2024-01-27 –, Machankura Stage
The Bitcoin Islands project was born on the island of Boracay in the Philippines, a place with a strong focus on tourism, through a partnership with Pouch, a start-up that allows people to receive digital payments using the Lighting Network. Initial success is immediate and over 300 merchants and businesses jump on board.
But the initial enthusiasm soon runs into a major shortfall in payment volume. Of the Bitcoiners visiting the island only a few want to pay in Bitcoin, and adoption on the island begins to fade.
The same pattern can be observed in El Salvador where, despite the legal tender and government proclamations, adoption is struggling to take off again due to a shortage of payments.
Ten years after the creation of the HODL meme, is it possible to say that the hardcore HODLER mentality is harming local communities and preventing Bitcoin from fulfilling its destiny as peer2peer digital cash?
We will spend four weeks in the Philippines with our project, Bitcoin Explorers. Just as we have done in the recent past with the Bitcoin communities of El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Turkey, and Lebanon, we will tell the world what is happening in the Bitcoin Islands using our key take, always focused on Bitcoin as a tool for financial inclusion and protection of human rights and individual freedoms around the world.
The speech I propose, similar to those I have brought to prestigious international conferences such as the Baltic Honeybadger, the PlanB Forum in Lugano and the Surfin' Bitcoin in Biarritz, will be enriched by photographic material taken on-site and experiences gathered firsthand.
Riccardo Giorgio Frega (aka Rikki) is an Italian author, speaker and a progressive libertarian activist.
Passionate about technology and its use in protecting human rights around the world, he focuses his activity on Bitcoin, which he considers to be a crucial stronghold in defense of civil rights and individual freedoms.
He is the co-author and co-host of Bitcoin Explorers, a project that chronicles Bitcoin adoption around the world, and of Bitcoin Italia Podcast, the first and most popular podcast on Bitcoin in Italy.