“Someone has to be there to maintain and iterate on the vision. There’s a tremendous amount of work to be done. When you have a thousand miles to go and you’ve only taken the first step, it feels like you’ve come a long way. It really helps to have someone say, ‘We’re one step closer, the goal is not a mirage.’” – Steve Jobs
Stacey Herbert, Director of the National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) of the Office of the President of El Salvador, shared the above quote with me, beaming with pride and determination, at the beginning of my interview with her.
Herbert is clearly on a mission, one that began in 2010 when she and her partner Max Keiser first discovered bitcoin and soon became one of its first spokespeople. That mission now includes the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, as well as the bureaucracy and citizens of El Salvador, which has become known in bitcoin circles as “Bitcoin Country.”
By many measures, the Bitcoin Office has already been a huge success since its founding in December 2022. It has stored 5,836 bitcoins on behalf of the state. It has educated 80,000 Salvadoran civil servants about what bitcoin is and why it matters. It has also helped implement bitcoin education from kindergarten to university level through programs like Mi Primer Bitcoin and cube +And he is attracted. Businessmen, Investors And other bright minds of the country.
While Herbert is proud of her accomplishments, she is not one to rest on her laurels, especially since she believes that El Salvador’s best days are still ahead. She has a vision that greater Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador will pave the way for a new renaissance, one that will elevate Salvadorans and continue to attract the world’s best to the country. Given the obstacles she has overcome since first arriving in the country three years ago, it’s hard to believe that she won’t continue to do her part to make this new era for El Salvador a reality.
Starting in El Salvador
Herbert and Kaiser arrived in El Salvador in late 2021, near the peak of the Bitcoin bull market that year. However, euphoria gave way to despair in 2022, when the price of Bitcoin fell in part as a result of the broader crypto crash.
“When we first came in three years ago, Bitcoin was at $69,000 and then it dropped to about $16,000,” Herbert told Bitcoin Magazine.
This left Herbert and Kaiser with the difficult task of explaining to Salvadorans that the collapse of major crypto companies does not mean that Bitcoin is dead, nor that it is a mirage.
“FTX went down, BlockFi went down, Celsius went down,” Herbert explained. “When they saw all these crashes, they thought it was the same thing as Bitcoin — all these scams, all these frauds.”
Herbert recalled the importance of steering El Salvador toward Bitcoin rather than cryptocurrencies at the time.
“There were two paths: it could be a crypto nation or a bitcoin nation,” Herbert said.
“With a crypto country, you’re competing with Las Vegas; you’re competing with Macau. The house always wins in those situations. It’s the same if you have a crypto economy. You have some rich guys running the house. The pre-miners, the chip owners, the chip distributors, they always win,” she said, adding that she doesn’t want to see El Salvador exploited by the crypto industry.
“Or maybe you could do the same thing that Switzerland did for gold, or what New York did for US Treasuries. You could build capital markets. You could build an economy. You could build Singapore 2.0, Alexandria 2.0, Florence 2.0. We worked to achieve that vision.”
Renaissance 2.0
In a vision shared by Herbert, President Bukele, and Kaiser, Bukele’s senior advisor, El Salvador is in the early stages of ushering in one of the greatest eras of human prosperity the world has ever seen.
Like the Renaissance, which took place in what is now northern Italy just over 500 years ago, El Salvador is paving the way for an explosion of entrepreneurship and creativity by adopting the hardest currency ever known to man.
“Florence didn’t initially have Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, all the architects, discoverers, explorers, astronomers, and then it found the perfect money,” Herbert explained.
They found the perfect money at that time – Fluorine “This created a positive feedback loop of increasing wealth concentrated in Florence versus other cities in what is now Italy and other regions across Europe,” she added, before explaining that great artists, businessmen and intellectuals flocked to Florence as it became a commercial centre.
“We believe the same type of operation could happen in El Salvador.”
Embracing the vision of Boukil
Herbert repeatedly shared in our discussion how El Salvador’s transformation could not have happened without Bukele’s leadership, who The approval rating among Salvadorans remains above 90%.making him one of the most popular presidents in the world.
The challenge now for ONBTC, she says, is to get the rest of the country to see and embrace its vision.
“You can’t just make President Bukele believe in Bitcoin,” Herbert explained.
“You need at least a portion of his 80,000 civil servants to understand what he is really trying to achieve,” she added. “Remember, as guardians of the vision, we have to bring everyone together to understand President Bukele’s vision for El Salvador.”
In an effort to get the rest of the country on board, Herbert has appointed well-known figures in the Bitcoin space to educate and train Salvadoran Bitcoin developers as well as members of the Salvadoran government.
This work started with Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song who came to El Salvador in March 2022 (before ONBTC was officially created) to teach developers how to work on Bitcoin Core.
“Jimmy Song taught a Bitcoin course to seven Salvadorans, one of whom was a guy named Mario Flamenco, who ended up being my assistant, the number two guy on the Bitcoin desk,” Herbert recalls.
Giacomo Zucco also joined the program to not only teach developers, but also provide three days of Bitcoin education to Salvadoran civil servants. Herbert explained that the educational efforts aim not only to provide Salvadoran bureaucrats with a deep technical knowledge of Bitcoin, but also to reshape their mindset.
“They are the people who interact with the population, so they need to understand why they are a Bitcoin country in terms of mentality,” said Herbert, a civil servant in El Salvador.
Herbert frequently referred to the importance of mindset during our discussion. She explained that the work ONBTC does is not just about helping people understand what Bitcoin is, but also about preparing them mentally and emotionally to be great.
“To be exceptional, you have to have people in government and in the population who are willing to be exceptional,” she said.
“We are training the population to be able to think like Florence 2.0, or Singapore 2.0 – to be something extraordinary,” she added.
“We need everyone to be on the same page about how important they are. What we are doing here is exceptional. What President Bukele has done for the country is absolutely exceptional.”
Passport Programs
Through ONBTC, Bukele is preparing Salvadorans to do great things, while through the Salvadoran passport programs he seeks to attract those with a track record of doing great things.
On April 6, 2024, Bukele announced that El Salvador would issue 5000 passports To scientists, doctors and even philosophers.
We are offering 5,000 free passports (equivalent to $5 billion in our passport program) to highly skilled scientists, engineers, doctors, artists, and philosophers from abroad.
This represents less than 0.1% of our population, so granting them full citizenship, including…
– Naibbuckle Watch (@naibbuckle) April 6, 2024
As Bukele noted in his tweet, those 5,000 passports are technically worth $5 billion. El Salvador is now issuing passports almost instantly to those who apply for a visa. $1 million investment In the country using BTC or USDT.
Although the program was designed to attract top talent from abroad, it also had positive effects on the Salvadoran people’s psyche, according to Herbert.
“What we did at the million dollar price worked,” Herbert said.
“If you go back, the Salvadoran people are starting to say, ‘Oh my God, some people were paying $10,000 to smugglers to get them across the border in the United States, and my passport is worth a million dollars.’ Even if a thousand Salvadorans thought that, that changes the mindset enough to be a critical seed of change,” she added.
What’s next for Bitcoin Office?
Herbert said ONBTC has some big announcements coming in the next three or four weeks. However, for now, ONBTC is focused on unveiling its first bitcoin banks, which she believes will help El Salvador build its capital markets.
“Bitcoin banks will come here, and we will start building the capital markets that are needed in earnest — just as we have been laying the foundation for greatness over the past 21 months,” Herbert added.
Beyond Bitcoin banks, Herbert is confident that the sky is the limit when it comes to what’s to come for El Salvador. And with ONBTC, the foundation has been laid for the country’s revival.
“We have the education, we have the mindset, we have the rebranding — the greatest rebranding in history — as I call it for El Salvador, and we have the growing popularity of President Bukele, because he continues to win,” she added. “We have walked a thousand miles in the last 21 months, and now we have another thousand-mile journey to begin.”
Editor’s Note: In our Founders series, we typically spotlight startup founders, but this week, we’ve chosen to highlight a government organization leader who has led those organizations since their inception.