Ferrer, a 48-year-old bitcoin evangelist who works full-time as Argentina’s head of business development at Paxful, a peer-to-peer crypto exchange, has been giving the same tour about Bitcoin and Argentina’s history since 2019 in his free time. Tourists and locals pay $35 for the approximately two-hour visit around Buenos Aires’ center.

During the tour, entitled Our Local Crazy Economy & Bitcoin, Ferrer explains how the chaotic Argentinian economy works and the reason crypto is booming in the country.

Ferrer started touring in February 2019 out of pure passion, with the clear goal of “bitcoinizing every corner of Argentina,” as he says on his Twitter profile. With the same objective, he also organizes a monthly event, Bitcoin Night, where he persuades a restaurant to accept payment in bitcoin, in exchange for bringing a lot of bitcoiners to dinner.

Since then, he has conducted 150 tours through Airbnb, with an average of four attendees per occasion.

Ferrer urged the group to download a Lightning-powered hot wallet to show how “easy and anonymous” it is to transfer bitcoin on the layer 2 payments protocol, distributing 1,000 satoshis among the participants, who obeyed his command after a few moments of confusion and glances of suspicion.

To reduce the drain of dollars from its reserves, in 2019, the government installed a barrier — known as a cepo in Spanish — that prevents locals from acquiring more than $200 per month through banks.

As he walked and talked, Ferrer began to explain how the impossibility of accessing dollars created illegal exchange offices known as “caves” and usually hidden behind traditional businesses such as jewelry stores, where dollars are sold at a price up to 100% more expensive than the official quotation.