Company Name: I Primer Bitcoin
Founder: John Dennehy
Date of establishment: August 2021
Headquarters location: El Salvador
Amount of Bitcoin Held in Treasury: About 0.5 BTC
Number of Employees: 21
Website: https://miprimerbitcoin.io/
Public or Private? Private (Non-Profit)
John Dennehy wants to change the world – and he believes Bitcoin education is the way to do so.
Dennehy sees Bitcoin as a tool to help individuals regain agency in their lives, and understands that education is critical to helping people use this tool.
Therefore, in late 2021, he created a Bitcoin education platform called Mi Primer Bitcoin (My First Bitcoin) as a way to empower Salvadorans every day.
He believes that for the Bitcoin revolution to be truly successful, Bitcoin users must have a good understanding of the technology they are interacting with.
“Education will naturally backfire on any efforts to mobilize Bitcoin’s revolutionary spirit,” Dennehy told Bitcoin Magazine.
And while Dennehy doesn’t hesitate to think of Bitcoin’s massive adoption as anything less than revolutionary, remember that his approach is a little like Gandhi’s and a little like Guevara’s.
Dennehy is soft-spoken, thoughtful and kind-hearted and considerate in his own way.
Inspiration for Mi Primer Bitcoin
In early 2021, like many of us during the COVID lockdown, Dennehy was concerned that people were feeling powerless and wanted to do something about it.
“I was in New York during the riots, and I spent a lot of time walking around thinking about the state of the world and the direction society was headed,” Dennehy said.
“My conclusion was that the root of the problem was that we had collectively lost agency, we had lost sovereignty – a person had lost agency in their own life – and that had a lot of negative second and third order consequences,” he added.
“The solution was Bitcoin education. The solution was to bring more people to Bitcoin and do it in a way that empowers and encourages people to think for themselves, think critically, and take control of their lives and their futures.
Riding a wave of inspiration, Dennehy booked a flight to Ecuador, a country he previously lived in and a place that “hasn’t been done well by the current system,” as he put it, to begin his Bitcoin education campaign.
First Attempt
Dennehy arrived in Ecuador in June 2021. There, he tried to teach friends about Bitcoin, but struggled to get people to meet in person because of the epidemic. Outside of personal meetings, he found it difficult to connect with people.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” Dennehy said of his experience in Ecuador.
While in Ecuador, however, Dennehy received word of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele’s announcement that bitcoin would become legal tender in El Salvador.
After snapping out of his disbelief, Dennehy booked his next flight, a ticket to El Salvador, to help the country make history.
“I decided to sell my property, and I got a ticket to El Salvador to try and see how I could help make it,” Dennehy said. “As the first nation in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, for better or for worse, El Salvador was going to be an example to the world, and I thought it was very important that it be a good example.”
Humble Beginnings
Dennehy arrived in El Salvador and immediately wrote a statement of Mi Primer Bitcoin machines and other educational programs. He also started hiring both students and teachers.
“The strategy was to talk to every Salvadoran I met – the Uber driver, the waiter at the restaurant, the person standing next to me waiting to cross the street – about Bitcoin,” Dennehy said.
“Before the first class, there were a few meetings of this group of people that were not planned. They came to my Airbnb and talked about it [Bitcoin] as a group,” he recounted.
“Of that group, a few people would volunteer for the job.”
Despite his years of experience as an ESL teacher and cycling coach, Dennehy knew early on that he was not the right person to teach the program he set out to create. Instead, he wanted the people of this country to play that role.
“Right from the start, one of the ideas that was established is that the community must be led, which means that the teachers must be able to communicate with the students in a way that I cannot do,” explained Dennehy. So, as a hard and fast rule, all teachers here in El Salvador are Salvadorans.
The first class was taught in a yoga studio between classes and had a total of one student in attendance. But by the end of the first month, all five of them were attending classes, which were held at that yoga studio or at restaurants or bars.
Developing Mi Primer Bitcoin Program for “Bitcoin Diploma”
In February 2022, Dennehy and the growing team at Mi Primer Bitcoin began to create a proper curriculum, which they would call the “Bitcoin Diploma”.
“We went through the calendar year 2022 with three versions of [the program],” said Dennehy.
“We’ve been iterating quickly. “We didn’t start building it until February, and the third one was finished in September,” he added.
Dennehy also shared that feedback from students on what was and wasn’t working greatly appreciated the process.
When I spoke with Dennehy, I got the impression that curriculum development was not one of the biggest challenges the organization had faced.
Challenges of Using Mi Primer Bitcoin
An ongoing challenge that Mi Primer Bitcoin has faced since its early days has been establishing the independence and impartiality of a non-profit organization.
Dennehy discussed how many Salvadorans associate Bitcoin with the Salvadoran government, an institution many in the country have mixed feelings about.
“In the beginning, there was a strong relationship here in El Salvador with the government and Bitcoin,” Dennehy said.
“People who love government loved Bitcoin. People who disliked government tended to dislike Bitcoin. There were even people who thought that Nayib Bukele invented Bitcoin. That was a common perception in these early days,” he added.
“Therefore, there is a strong relationship that Bitcoin had with the government. The first struggle was to show people that Bitcoin is different. Bitcoin is independent. So do we.”
Dennehy pointed out that this challenge still exists, especially since Mi Primer Bitcoin is now working within the public school system in El Salvador.
“We always try to show our independence not just by action, but by sight,” he explained.
“Working with the government increases that challenge of distinguishing oneself according to the views of others in the government,” he added.
“One of the ways we deal with that initial challenge of not depending on the government, as a point of policy. We have never accepted funding from the government.”
Another challenge Mi Primer Bitcoin faces is keeping its 21 employees paid through a donation-based system, a challenge that is magnified by the fact that the organization does not accept donations with strings attached.
“We turn down a lot of sponsorship offers,” said Dennehy. “We reject four out of five funding requests, because four out of five come with strings attached.”
However, notable institutions in the Bitcoin space have begun to alleviate some of the financial burden of Mi Primer Bitcoin.
“We get grants from HRF, OpenSats and Block,” said Dennehy.
“They all come wireless, which is great,” he added.
“I think grants may start to take a bigger piece of the pie, but from the beginning until now, most of our funding has come from grassroots support.”
Mi Primer Bitcoin Goes Global
Mi Primer Bitcoin study materials and curriculum are free to download and use. This has made it easier for teachers around the world to use the nonprofit’s curriculum.
And Mi Primer Bitcoin also supports its international teachers who lead Bitcoin education efforts in their different countries, members of Mi Primer Bitcoin that the organization refers to as “Points of Light.”
“We have 33 nodes in 22 countries, and we all come together and share best practices,” explains Dennehy.
“Maybe a teacher from Argentina will teach about the program that started in Columbia. We have a place in Cuba and a place in the Dominican Republic, and they actually teach each other,” he added.
When I asked Dennehy how fast the Mi Primer Bitcoin model is spreading on a scale of one to 10, he answered “10,” with little hesitation. He also pointed out that trying to expand Mi Primer Bitcoin too quickly would cause the agency to deviate from its mission.
“I think the only way this spreads quickly is if we compromise our values, if we centralize and dictate rather than empower and empower,” Dennehy said.
“We’re trying to rethink what’s possible for the next generation and that often means we have to create a new way. If we try to teach others that a different future is possible, we must show it ourselves,” he added.
“What you say is not important, what you do is everything.”
Dennehy went on to explain that Mi Primer Bitcoin has received 4 Light Node requests in the last 48 hours and that he is amazed at how fast things are moving.
Never in his wildest dream did he see Mi Primer Bitcoin growing so fast.
“I am a dreamer. I am an opinionated person. That’s why I’m here,” said Dennehy. “But if you would have told me two and a half years ago that we would have personally taught tens of thousands of students, and we would have encouraged and helped facilitate this in many other countries, I would have said, ‘No. Maybe in 10 years.’
Mission-Driven Remaining
As Mi Primer Bitcoin continues, Dennehy believes the organization must continue to emulate Bitcoin itself if it is to remain true to its mission of empowering others.
“Everything we do at Mi Primer Bitcoin, we try to learn from Bitcoin itself,” said Dennehy. “And decentralization is very important to us, because we want to empower others rather than control them.”
And his vision of what this empowerment looks like seems more refined than ever.
“Bitcoin education is a means to an end, and that ends up empowering you,” Dennehy said.
“Once you realize that you have the power to control your money, that you can control your current time, the structure of motivation changes. In the world of fiat, we do not encourage looking to the future, building, creating, because the rules of the game may change. I can start a business today, but the rules of the game that will most influence whether it succeeds or not are not up to me and can change at any time. So it encourages us to be followers rather than leaders,” he explained.
“Bitcoin is something that flips a switch that says ‘OK, I could control my money, which gives me more control now and makes it easier to build for myself in the future, because I’m not relying on someone else’s favor.’ The more we can include ourselves in defining our future, the more motivated we are to look to the future – to create and create. That’s the end, and Bitcoin education is the way to do that.”
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