Bitcoin Office in El Salvador Celebrates 21 Months of Success, Prepares for Renaissance 2.0

“Someone has to be the keeper and repeater of the vision. There is a lot of work to be done. If you have to walk a thousand miles and you have only just taken the first step, it feels like a long way. It really helps when you have someone to say, ‘We are one step closer and the goal is not a mirage.’” -Steve Jobs

Stacy Herbert, director of the National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) of the Office of the President of El Salvador, shared the above quote with me, beaming with pride and determination, at the beginning of my interview with her.

Clearly, Herbert is on a mission, one that began in 2010 when she and her partner, Max Keiser, first discovered Bitcoin and soon after became one of its early spokespeople. That mission now includes El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, as well as the bureaucracy and citizens of El Salvador, which has become popularly known in Bitcoin circles as “Bitcoin Country.”

According to many statistics, The Bitcoin Office has already achieved a lot of success since its creation in December 2022. It has stored 5,836 bitcoin on behalf of the country. It has educated 80,000 Salvadoran civil servants on what Bitcoin is and why it is important. It has helped implement Bitcoin education from kindergarten to university level through programs like Mi Primer Bitcoin and CUBO+. And it has attracted entrepreneurs, investors, and other bright minds to the country.

While Herbert is proud of these accomplishments, she’s not one to rest on her laurels, especially since she believes that El Salvador’s best days are yet to come. She has a vision that continued Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador will set the stage for a new renaissance, one that will uplift Salvadorans and continue to attract the world’s best people to the country. Given the obstacles she’s overcome since first arriving in the country three years ago, it’s hard to believe that she won’t continue to do her part to make this new era happen for El Salvador.

Getting started in El Salvador

Herbert arrived in El Salvador with Keiser toward the end of 2021, near the peak of that year’s Bitcoin bull market. Euphoria gave way to despair in 2022, however, as Bitcoin’s price plummeted in part due to a broader meltdown in the crypto space.

“When we first got here three years ago, bitcoin hit $69,000 and then it dropped to something like $16,000,” Herbert told Bitcoin Magazine.

Herbert and Keiser were challenged to explain to the people of Salvador that the collapse of the major crypto companies did not mean that Bitcoin was dead, or that it was a mirage.

“FTX crashed, BlockFi crashed, Celsius crashed,” Herbert explained. “When they saw all these crashes, they thought it was the same as Bitcoin — all these scams, all these frauds.”

Herbert stressed how important it was to steer El Salvador in a bitcoin and non-crypto direction at the time.

“There were two paths: you could become a crypto country or you could become a Bitcoin country,” Herbert said.

“With cryptoland, you’re competing with Vegas; you’re competing with Macau. The house always wins in those situations. And it’s the same when you have a crypto economy. You have a few rich guys running the house. The pre-mines, the chip owners, the chip dispensers, they always win,” she added, stressing that she didn’t want El Salvador to be exploited by the crypto industry.

“Or you could go down the path of what Switzerland was for gold, or New York became for U.S. Treasuries. You could build capital markets. You could build an economy. You could build a Singapore 2.0, an Alexandria 2.0, a Florence 2.0. We have been advocating for this vision.”

Renaissance 2.0

In the view Herbert shares with President Bukele and Keiser, a senior adviser to Bukele, El Salvador is in the early stages of one of the greatest eras of human flourishing the world has ever known.

Like the Renaissance that took place over 500 years ago in what is now northern Italy, El Salvador is paving the way for an explosion of entrepreneurship and creativity by using the hardest money ever.

“Florence at first didn’t just have DaVinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli and all those architects, explorers, voyagers, astronomers, and then they found the perfect money,” Herbert explained.

“They found the perfect money of the time – the Florin – and that created a positive feedback loop of more and more wealth being concentrated in Florence versus the other city-states of what is now Italy and other regions in Europe,” she added, before sharing that great artists, businessmen and thinkers flocked to Florence in the wake of the city’s growth into a commercial center.

“We believe that a similar process could occur in El Salvador.”

Embracing Bukele’s vision

Herbert said repeatedly in our conversation that El Salvador’s transformation could not have happened without Bukele’s leadership. His approval rating among Salvadorans remains above 90%, making him one of the most popular presidents in the world.

She says the challenge for ONBTC is to get the rest of the country to see and embrace its vision.

“You can’t just make President Bukele believe in Bitcoin,” Herbert explained.

“You need at least some of his 80,000 civil servants to understand what he is actually trying to achieve. Remember, as guardians of the vision, we have to drag everyone along to understand President Bukele’s vision for El Salvador,” she added.

To get the rest of the country on board, Herbert has hired well-known Bitcoin figures to educate and train Salvadoran Bitcoin developers and members of the Salvadoran government.

This work began when Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song came to El Salvador in March 2022 (before ONBTC was officially established) to teach developers how to work with Bitcoin Core.

“Jimmy Song taught his Bitcoin course to seven Salvadorans,” Herbert recalls. “One of them was a guy named Mario Flamenco, who eventually became my assistant, my number two in the Bitcoin office.”

Giacomo Zucco also came on board to not only educate developers, but also provide three days of Bitcoin education to El Salvadoran officials. Herbert explained that the educational effort is not only intended to give El Salvadoran officials a deep technical understanding of Bitcoin, but also to change their mindset.

“They are the people who deal with the population,” Herbert said of El Salvador officials, “so they need to understand why they are a Bitcoin country in terms of mentality.”

Herbert often referred to the importance of mindset during our conversation. She explained that the work of the ONBTC is more than just helping people understand what Bitcoin is, but it’s about mentally and emotionally preparing them to be great.

“To be extraordinary, you need people in government and in the public who are willing to be extraordinary,” she said.

“We are training a population to have the mindset to be Florence 2.0, to be Singapore 2.0 – to be something extraordinary,” she added.

“You have to have everyone on the same page about how important they are. What we’re doing here is extraordinary. What President Bukele has brought to the country is quite extraordinary.”

Passport Programs

Through ONBTC, Bukele is preparing Salvadorans for great things, while through El Salvador’s passport programs he wants to attract people with a track record of achieving great things.

On April 6, 2024, Bukele announced that El Salvador would issue 5,000 passports to scientists, doctors and even philosophers.

We offer 5,000 free passports (equivalent to $5 billion in our passport program) to highly qualified scientists, engineers, doctors, artists and philosophers from abroad.

This represents less than 0.1% of our population, giving them full citizen status, including…

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 6, 2024

As Bukele shared in his tweet, these 5,000 passports are technically worth $5 billion. El Salvador is now issuing passports almost immediately to those who make a $1 million investment in the country using BTC or USDT.

Although this program was intended to attract top talent from abroad, according to Herbert it also had positive effects on the psychology of the Salvadoran population.

“What we did with the million-dollar price tag worked,” Herbert said.

“If you go back, Salvadorans started saying, ‘My God, some people paid $10,000 to coyotes to take them across the border into the U.S., and my passport is worth $1 million.’ Even if a thousand Salvadorans think that, it changes the mindset enough to be a crucial seed of change,” she added.

What is the future of The Bitcoin Office?

Herbert said ONBTC has a number of big announcements coming in the next three to four weeks. For now, however, ONBTC is focused on unveiling the first Bitcoin banks, which it believes will help El Salvador build capital markets.

“Bitcoin banks will come here and we will begin in earnest to build the capital markets that are needed – just as we have been laying the foundation for greatness over the last 21 months,” Herbert said.

Beyond Bitcoin banks, Herbert seems convinced that the sky is the limit for what will happen to El Salvador in the future. Thanks to ONBTC, a foundation has been laid for the country’s revitalization.

“We have the education, we have the mindset, we have the rebranding — the biggest rebranding in history — as I call it for El Salvador, and we have a growing popularity for President Bukele because he keeps winning,” she said. “We’ve walked a thousand miles in the last 21 months, and we have another thousand-mile journey to begin.”

Editor’s Note: We normally profile startup founders for our Founders series, but this week we chose to profile the director of a government agency who has led the institution since its inception.