Company Name Mi Primer Bitcoin
Founder: John Dennehy
Date founded: August 2021
Headquarter Location: El Salvador
Bitcoins held by the Treasury About 0.5 BTC
The number of employees: 21
Website: https://miprimerbitcoin.io/
Public or private? Private (non-profits)
John Dennehy would like to change the world — and he believes that Bitcoin education is a means to do so.
Dennehy views Bitcoin as an important tool that can help individuals take back control of their lives. He believes education is key to enabling people to use the tool.
He created the Bitcoin Education Platform called Mi Primer Bitcoin (My First Bitcoin) as a means to empower everyday Salvadorans.
Bitcoiners must be able to understand their technology in order for him to believe that the Bitcoin revolution will truly succeed.
“Education naturally will push back against any attempts to co-opt the revolutionary spirit of Bitcoin,” Dennehy tells Bitcoin Magazine.
Dennehy may not hesitate to describe the adoption of Bitcoin as less than revolution but his method is much more Gandhian and far less Guevaraian.
Dennehy has a kind, thoughtful and introspective personality.
What Inspired Mi Primer Bitcoin?
Dennehy wanted to make a difference in the early part of 2021. Like many others during COVID, he was worried about how people felt powerless and wanted something done.
“I was in New York during the pandemic, and I spent a lot of time on long walks contemplating the state of the world and the direction that society was heading in,” said Dennehy.
“My conclusion was that the root of the problem was that we had collectively lost agency, we had lost sovereignty — the individual had lost agency in their own life — and that had a lot of negative second and third order effects,” He also added.
“The solution was Bitcoin education. The solution was to bring more people into Bitcoin and do it in a way that empowers and encourages people to think for themselves, to think critically, and to take control of their own life and their own future.”
Dennehy was inspired to book a trip to Ecuador. It’s a place he had lived before and that has a lot of meaning for him. “wasn’t well served by the current system,” He said that he would begin his Bitcoin Education Mission.
The First Attempt
Dennehy arrived to Ecuador in 2021. He tried to inform his friends of Bitcoin but was unable to convince them to come to Ecuador because of the epidemic. He found it hard to make connections with others without in-person meeting.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” Dennehy recalled his Ecuadorian experience.
Dennehy received word from El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele while in Ecuador. announcement El Salvador will soon be able to accept bitcoin as legal tender.
Dennehy, who had recovered from his disbelief and was now ready to make history, booked a flight to El Salvador.
“I decided to sell my possessions, get a one-way ticket to El Salvador to try to see how I could help make it successful,” Dennehy recounted. “As the first nation in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, for better or worse, El Salvador was going to be an example for the world, and I thought it was of the utmost importance that it was a good example.”
The Beginnings of Humble Beginnings
Dennehy arrived in El Salvador, and immediately drafted Mi Primer Bitcoin. mission statement He also provided some lesson plans. Moreover, he began recruiting both teachers and students.
“The tactic was to talk to every Salvadoran I met — the Uber driver, the waitress at the restaurant, the person standing next to me waiting to cross the street — about Bitcoin,” said Dennehy.
“Before the first class, there were a couple of meetings of this very random group of people. They came to my Airbnb and talked about [Bitcoin] as a group,” He recounted.
“Of that group, a couple of people would volunteer with the project.”
Dennehy was aware that, despite years of teaching ESL and cycling lessons as well as his own experience in both fields, he would not be the ideal person to run the program. He wanted to have locals fill that position.
“From the start, one of the founding concepts was that it should be community led, which means that the teachers should be able to relate to their students in a way that I just never would be able to,” Dennehy explained. “So, as a hard and fast rule, all the teachers here in El Salvador are Salvadoran.”
In the middle of a class in a Yoga studio, only one person attended. But by the end of the first month, a total of five had attended classes, which were held in that same yoga studio or in cafés or restaurants.
Mi Primer Bitcoins “Bitcoin Diploma” The Program
Dennehy, along with the team of Mi Primer Bitcoin, began to develop a curriculum in February 2022. It would be called its “Bitcoin Diploma” program.
“We went through the 2022 calendar year with three versions of [the program],” said Dennehy.
“We were just iterating very quickly. We didn’t start to build it until February, and the third version was complete in September,” He also added.
Dennehy said that the feedback students gave on what worked and didn’t work was also very important.
When I spoke with Dennehy about the challenges that the organization faces, it was clear to me that developing a curriculum wasn’t one of them.
Mi Primer: The challenges of running it
Since its inception, Mi Primer Bitcoin’s biggest challenge has been to establish the non-profit organization’s impartiality and independence.
Dennehy talked about how many Salvadorans link Bitcoin to the Salvadoran Government, an institution that has polarized many Salvadorans.
“Early on, there was a strong association here in El Salvador with the government and Bitcoin,” said Dennehy.
“People that liked the government tended to like Bitcoin. People that didn’t like the government tended to not like Bitcoin. There were even people that thought that Nayib Bukele invented Bitcoin. That was a common perception in these early days,” “He added.”
“So, there is a strong association that Bitcoin had with the government. An early struggle was to show people that Bitcoin is separate. Bitcoin is independent. And so are we.”
Dennehy noted that there is still a challenge, particularly since Mi Primer Bitcoin has now been integrated into the El Salvador public school system.
“We’re always trying to assert our independence and not just in deed, but in perception,” “He explained.”
“Working with the government just amplifies that challenge of separating ourselves in the perception of others from the government,” He also added.
“One of the ways that we meet that first challenge of not being dependent on the government is, as a point of principle. We never accept funding from the government.”
Mi Primer Bitcoin also faces the challenge of paying its 21 staff members via a system based on donations. This challenge is exacerbated by the fact the the organization does not accept donations with conditions attached.
“We turn down most offers for sponsorships,” said Dennehy. “Four out of five offers for sponsorships we turn down, because four out of five come with strings attached.”
Mi Primer Bitcoin is no longer burdened by the financial strain of Mi Primer Bitcoin.
The Grants We Receive HRF, OpenSats The following are some examples of how to get started: Block,” said Dennehy.
“All of those come without strings attached, which is great,” He also added.
“I think grants might start to take up a bigger slice of the pie, but from the start until now, the majority of our funding has come from grassroots support.”
Mi Primer Bitcoin Goes Global
Mi Primer Bitcoin is a curriculum and education material that teaches Bitcoin. free to download Use. Teachers around the globe can now easily adopt this curriculum.
Mi Primer Bitcoin supports the international teachers who are responsible for Bitcoin education in their home countries. These members, which Mi Primer bitcoin refers to, include all of its international teachers. “Light Nodes.”
“We have 33 nodes in 22 countries, and we all get together and share best practices,” explained Dennehy.
“Maybe a teacher in Argentina will guest teach for a project that started in Columbia. We have a node in Cuba and a node in the Dominican Republic, and they’re actually co-teaching,” He also added.
Dennehy replied that Mi Primer Bitcoin was spreading quickly on a one-to-10 scale. “10,” Without hesitation. He pointed out, too, that expanding Mi Primer Bitcoin faster would cause it to lose its focus.
“I think the only way that this spreads faster is if we compromise our values, if we centralize and dictate rather than decentralize and empower,” Dennehy stated.
“We are trying to reimagine what’s possible for the next generation and that often means we have to forge a new path. If we are trying to teach others that a different future is possible, we must demonstrate that ourselves,” “He added.”
“What you say isn’t important, what you do is everything.”
Dennehy explained that Mi Primer Bitcoin received four Light Node applications within the past 48-hours and that it’s amazing how rapidly things have accelerated.
He never imagined that Mi Primer Bitcoin would grow so rapidly.
“I’m a dreamer. I’m an idealist. That’s why I’m here,” said Dennehy. “But if you told me two and a half years ago we would have taught tens of thousands of students in person, and we would have inspired and helped facilitate this in dozens of other countries, I’d be like, ‘No way. Maybe in like 10 years.'”
Staying mission-driven
Dennehy says that as Mi Primer Bitcoin grows, it must emulate Bitcoin to stay true to the mission to empower others.
“Everything that we do at Mi Primer Bitcoin, we try to learn from Bitcoin itself,” Dennehy shared. “And decentralization is really important to us, because we want to empower others rather than control them.”
It seems that his understanding of the empowerment that he is referring to has become more sophisticated.
“Bitcoin education is a means to an end, and that end is empowerment,” said Dennehy.
“Once you realize that you have control over your money, that you could have more control over your present, it flips the incentive structure. In the fiat world, we’re disincentivized to look into the future, to build, to create, because the rules of the game might change. I could start a business today, but the rules of the game that will greatly influence whether it’s successful or not are not up to me and could change at any moment. So, it encourages us to be followers rather than leaders,” He clarified.
“Bitcoin is something that flips a switch that ‘Okay, I could have more control of my money, which gives me more control of my present which makes it easier to build out into the future, because I’m not relying on the whims of someone else.’ The more we can insert ourselves into defining our own destiny, the more we are encouraged and incentivized to look into the future — to build and create. That’s the end, and Bitcoin education is the means to that end.”
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Source: bitcoinmagazine.com
