El Salvador’s ‘My First Bitcoin:’ How to Teach a Nation About Crypto

by · August 10, 2022

The grassroots program Mi Primer Bitcoin or “My First Bitcoin” has taken off in El Salvador. The first batch of Bitcoiner-com students began studies in May this year. The program was founded by John Dennehy, an American activist and journalist, and also has the support of the El Salvador government.

Cointelegraph spoke with Dennehy and Gilberto Motto, El Salvador’s director of education, to delve into the country’s struggles and successes in Bitcoin education and to understand the speed at which Bitcoin education is spreading among the land of volcanoes.

Genesis Block

When El Salvador adopted Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender on June 8, 2021, very few El Salvadorans besides President Nayib Bukele could explain terms like seeding, Satoshis, or mining. It was “Bitcoin Beach,” the name given to the sleepy surf town of El Zonte, the birthplace of Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador.

But, the 3,000 local residents would have their work cut out for them to teach the remaining 6 million population. In fact, Salvadorans would require hundreds of hours of training, learning and “orange-peeling” to be able to save and trade in Bitcoin.

The moment Bukele onboarded up to 6 million people in the Bitcoin protocol. Source: Twitter

An enormous task loomed before the Salvadoran government. Motto told Cointelegraph that according to Article 6 of the Bitcoin Law, approved on June 8, 2021, “The state will provide training in the use of this cryptocurrency.” But what would that training look like? How could the government quickly and efficiently introduce Bitcoin classes when they themselves also had to get hold of new money?

All the while, Bitcoiners, commentators and mainstream media watched as the El Salvador experiment played out. Dennehy, who had previously lived and worked in Latin America, told Cointelegraph that after the law’s announcement, he needed to get to the country ASAP:

“I knew I wanted to do something to make sure it worked out, that it was a success here.”

Dennehy had been “predisposed to the separation of money and state” for some time, and when he first learned about Satoshi Nakamoto’s innovation while living in Ecuador in 2013, he became a fervent Bitcoiner. He jokes that in the experience of most “OG” Bitcoiners, the first exchange he bought BTC from was hacked, losing him around 2 BTC at the time – now worth over $40,000 at the time of writing.

Almost 10 years later, and after the arrival of the first country to adopt Bitcoin, he had to find a way to participate. He flew to El Salvador the second opportunity allowed. However, like other Bitcoiners who have made the pilgrimage to El Salvador, he was struck by how few merchants and vendors accept Bitcoin. “It was actually zero [merchants] when the law went into effect,” Dennehy told Cointelegraph in May of this year.

Rikki, a Bitcoin podcaster and human rights activist who spent 45 days in El Salvador living on Bitcoin and nothing else, told Cointelegraph similar stories about his travels in Bitcoin Land: “No one here knows anything about Bitcoin. [The government] did not give a second of education to the people of El Salvador.”

Motto explained to Cointelegraph that Bitcoin has since been incorporated into financial education as well as financial literacy programs across the country. Motto told Cointelegraph that “The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is working together with various institutions related to Bitcoin in the country:”

“Including Bitcoin Beach Wallet, Mi Primer Bitcoin and others, in the development of a Financial Education training module containing updated content such as cryptocurrencies and electronic wallets.”

Still, relying on a government or third party to get things done would go against Bitcoin’s ethos, “don’t trust, verify.” A grassroots Bitcoin education campaign that would spread like the network, one that would complement and expand the government’s Bitcoin education plans, would be well suited.

“Mi Primer Bitcoin,” or My First Bitcoin in English, founded by Dennehy in 2021, is a non-governmental organization that offers free Bitcoin education to Salvadorans. It has since received funding from LookingGlass as well as IBEX Mercado, a Bitcoin and Lightning Network service provider.

The project came to Dennehy during his first conversations with Salvadorans as he got to know his new home. He casually asked, “Do you take Bitcoin?” and realized that many people not only accepted Bitcoin, but they asked Dennehy to explain the decentralized currency to them:

“They were interested in learning more. They saw something with varying levels of knowledge, but generally low, low but interested,” he said.

Some of the first teachers on the program came to the preliminary meetings that Dennehy hosted in AirBnBs and meeting rooms. The first class took place on 24 September 2021 in a yoga studio “because we started from scratch”, says Dennehy.

“We had no funds, we had no places. […] And actually, in our first class, a student came,” he said.

Undaunted and with a conviction forged across several Bitcoin bear markets, Dennehy and his team pressed on. By October, classes had swelled to nearly 80 students, and November boasted over 250. The Bitcoin price also began to soar—a likely catalyst:

“The reality is that interest rates change depending on what the price does.”

Nevertheless, interest was maintained during 2022’s price action. Class numbers hit an all-time high in April this year with over 800 students, while the price dropped to annual lows. The classes boil down to financial literacy, from the history of money to what problems money solves, Dennehy explained. Financial literacy and Bitcoin education go hand in hand.

Motto agreed with Dennehy’s assessment, saying that Bitcoin and financial literacy must work together in El Salvador: “Savings, tax payments, planning expenses, personal budgets or family budgets and other concepts are still valid at the moment and unfortunately not the whole population knows . and knows how to make good use of them.”

Importantly, the Bitcoin Diploma program targets teenagers, i.e. those who are most eager to learn about money, as they know that money is intrinsically linked to their independence. It’s a smart move, Dennehy states, as they will most likely spread the Bitcoin message around El Salvador:

“If we could reach every 16-year-old or 17-year-old in the country, we would effectively teach the entire country in one year because that demographic is really strategic. They go home and they want to talk to their parents, aunts, uncles, little brothers and sisters. »

The Bitcoin Diploma exam, taken in week 10, is divided into four parts. The first part is to create a wallet and then restore it on another device. The second task is to make a transaction on the chain, find the transaction in the blockchain explorer, and then explain why the transactions can be considered final.

One year since his arrival, Dennehy would “put the figure at 10% of the population is now an active Bitcoin user.” Similarly, Cointelegraph reported that as much as a fifth of merchants in El Salvador now accept Bitcoin.

Related: Morgan Stanley urges investors to buy defaulted El Salvador eurobonds

Progress is clearly good, but Dennehy emphasized that Bitcoin is a global currency. The progress in El Salvador can be reflected around the world:

“We are focused on El Salvador at the moment because we have limited resources and El Salvador is the signal. This is the front line. But our ambition is global. Our ambition is to change El Salvador, but also to change the world.

He explained that “once we create a successful template here, the idea is to rebrand it as Bitcoin, El Salvador and then open up Bitcoin.”