Ricky explains the thinking behind Bitcoin Lago

Who is talking

In March 2025 the channel The Orange Journey, the English-language side of the Norwegian show Bitcoinsnakk, published a 76 minute conversation with Ricky from Bitcoin Lago. The host is Nicolai. They talked in Oslo, where Ricky had travelled from Montreal to speak at the Oslo Plebs meetup. Ricky is an architect, has followed bitcoin since 2013, and was part of the small group that launched the project in 2022 with Patrick Melder.

Everything below is Ricky's account as of early 2025. Numbers and plans may have changed since.

Copying Bitcoin Beach, with local people in front

Ricky says the idea came from Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador, which showed that a whole town could use bitcoin in daily life. If it works there, why not at Lake Atitlán? Patrick had contacts in Panajachel and wanted to launch in 2022. Ricky thought a bear market was a poor time, but he joined anyway. He did not want the project to look like foreigners coming to save the community.

At the start there were only classes for children in a school and no merchants. Then Patrick found Eliazar. With help from a Bitcoin Beach donation, other gifts and their own money, the team sent Eliazar to El Zonte for a week in 2022. Ricky calls it a small training course, and says Eliazar came back motivated. In about six months he onboarded roughly 60 businesses. Ricky thinks the count in Panajachel reached about 100 by the end of 2022, and says he is not sure.

Why they stopped adding merchants

Ricky says the team had to slow down. Bitcoin only enters a local economy when bitcoiners visit and spend it, and local people rarely go out of their way to buy it. The target is the poorest of the poor, in an informal cash economy where almost everyone has a phone but small shops keep their savings in stock, which is lost in a fire or a robbery.

Businesses also drift away when staff change and nobody is there to show the new employee how it works. Ricky's view is that, after the start, owners must take responsibility, much like self-custody in bitcoin. If a business asks to join, the team will still help. But the main effort now goes to classes for children in schools.

The walking ATM

In 2022 the price was falling and many merchants wanted to cash out. Ricky says Eliazar acted as a walking ATM, converting payments to quetzales the same day, or sometimes the next, almost every day. Ricky handled the money behind the scenes and says they never failed to pay out. That built trust.

Once the price hit bottom and started rising, merchants began to hold their bitcoin, and the circulation stopped. Ricky says that is normal, and that there is no shame in it. His message to people in richer countries is to spend and replace if they can.

Small on purpose

Ricky describes the project as grassroots, the opposite of a government push from above. It has no office or building, and he says that is deliberate: what they have, they must earn. Eliazar is the only full-time person, and lives in a village about five minutes from Panajachel. Ricky's motto is less marketing and more work.

He ends with a travel pitch. Lake Atitlán is one of Guatemala's top attractions, with boats, volcanoes and several Maya cultures, and you can rent an ATV or a bike with bitcoin.

In their words

We had to stop because at some point there is not enough bitcoin coming in, because the only way bitcoin can really enter the economy is if bitcoiners go there, visit and spend.

I don't think it's our job to help a business make money. We did that in the beginning to get things rolling, but at some point I think we need people to take responsibility.

Eliazar was a walking ATM. Nobody knows this, but I was managing everything on the back end.

We don't want to have it handed to us because that sends the wrong message. Everything we have, we have to earn ourselves.

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