A Canadian creator visits Bitcoin Lago: cooking oil mining, tuk tuks and weavers in San Juan
The Get Based channel followed Eliazar through Panajachel and San Juan La Laguna in a film published in March 2023.
A Canadian creator comes to see the lake
In March 2023 the YouTube channel Get Based published "The Untold Secrets of Guatemala's Bitcoin Lake", a 17 minute film by a Canadian creator who travelled to Panajachel with a friend, Adam. The captions do not give the filming date. The project was about 10 months into its work, so it was probably recorded in late 2022. Numbers and details may have changed since.
The trip starts from Guatemala City with long, winding roads. The host calls the drive brutal, but he arrives in a tourist town where bitcoin merchants, education and some local mining were growing.
Mining with cooking oil
The first stop is the used cooking oil miner. The host presents it as turning oil that would otherwise be dumped into the lake into bitcoin. Eliazar, described as the community leader and the person who maintains the mine, says the oil used to end up in the garbage, the rivers or the lake. By mining with it, he says, they can save the lake.
The narration says the miner earns about 230 dollars of bitcoin a month, around half of an average monthly salary in Guatemala.
Eighty businesses in ten months, and one waiter's story
The video says the project onboarded around 80 businesses in Panajachel in just 10 months, and credits Eliazar's hours of patient explanation. One speaker, most likely Eliazar, tells how he was a waiter in town and knew nothing about bitcoin. He saw a man with a bitcoin T-shirt, asked about it, downloaded Wallet of Satoshi in a second and received a tip. A couple of months later he was offered work with the project. Friends and visitors then asked him about mining, wallets and Lightning, so he learned all of it.
On the business side, the host explains that setup is simple: the Bitcoin Beach wallet lets a merchant create an invoice within 30 seconds of downloading it. Of a dozen or so businesses the crew spoke to, most said they would keep the bitcoin instead of converting it.
Boat, chocolate and weaving in San Juan
The team crosses to San Juan La Laguna by boat. They tour a chocolate factory, where Eliazar talks to the owners about bitcoin. Then they visit Casa Flor Ixcaco, a weaving cooperative where cotton is prepared by hand for around 16 hours, dyed with flowers, spices and fruit, and woven into blouses that can take two weeks. Profits are shared among the women. Eliazar pitches bitcoin there as a way to take digital payments without giving 8 to 10 percent to card companies, a figure given by the narration.
Why the host thinks bitcoin could fit here
The narration lists Guatemala's context: remittances at about 18 percent of GDP, more than half the population without a bank account, and 79 percent in informal work. It adds that over 43 percent speak a Mayan language. These are the video's figures, not ones we have checked.
An interviewee argues that, because of the civil war and long distrust of the central government, indigenous communities would probably not have accepted a bitcoin law imposed from above. In his view, people will want bitcoin, not the government. The host's conclusion is that this resilience could make a grassroots effort work.
A founder on why Eliazar matters
A voice that says it came up with the idea of the project, not named in the captions, says it should be a decentralized community led by people on the ground. Someone from Guatemala City would not have Eliazar's credibility, he says, because Eliazar is from the community. He told him to do it for his people. He calls Eliazar's arrival a blessing and a divine intervention.
The host closes by thanking everyone involved with Bitcoin Lago and says the trip was well worth it.
In their words
They used to throw this all in the garbage, in the rivers or into the lake, slowly killing our lake. By mining bitcoin with it, we can save our lake.
I saw a guy with the word Bitcoin on his T-shirt and, as a waiter, I asked him what Bitcoin was, and he made a transaction. It went fast.
You are doing this for your people. It is not just about you, it is about bringing something better to your people.
This summary is based on the video's automatic captions. If something is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
