Members of the Píntag Amaru community close a trade with each other by using bitcoin as a currency. Among his plans are to connect with other communities through BTC.
Is Bitcoin (BTC) the best alternative to improve the economic situation of small communities with just a few resources in Latin America? After Bitcoin Beach, based in El Salvador, the situation got revealed as a possibility. Initiatives that point in this direction have begun to appear repeatedly in the region. Now, these initiatives arrive in Ecuador, led by businessman Mauricio Rubio.
The bitcoin began a matter of about six months ago, in the middle of the year 2021, an education and community organization project with bitcoin in a rural place located on the slopes of the Antisana volcano near Valencia, more than an hour and a half from Quito, the capital of the South American nation.
There are just less than one hundred families that belong to Píntag Amaru, which Rubio describes as an agroecological peasant community. These communities try to defend self-sustainability and reforestation.
Even before the irruption of bitcoin in their lives, these families were organized bodies working together in the community. These groups lead community jobs and projects that favor the well-being of all, including a savings fund, which is now in BTC.
Curiously, Rubio leads a podcast where he shared thoughts about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. He said one day, a woman who works for him at home told him that she had heard an episode and her entire community had heard it too.
The Key is Education
The official has been in bitcoin since 2016. And although he got in badly (he fell into a pyramid scam), he was investigating more and learning about this tool that, according to him, offers freedom and many possibilities that would improve the way people live on earth.
The official also learned about the so-called Bitcoin Beach, a community project based in the beach area of El Zonte, El Salvador. The representative showed a lot of interest in what was happening in that region, and even before the Central American country approved bitcoin as legal tender, he went to see first-hand the experience of El Zonte. The experience served as inspiration for the creation of the Bitcoin Law.
In this educational effort, these communities are moving step by step. Among other subjects, Rubio highlighted that the project is getting promoted by himself only with the people in the community.
But even so, what started as a simple movement of the fiat money savings to bitcoin now includes the use of the Lightning network, and trade between community members is entirely in bitcoin. They still need fiat money once they get out of that little bitcoin bubble because, in the rest of the country, the use of cryptocurrency is still rare, and there are still certain things that need to get known.
By: Jenson Nuñez
