“Someone has to be the guardian and the reiterator of the vision. There is so much work to be done. When you have a thousand miles to walk and you have only taken the first step, it seems like a long road. It really helps if there is someone who says, '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 Presidency of El Salvador, shared the above quote with me, beaming with pride and determination, at the beginning of my interview with her.
It’s clear that Herbert is on a mission, a mission that began in 2010 when she and her partner, Max Keiser, discovered bitcoin and soon after became some of the currency’s first spokespeople. This mission now includes El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, as well as the bureaucracy and citizens of El Salvador, which has become a country colloquially known as “bitcoin Country” in bitcoin circles.
By many metrics, The bitcoin Office has already achieved great success since its founding in December 2022. It has accumulated 5,836 bitcoins on behalf of the country. It has educated 80,000 Salvadoran public officials on what bitcoin is and why it is important. It has helped implement bitcoin education from kindergarten to university levels through programs such as Mi Primer bitcoin and CUBE+. And he feels attracted entrepreneurs, investors and other brilliant minds to the country.
While Herbert is proud of these accomplishments, she isn’t resting on her laurels, especially since she believes El Salvador’s best days are still ahead of her. She envisions that increased bitcoin adoption in El Salvador will lay the groundwork for a new renaissance, one that will uplift Salvadorans and continue to attract the world’s best to the country. Given the obstacles she has overcome since she first arrived in the country three years ago, it’s hard to believe she won’t continue to do her part to make this new era for El Salvador happen.
First steps in El Salvador
Herbert arrived with Keiser in El Salvador towards the end of 2021, near the height of the bitcoin bull market that year. However, euphoria gave way to despair in 2022, when the price of bitcoin plummeted partly as a result of a broader meltdown in the crypto space.
“When we first got in three years ago, bitcoin hit $69,000 and then started to fall back to around $16,000,” Herbert told bitcoin Magazine.
This left Herbert and Keiser with the challenge of explaining to Salvadorans that the collapse of major cryptocurrency companies did not mean that bitcoin was dead, nor that it was a mirage.
“FTX crashed, BlockFi crashed, and Celsius crashed,” Herbert explained. “When they saw all those crashes, they thought it was the same as bitcoin: all these scams, all these frauds.”
Herbert recalled the importance of steering El Salvador towards a path of bitcoin and not cryptocurrencies at that time.
“There were two paths: you could be a cryptocurrency country or you could be a bitcoin country,” Herbert said.
“In the crypto world you compete with Las Vegas, with Macau. The house always wins in those situations. And the same thing happens if you have a crypto economy. You have some rich guys running the house. The pre-miners, the chip owners, the chip dispensers, they always win,” he added, noting that he did not want to see El Salvador exploited by the crypto industry.
“Or you could go the way of what Switzerland was for gold, or what New York became for US Treasury bonds. 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 are driving this vision.”
Renaissance 2.0
In the vision that Herbert shares with President Bukele and Keiser, a senior advisor to Bukele, El Salvador is in the early stages of ushering in one of the greatest eras of human flourishing the world has ever seen.
Much like the Renaissance, which occurred in what is now northern Italy just over 500 years ago, El Salvador is setting the stage for its own explosion of entrepreneurship and creativity by embracing the hardest money ever known to man.
“Florence first had no Da Vinci, no Michelangelo, no Botticelli and all the architects, discoverers, explorers and astronomers, and then it found the perfect money,” Herbert explained.
“They found the perfect money of the time — The florin — and that led to a positive feedback loop of more and more wealth concentrating in Florence versus the other city-states of what is now Italy and other regions of Europe,” he added, before sharing that great artists, entrepreneurs and thinkers flocked to Florence after it became a commercial hub.
“We believe that the same type of process could occur in El Salvador.”
Embracing Bukele's vision
Herbert repeatedly shared in our discussion how the transformation of El Salvador could not have happened without the leadership of Bukele, whose The approval rating among Salvadorans remains above 90%making him one of the most popular presidents in the world.
A challenge for ONBTC now, he says, is getting the rest of the country to see and adopt its vision.
“You can’t just have President Bukele (believe in bitcoin),” Herbert explained.
“It is necessary that at least a portion of his 80,000 officials understand what he is really trying to achieve. Remember, as guardians of the vision, we have to make sure that everyone understands President Bukele’s vision for El Salvador,” he added.
In an effort to get the rest of the country on board, Herbert has hired well-known bitcoin figures to educate and train Salvadoran bitcoin developers as well as members of the Salvadoran government.
This work began with bitcoin developer Jimmy Song, who came to El Salvador in March 2022 (before ONBTC was officially established) to teach developers how to work on bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/”>bitcoin Core.
“Jimmy Song taught his bitcoin course to seven Salvadorans,” Herbert recalls. “One of them was a guy named Mario Flamenco, who ended up becoming my assistant, my number two in the bitcoin office.”
Giacomo Zucco also joined the project to not only teach developers, but also to provide three days of bitcoin education to El Salvador’s public officials. Herbert explained that the educational efforts are not only aimed at giving El Salvador’s bureaucrats deep technical knowledge about bitcoin, but also at changing their mindset.
“They are the people who interact with the population,” Herbert said of El Salvador’s public officials, “so they need to understand why they are a bitcoin country in terms of mindset.”
Herbert referred often to the importance of mindset during our conversation. He explained that the work ONBTC does is not just about helping people understand what bitcoin is, but about preparing them mentally and emotionally to be great at it.
“To be extraordinary, you have to have people in government and in the population who are willing to be extraordinary,” he said.
“We are training a population to have the mindset of being Florence 2.0, of being Singapore 2.0, of being something extraordinary,” he added.
“Everyone needs to agree on its importance. What we are doing here is extraordinary. What President Bukele has delivered 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 seeks to attract those who have a track record of doing great things.
On April 6, 2024, Bukele announced that El Salvador would issue 5,000 passports To people like scientists, doctors and even philosophers.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet”>
We are offering 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, so granting them full citizen status, including…
– Naib Watch (@naibbuckle) twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1776733270186545406?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>April 6, 2024
As Bukele shared in his tweet, these 5,000 passports are technically worth $5 billion. El Salvador now issues passports almost instantly to those who make a bitcoin.com/el-salvador-introduces-exclusive-citizenship-through-1-million-crypto-investment/”>Investment of 1 million dollars in the country with btc or USDT.
While this program was designed to attract top talent from abroad, it also had positive effects on the psychology of the Salvadoran people, according to Herbert.
“What we did with the million-dollar price tag worked,” Herbert said.
“If we go back in time, Salvadorans started saying, ‘My God, some people paid $10,000 to coyotes to take them across the border into the United States, and my passport is worth a million dollars. ’ Even if a thousand Salvadorans think that, it changes the mentality enough to be a fundamental seed of change,” he added.
What's next for The bitcoin Office?
Herbert said that ONBTC has some major announcements planned 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 to seriously build the capital markets that are needed, just as we have laid the groundwork for greatness over the past 21 months,” Herbert said.
Beyond bitcoin banks, Herbert seems certain that El Salvador's future is limitless. Thanks to ONBTC, the foundations have 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 the growing popularity of President Bukele, because he keeps winning,” he said. “We have walked a thousand miles in the last 21 months, and now we have another thousand-mile journey to begin.”
Editor's note: We typically profile startup founders for our Founders series, but this week we chose to profile the head of a government institution who has led that institution since its inception.
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