Bitcoiners - Live From Bitcoin Beach

Is El Salvador real estate overpriced, or is everyone who called El Zonte a bubble two years ago now wishing they’d bought? Lexi Cross thought prices were already too high back then, and they’ve gone up again since! You’ve seen the headlines about El Salvador tourism and the apartment projects going up along the coast. What you can’t tell from outside is who’s buying now, what it takes to run a re...

Before anyone was buying property in El Salvador with Bitcoin, Mike called a lawyer to ask whether giving Bitcoin away in El Zonte could put him in jail. You’ve heard the country made Bitcoin legal tender. What you haven’t heard is what that did to one law office, one land deal and one very stubborn banking system. That lawyer is Carlos Gil, partner at the Salvadoran office of ECIJA, an internatio...

What happens when a nightclub bouncer from Santa Barbara, California sells everything he owns and opens a restaurant in El Zonte? You’ve probably seen Max Keiser posting from a beach restaurant and wondered how it got there. The posts show the finished version. They don’t show the ten years before it, or the little box it started in. Mike sits down with Antoine Allain, owner of La Cajita, born in...

What happens to your Bitcoin if you die tomorrow? In El Zonte, one builder’s answer is a dead man switch and an encrypted seed phrase. If you practice self custody, your 12 or 24 words are stored somewhere safe. How your family would ever reach them is the question Eric Summers set out to solve. Mike first met Eric as the math tutor for one of his son’s friends. Eric’s story of moving to El Salvad...

Is El Salvador safe enough to run a business that takes Bitcoin and go running at night? This Salvadoran entrepreneur says yes! Mike sits down with Byron Espinoza, a young Salvadoran who opened a car repair shop with his cousin at 23. He grew up in a neighborhood where the gang members were his childhood friends, and he's had guns pointed at him more than once. So when neighbors warned him th...

Is El Salvador the freest country on earth for a Bitcoin business, or the most heavily KYC'd place a Bitcoiner could choose? Anyone who has bought El Salvador real estate lately has an opinion, and so does the lawyer who reads the regulations for a living. You already know this is Bitcoin Country. What you can't tell from the outside is why the El Salvador banks turned Bitcoin companies...

Is Bitcoin still legal tender in El Salvador? Plenty of people say it isn't, so Mike put the question to a Salvadoran lawyer who has followed every change to the law. You've seen the IMF headlines and decided the experiment ended. What you can't see from outside is how the El Salvador economy looks to someone who was born here, practiced law through the worst years, and now builds h...

Would you put your kids in public schools in El Salvador, 40 to a class and no English spoken, to give them a future you couldn't see in Canada? Charity Hagenaars did. Her family of five lives on $3,000 to $3,500 a month, and if you've searched cost of living in El Salvador you've probably seen her videos on living in El Salvador. What you can't see from a video is whether rent...

How long does Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador have to work before the press admits it worked? Kevin Rivera has been covering this country since the Bitcoin Law passed, and he'll tell you the people writing the obituaries are measuring adoption with a broken clock. He grew up in Chiltiupán, the municipality El Zonte sits under, about 15 to 20 minutes up the road from Bitcoin Beach. He was 20....

Would you sell your house, go all in on Bitcoin, and move to El Salvador without ever setting foot in the country? Jon Byrne did exactly that. I sat down with the BitTasker founder to hear how a kid from Ireland grew up around the violence of the Troubles era, then apartheid-era Johannesburg, then the Celtic Tiger collapse, and finally took one last look at the fiat world and decided sound money w...

Would you trust two brothers with zero aviation experience to run El Salvador's helicopter tours, plane charters, and Bitcoin travel experiences? Thousands of Bitcoiners already have. Today on Live From Bitcoin Beach, I sit down with Mauricio and Diego Villeda, founders of Bitcoin Life, the Bitcoin tourism and concierge service company that convinced El Salvador's Minister of Defense to...

How does one ride with the wrong passenger turn an ordinary driver into a Bitcoin entrepreneur in El Salvador? I sat down with Pierre Valiente to find out, and his car rentals, airport transfers, and 14-room Bitcoin Casa guest house in San Salvador all accept Bitcoin, which makes life awkward for every critic who keeps telling me locals don't use it. The passenger was Sandy Wade, headed to th...

Why do most expats moving to El Salvador pack up and fly home within three years, even after selling everything for their relocation dream of living abroad in Bitcoin country? Jeni Ari ( @jeniarilagringasalvadorena ) has watched it happen over and over, and she says the ones who make it have something the others don't. I've got Jeni back in the studio, and she's the founder of Livin...

Would you sell everything and move to El Salvador, or is that just a Bitcoin fantasy? The founders of Build in El Salvador (@BuildInES) reveal why Bitcoin expats thrive or quit. In this episode, Mike Peterson sits down with Michael Ruiz and Luis Esparragoza, whose community helps startup founders and Bitcoiners relocate, connect, and build businesses in one of the most talked-about emerging market...

Would you trust Bitcoin and a Lightning Network digital wallet to rebuild your life in El Salvador after COVID destroyed your business and the banks turned away? Kevin Ayala (@KevinAyala24) did, and that choice runs through his whole story. He grew up training as a violinist in El Salvador's national orchestra, and he first heard about Bitcoin in 2009 from a high school teacher. He didn'...

Should families in El Zonte, El Salvador who've never owned anything pay their mortgage in Bitcoin, or does charity work better when it's free? New Story bet on the mortgage, and 122 families are about to become homeowners because of it. Mike Peterson sits down with Renato Salazar (@HolaIAmRenato) to talk about the project turning some of the most expensive land in El Salvador into first...

Why trust a custodian with your sats? Edgar Borja (@k1elsalvador) breaks down K1's self-custody Bitcoin ATM, on-chain and Lightning buying, and Bitcoin in Bolivia. Edgar walks through K1's new update, buying Bitcoin on the Lightning Network and on-chain, what's happening with Bitcoin adoption in Bolivia, and what it's like pitching investors 5,000 times. K1's machines now...

Is El Salvador still Bitcoin country, or did the world move on the moment the IMF deal got signed? Mike sits down with Will Lehr (@thewilliamlehr) from Club Cocal, James (@beefbackbetter) from Beef Back Better, and Ronny Avendano (@ronnyavendano_) from the Bitcoin Hardware Store to talk about the Bitcoin farmers market, El Salvador real estate, self custody, and what life on a Bitcoin standard act...

What if the government used debanking and digital surveillance to silence you? Michael Ballweg (@Michael_Ballweg), founder of Querdenken, rebuilt on a Bitcoin standard in El Salvador and is now fighting for local AI and data sovereignty while Europe tightens its grip on free speech and privacy protection. Michael took a 180-person rally in Stuttgart and grew it into 1.3 million people in Berlin wi...

How much longer can productive labor stay trapped in a crumbling European fiat system before the logical move is to opt out entirely, escape rigid structures, and seek an anti-fragile alternative? Many wonder whether El Salvador is truly a sovereign haven or just a developing nation running a clever marketing stunt, but the answer becomes clear when you look at how the Ministry of Education and Bi...

Can Bitcoin save traditional farming from total collapse? El Salvador's Cherito (@CheritoCafe) de-financialized his supply chain, uses a Bitcoin circular economy to bypass banks, and runs nodes inside his coffee lab!  In this episode, we sit down with Jorge, globally recognized in the community as Cherito, to dissect how legacy financial institutions manipulate commodity pricing to trap agric...

Is El Salvador truly a Bitcoin paradise, or are banks winning the war? AsoBitcoin President Will Hernandez (@whbitcoin) reveals the truth about banking, taxes, and real estate. If El Salvador is the ultimate haven for financial freedom, why is it still an absolute nightmare for a Bitcoin company to open a simple savings account? There is a massive disconnect between political idealism and reality...

Is legacy aid a fiat trap? See how unbanked communities use a Bitcoin standard and circular economy networks to achieve sustainable development. We recorded this episode right from the beach in El Zonte, El Salvador, following the conclusion of our global Bitcoin circular economy summit. Leaders from all over the world came into town to show how they are bypassing corporate charities and corrupt s...

Can you truly protect your assets if a third party controls your data?  The Global Circular Bitcoin Economy Summit in El Zonte just wrapped up, and the focus on the ground was centered entirely on the raw, unyielding mechanics of financial survival and digital sovereignty rather than price action or trading charts. This week, we are cutting straight through the fiat marketing noise to talk to the...

Is the Wall Street ETF narrative killing peer-to-peer Bitcoin adoption? Is Bitcoin failing if it only becomes a corporate store of value hoarded on Wall Street?  Institutional demand and exchange-traded funds are not the end game for hyperbitcoinization. True freedom requires building an alternative economic system entirely outside legacy banking, proving that Bitcoin must function as everyday mon...