Adopting Bitcoin 2023: Rudy Gallardo and Eliazar present Bitcoin Lago's numbers, schools and mining
A November 2023 talk from the Blink stage gives volume, transactions, graduation sizes and plans for the lake.
A talk from the Blink stage in November 2023
At Adopting Bitcoin 2023 in El Salvador, Rudy Gallardo and Eliazar presented Bitcoin Lago from the Blink stage. The 17 minute talk was published by the Adopting Bitcoin channel on November 16, 2023, so every number below belongs to that moment. Founder Patrick Melder could not attend. Rudy, a volunteer at the lake for at least a year, did most of the speaking and introduced Eliazar as the community leader, "the man, the legend," who makes the project work.
The project's three goals, he said, are education, orange pilling merchants and mining.
The numbers
Rudy said around 80 businesses in Panajachel and over 100 around the lake accepted bitcoin. In the same talk he also said more than 70 merchants in Panajachel, so treat the count as roughly 70 to 80 in town. He added that 60 percent of the adult population in Guatemala cannot have a bank account and that, in his words, 60 percent of the merchants have no bank account, so without bitcoin they would only take cash.
From January 2022 to April 2023 the lake recorded 8.85 bitcoin in volume and more than 5,000 transactions. Rudy called that huge for a team of only three people, in a bear market. A chart showed a spike in November 2022, when a group of bitcoiners visited. He said volume kept growing afterwards and that some bitcoiners had come to live in Panajachel.
Education as opportunity
The My First Bitcoin diploma is a 10 week program. Rudy believed Guatemala was the first country outside El Salvador to run it. The first class had about 20 students. A recent graduation had more than 40 children, and schools were now asking the team for lessons.
He said education here is also about opportunity: showing indigenous children that the world is bigger and that they can dream of a better future. Two years earlier, he said, people would call bitcoin a scam or not know it. Now they say, "that merchant accepts Bitcoin." A video showed a little girl making her first Lightning payment in her final test.
Visiting bitcoiners are invited to teach too. One explained what a multisig wallet is. Meetups bring bitcoiners and locals together.
Mining with waste, and a Lightning ATM
Rudy described Kaboom, the used cooking oil miner, as the project's proof of work. People in the area, he said, pour oil into rivers and sinks, and it ends up in the lake. Mining collects it. The team took children to the facility to learn about money and proof of work, with help from a volunteer with a mining background.
The Bitcoin ATM at the lake runs on Lightning. Rudy demonstrated selling 100 quetzales from a Blink wallet. He called it the first Bitcoin ATM with Lightning in Central America, a claim we have not checked, and the first capital investment in the lake. It helps visiting bitcoiners and also merchants, and he said the flow of bitcoin into the community is new money.
What they planned next
Rudy said not all merchants cash out and that some had held their bitcoin for a year. He wanted to ask them what they expected after the recent price rise. Plans included a visitor app to browse restaurants with menus, prices and locations, a better point of sale, and finding a new teacher to continue the work started by Reyna.
One of the speakers closed by saying they had concentrated on Panajachel for two years and now wanted to reach all the towns around the lake. They asked for volunteers and thanked the companies that support the project, with the line: let's go fix the money, fix the world.
In their words
Sometimes people think Bitcoin education is only about financial education, but in these communities it is also about opportunity.
If you ask someone at the lake what Bitcoin is, they will say: oh yes, I know that, that merchant accepts Bitcoin.
This is our proof of work: we are showing the world that we can mine from waste.
Let's go fix the money, fix the world.
This summary is based on the video's automatic captions. If something is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
