El Zonte, the small Salvadoran community that uses Bitcoin to boost the real economy.
Lately El Salvador has become the main topic of conversation in the world of cryptocurrencies and not for less, it is no small thing to be the first country in the world that admits the Bitcoin (BTC) as a legal currency at the same level of the dollar. However, some time ago a small beach community of this small Central American territory assumed the main digital currency of the planet as an essential part of its economy, leaving poverty behind and placing itself at the forefront of this new paradigm.
That small town is called El Zonte, a beach paradise of barely 3,000 inhabitants but who make Bitcoin their only currency of daily use under the guidance of a project called Bitcoin Beach, a local initiative that was created in 2018 and that is giving much to talk about for the achievements made in such a short time. The founder of Bitcoin Beach is cryptoinvestor Michael Peterson who had the interest to experiment in El Zonte the first example of using BTC as a currency in a real economy due to the fact that the inhabitants of this beach community do not have bank accounts, therefore access to infrastructure and financial instruments are conspicuous by their absence in the coastal town and of course, only cash is the only way (until then) to generate income and commercial exchanges.
According to Bitcoin Beach officials, it all started with a generous six-figure anonymous donation, apparently from a crypto-investor who wanted to use the profits generated by the BTC boom as a philanthropic way to repay his multi-million dollar fortune for having invested in the digital currency when it was worth pennies. The donor contacted Peterson, who has been living in El Zonte for several years, leading various social projects in several poor Salvadoran towns.
Because of Mr. Peterson's intense social activity in El Salvador, the anonymous donor decided to provide the funds for the projects in this country, but he demanded two conditions: 1) that this money could not be exchanged for any fiat currency, 2) that all the beneficiaries of his donation had to use only BTC. Thus the small town of El Zonte took on the challenge of moving away from cash and into the decentralized digital economy.
Introducing this new model to the small community proved to be a great challenge, as the transition to the new digital paradigm implied leaving behind a lifestyle that was deeply rooted in the inhabitants, while the cryptocurrency economy was something totally unknown among this town dedicated to tourism activities. But the inhabitants of El Zonte far from rejecting this new currency unknown to the vast majority of them, curiosity and a good training campaign among the people helped its inhabitants to assume the commercial use of BTC without problems, largely covered by the great curiosity that this represented for them.
Gradually, young people, children and the elderly of El Zonte began to use the BTC to pay for practically anything, from basic necessities such as food, cleaning and personal hygiene items, to various services such as car rentals or surfing lessons. It should also be noted that the children of the small beach town are beneficiaries of this new economy of the world's main cryptocurrency, as they benefit from scholarships, school equipment, infrastructure and transportation.
The community learned how to carry out P2P transactions with the support of Bitcoin Beach, who were also involved in teaching the importance of decentralized cryptocurrency mechanisms. Likewise, the inhabitants learned to present productive projects to be financed with BTC, in this way the youth took the path of entrepreneurship through this cryptocurrency to move away from the criminal world, substantially reducing the cases of violence associated with gangs or drug trafficking (according to the testimony of those responsible for the Bitcoin Beach project).
On the other hand, being El Salvador a country with a high migration rate, BTC is used as a method of sending remittances to relatives in the country, so they do not have to live at the mercy of the high commissions that money remittance companies apply to those who send or receive fiat money under their conditions. Employment rates in the area have also soared since the people learned to use BTC as part of their daily lives.
The experience of El Zonte is a sample of the importance of BTC and cryptocurrencies to stimulate the real economy, beyond its value as a speculative product there is a world outside that needs them to create a decentralized economic paradigm, away from the influence of governments, banks and institutions and close to the total independence of human beings, at least that is what Satoshi Nakamoto captured in the whitepaper, something that from a small beach in El Salvador are fighting to make it a reality.
