Hi folks đ
So, I finally made it out of Europe.
I left a cold, miserable Heathrow Airport a few weeks ago and flew to San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador.
I was there primarily to catch up with a friendâthe writer and activist John Dennehyâwho founded a cryptocurrency education nonprofit called My First Bitcoin. Over 1,000 Salvadorians have attended his classes so far, and much like my own future-facing nonprofit, Plumia, things are moving a lot faster than anticipated.
Husband Jesse and I got stuck into an impromptu hackathon with John to work on some comms and media stuff for My First Bitcoin one Saturday afternoon. It was an interesting and productive exercise, but Iâm starting to suspect the boys just wanted an excuse to deepen their eight-years-and-counting bromance đ
El Salvador is a country in transition, and spending time there left me with high hopes for its future. The people have the energy of fierce, passionate builders, and the government embraces the âmove fast and break stuffâ mentality of a Silicon Valley tech company. Hence the recent legalization of Bitcoin as legal tender, and new regulations to support DAO and DeFi ecosystems currently in the works.
President Nayib Bukele has become a global Twitter star since taking office in 2019, and while critics like to call him âthe millennial dictator,â the countryâs rapid progress under his leadership is impressiveâfor example, El Salvadorâs murder rate plummeted by a whopping 50% during his first year in office.
Thereâs no denying that Bukele is a provocative character, happy to pick public fights with institutions like the IMF and powerful countries like France and Canada, but he seems to care a lot more about his people and country than the Boris Johnsons of this world. As the old saying goes: âPeople in glass houses shouldnât throw rocks.â
Anyway, next up for me is two weeks in Mexico City, then a month or so in Playa Del Carmen. Hit reply if you have tips for either place, or if youâre there at the same time and fancy meeting up.
-lraz âď¸
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