Last month, in an attempt to skirt harsh financial sanctions, a top Russian lawmaker said Russia may start accepting bitcoin for oil and gas.
Black volcanic sand gives way to warm water and an exceptional point break that draws surfers from around the world.
We met Andreas Kohl, visiting from Liechtenstein.
To understand how this remote town of 3,000 became part of a grand bitcoin experiment and how it all works, we were told to head to this break and look for a middle-aged blonde guy locals call “the man.” That’s him, Mike Peterson, an expat from San Diego with a degree in economics and nose for decent waves.
Mike Peterson: I wound up here on a surf trip, I think, like 18 years ago.
Peterson, who once worked as a financial planner, moved to El Zonte a few years later and started helping those people.
Mike Peterson: That’s kind of the cycle that we’ve seen of destruction of people having to leave because there’s not enough opportunity.
Mike Peterson: The stipulation was you can’t just convert it into dollars because they believe the actual usage of bitcoin would be what would benefit the people.
Mike Peterson: So bitcoin is the – the world’s first decentralized money that’s not controlled by any government.
Cash has always been king, which made convincing people in El Zonte to work for bitcoin, a currency they couldn’t hold or see, especially difficult.
Mike Peterson: So we were hiring them to do things in the community – pick up trash out of the river – and then we’d pay them in bitcoin.
Then, using a popular phone app called “Bitcoin Beach,” instantly transfer bitcoin from their wallets to hers, which she keeps in her apron.
There’s also concern about the computer power or energy needed to support bitcoin’s underlying network.
Its value inched up and down, peaking last November at almost $70,000 a bitcoin, only to lose around 30% of its value in the last few months.
Jack Mallers is a 28-year-old CEO from Chicago who developed an app called “Strike,” designed to disrupt one of the biggest businesses in El Salvador – remittances, money sent from overseas.
Last summer at a bitcoin conference in Miami, Bukele announced in a video message that El Salvador would become the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as an official currency, alongside the U.S.
El Salvador is billions of dollars in debt and has long relied on loans from the International Monetary Fund to prop up its economy.
Sharyn Alfonsi: But isn’t Bukele kind of a genius in a way, because he’s changed the narrative.
And when he learned the shaved ice vendors in El Zonte were going 30 minutes out of town to buy ice, he decided to become the ice supplier in town and used his bitcoin profits to buy this freezer.