the one main difference between El Salvador and any other country I've seen is the optimism.
There's optimism here.
People are looking into the future with hope, with plans, with visions.
People will tell you, this country, you know, things are way better here than they used
to be, whereas if you go to Germany, for example, people will tell you the opposite.
That sounds like a simple thing, but it makes a world of a difference.
This country has regained its collective identity and they are proud to show their country,
they are proud to show the things they have, the volcanoes, the surf, the pupusas, the
bitcoin law even.
This country wants bitcoins to come here, and so of course bitcoins want to come here.
I don't want to be working against the official narrative of my government all the time.
That's very tiring and exhausting.
The moment you experience the opposite, you don't want to go back.
Today that guest is Lena Zike, the creator of everyone's favorite bitcoin, comic, plushie,
and all-around character, the little hodler.
Lena just moved to El Salvador, so we go deep into what motivated her to make the move to
bitcoin country, what she thinks of it, the misperceptions she sees from the outside looking
in, and advice for those looking to move to or just visit El Salvador.
Before we dive in, if you like the bitcoin podcast, please share an episode you find
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Without further ado, let's get into this bitcoin talk with Lena Zeike.
How are you doing?
Last time, I'm trying to think, last time we saw you was, was it in Prague?
Does that sound right?
I think it was Prague, yeah.
It feels like a long time.
We've been, obviously with the baby and everything, we have been out of the loop for a little
while.
Thank you, thank you.
Yeah.
But no, we're, I didn't know, I didn't know Carla was pregnant.
We were still, yeah, still hush hush at that point just because it was fairly early on.
But yeah, now the clearly she was, she was pregnant during that time.
She's actually pregnant during a bitcoin conference in Miami too.
So that was, that was like very early on in the process.
So technically our little guy has already been to a couple of bitcoin conferences.
He just was in the womb during it.
So I say you should play classical music when, when you're pregnant.
So the kid becomes like cultured or whatever.
I wonder what's going to happen to him if you went to conferences.
He's yeah, just going to start gently having glowing laser eyes the older he gets.
No, I mean, it's, it's some good, some pretty good information to soak up though.
I mean, the nice thing about bitcoin conferences too, is you always, you know, he'll get a
chance to hear a bunch of different languages spoken and very anti state rhetoric.
If he can understand it yet, we'll see.
So I mean, I can't, I can't imagine much better information to be putting into his
little forming brain.
And you got to start him young, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Oh my God, I'm so happy for you.
We're very, very excited with the little guy.
He's been a, he's been a good time so far.
Man, they get big fast though.
It's wild.
Like they just, yeah, they just grow and I mean, kid eats a lot.
So that's good.
But I think he's looking like he's going to be bigger than me.
So yeah, watch out.
It's going to be a large guy.
Oh, that's so great.
Oh my God.
Amazing.
But how are, how are you doing?
Now you are, you are full on living in El Salvador now, right?
Yes, sir.
And when did you, when did you officially make the move?
So oh my God, everything happened after we met because we met in June.
Right?
So actually.
Yeah, they live in June.
Yeah.
So I, I went in August and I, I spent like almost two weeks there, but I just, I just
really, really loved it there.
So I went, that was my first time and then a month later I came back because I loved
it so much.
And then I had to leave again because it was conferences.
Like it was conference season.
And after conference season end of October, I think Lugano was the last one.
Then I came back here and then I just didn't leave.
So now I have my, yeah, now I have my residence, my company's here.
Yeah.
My stuff is here.
I mean, I don't have much stuff.
I just sent myself a bunch of plushies.
I was going to say, yeah, the most, the most important things, piano and plenty of, plenty
of flush little holders.
But you know, this frame is basically all I have.
So, oh, I also have a PlayStation.
Okay.
So you, you truly have all the essentials.
I mean, that, that, you know, that's good.
It's a, you know, anything that is not pictured is basically just a Bitcoin being stacked.
Right.
That's a, that's what it comes down to.
I don't have any, but theoretically, of course not me neither.
But I'd like some someday.
Oh man.
Well, well, great.
Well, you know, I'm glad we were getting a chance to talk here just to catch up for
one, but then also because I think this journey of yours with going to El Salvador, I think
it's something that is really kind of interesting and exciting for a lot of people because there
are probably a lot of folks around the world from all sorts of countries who are looking
at what's happening in El Salvador and thinking, you know what, things don't look quite as
hopeful in my country.
And maybe it's time to make a move.
Like we live in this globally connected world now.
If you are able to have your laptop, most people can work from most places.
And so, you know, I wanted a chance to kind of talk to you about that and obviously talk
about, you know, I'm just a huge fan of the little hodler.
Who is not?
I mean, you've built, I've got a few of them back here.
And I think I tried to, I'm pretty sure we've got one of, you know, the like original ones
too that we got at Bitcoin Conf a couple of years ago.
Well, not like original original, but like, you know, the, the more, yeah, I think something
like that, but they're just the best.
And the comic strips that you put out as well are always, first of all, you're able to just
pick up the zeitgeist of the moment so quickly and get it out there.
And they're always just so right on the mark.
And clearly they resonate with people too, because it's like this adorable little character
who you look at and you know, if you don't read what it's saying that you look at and
you're like, Oh, that's, that's cute.
You know, like perhaps some little children's comic.
And then you read it and it's all this incredibly poignant kind of rebuke of the, the clown world,
fiat world, shenanigans and the hopefulness of Bitcoin rolled into one.
And I just think it's, it's so brilliant.
So maybe a good place for us to start is can you kind of just tell us, first of all, who
you are and how did you get here today to be making, having this business where you have
now brought to El Salvador, you're making these adorable plush little hodlers and you're
creating these incredible comic strips that just about, I think everyone you make goes
like viral or mini viral, like it's quite impressive.
So how did you get here to be doing this today, Lena?
Yeah, nice.
Wait, the first question was who am I, right?
I'm Lena.
Yeah.
I'm Lena.
I am, well, hold on.
Yeah.
I'm Lena.
I'm from Germany.
There you go.
That's me.
And I make Bitcoin comics.
So I started this in 2020, actually.
So at the time I was in the Bitcoin space, but I was working in more in marketing.
I still do marketing, but now I do it for my plushies.
And I was also active on Bitcoin Twitter at the time.
And really what it boils down to the reason why I started doing the comics is because
I couldn't handle the toxicity.
So, you know, at the time, around that time when I made my first comic, Bitcoin was like
$9,000 and we had that whole 9,000 meme.
Oh my God, the Dragon Ball creator died.
I saw that.
I just saw that today.
I was like, oh my gosh.
I didn't watch a ton of like anime growing up, but Dragon Ball Z was one that I watched
like religiously.
I saw that was like, that was like a, that was, that's a sad, sad moment.
It's like a part of childhood that kind of dies.
But now it also, I feel like it's going to encourage people like I want to go back and
rewatch everything now.
Like I feel like when that happens, when some like creator passes away, everybody says,
wait, I love that so much.
It was such a big part of who I was growing up.
Let me go revisit it through a new lens and like you get a new appreciation for it.
You know, and they live on through their work, which I think is kind of beautiful.
Same feeling.
Everybody's really sad, but they celebrate his life's work and I love that.
I mean, what more can you ask for?
You know, that's a great legacy.
Yeah, it is.
It's still sad.
Wow.
I totally got sidetracked because of the over 9,000 meme.
Yeah, so Bitcoin was over 9,000 for like a month straight.
It was right after the halving and we all knew it was a similar, like a similar feeling
to right now where we're like, okay, once we cross the threshold, it's just going to
go way up.
And we knew that at the time it was 10K.
So we knew it was going to go there.
We just didn't quite know when and it was this like vibe of anticipation in among Bitcoiners.
And I was already active on Bitcoin Twitter at the time.
I was doing like, you know, there are these, these super hyper bullish Bitcoin tweets
were doing really well at the time.
And I did a bunch of those because you know, they would get your impressions and followers
and that actually worked.
But my problem was that doing these controversial tweets would make me really self conscious
because I didn't want to get hate in the comments.
So I would post a tweet and then I would turn off my notifications for the rest of
it.
It's just kind of lame.
But yeah, so that was kind of my routine at the time.
And then that when I made the first comic, it was like July 2020.
I just had the idea.
Like I'd like to tell a grand story about it, but I just, I had an idea for a comic.
I don't know where it came from.
It just kind of appeared and I just kind of made it on PowerPoint at the time.
It was super, super raw.
Yeah.
Sometimes people still pull it up and it's also kind of like it's a bit nostalgic.
I like it.
I like looking at it.
But yeah, so I did that and it fit the theme at the time.
It fit the mood at the time and it became my most like tweet at the time.
So it was just like randomly I discovered something that I didn't know was there, like
a demand for something that I, that was completely unexpected for me.
So that was the first time I made a comic.
But it was a one-off thing.
I didn't have any, because it appeared so suddenly I had no more ideas.
It wasn't like, oh, I'm going to make a bunch of comics now.
No, just a random idea.
And I had another random idea for another comic a couple months later and that went equally
viral.
So then I thought, oh my God, I wish I had more ideas, but I don't.
Like where is this coming from?
I don't know.
So it took until April 2021.
And at that time I was in Taiwan at that time and I was in a quarantine hotel.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
So the thing is that I don't know, like I actually don't know much about how I was in
the States.
I was living in Taiwan at the time and I left the country and came back, which was very
stupid of me because in Asia, things were run differently there and it was, people were
okay with it.
Right?
So you just kind of have to go along.
So I was in a quarantine hotel, which basically meant they would lock you up for 15 days.
And they literally like lock the door though and bring your food three times a day.
And if you needed anything, you'd have to time it with the delivery of food.
Otherwise you wouldn't get it.
So you had like a window.
They would call you in the morning and at night, the reception would call you and ask
you to tell them your temperature.
And the police would, when you entered the country, would grab your phone number and
start GPS tracking your phone so that you don't leave home.
And the police would also call you twice a day to make sure you didn't leave without
your phone.
Dear Lord.
Yeah.
Long story short, I was there for 15 days.
I was bored out of my mind and I made a comic because I had another idea randomly again.
But this time I was like, okay, look, if I'm going to be doing this, I might as well draw
it myself.
So that was when I drew the first comic with the actual little hotler and he looked pretty
much the same as right now.
So he was my first, my first attempt at little hotlers, the way he looks today.
And I made a comic and that became one of my most liked tweets ever to date.
And it became so popular and it's still, it's the, it's the comic with the little
hotler who's a whole corner and no, he has a whole Bitcoin and he listened to Citadel
at the end of the comic.
I know it well.
Yeah.
So, yeah, people still reference that today makes me so happy.
But yeah, so that was, I would say the kickoff because from that point I said, okay, I need
to turn this into something where I can actually, I don't rely on my brain randomly coming up
with things every couple months.
But then I sat down because I had nothing to do.
I sat down and just thought up all these comic ideas.
A lot of them were very lame.
But as you do something, you get better at it.
So with time, like I would improve my skill set and my, I don't know, comic, comic, comic
vacation skills.
So I did that and it just, it turned from a hobby into a business when I made a plushie
and people started, I just made it for myself.
Again, I just made it for fun because I wanted it.
I posted it and then people started asking, can I get one?
Can I get one?
And then I launched a store and then it became a business.
And so yeah, it just kind of, it just kind of evolved like that.
There's a lot of serendipity in that story.
You know, I mean, who knows, maybe if you weren't locked in that hotel room, in that quarantine,
you wouldn't have had like the frustration of boredom where you said, you know what,
let me just dive into this.
It's funny how those things kind of work out.
I mean, I'm sure looking back, it would have been a lot nicer not to be locked in that
hotel room, but still like at least something really incredible came out of it and something
that now like is such a, I mean, it's truly an icon that is iconic, you know, and the
fact I love that now you're doing all the conference series, like every conference wants
to have their own little hodler.
And I think we've got Prague back here, the Bitcoin ski summit and Pacific Bitcoin, I
believe.
Or maybe there's a, I think we also have a panties for bitcoins.
But one lying around here somewhere, which is a great one, you know,
I love it.
It's one of my favorites.
It's so great.
And there's such a very cool Bitcoin company and a great family.
Like it's, it's wonderful to see that.
But, but I love this.
And, you know, now it seems that you correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you're
at this point where when you see something in the news or, you know, on social media,
whatever, is that where you're getting a lot of your inspiration now?
Like you see something that is just silly, whether it's about some sort of fiat money
printing or like you've been doing some with, you know, comments about El Salvador recently,
which have been really just spot on.
Is that where you're basically, you know, it's like, okay, you see something where you're
like, this is ridiculous.
I need to make a comic about this.
Or like, is that kind of the, some of the, the serendipity that happens now?
Yeah.
I think I feel some pretty similar to how you feel because I see what you tweet.
And sometimes you just see the ridiculousness and you're just like, is this real?
This like these, these stories, they write themselves.
They actually write themselves a lot of the time with the, like the stuff that happens.
I just kind of draw it.
I don't think of anything myself because you have the silly storyline and then you have
the really silly punchline.
And that's all I do.
I kind of simplify it and give him a silly face.
So a lot of the time these things write themselves.
So yeah, I do do that.
I look at the news and a lot of people say a lot of stupid things about Bitcoin.
And that deserves some exposure.
And yeah, and then there's some evergreens, right?
Sometimes I just do evergreen comics or some like concept.
I have one that was pretty popular.
It was about the concept of anti fragility because that's kind of hard to explain with
words.
And sometimes I try to take something like that and make it like explain it in pictures
or like the, I did that with the Cantillon effect.
Cantillon, Cantillon, I don't know.
I think it can go either way because technically Richard Cantillon or Cantillon was Irish French.
So I think technically you can say it either way if I'm not mistaken.
So no judgment here.
However you want to pronounce it is my point.
Okay.
All right.
I just realized I might have never said that word out loud.
Yeah, it's a weird one.
It depends if I'm, how much I'm trying to mock somebody.
Like if I'm using the Cantillon effect, it's a fun word.
But now I digress.
I digress into mocking the French.
I love the French, but they're fun to mock as well.
I'm German.
I'm not allowed to speak up about this.
Yes, naturally.
Okay, so next topic.
Yeah.
No, I love that though.
I mean, I think what you said is so powerful because you're really, the world is so ridiculous
already that these, the headlines you see almost seem like they must be satire.
Like this is the point that I'm at right now where I read something and it's, if it didn't
have that, you know, New York Times or Wall Street Journal or whatever emblazoned on it,
I would think it was satire and perhaps they don't even realize that they are at this point
of just absurdity where, I mean, we know that trust in these legacy institutions is at an
all time low.
It's dying.
They're losing their power.
There's a reason that all of these legacy media institutions are firing record numbers
of people right now because they don't have the readership they used to because everyone
is a journalist now.
Thanks to social media.
This is a powerful thing.
It's a decentralizing force, but they keep persisting.
Actually journalists.
It's not a thing.
So they might have to title to title journalists, but what do they do in the writing opinion
pieces?
It's really researched.
Yeah.
Let's let's be honest.
It's propaganda, just thinly, thinly veiled propaganda.
And it's such a beautiful thing to be able to hold it.
I think what you do is kind of hold this mirror up to that with this comic where you're just,
you know, again, use their own words against them, show how ridiculous it is by putting
it into this cute little comic with these adorable characters.
But it's it's like it's it's somehow it's really very subversive, though, in a very
good way.
I mean, because you're able to show how ridiculous what they're doing is not in this aggressive
way where you're saying, you know, fuck these fucking propagandists like, no, no, it's just
here's a cute little comic.
I'm just saying what you said.
Look at how ridiculous you are.
You know, you you've got clown makeup all over your faces.
So I love it.
And I think, you know, you're some of your recent Bokele ones, I also like the one that
was I think it'll be a very evergreen one about kind of the the last bull market versus
this one or the last run up to 69 K versus this one and how it was built on this teetering
tower of FTX and all this other crypto stuff that got associated with Bitcoin.
And now you're building this solid foundation with nation state adoption with these ETFs
with just less hype, maybe it feels like we're not at peak hype yet, like not even close.
Like this is just like insider hype still.
I don't know.
But I'm curious, you know, what do you find that the evergreen ones are typically the
best performing in terms of just the engagement they get?
Or is it kind of the ones that are coming out right as something ridiculous is happening?
You see that people just pick up on it, like, or does it does it kind of even out?
What's the what's the feel there?
That's even out.
I have some evergreens that I know they're going to be like, it always depends on the
timing.
So sometimes you can post an evergreen and it's badly time timing is so important.
But then there's also just some that are like, you can only use them once.
But they they work at that time.
For example, when Greenpeace did the the beautiful skull of Satoshi, I did a comic about it and
it was super popular, which again, that comic too was just picturing reality.
Which this is in many cases, that's all I do.
I probably like I simplify it to a point where you can really tell the the the the ridiculousness
of it.
So that worked very well.
But then yeah, I do have evergreens and I have some that they will always be popular because
they they are timeless.
But yeah, the last one I did about the the all time high, too, that was just a random
idea.
Just also some funny sometimes I think for four days or weeks, I think about a comic idea.
And then I posted and it's like, like, just a dud.
Yeah, and sometimes a random we come up with something and it just like it just works.
So that happened with the the all time high comic, actually.
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So thank you.
I think you're so right about timing like that's something that Karl and I noticed so
much when we were we recently like just a couple of days ago made a video, but we haven't
been making any as consistently now because we've got the yeah, this you know, the human
to raise and take care of.
But that was the thing that we there would be some that we thought, oh my god, this is
like this is hilarious.
This is gonna people are gonna love this.
It's gonna go crazy.
And then you post in it just like, wow, like, you know, just really kind of lackluster and
you're like, oh, okay, maybe we missed something.
But then other times ones that we spend extremely little time on and just happen to be timed
right, like it happens to capture that the moment.
That's honestly it makes the majority of the difference.
And I think that's true with so much of the of just messaging in general of I mean, of
actual like journalism in general, too, like, are you able to capture what's happening in
this moment and tap into what people are feeling right now into their frustrations into what's
exciting them or angering them.
That's how you really get people to jump on board and say like, yes, this captures what
I'm feeling right now in a very simplified way that I couldn't exactly express.
But now you've done it in a comic or in a video and it's a it's a powerful thing.
Like, I mean, ultimately, every one of those comics is its own meme.
Like it is a way for you to transmit a lot of information in a very condensed format.
I mean, in a format that literally like a child can read and understand and also say
like, you know, mommy, daddy, look at the cute little little hoodler.
Like it's it's quite brilliant there.
And I mean, how many if I can ask how many different plushies do you have now?
Like, do you know how many different iterations of it you've done?
Okay.
Okay, so a lot.
A lot.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure we made over 30 special editions.
Yeah.
And I have my own, obviously.
And then what also happened over time is that I my so I would create new characters as needed.
And I started with the little hodler and the little no corner.
Those were my first two characters.
And then as time went on, on a like, whenever I needed somebody new, I would create somebody
new and then they would sort of organically get their own personality like the like a
little printer, for example, who's love the little printer.
Great character.
Yeah, he's he's my favorite.
One of my favorites.
Sorry, it's like, sorry, not your all my favorites.
No, I he's one of my favorites because he just sort of had this, this personality that
became a thing where he's just like being abused by the Fed.
And he was just kind of doing his job, but he's too agreeable to speak up.
And I just kind of happened.
And because of that, I started it developed into this universe.
And then obviously now I'm working on making each of them into a plushie, starting with
the most popular ones.
So I had the doing this like a little Satoshi, a little printer.
And we had of course, we have the Bitcoin, we have Kelly, who's extremely popular.
And then a bunch of others.
One day I'll make the little no corner, but maybe last, you know, no corners last to the
party anyway.
Well, speaking of Buchela, I want to because I could talk about little hodlers all day
long.
So I have to give myself.
Can I just say like, I feel so.
Like the way you interpret and describe the little hodler, nobody has ever described it
like that to me.
That is one to one.
What I wanted to achieve, like it feels so happy.
I kind of want to record that and like, I don't know, put it on my website.
I'll send it right to you.
I'm happy to have it be a testimonial.
Because I really, I really do think that it's weaned within Bitcoin.
You know, Bitcoin doesn't care, right?
But Bitcoiners care.
Bitcoiners care a lot.
And I think that different Bitcoiners find different ways to express how much Bitcoin
and this monetary revolution means to them.
And you have found a really powerful way of expressing that.
And ultimately, I think it's a great example that you set for Bitcoiners everywhere who
are thinking, you know, I want to maybe they don't code like and they're thinking I want
to be able to do something, you know, I can't code.
Is it going to be worthwhile for me to learn to code and then to try to contribute in some
way?
Most likely not at this point, you know, but if you want to do that more power to you
people, but there are so many ways that you can contribute into getting Bitcoin into the
greater consciousness and, you know, find something that you can also enjoy doing.
Like I assume that you still very much enjoy creating these comics, creating these plushies
because like they seem to be full of that joy.
Like they're happy little things, but they shine that mirror back onto the broken system
that we have.
And so if you're listening out there, it's like, find something that allows you to help
shine that mirror back on our broken system.
Because ultimately, like it all comes down to memes, right?
Like it all comes down to how can we make this really, really complex thing, which is
Bitcoin or the fiat monetary system?
How can we distill that into something that anyone can understand and they don't have to
be a PhD economist or computer scientist?
Although sometimes those most educated in that field have some great difficulty understanding
Bitcoin, but that's a different story.
But what you've done is a really great, I think, case study for people to look at and
say, okay, I, you know, Lena made comics and ended up building a business out of these
comics.
And at the same time, these comics go viral and are seen by people not just within Bitcoin,
but outside of Bitcoin, which is ultimately what we want, right?
Like your innocent little comic has a better chance of going viral than somebody who is
you know, ranting on a five hour Bitcoin podcast about how the state is, you know, just going
through his totalitarian power grab.
Like certain things reach outside the bubble and certain things are made for those within
the bubble.
And I think the little hodler is a little bit of both people within the bubble love
it and people outside the bubble might actually drink in some of what, you know, it's putting
out there.
So I think it's a, it's a beautiful synergy there.
Please do, please do.
I'll send it all to you.
But if you're good with it, I'd like to switch gears a little bit.
So, and I'd love to talk because you brought up the Bukele little hodler, which love his
little hat, you know, it's a, it's great.
You have recently moved to El Salvador, you moved from Germany, that's quite a large cultural
shift.
Can you talk just a little bit about kind of what made you finally decide to pull that
trigger and move, you know, truly across the world to a completely different culture to
a place that is, has had quite a both happy recently, but very sad and tragic history
before a few years ago, but is now on this up and up.
What was your moment where you said, you know what, I'm going to, I'm just going to pick
up everything and I'm going to move to El Salvador and start there.
Well, to be fair, I was already not living in Germany anymore, actually.
Okay, fair enough.
I would say, I'm, yeah, I would say I'm German and I moved to El Salvador, which is true,
but I actually left Germany 10 years ago.
So I finished, I finished high school and then I left at the time I left because I don't
like looking back probably, like I had some like dissatisfaction, but I just generally
at the time I just felt like I wanted to go out into the world.
I spent a lot of the last 10 years in Asia, I lived in Southeast Asia and East Asia, Japan,
Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines, like that corner of the world.
And when I, like right before I moved to El Salvador, I was living between Malta and
Turkey.
And I, so El Salvador was on my radar because of the Bitcoin law.
So about two years ago when that happened, obviously, like that was the first time, like
I was, I'm almost ashamed to say that, but that was the first time I heard about El Salvador.
So I didn't know anything about the country at the time.
And then suddenly it popped up everywhere, which shows you what a brilliant move that
was, even just in the sense of getting exposure and sort of switching up the headlines that
the country would get on the world stage.
But yeah, so I did some comics about it at the time because the great inspiration for
a comic, literally my first comic about it was the reaction of the world to El Salvador
adopting Bitcoin as legal tender, being like, oh, but that's such a small country.
That doesn't even, that doesn't matter.
That doesn't do anything.
Again, it wrote itself.
I made a comic out of it.
And that too is one of my most popular comics.
And that comic back then earned me the presidential follow.
So yeah, that was pretty cool.
And so that's how he became aware of the little hotler.
So a couple months later, Bokehler was coming to Turkey for a state visit.
And he was, that was around that time everybody was like, oh, he's gonna orange pill Erdogan.
He's gonna make him like start Bitcoin mining.
Obviously not.
But you know, we were hopeful.
So he actually asked me if he could get a hotler.
So when he came to, yeah, he wanted one was like, what?
But yeah, so he came to, he came to Istanbul.
And that's where I first met him and I brought him a hotler.
So I had a chance like, I have a bit of a conversation.
And at that point I decided, okay, I have to see El Salvador.
But for some reason after that is to took me a year and a half.
Like, I don't know, like, I don't think about it.
Those are like lifelong regrets.
But like a year and a half later, I made it.
I made it to El Salvador.
And I just like, I can never, like sometimes I listen to myself talk about El Salvador.
And I'm like, okay, like that just sounds so like cheesy and dreamy and like head up
in the clouds.
I just don't know how to better communicate this.
Because from the moment you set foot here and everybody who comes here is going to tell
you this, you feel the difference.
And I had the same thing.
So I first came here in August last year.
And I just went around the country and I had some, like, I knew some people here who would
like immediately they were there to help me and they took me around the country and showed
me all the things.
It's really great, extremely hospitable country.
But the one main difference between El Salvador and any other country I've seen is the optimism.
There's optimism here.
People are looking into the future with hope, with plans, with visions.
People will tell you this country, you know, things are way better here than they used
to be versus, of course, like, of course they would say that.
Whereas if you go to Germany, for example, people will tell you the opposite.
That sounds like a simple thing, but it makes a world of a difference.
So here you feel that there is a, this country has regained its collective identity and they
are proud to show their country, they are proud to show the things they have, the volcanoes,
the surf, the pupusas, the Bitcoin law even, you know.
So you really feel that.
And as a big speaking, as a Bitcoiner coming here, another thing I felt very strongly is
that I'm welcome here, that I don't get the side eye for being a Bitcoiner, for having
a Bitcoin business.
Actually this country wants Bitcoiners to come here.
And so of course, Bitcoiners want to come here.
I don't want to be working against the official narrative of my government all the time.
That's very tiring and exhausting.
And if like the moment you experience the opposite, you don't want to go back.
This is what happened to me and it's what happened to a lot of other people.
That's why there's so many Bitcoiners here and growing.
I love that and I've had the pleasure of going to El Salvador twice.
Karl and I went twice in 2022.
So we went for the first time, I think in July into August and then thought, oh, well
we can't wait to come back.
This was because truly you're right.
It's an amazing thing when you see a country where across the board people have hope.
They see that there's meaningful progress happening, not just politicians promising
to do something and then never doing it.
And then the next election, they promise a different set of things and they never do
it again.
And you go back and forth between at least in America between our two parties of each
one blaming the last guy for the problems this time.
But saying, look, he's fixed everything and now everything's all fine.
And it never is.
And because our base layer, our monetary layer is broken and it's just breaking everything
else.
But we were thinking, gosh, we cannot wait to go back.
And then we got invited to adopting Bitcoin that same year.
And so we said, well, it's only a couple months later, but we've got to go back.
And so then we got the chance to go back again.
And again, just a wonderful experience.
And that is a great conference too, just because again, so many builders are there.
So many people from El Salvador are there because they make it very easy for Salvadorans to
go to that conference.
And again, you have this beautiful feeling of hope.
I mean, El Salvador is basically established itself as this Bitcoin mecca for the world.
And it's really quite brilliant.
I mean, to say nothing of dropping the crime rate from being one of the highest in the
world to, though, I think the lowest in Latin America, which in a couple of years, which
is incredible.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like, I, when we went there, I mean, I, I've, Carla too, you know, because
we got back and you still get the questions of, oh, did you feel, did you feel safe?
It's like, yeah.
It felt a lot safer than walking around Chicago at night.
That's for sure.
And but people still, I think it takes so long for them to get their preconceived notions
out of their head.
Because if they heard about El Salvador before a couple of years ago, it wasn't for things
like crime rate dropping, tourism going through the roof and these, this crazy new Bitcoin
law.
It was because people were horrible, horrible things were happening there.
But that sticks in people's heads.
And I find it, and I'm curious of your perception of this now being there on the ground, so
much of the Western media, European media and, and American media is so, so strangely
critical of the progress that El Salvador is making.
It feels like they really don't want.
Yeah, I know.
So weird.
It feels like they really don't want El Salvador to succeed.
It feels like they really want El Salvador to fail.
And they, I mean, which is a weird thing to want because El Salvador failing would mean
a regression back to people getting murdered left and right and wildly corrupt government
and gangs.
So that's a weird thing to have this sick wish for.
But somehow that is seemingly the wish of many in the Western so-called developed world.
What is your what is the read of, you know, you are now on the ground there.
You are living there.
What's, you know, what do you say to the, these journalists quote that are publishing
just outright propaganda and kind of just somehow begging for El Salvador to fail begging
for it seems, you know, Bukele to fail.
What's your experience on the ground and how do you, you know, how do you react to that?
Nobody takes him seriously anymore.
They've been doing this for over five years now.
Oh, yeah.
Well, they even did it before he became president.
And in the beginning, it was easier to push the narrative because you could as a journalist
or as a big media outlet, you can throw things out there and see what sticks.
And it's very hard to prove a negative.
So they went from the very beginning go, oh, look at that guy.
He's a dictator.
Now, what's he going to do?
Like, all he can do is do his job and then show the receipts.
And that's what he did.
And then, you know, now five years later, they were really down silly for still trying
to push that narrative and the more time passes.
So time really is on his side here.
But he had to, and he's still dealing with these, with these accusations and with these
stupid headlines.
But by now, they, they have little to no power because he just had, he has the statistics
now he has the numbers, he has the receipts.
And so nobody takes them seriously anymore.
The problem is, as you said before, it's very hard to get rid of your preconceived notions.
So here on the ground in El Salvador, nobody cares what the mainstream media abroad says.
It's like, dude, like you've probably never been here.
You probably got like an assignment from above.
And we all kind of know what, who sits above.
So you just kind of do your thing and we don't care.
But let's say back in Europe, for example, in the US there's a shift.
Very, very strongly you can, you can see that happen, which is very interesting in Europe,
parts of Europe too, but still in Europe, the, these, these, these headlines and these
nonsense narratives hold more power, probably because it's further away and people know
less about how things are run here and especially in Germany.
I always talk about Germany because I'm German.
I love my country.
I just don't love how it's run.
I just want to put that out there.
Yeah.
So, especially in Germany, our, our state media is very, very, very prejudiced against El
Salvador and these, these things stick with you even if you don't want them to.
That's very unfortunate.
And it happens subconsciously.
I noticed it, the same happened to me, even though I saw myself, you know, a very don't
trust, verify, Bitcoin or before it first came here, I thought I had this like a bit
of a gut feeling where it's like, okay, is it actually safe?
Like, I don't know.
Like never be.
So you come here and it's safer than German cities, which again, you couldn't, you knew
it's hard to, to, to believe that if you haven't seen it.
But so nobody, nobody will have a brain bias and stuff, but they will keep pushing it so
long as they can uphold at least some of that illusion because they so desperately don't
want somebody to show that it can be done differently.
There's so many things going on here.
One of them just being like this colonialist mindset that you don't want a country that
was under the control of foreign powers for decades to suddenly be independent and show,
look, we can do this ourselves.
And this is what's happening in El Salvador, which is amazing.
And what Boquera has done has inspired first the neighboring countries, now the Latin American
continent, even the US and now parts of Europe, which makes him like, it's an amazing legacy
that he's building.
But certain people don't like that.
So, you know, and these certain people control much of the media.
And so that's why you get those headlines, even though nobody believes them anymore.
Well, you know, I think it's so interesting.
A lot of the Western power structures kind of need Boquera and El Salvador to fail because
if he is successful, which I think he has already proven that he has been successful
and is continuing to do so.
And you can see that by his approval rating being the highest in the world or one of the
highest in the world.
It's hard to hard to argue with that, and you can see that if you actually go to El Salvador
and talk to people because that's one of the things that Carl and I did.
And this was in in 2022, it was a little, you know, I guess a little under the Bitcoin
law was 2021, right?
September 2021, I think.
So we went there a little under a year after that for the first time and just ask you,
you know, what do you think about this Bitcoin law?
What do you think about Boquela?
And at that point, some people were fairly ambivalent to the Bitcoin law.
It was, you know, like it's fine or, you know, some people, you know, wow, I think it's
great, you know, this is wonderful.
Other people saying, oh, you know, it could have maybe been rolled out a little bit better,
but I think it's a it's a pretty good idea, you know, okay, fair, you know, people were
free to felt free to speak their minds clearly.
But then you ask them, you know, what do you think of Boquela?
And I did not hear anyone granted.
I didn't talk to every person in the country.
This is just my small sample set.
I know, but I but I did everyone I talked to said he's taking our country in the right
direction and we have hope for once.
That was the the the synopsis of just about every single conversation that we had there.
And that's a really powerful thing.
Hope is really powerful.
But the the entrenched Western power structures, they need to they need to have fear and despair
in order to stay in power.
They need to keep the populace afraid of the other afraid of what dangers might happen
if the wrong candidate is elected, what might happen if the, you know, the wrong law is
passed.
And they also just refuse to do basic things for their citizens like have, you know, for
instance, secure borders or, I don't know, take care of crime.
Like we have amazing America's of I again, I love America.
Same as you with Jeremy, I love I love my country.
I don't like how it's run.
And I love, you know, my my countrymen as well.
And it's so sad to see this as governments bloat and bloat and bloat and are still just
become less and less effective at actually doing what they're supposed to do, which is
protect the private property of their citizens.
That's that is the ultimate.
It's the only reason the government really exists is to enforce the law.
And the only real purpose of the law is to organize for the collective defense of private
property.
And if you can't do that, if you can't keep people safe from being plundered, either by
by criminals or by the criminals that are writing the laws, well, then you've just that's a failed
government.
That's a failed state.
And so I think where you see, you know, Bokele and his, his methods were certainly controversial,
you know, rounding up people with with gang tattoos on their faces and people are saying,
how could they possibly be gang members?
And I'm sure there were definitely people who were probably wrongfully imprisoned.
And I'm sure that I've also seen recent pressure leases that they're actually working through
the legal system to try and remedy that.
Great.
You know, certainly no government is perfect in the US doesn't have a leg to stand on when
it comes to criticizing that.
But if he can do that, if he can make his country safe, then what does that say about
all the other governments who refuse to do so, who refuse to protect their citizens?
Because if they can do it in El Salvador, a country that's been under the boot of Western
powers and the boot of the IMF for so long and decided just to make a big change, well,
then why can't we do that in America?
Then people start to ask questions and asking questions is very dangerous.
You don't want that.
That yet.
I don't know.
It's it's it's amazing to see the the Bitcoin exodus happening to El Salvador, though.
And I think another great proof of El Salvador going in the right direction is native Salvadorans
are moving back home.
They're not trying to escape El Salvador to go to the US.
They're trying to escape from the US back to El Salvador and not like in the 90s when
Bill Clinton deported tons of gang members back to El Salvador.
Very different from that.
These are people who escaped the violence that are now coming back home and people like yourself
who are finding a new home there and eating lots of papuces, I hope.
It's them.
There's so bad for you, but they're so good.
They're dangerously good.
I want to say I'm going to get back to the important part in a minute, which is to throw
in there.
They they have so we all know the papuces, but generally something that you'll get a
lot here is, oh my God, how they call it typical, I think, which means you get like
a steak, for example.
And then they have garnish on the side, which is usually beans and rice and plantain and
tortillas and cheese and salsa.
And oh my God, I'm getting hungry.
It's really, really, really good.
And that is actually really good for you too.
It's probably harder to market this as a specialty dish or like a signature dish for the country,
but this is really good and undervalued.
But yes, so everything you said, back to the important stuff, is very, very true.
And it's yeah, it's so sad that somebody doing their job is so dangerous to the powers that
beat.
It's such a shame.
And that is interesting to see because okay, this is so good at communicating what he's
doing.
He's really good at marketing.
Obviously, he ran a marketing agency before he like in his previous life.
And he like from the beginning, he was using social media, right?
And he knew how to appeal to the people.
Like his social media game is like right up there, which is part of the reason why it's
so good at getting the point across and then if you look at, are chances are in Germany
have a Twitter?
Probably, like but it's run by some intern, right?
Or like sometimes I see what Biden tweets, like he doesn't tweet obviously.
But you know, so that's a huge difference and that's obviously the small part of the
thing.
But he's reaching very, very far and that's what makes him, part of what makes him makes
him a threat in the eye of those who would rather not have the world know that things
can be run differently.
So they try to, they try to focus on like whatever they can find that they could use
against him.
So for the longest time, they'd be going, oh, you're centralizing power.
You're such a dictator.
What was happening is that he was fighting against his own government, right?
So he became president in 2019 and up until they had parliamentary elections in 2021,
he had no like he, whenever he tried to push for something in parliament, parliament, which
was like heavily controlled by the opposition, the two, the big parties that had run the
country for decades prior, would just try to block everything to make him look bad,
to keep the status quo, because those were the administrations previously that had heavily
benefited from collaboration with gangs, from corruption, and also from, you know, using
for an aid for their own benefit and disappearing money.
So when he went in one parliamentary elections and then swapped out the Supreme Court judges,
for example, then of course from, from overseas, he would get an outcry like, oh my God, he's
a dictator.
What he was doing is make governance more efficient.
That's what he's been doing this entire time, once he's been doing since.
So for example, what they did with the new, with the latest election is they shrink, they
shrunk the number of municipalities to streamline governance further.
So you see here, sort of a shrinking of a government, rather than a bloating of government,
which is good, but you know, we have to sell it as something bad because everything he
does is bad.
So they try to focus on these things, try to make him look as bad as possible, but it's
just not working anymore because you can see the results of what they're doing here.
Those are really, really good results.
And the interesting thing, or another interesting thing that I can see too, is the reaction
from the population here.
So another thing you're not supposed to do is talk to the locals like you and Carla did,
because how dare you, you must read the headlines, you must not listen to the people whose opinion
really matters.
They speak, A, they speak very well of Bukirre, and B, they speak in a very reflective manner,
which is, it's rare because in, let's look at the US for example.
The US government and both parties, oh, you have this thing that you always tweet, there's
no red, there's no blue, there's the state and then there's you, right?
I love that.
Perfect.
Yeah, like this is so true, because both sides will try to put out polarizing statements
to just, everything's polarizing in politics.
Politics divides these days, divides the people.
And so of course, you shape your audience with the way you speak to them and the things
you try to indoctrinate them with.
Everybody uses propaganda, but this is the kind of propaganda that you see in most of
the world in the US, and we also see it in the EU, we also see it in Germany.
We might have more parties, but like it's getting very, it's getting very left right
these days.
In Salvador, from the beginning, this administration spoke to its people in a very logical, rational
way with common sense, with no left-right division.
They do things to make life better, that they don't go and promise the moon and the stars
and rainbows and butterflies.
They said, for example, when Bucchia introduced his territorial control plan, which is how
they got rid of the gangs, he said, look, this is going to be really difficult and hard,
and our GDP might suffer because this was a parallel state, basically.
But we're going to do it, you know, and they did it.
And people react the same way to it, because this is what they're being told.
They see, okay, our government uses common sense, so I will react to them with common
sense.
And I will tell you, yeah, things are good, some things are bad.
You know, I hope they fix this, I hope they fix that, but they've already done this, and
I see they're working on that.
Maybe this didn't work so well, but that worked well.
And we understand that they're trying their best, and we look at things in a reflective
manner, which is what you want.
But it's not, I can't even blame the people in Germany, for example, or in the US.
I can't even really blame people, because if you're just being indoctrinated with polarizing
like, battle language, what are you going to do?
Like, of course, that sticks with you, right?
So sad.
It is.
And it's honestly just such the way that political structures are in the US or in the
EU, it all comes down to promoting really short-term thinking.
You know, it on it from a, to use safe it ends, you know, low time preference versus high time preference.
The either two party or multi party or whatever it may be that we see across the Western world
and throughout Europe.
It's very high time preference.
It's always next election, next election, doesn't actually matter what we get done,
as long as we can have enough things on our checklist that show, look, at least we kept
this campaign promise, but the only reason we couldn't do the other things was because
of the other guys.
And if only, if only they weren't so evil, then we would, you know, everything would
be sunshine and daisies.
And this happens just every election cycle over and over again.
And there's never actually meaningful change.
Things just start getting or continue getting progressively a little bit worse and a little
bit worse while your money buys less and less and less.
And what I, at least my external read and the read from, you know, being in El Salvador
a couple of times was there is more long term thinking taking place.
Not that he's going to try and crown himself a dictator for a thousand years as some in
the Western media might have you believe, but that this isn't about, he's not doing
things to try and figure out how he's going to win the next election.
He's doing things because they're going to be good for his country.
And clearly that worked with the, you know, he was just reelected.
So clearly just what doing actually good things and keeping promises and making life better
is actually keeps people really happy.
Who would have thought that that would, the formula was so simple.
Just do what you say you're going to do, make people's lives better and don't promise things
that you're never going to do just because they sound good at the moment and they're
a good sound bite on that debate stage or something.
So I really think so much of it is that short term versus long term thinking.
It seems to me that he's trying to set El Salvador up not just for himself to get reelected
in a couple of years, but for that country to continue lifting itself up and becoming
an economic powerhouse.
It's a small country, but people around the world are talking about that small country
now and it's, it's for good reasons.
It's because their tourism went through the roof.
Their GDP is up.
All of the fear mongering and the FUD really about their, you know, Bukele's Bitcoin bet
like, whoa, it's, you know, when Bitcoin was low, it was really easy to say that.
Now it's not so easy to, to make fun of, you know, Bukele for his, his bet.
It starts to look like a very good investment in the long term economic health of his country.
It's nice to see.
You know,
That's not a way to spin that.
Don't worry.
I'm sure.
Yeah.
Well, you know, if he, I mean, clearly the IMF is no fans of him because they can, he
now is making it so that he does not in the future need to take their strings attached
money, which I think is, is wonderful because they have certainly done a great deal of harm
around the world.
And really what it is it comes down to, it comes down to trying to, the IMF basically
exists to try and hide the inflation that is rampant in Western developed countries
by exporting that inflation to underdeveloped countries and making sure they stay underdeveloped
so they can't actually pick themselves up and become successful because they don't want
them successful, then they'd make their own decisions.
And again, you can't have people asking questions and making their own decision.
That's very, very bad for business.
Is the curateer or something?
Like, are you safe saying these things?
I think so.
I, it's America.
So I have.
Let's just say I have the number of guns that I have is more than zero.
And I, I also like to, I like to hide weapons around my house, which might, might seem a
little bit crazy, but I enjoy it.
So yes, I'm make a little holler with like a little pocket or something.
Oh, no, that's an idea.
Okay.
I'm going to have to cut and cut this part out just so people don't know that, you know,
don't look in the little, there's no guns in the little holler.
I swear they're just innocent now.
But it's, it's really nice to hear this perspective because again, I haven't been back since 2022.
And so from the first time you came, you visited El Salvador to when you decided to move, how
long was that, that timeline?
I came in August and I moved in October.
Oh, wow.
So you, you just said, let's do it.
Yeah.
But that's sort of like, I do, I've been doing that my whole life.
Like I don't really, I, I don't recommend it, but I don't like, I've been faring pretty
well with it.
And the thing is that I've moved country many times.
So I lived in many places.
Sometimes it was for work.
Sometimes it was for other reasons.
Sometimes it was out of curiosity.
And then I just love traveling too.
But El Salvador, I came here because of, I don't even like, I can't name a million rational
reasons, but then it also just, there has to be, the chemistry has to be right.
And I just, so I get, sometimes I get comments, actually not sometimes, I often get comments
where people are like, oh, but what if you move now and then things, things go downhill
again?
Like, I don't know, Bukele leaves office and then things go worse or whatever.
Yeah, sure, you can think that way.
But then you're, you're planning for a collision course.
So what I want to do, this is, it goes both ways.
So in one way, this country welcomes us.
This country wants us.
Like I've tried to get visas in countries that made it so hard.
My own country makes it extremely hard for you to, to move there.
Unless you're from a certain, from a certain region of the world.
I don't want to, so it's the same, we have the same immigration policy in America.
It's very hard to move to America legally.
It's very easy to move to America illegally, which is, it took Carla 13 years to become
a citizen here with a father who came as a communist refugee, like, or I should say
communist defector, like fleeing some shit.
You know, communism's a bitch, turns out, not, not a picnic.
And, you know, I'm curious if I can ask you, because I think, again, a lot of people are
probably finding themselves at this place where maybe they're unhappy with what's the
direction their own country is heading.
Maybe they're feeling like they need a change.
Maybe they're Bitcoiners and they're feeling like, you know what, I want to go somewhere
where I feel I'm, I'm welcome in a country that is really having a Bitcoin strategy at
not just the local level, because that's where things started and I'll solve it.
It started with Alzante with Bitcoin Beach.
It started from the bottom, but then now it's coming down from the top as well, hopefully
meeting somewhere in the middle.
But what's your, what's your message to people who are maybe, maybe they're thinking about
it, maybe they're, they've been toying with the idea.
What would you say to those people as kind of based on your experience, like, I don't
know, what's, what message do you have for folks who are saying, should I, should I consider
El Salvador?
I get it more and more, I get it more and more even from my own country, people, which
is amazing to see, because normally we are the last to do anything and we have, like
we feel very, again, I love my country, but we are so settled in our comfort zone.
It's really dangerous for us.
We've been so privileged for a long time that we thought ourselves on top of the world.
And slowly this illusion is crumbling in the eyes of the public, whereas our government
is still trying to uphold it, of course, desperately so with less and less success.
So people are starting to look elsewhere increasingly.
And what's also happening is people are starting to look outside of the EU because a lot of
people think rightfully so.
I think that if you think things in Germany are going downhill because of government
overreach, because of mismanagement of everything, because of our failing currency and those
things, then you will not be better off in another EU country.
So people are trying to look outside of the EU and El Salvador is increasingly becoming
present on the map and on people's radars.
The thing is that, again, because headlines stick with you subconsciously, because it's
very far, possibly, because you may not have heard much about it.
If you did, it was for gangs and war.
And now the narrative has shifted to, yeah, sure, things are better, but what if?
What if?
So it's easy to procrastinate and to then not do it.
The best thing you can do is just come, if you can, obviously.
If you are toying with the idea of coming here, just come here, just come for a trip.
It's very, very nice.
I did that.
And then the rest will fall into place.
So it's easy to overthink things and I am very guilty of that myself.
Traveling the world has made me better at not doing that.
And you throw yourself in situations where you have no time to overthink.
But generally, you cannot seem to lose.
Come here, you'll eat great food, you'll see volcanoes everywhere, you'll have amazing
weather, you'll meet awesome people, and you'll probably want to stay.
And then you go from there.
It's actually not very complicated.
So it, yeah, it's very simple.
Everything's really simple, if you want it to be.
I like that.
That's good advice.
And yeah, for anyone, whether you're thinking of moving to El Salvador or not, I would highly
recommend it.
At least going to visit because it is a wonderful, wonderful place to visit.
I mean, you can, San Salvador is a really great city.
It's clearly on the up and up.
I saw that library that they put in, which just looks incredible.
And then you can also find your way to, you know, on the same day you can be hiking up
a volcano and then, you know, go and surf in the afternoon.
Like it's pretty incredible to be able to do that.
And I love the terrain in that country.
It is, like every road that you're driving on, you're like, wow, this is just beautiful.
Like there's these vistas everywhere, whether you're along the coast or going through the,
you know, the countryside, it's like, wow, this is truly stunningly beautiful.
It's a treat.
You saw a huge spider yesterday, like this big.
Oh geez, you can't talk.
You can't talk Carla.
Oh boy.
She is not a fan of spiders.
Uh, wow.
Okay.
Me neither.
I don't know.
I also don't like spiders.
Okay.
Sorry.
Too many questions in the spider.
No, but I was getting to a point with that because that's not a great advertisement.
Yeah.
It was a purpose behind the statement.
We went to a volcano, not a volcano, the other thing, waterfall.
We went to a waterfall yesterday and we just like hiked up the waterfall or it was actually
seven waterfalls in one.
You do like a four hour hike around it.
Um, the thing is you have beautiful terrain.
You can be like, there's a volcano over there and I can like literally over there and I
can be at the beach in 45 minutes and the climate is going to be different.
It's really amazing.
And in the same, in the same spirit, you can get to a bunch of waterfalls very quickly
or to the forest or whatever.
And two things, A, because this country is severely underestimated and severely undervalued
like Bitcoin, um, you will not have many tourists here yet.
It's a temporary privilege.
If you come here, you can take photos without a bunch of tourists in the background.
The second thing is the nature is so raw and natural and that is amazing.
You get, oh my God, I can't even explain it.
So if you see nature in Europe, it's like, it's organized nature.
It's regulated.
Somebody has already been there.
So everything's like in, I don't know, it feel like everything's in within norms.
I can't even really explain it.
So here you get that, you get that raw feeling of you go into the wilderness and you see
beautiful untouched nature without all the dangerous animals, by the way.
So a lot of times we go into the jungle, like you're going to have lots of like big dangerous
or small dangerous animals.
So they told us the spider yesterday was not dangerous.
Still didn't touch it, but so here you're not, you have some animals.
You have pumas.
I've never seen one, but apparently that's pumas here.
You have snakes, but apparently most of them are not dangerous.
You have spiders I've learned.
You have monkeys and you have like geckos and stuff, but you don't have like crocodiles
or hippos or things that easily kill you.
So it's actually very fun to go into nature and you don't have to worry about not coming
back.
So that is a great, and you get there very, very easily.
And again, locals will be so happy to show you around.
We had a local guide yesterday.
It was really, really great.
And then I took a very epic photo by the waterfall, by one of the waterfalls.
And yeah, so it's, it's really awesome.
It's a good pitch.
And honestly, that was one thing I was, like, if you travel these days, generally just about
everywhere you go, there's going to be a lot of tourists.
And that's fine.
It's a good thing to see a lot of tourists.
And we saw, like, clearly tourism in El Salvador is exploding because you can look at the numbers
and see that it's up, I don't know how many, it's probably like 200% now or something.
I think it was, it was well in the hundreds last time I checked, but it's, it's exploding,
but it doesn't feel like everything is overcrowded.
I mean, and it's a small country, but things, there's a very relaxed, relaxed vibe there.
And like, again, something I saw was just that I think it's really hard to overstate
how much of an impact the people having hope is, like genuine hope, and not, not just the
hope of, I hope things get better, the hope that comes with seeing things get better and
realizing this is just the start of how good they can get, especially after, I mean, it,
they have a rough, a rough history, and they're very aware of that history and of the struggles
they've had.
And I think that that makes the success they're having now all the more important and meaningful
for them.
It's, it's a beautiful thing to see.
It's, it's to imagine for, for many of us to imagine is being for the first time being
able to walk outside at night without being scared to walk with your phone in your hand
to wear Nike clothes or Adidas or something like that, to meet your friends after sunset,
to go clubbing without being worried, to send your kids to school without being worried.
Many people have not had that feeling their entire lives.
This country has been under the control of corrupt governments working, working with
gangs under the control of a parallel government run by these gangs for, for decades.
Like people, like people's entire, like people my age have not seen Osiridor this way up
until the book that got into, went into office.
This is extremely significant.
And of course, then they, people will not understand, and I also don't understand why
then from overseas what you hear is, oh, but this is not good.
Well, you should go back to the way, well, they will not say it, but they want things
to go back to the way they were before.
And that is like a slap in the face.
So human rights organizations will say, hey, but you're treating these criminals very badly.
Where were they before when these criminals were killing people every day?
We're extorting people when you wanted to maybe open a business, but you couldn't because
the moment you did, the gangs will come and demand money from you and otherwise they would
kill you or your children or your family.
Those are real things that happened.
I have heard so many stories, like every Salvadoran will have their own, their own story to tell
about their experience with the gangs.
This was, it was so bad that you could, you know, people would, like we would then say,
oh, why don't you go to the police?
Because the police too was either corrupt or extorted, police officers are also humans.
They also have family.
They were also extorted by the gangs.
It was that bad.
And this has ended.
It is such a shift.
And this is just, I mean, it's, it's one of the main things that Bocca has done here,
but it's just one other thing he has done.
Right.
So another thing he has done is he has, it's very interesting.
If you look back at his, his political career, so you know, he started as the mayor of a
small town south of San Salvador.
From that very time, he was pushing very dreamy language, let's say, like he was really going
out there and going this like, this ethereal route and saying, hey, we should not think
ourselves small because this is what's being told to us from above, from all these supranational
organizations that, that want us to think we are not able to be independent.
We must not believe them.
We must allow ourselves to have hopes and dreams.
We must allow ourselves to build something bigger than ourselves.
He was pushing this, his entire political career, and obviously the, the higher he would
recline the latter, the more power he would have to, to convey that message.
So you could see it in the policies that he was pushing.
He was as mayor of San Salvador, for example, he was doing these streetlight installations.
He was cleaning up the, the old town and doing a lot of visual things where then of course
the tractors would go and say, oh, but that's so unimportant.
Like, no, it's not unimportant.
It's in addition to providing safety and security to the people, he provided them with the ability
to be proud of their country for many, for the first time in their lives.
And he helped, you know, he did the surf city project, for example.
So he's, he actively worked on building a collective identity because as a country,
and again, you feel it when you come here, I, I, I'm German, so I know if you are not
proud, if you are taught not to be proud of your country, if you are taught to be eternally
ashamed of your country, we are so, we Germans are, are, we are brought up thinking that
it is very bad to put a country flag up by your window or by your car or whatever.
Like we do this every four years for the World Cup, but that's about it.
And like, and like if you do it outside of that timeframe, then that's weird.
Why would you do that?
So I know what it means to be, to feel like borderline ashamed of your nationality.
He fixed that.
And that is also part of the reason why people are so proud.
They're so happy.
They're so optimistic and energetic.
And that I do not understand why you would demonize that.
They had a democratic election.
He won by a landslide.
People are so happy to have him here.
Is everything perfect?
Of course not.
But nobody ever said that.
So it's just, it's just sad to see that this is what's being pushed, but it's great to
see that is slowly stopping to work, that people are no longer buying these narratives
and that people are making up their own minds.
And that, you know, it's thanks to social media, it's thanks to this, this like information
getting out there.
And it's thanks to the receipts that are being shown here.
That's the good thing.
That's just sort of aligning.
I think it's, it's one of those things where I like to think about Bitcoin and all the
fud that Bitcoin gets is all they can do, and I use they in the collective to mean the
media, you know, but we know who they are in this context, but all they can do is lie.
And all we need to do is tell the truth.
Because the truth, when the truth is on your side, all you have to do is tell it and show
the receipts.
And all your opposition can do in the case of Bitcoin is lie about it, is invent stories,
is use old, old tropes that play on people's ingrained notions of what something is.
And it feels like that's a very, very parallel kind of parallel comparison to El Salvador,
where all the Western media can do is try and play on all the preconceived notions about
El Salvador, they can try to spin up lies and, and you know, okay, if now that things
are going well, they can fear monger about the future and what that's going to be.
And all the, all El Salvador needs to do and Bukele needs to do is just to tell the truth.
And to show that, look, this is what's happening.
We're, we're not trying to hide anything where we've been very, and it's not like they were
sneaky about rounding up all of the gang members.
They were very public about it and very proud of it.
And as you said, people feel safe.
And because they feel safe, they can have hope for the future and they can have the
hope to start a business or for people in their family who moved away years ago to come
back and say, wow, I can come back to my family now.
I can start something here in El Salvador.
That's a very powerful thing.
And I think again, when the truth is on your side, you are in the position of power and
all your detractors can do is try to say the lie enough times that maybe a few people believe
it.
But, you know, I think it was Martin Luther King who said, a lie cannot live.
Like it's going to the lie will die eventually.
It's just a matter of time.
And so it's nice to see and I mean, Bukele even came in and spoke at the CPAC, the in
the US, the conservative conference and was very well received.
And I think we both know another reason that perhaps the Western media and establishment
is not a fan of him is because he talks about how money actually works.
You know, he did this on Tucker Carlson show to a couple of years ago.
He talks about how fiat money works very honestly and candidly.
And in his, I mean, he is he is a very good speaker.
I'll say that he is it's quite impressive in multiple languages.
So really Bravo to him.
But clearly he's he's showing that a country can be successful without being suckling at
the the poisonous teat of the International Monetary Fund.
Yes, they're Salvador is still a dollarized country, but has adopted Bitcoin as legal
tender.
And he's also very, very vocal about money being broken.
And that's because again, he's just telling the truth there.
He's not he's not making up any lies about how the fiat monetary system works.
He's just telling the truth.
But a lot of people haven't heard that truth.
And that sounds very shocking.
But it's it's powerful.
Because it it reveals the playbook of the powers that the witches speak the truth.
You must be a conspiracy theorist.
This was very, it's very easy to do with normal people.
It gets harder to do when you are ahead of state.
So there there has to be a way to discredit you, which then of course explains a lot of
the headlines and a lot of the dictator authoritarian stuff that is being thrown at him.
And it no longer really sticks, because of course, he's proving them wrong.
And there, you know, you mentioned the parallel and I really agree parallel between El Salvador
and Bitcoin is that the truth comes out in the end.
And I've said for a long time that I mean, it's not just it's not a big revelation,
but one of our strongest arguments as Bitcoiners is time.
Time is on our side, because with time, we prove everybody wrong, because all these these
nonsense narratives, they don't stick.
And you can see that with Bitcoin, and you can also see that with things that are happening
now Salvador.
And then it's it's kind of poetic then for El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin.
And it's so funny to see a head of state talk about money the way he does and the rest
of the world scrambling and be like, Oh my God, he said the quiet part out loud.
No, what were to do with it?
It's so true.
And in the in the US, they're, you know, we just blame greedy corporations or the other
political party or that's that's the favorite one.
And it's it's funny.
But you know, it's I think he's he's certainly he's pulling back the veil a little bit.
And he's challenging that status quo of what are you what are you supposed to do or not
do as an elected leader?
And I mean, in my mind, and again, from the limited people I've talked to, and I want
to caveat this, I've not talked to every person in the country, and I'm sure there are people
who hate book LA and think he's doing a terrible job.
Sure.
But from the people that I've talked to and the things that I've seen in my limited experience
going there a couple of times, and seeing him speak seeing how he acts on on social
media seeing the speeches he gives.
He seems to be trying to do what is right for his people and what's going to lift his
country up.
And the results seem to speak for themselves so far.
And again, time will continue to tell the story of whether or not this is this is successful.
But so far, this, you know, experiment as I think is often characterized in the Western
media the experiment of doing things that are good for your people and doing things
that are good for your sovereignty as a nation.
It seems to be working.
And now I think it's it's it's pretty beautiful to see Bitcoin starting to do what we all
were waiting for Bitcoin to do that it does every four years as we approach the supply
getting cut in half, which is it starts to starts to go wild.
And he starts to look.
It gets very hard to say, well, this was just a gamble on Bitcoin or you're gambling with
your nation's economy somehow.
It's like, turns out not being on a Bitcoin standard is a bit more of a gamble.
The Fiat standard seems to be much more of a gamble than the Bitcoin standard.
So again, time will tell.
But it is a shame that way too.
Yeah, because he really understands it.
So you have a lot of politicians who will use Bitcoin when they feel like it's good
for their image.
It's just a very politician thing to do use things that make you look good.
And you know, in a way, he really rebranded the the politician label, at least for himself
in a way that, you know, being called a politician is like, this is like almost an insult.
So and a lot of people will say, actually, he's not a politician.
He's a leader, which is interesting.
But anyway, my my wait, what was I saying?
Oh, yeah, he really understands Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Yeah, he really understands it versus a lot of people who just use it for short term gain.
So they adopted Bitcoin.
He didn't interview at the time with Peter McCormack, where you could really tell that
he understands the concept.
And also in general, you know, I also talked to him around the time.
He really he really understands Bitcoin deeply, which says a lot for somebody who unlike us
doesn't spend 24 seven on Bitcoin Twitter or reading about Bitcoin or working on Bitcoin.
He's a president.
He has a country to run.
He understands it very, very well.
And so when Bitcoin tanked after the Bitcoin law went into effect, he could have said,
oh, OK, yeah, that didn't work out.
Let's just like quietly get rid of this and shine and light on other things that we're
doing.
They did not do that.
They they hodled their way.
They stacked their way through the bear market.
And now they're going to reap the rewards.
And now the rest of the world is going to go look and probably it's going to go the same
way like, oh, they're so lucky.
But they're going to look and they're going to be like, oh, you know, we might copy that.
El Salvador had nobody to copy El Salvador was the first.
And they had to they had a very rough start because they started through a bear market.
And now, you know, this is it's very glorious that they're going to see like they're going
to get they're going to reap the rewards now.
And this low time preference is going to pay off big time.
And it is not by it is not a gamble.
It is not by chance.
They knew exactly what they were doing.
And that is so they're not going to get credit for that.
But we know we know they're bad as.
Amen.
You know, that is, I think that's a very glorious note to to wrap things up on because your time
is like Bitcoin is scarce.
So I want to thank you for sharing that scarce time because Bitcoin podcasts are very abundant.
So thank you for coming on this one.
It's really been a pleasure.
It's been great to chat with you to hear the story.
It makes me want to go back to El Salvador again, because it's been too long.
This time we'll have a new member of our family and tell them we go can't wait to give him
his first papusa.
He's going to he's going to love it.
Yeah, he's he's a cool little guy.
But before we close out, just anywhere you want to link your Twitter and your noster
and the website.
Is there anywhere else that people should should go?
It's the website is let's see.
It's just the little Holdler.com.
Yeah.
If they want to get one of these bad boys.
Twitter is my very German name, which is, you know, at this point, just read it in the
show notes, I guess, because well, I was you say say the German name, you know, you're
still proud of your German heritage, you know, so it's it's all good.
Lena Zeichel.
Nobody can pronounce it.
Zeichel.
Okay.
It was decent.
Decent.
Say that again.
Zeichel.
Oh my God.
Yes.
Oh my God.
I am.
That was great.
I'm glad.
See, now I know how to say it when I'm doing the intro for the show, you know, this was
actually just a trick to make sure I wasn't going to butcher butcher your last name.
So I was like, I can say Lena just fine, but Zeichel.
Okay.
Now, if I say it too many times, I'm going to start screwing it up.
So I've got to just I've got to take the win here.
But I'm so happy.
But I'll I'll I'll link all this in the show notes.
It's really been a pleasure and looking forward to seeing you in person.
I'm sure maybe at a conference or perhaps in El Salvador again.
Wait, it's been very long.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast.
If you are a Bitcoin only company interested in sponsoring another fucking Bitcoin podcast,
head to Bitcoin podcast.net or hit me up on social media on noster.
Head to primal.net slash Walker and on Twitter search for at Walker America or at TIT coin
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Bitcoin is scarce.
There will only ever be 21 million.
But Bitcoin podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast.
Until next time, stay free.