A small community of 40 inhabitants living in Ecuador has decided to adopt Bitcoin (BTC) as a local currency. A movement directly inspired by the Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador
The adoption of Bitcoin by a local community in Ecuador
Could Bitcoin (BTC) be the new alternative for struggling Latin Americans?
That’s what businessman Mauricio Rubio’s initiative suggests, as he has enabled a small Ecuadorian community of 40 people to adopt Bitcoin as their currency of exchange
Siguiendo el ejemplo de @Bitcoinbeach , estamos desarrollando la primera comunidad Bitcoin en Ecuador.
Rural, con limitaciones pero llenos de esperanza LightningNetwork @romanmartinezc @Konfidinse pic.twitter.com/vmFfB2HzMl– Mauricio Rubio (@maurorubiot) December 17, 2021
One day when Mauricio Rubio was doing a podcast on the subject of Bitcoin and the development of cryptocurrencies in general, a woman from the Píntag Amaru community heard him and suggested that he come to her village to talk to them about it more.
I went there, and I found an organised community that used to have reserves. So I offered to reserve in bitcoins and was surprised by their positive response. We started with a first wallet and then started to store Bitcoin. This was when the price of Bitcoin was $30,000.
The man describes the residents as a farming community where “everything they sow, they sow without chemical fertilizers of any kind. They are trying to defend their self-sufficiency, reforestation, and this while living at 3000 meters above sea level.”
For him, this is in line with the desire for most bitcoin holders to live independently, away from the banking system as we know it.
A small-scale network
It has already enabled the villagers to offer tourist trips to visitors who want them, as they can now accept bitcoin payments via the Lightning network, which is designed to minimise the time taken to complete a transaction. This is the same network that was used in El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender.
Tourists are accommodated in a house designed for this purpose and live in the community as if they were living there themselves.
According to the businessman, the next stage of the project is already in preparation, with the next step being to collaborate with neighbouring villages to expand the capacity of tourist stays.
You can discover the Antisana volcano, then go to the beach and live with other communities […]. We want to help local communities develop and boost their economy with Bitcoin,” he added.
The Bitcoin Beach example
El Salvador, the first country to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender, is home to “Bitcoin Beach” on El Zonte beach.
Storefront accepting Bitcoin in El Zonte (Source: Reuters)
This is a project to create a Bitcoin-based economy for self-sufficiency, as the majority of the population there cannot even access a bank account. Most of the time, local vendors cannot receive credit card payments either.
The Bitcoin Beach was made possible by a generous anonymous donation of over $100,000 in Bitcoins and now allows the local people to access education and pay for their daily transactions securely and independently.
But it also allows for direct infrastructure development as it is now even possible to pay local construction companies in bitcoins.
It would seem that crypto-assets are becoming the alternative of choice to banks for populations in difficulty, allowing them to develop a local economy in a simplified way.
