I missed the ocean and the black beaches of El Zonte. We’re happy to be back. Being here is fun and we still have a lot of content to make around here.
We left beautiful Suchi late in the morning. From the north of the country to the beaches in the south is a couple hours drive. El Salvador is so small, literally everything is at your fingertips. Along the way we stop for gas, almost every gas station here accepts Bitcoin so it’s not hard. Today Chivo is back to being strangely slow. Lightning transactions have been working properly for weeks now. But today for some strange reason they seem to be cumbersome. The attendant has to close and reopen the app at least a couple of times before the payment shows up on the list. Who knows what’s going on under the hood of this absurd wallet. It’s a mystery we’d love for someone to be able to solve.
We arrive at Bitcoin Beach in the early afternoon. We booked at the same hotel we already stayed at four weeks ago because we know it has all the features we need. It’s comfortable, well located, fairly quiet and has great wi-fi. I’ll be hosting the Bitrefill podcast and we have a lot to do, so connectivity is vital these days.
In the evening we are joined by Lorenzo, another crypto traveler. Laura met him at a conference in Lisbon and for the past few months he has been living in Buenos Aires. He decided to make a detour and spend a few days with us in El Salvador to see the Bitcoin law with his own eyes. We take him to eat papusas, the most typical thing you can do around here. Cheap and delicious.
He tells us extensively about what is happening in Argentina, with inflation galloping, prices more than doubling in the last year, and how cryptocurrency exchange advertisements are everywhere in the cities. How there is a substantial dual currency system, with an incredible demand for dollars in cash on the black market (or blue market, as the locals call it, because black sounds bad). The illegal dealing of foreign currency, in the open, with prices doubled compared to the current exchange rate. What a clown of a world we have built. These are things that leave one stunned. If behind these stories there wasn’t also the suffering of the people, the families who can’t support themselves, the stories of forced migration and all that we know there is, we would laugh. Laughing at the political class, everywhere incompetent and disappointing. Laugh at the economic institutions, inadequate and servants of the very money they issue and regulate. Laughing at the establishment in general, too arrogant to realize its own obsolescence.
Bitcoin is cure and vaccine. Understanding this means putting your heart on your sleeve. Knowing that the drift we are experiencing is necessary. It is the metastasis of a dying system. Everywhere the symptoms are clearly visible. The machine that has nurtured the status quo for centuries has jammed and change is unstoppable. Bitcoin is already ready. Perfect in its scientific and mathematical essence. Totally in tune with the laws of physics that rule the universe. Concentrated energy in absolute digital scarcity. Economic digital steel as Michael Saylor has recently defined it. Ductile, instantaneous, safe, incensurable, thermodynamic, multiplanetary.
Simply what humanity will need in the next thousand years of progress and exploration.
No one today can predict with absolute certainty what kind of society we will be able to design for our heirs. Very different from the current one. This is certain. No one can say what the world of work will be like a hundred years from now. How our institutions will be. If any will exist. What will become of the borders of our modern states, the languages we speak, our culture and traditions as individual peoples. What I do know, however, is that Bitcoin will be central to all that is to come. Once you understand its true essence everything seems obvious. Foregone. Inevitable.
I have never really understood those who doubt. Perhaps doubt comes from ignorance, from a limited open-mindedness. From the inability to step outside the box to see a totally new paradigm. More likely from selfishness. From the fear of losing what is ours. What belongs to us. Our value, our savings, our privileges. Armies of little Gollums blinded by billions of tin rings.
Embracing the unknown has always been the necessary trait of explorers and they have always been the ones to expand the boundaries of knowledge and human civilization. Everyone else is still left with the couch and the Playstation. And a comfortable, apathetic life.
