Bitcoin Ekasi about Bitcoin Circular economies \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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A Bitcoin Circular Economy is a geographically concentrated effort (an effort that is focused on a relatively small area/population) that promotes the use of bitcoin as an everyday form of money, without, as far as possible, converting to and/or touching the fiat system in any way, whatsoever.

This includes services where Bitcoin is used to make purchases, but where the merchant never sees any sats. These services are preferable to using fiat on both ends, but they're not ideal. Ideally we want both the customer and merchant interacting directly with one another, and directly with Bitcoin only. These services can however be (and very often are) an ideal stepping stone and should be treated as such.

A Bitcoin Circular Economy promotes using bitcoin to pay salaries, make grocery purchases and do everything with bitcoin that would otherwise normally be done with fiat, in a way that is p2p and direct, as far as possible. The idea first emerged in Arnhem, in the Netherlands, in 2014, with ArnhemBitcoinstad, but really exploded with the founding of Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador, in 2019.

We (Bitcoin Ekasi) and others, like Praia Bitcoin Brazil⚡️ and Bitcoin Jungle , copied the Bitcoin Beach model and adjusted for local context, starting around 2021. Several more projects have followed. Federation of Bitcoin Circular Economies is, in part, an effort to track, catalogue and provide a blueprint of the various circular economies and their different models, so that the idea may spread even further and be more easily and widely adopted.

Ultimately, we're all working towards the same thing: To establish Bitcoin as global money, and we believe the best way of doing that is through establishing circular economies.

The separation of money and state, which is perhaps the only thing Bitcoiners can agree on, is, in essence, nothing more than a global Bitcoin circular economy, which, in turn, is nothing more than countless smaller interlinked circular economies.

These do not have to be formal projects. In fact, many aren't. All it needs to be is an attempt to solve both ends of the adoption equation:

Who will spend the sats? And where will they spend it?

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTCLNAT 2 Feb

Ekasi is doing a good job. In one of his interventions at Adopting Bitcoin in Africa, they mentioned an element that has made us think.

They suggested that instead of giving a sermon on what Bitcoin is to merchants, we should listen to them to find out their needs and thus help them with the appropriate tools.

Sometimes we forget that Bitcoin as libertarian money is not imposed, it is proposed. We are not here to win, we are here to convince and help. It is true that the massive adoption of Bitcoin benefits us all, but people have their right. What we do not stop asking from time to time is "do you accept Bitcoin?"

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 2 Feb

Focus on spender education. In each of these circular economies there are already enough merchants that sell for bitcoin, but not enough spenders that spend bitcoin. Since your main source of spenders are tourists, you need tourist education - and word of mouth is not going to be enough for that.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 2 Feb

This is what's important. The writer speaks of a federation. Is there a web site or nostr account set up?

164 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCLNAT 2 Feb

https://bitcoinconfederation.org/

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 2 Feb

Thanks!