires that you hear that like oh, no, we should raise taxes. They're still employing an army of people to make sure they're not subjected to those increases in taxes, and so I think that, yeah, I think that that's something that's really important and I think that's something we need to speak openly about that, like, hey, if you really care for somebody, you should be the
one that's out there doing it, making those sacrifices. And I mean even even when it comes to immigration thing, you see people that are that are talking about like, hey, we need to help the immigrants we need It's like, well, how many people do you have in your home? What have you done personally? How are you becoming involved? The government should do that?
Yeah, yeah, but what about you know, a nonprofit that I was working with, our slogan was happy people help others. And so I think any parent recognizes that some really the greatest joy you can have is by giving other people joy.
And so.
Maybe there's sort of the chicken or the egg most in a sense where like maybe if they went helped to the people, then they would get the joy and realize, wow, that was actually better. And when you rely on the state, you short circuit that whole thing. Right, because like, if I help you, I feel really good about that, but you also feel really good, like, wow, this guy helped me. That's amazing. So now both of us get the benefit
of that. But if the government steals my money from me, I'm angry and they give it to you, and now you feel entitled.
Yep.
And so then you take this experience that both people could benefit from and now both people are angry about one percent.
I mean, you pit the nail on the head. I mean, that is exactly the problem that we face now. And you take that connection, that human connection away, where when people are receiving money from the government, like I said, they become entitled and they become embittered, like wait, I
shouldn't be getting more, this isn't fair. But when they see that connection that somebody's actually sacrificing their hard work to help them, it becomes more real and they see that they have to have a personal responsibility to respond to that and to try to improve themselves.
And so that's what I really think that we need to get back to.
And that's why I'm so hopeful about the people in the bitcoin space. As their resources increase, that they can have a broader impact than go out. And I think we need to challenge people because the one issue I see and I see with a lot of bitcoiners, and they have this plan that down the road in twenty years, when their bitcoin's worth, you know, twenty million dollars a coin or something, then they're going to do something. It's like, no, you're missing all this time in between. Think of all
the lives that you can impact. You can't go back in time and change those people's lives. And so I think regardless of the price of bitcoin, we should be using our personal resources right now.
Yeah, whatever you have, your time, your effort, your energy, focus, you know, whatever it is. I mean, we all have something to give, even if it's not money. We've all been given gifts, and so we'll just announce it here.
You know.
I tried to come down and help the community a couple of years ago and it fell through unfortunately, but I am planning a trip to go down there and do some serving opportunities just directly into the community. We'll bring a small amount of people with us if you're interested in getting down to the community, learning about that, learning about what's going on to big going, but more importantly, giving back to the community. We'll put a link down in the description down below if you want to fill
out that form. It's going to be a small group. We'll be doing trips down there at else Aha, or if you want to come hang out with us, let me know in there. But you know, again I mentioned earlier, I know you worked, you know, in some stuff in Peru and you and I think there's Argentina and you're starting to see this pop up all over the place. So maybe just kind of wrap this up, but maybe just what would your advice be to people who are inspired by this and would like to go affect change.
So you really got to show up and put some some boots on the ground and understand. You know a lot of people think they, you know, understand the situation, but you've got to really be there and see it and really feel it, and then then you'll understand how you can best use your resources, whether though or financial resources, or skills you.
Have, or relationships. A lot of time just being able to connect people.
And so that's why I always tell people like, come down to El Salvador, see what's happening there, Judge for yourself, and see what part you can play.
Yeah, and where can they follow along Bitcoin Beach on Twitter. Where can they see what's going on and kind of check that out.
Yeah, follow us on bitcoin Beach on Twitter. We also have a podcast YouTube Live from Bitcoin Beach we do, you know, we work in interviewing different bitcoiners that are coming through El Salvador, but also once a week we do a Twitter spaces that we post there that kind of focuses and highlights one of these circular bitcoin economies
that we're working with around the world. So this, you know, whether it's Bitcoin Akasi in South Africa or last week we were talking with the folks and Uganda that are working with an orphanage there and start starting a circular bitcoin economy there. We try to highlight these different things, so that's another way people can become connected with projects they can become involved.
With great all right, well that was signed off.
Thanks so much, Mike, Thanks Mark,