This article is part of a series of four pieces on El Salvador. You can find the previous shipment, a story about the zonte, here.
There was formidable energy at this year’s plan B conference in El Salvador.
The event, which took place from January 30 to 31, was historic for many of its 2,500 attendees. It was the first Bitcoin forum in the Central American nation to have a complete double language agenda, which means sessions in English and Spanish.
For Roman Martínez, a Salvadoran co -founder of Bitcoin Beach, Plan B was a dream come true, because it allowed common Salvadorans to make sense of his country’s Bitcoin experiment and reflect on his own place within him. “Until now, each Bitcoin conference was aimed at foreigners,” he told me the first day, in Spanish. “Not everyone knows English. It is already difficult to learn a complex topic in your own language. In another, it is three times more difficult. “
Martínez was involved in the organization of the event. The expectation, he said, was that it would appear from 100 to 150 saviors, but more than 1,500 tickets were sold to Spanish speakers. “I’ve never seen so many Salvadoras at a Bitcoin conference,” he said. “We reach a point where Salvadorans are realizing that Bitcoin is not going anywhere, and we learn to be part of it at this time, or we will leave behind.”
I could also feel it.
The English -speaking area, located at the Sheraton President San Salvador Hotel, had cryptographic celebrities on stage, including the CEO of Tether, Paolo Ardoino, and OGS such as Samson Mow, Jimmy Song, the CEO of Blockstream, Adam Back, and the Early Bitcoin Peter Todd developer. “We are witnessing a battle between centralized and decentralized systems!” Walker America, presenter of the Bitcoin podcast, shouted in the conference opening panel.
However, that side of the conference felt something formulated compared to the Spanish -speaking area, held at the El Salvador Arts Museum, which was absolutely electric. There, Salvadorans of all stripes described plans to help their country develop, from providing new educational opportunities, to Bitcoin’s mixture with dental care, to discussing the government’s strategy with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Many of the panel speakers, the young Salvadorans, had fire in their eyes.
“We are in the right place in the world at the right time of history,” said Gerardo Linares, co -founder of Bitcoin Berlin (the initiative behind the second circular economy of Bitcoin of the Nation) to a completely spelling audience. “Everything is happening here, in El Salvador.”
A conference for Salvadorans
I was surprised by the demographic makeup of the Spanish area. Cryptographic conferences are famous dominated by men; Participants often complain about having to navigate a sea of types. The English -speaking area was like that, perhaps 90% male and 10% female.
The Spanish side was much more balanced, with a proportion of approximately 60% of men and 40% of women. While most attendees looked Bitcoin Black and Orange t -shirts, also wears middle -aged Salvadoran couples who wore elegant saving sets and twenty university students with turtle neck and blocas.
I asked Evelyn Lemus and Patricia Rosales, two of the Salvadorans who headed the Bitcoin initiative in Berlin, which thought of the female assistance rate. They did not seem surprised. “There is a new generation of Salvadoran women who do not depend on men,” Rosales told me, a single mother.
In El Salvador, most of the time, it is women who handle family finances, ”said Lemus. “That is why they come to events like this: see how family money can manage and invest. It is one of the reasons why we really wanted to have the conference in Spanish. “
Bitcoin should not be reserved for the elite of the nation, but should facilitate daily life for common Salvadorans, Lemus said. That concern influenced his action plan for Bitcoin Berlin. “We wanted to go back this notion that Salvadorans do not use Bitcoin, which only expatriates use it. Now, if you go to Berlin, you will see working class people using bitcoin. “
Giving meaning to the situation of El Salvador
There was a general feeling that El Salvador is on the cusp to enter a new phase in its Bitcoin experiment.
The last four years have seen the Central American nation, once known as the world capital of homicide, is re -marked in the country of Bitcoin. President Nayib Bukele, by blocking MS-13 and Barrio 18 and ending the gang war People at the conference seemed to see it.
Many conversations revolved around the truck in the adoption of Bitcoin. For years, although Bitcoin became a legal tender in 2021, he can only pay things with the cryptocurrency in the zonte, the small surfing village also known as Bitcoin Beach. In 2023, 88% of Salvadorans did not use the digital currency, according to a survey of the American Central University.
But now a second circular economy of Bitcoin has been implemented in the city of Berlin, in the mountains, and other initiatives are growing in other places, such as in Santa Ana, the second largest city in the country.
Martínez, Lemus and Linares were eager to share advice and advice. The sauce secret to adoption, they said, is to mix Bitcoin initiatives with social work. “If the way of making people use Bitcoin to make hamburgers instead of doing social work, then I would be doing hamburgers,” Linares told me. “Whatever it works. People like social things, so that is what we are doing. “
The decision of the Stablecoin Tether giant to relocate his headquarters in El Salvador was also perceived as a massive victory. Tether reported $ 143.7 billion in assets, including $ 94.5 billion in Treasury invoices, in the last financial quarter of 2024. For comparison, El Salvador’s GDP was estimated at $ 34 billion in 2023 by the World Bank.
Tether has become the largest (with much) company that is based on El Salvador, and other cryptographic firms are obliged to follow their steps, taking advantage of the advanced cryptographic regulatory framework of the nation and the increasingly qualified workforce. For Salvadorans, that means more career opportunities, higher wages and the possibility of the country becoming a technological center in its own right.
“El Salvador should not only be known for being the first to implement Bitcoin as legal tender,” said Darvin Otero, CEO of Tiianki Technology, on stage. “Let’s change the life of young people here and we believe the next leaders of this technological movement.”
“We have a small territory, but we can have a big dream,” said Alejandro Muñoz, Salvadoran lawyer. “We can provide great service. … Good lawyers will attract good investors and filter the scammers. Bitcoin’s education must occur in the legal industry; Steps are already being taken in that direction. “
Brilliant future ahead
The conference occurred only a few days after the government, as part of a recent multimillionaire agreement with the IMF, the state of Bitcoin rescinded as a legal tender, which means that companies are no longer obliged to accept Bitcoin payments. While some members of the Bitcoin community have accused Bukele of collapsing the IMF, none of Plan B’s Salvadorans seemed to see him like this. In his opinion, nothing has changed at a practical level, since the vast majority of companies did not use Bitcoin to begin with.
In fact, several people welcomed the deal. “El Salvador noticed long -term funds to finish the necessary reforms,” recently Mike Peterson, an American expatriate who lives in the zonte and co -founded by Bitcoin Beach, published in X. “The IMF loan puts the country on the way to Obtaining BBB credit rating that most sovereign wealth funds require investing in a country. “
That is the big difference between saviors and bitcoinists. Bitcoiners Hardcore prioritize global adoption; They want the cryptocurrency to eventually supplicate currencies issued by the Government, such as the US dollar. For them, El Salvador is a springboard, the first nation to start hyperbitcoinization, but certainly not the last.
Salvadorans do not have the same priorities. For them, Bitcoin is simply a tool, a means to an end. Its objective is to develop saving society.
“Salvadorans have always been proud to be Salvadorans. But there was a lot of pessimism. We were never the first in anything positive, only in negative things, ”Linares told me. “Now people come from all parts of the world to listen to what we have to say. Bitcoin has a lot to do with that. ”
“There are many projects here in El Salvador that invest so much time and resources and have almost nothing in return, except in tremendous pride of being able to give back the community and support everyone else. This feeling needs to expand throughout the country. We are at a time of great change. You can feel it in the air. “
