From zero to a million: the first six months of MyFirstBitcoin and beyond
On September 24th MiPrimerBitcoin had its first class in El Salvador. We brought fold-up chairs into a yoga studio, borrowing the space between sessions. One student came. By the end of the month, we had a grand total of 5 students.
From those humble beginnings, we’ve grown quite a bit. We teach thousands of students, have spread across the country, and are deeply involved in shaping the nation’s future.
We believe the world is at a crossroads and that El Salvador is the front-line of the next war — but it won’t be fought with tanks and guns, it will be fought over which ideas dominate our future world. We believe Bitcoin can push that world toward decentralization, self-sovereignty, and personal responsibility. We believe that education is our best defense and our best offense. We believe El Salvador will create a lot of precedents and will have over-size influence in exactly how Bitcoin is used and seen throughout the world. We believe we are at a unique intersection where we really can make a difference. We believe we can change the world.
The journey to this point has been exhilarating and exhausting. For much of these first six months, we were just focused on surviving one more day — scrambling to take advantage of every opportunity that came our way — matching borrowed spaces with curious students all while trying to build out infrastructure.
We are ending that phase of quick but chaotic growth and building something that can scale to our grand ambitions of teaching the entire nation by the end of next year.
When I arrived in El Salvador in August I had the vague idea that I wanted to contribute. Earlier that year, while living in Ecuador, I gave away some sats to friends and neighbors as part of a quick intro based more on practice than theory. My vague idea for El Salvador was to scale that, and also to encourage a circular economy by letting the students keep the sats.
I assumed there would be various projects farther along in their development as well as significant education efforts already underway. I was wrong. I quickly realized that I underestimated the need for education and overestimated how big the network of people working for Bitcoin was.
I believe the Bitcoin community greatly underestimates the importance of El Salvador. Quality, independent education is a huge positive yes, but the lack of it is not neutral. It creates space for scams and things like central bank digital currencies. In a world of noise, El Salvador is the signal.
The first volunteers were all Salvadorans who knew enough to see the promise of Bitcoin and believe it could be a positive force for their nation but were quite new to Bitcoin themselves. Our greatest resource has always been human, has always been Salvadoreans who believed they can make a positive impact in their nation and are willing to put the work in to make it happen. Some early students became teachers — including that first one from the yoga studio. Napoleon was my Uber driver earlier that month, I asked to pay in Bitcoin which he didn’t know how to accept but was interested in learning. Now, besides teaching, he now runs a Bitcoin-first car service of three employees.
In November, on two days’ notice, we organized our first meet-up. This was important for two reasons: money & momentum. Ibex Mercado sponsored the event, which was the first time a company donated to us and kicked off a new revenue stream for us — up until then we relied on donations from friends and family. With their donated funds we gifted sats to everyone who came and negotiated a discount for anyone who paid in Bitcoin. We went around to give out the bonus which let us talk with each table. Many people were curious, and we walked them through their first transactions. It was our biggest class yet. It was also the first time many people heard about us. We now have a meet-up once a month, an evolution of that first one, and each one is bigger and better. Besides teaching some new people, the meet-ups also serve as a place to connect and form a local Bitcoin community.
After a lull around Christmas, in February we smashed our record and taught 800 students, often traveling far outside the capital on weekends to give classes in rural communities. That was also when we had our first meeting about creating a Diploma program in the public school system.
That Diploma program has speed along. On April 23rd we launch. The ten-week course will be required in order to graduate. It is the first of its kind in the world. Our hope is that it serves as a pilot. We are working in public, compiling hard data to objectively view its success and making everything as easy as possible to copy. We now have the support of the Ministry of Education and interest from other schools. The goal is to add a few more schools this year and roll out nationwide next year.
In six months, we went from one student in a borrowed yoga studio to a force with real influence over the future of Bitcoin education. We are just getting started.
The mission is urgent. We want to grow as quickly as possible. We are also fiercely independent which means we turn down funds from anyone who tries to influence our content with their donation. We believe it’s important that we are always impartial and independent. Either the government or a for-profit business will always have other motivations and interests and our students realize that. They trust us because of our independence.
We hired our first two full-time employees in March and hope to grow our staff quickly. This month we are looking for permanent space in San Salvador, which will host classes on evenings and weekends and serve as an office for our staff during the day. This will supplement our borrowed spaces and help us grow our student base. We are also opening a new chapter in San Miguel this month — El Salvador’s second-largest city — and plan to make that a base for the eastern half of the country. Eventually opening our own permanent space there as well as hosting meet-ups and everything we already do in San Salvador.
We are expanding in every way possible concerning Bitcoin education in El Salvador. Intro classes, meet-ups, and programs throughout the public school system, but also much more. More advanced classes both online and in-person, classes aimed at businesses and policymakers as well as videos and social media. We aim to reach every single person in the nation by end of next year. We aim to ensure that the example that El Salvador creates is a positive one. We aim to change the world.
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