“Someone needs to be the keeper and reiterator of the vision. There’s a ton of work to do. When you have to walk a thousand miles and have only taken the first step, it feels like a long way. It really helps if there is someone saying, ‘We are one step closer, and the goal is not a mirage.’” -Steve Jobs
Stacy Herbert, Director of the National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) of the Office of the President of El Salvador, shared the above quote with me, while beaming with both pride and resolve, at the onset of my interview with her.
It’s clear that Herbert is on a mission, a mission that started in 2010 when she and her partner, Max Keiser, first discovered Bitcoin and became some of the earliest spokespeople for it soon after. This mission now includes the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, as well as the bureaucracy and citizens of El Salvador, which has colloquially become known as “Bitcoin country” in Bitcoin circles.
By many metrics, The Bitcoin Office has already achieved much success since its founding in December 2022. It’s stockpiled 5,836 bitcoin on behalf of the country. It’s educated 80,000 Salvadoran civil servants on what Bitcoin is and why it’s important. It’s helped implement Bitcoin education from kindergarten to university levels through programs like Mi Primer Bitcoin and CUBO+. And it’s attracted entrepreneurs, investors and other bright minds to the country.
While Herbert is proud of these accomplishments, she’s not one to rest on her laurels, especially since she believes that El Salvador’s best days still lie ahead. She has a vision that further Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador will set the stage for a new renaissance, one that will uplift Salvadorans and continue to attract the world’s best to the country. Given the obstacles she’s overcome since first arriving in the country three years ago, it’s difficult to believe she won’t continue to do her part to make this new era for El Salvador happen.
Getting Started in El Salvador
Herbert arrived with Keiser in El Salvador toward the latter part of 2021, near the height of that same year’s bitcoin bull market. Euphoria gave way to despair into 2022, though, when bitcoin’s price tanked in part as a result of broader meltdown in the crypto space.
“When we first arrived three years ago, bitcoin hit $69,000 and then it proceeded to tumble down to something like $16,000,” Herbert told Bitcoin Magazine.
This left Herbert and Keiser tasked with the challenge of explaining to Salvadorans that the collapse of major crypto companies didn’t mean that Bitcoin was dead, nor that it was a mirage.
“FTX collapsed, BlockFi collapsed, and Celsius collapsed,” explained Herbert. “When they saw all those collapses, they thought that it was the same thing as Bitcoin — all these scams, all these frauds.”
Herbert recalled the importance of steering El Salvador in a bitcoin-not-crypto path at that time.
“There were two paths: You could be crypto country or you could be Bitcoin country,” said Herbert.
“With crypto country, you’re competing with Vegas; you’re competing with Macau. The house always wins in those situations. And that’s the same thing if you have a crypto economy. You have some wealthy guys who run the house. The pre-mines, the chip owners, the chip dispensers, they always win,” she added, making the point that she didn’t want to see El Salvador exploited by the crypto industry.
“Or you could go down the route of what Switzerland was to gold, or New York became to US Treasuries. You could build capital markets. You could build an economy. You could build a Singapore 2.0, an Alexandria 2.0, a Florence 2.0. We pushed for this vision.”
Renaissance 2.0
In the vision that Herbert shares with President Bukele and Keiser, a senior advisor to Bukele, El Salvador is in the early stages of ushering in one of the greatest eras of human flourishing the world has ever seen.
Much like the Renaissance, which occurred in what is now northern Italy just over 500 years ago, El Salvador is setting the stage for its own explosion of entrepreneurship and creativity by adopting that hardest money ever known to man.
“Florence first didn’t just didn’t have DaVinci and Michelangelo and Botticelli and all of the architects, the discoverers, the explorers, the astronomers, and then find perfect money,” explained Herbert.
“They found the perfect money of the time — the Florin — and that led to a positive feedback loop of ever more wealth concentrating in Florence versus the other city states of what is now Italy and other regions across Europe,” she added, before sharing that great artists, businesspeople and thinkers flocked to Florence in the wake of its becoming a commercial center.
“We think that same sort of process could happen in El Salvador.”
Embracing Bukele’s Vision
Herbert shared repeatedly in our discussion how El Salvador’s transformation couldn’t have happened without the leadership of Bukele, whose approval rating amongst Salvadorans is still above 90%, making him one of the most popular presidents in the world.
A challenge for the ONBTC now, she claims, is getting the rest of the country to see and embrace his vision.
“You can’t just have President Bukele [believing in Bitcoin],” explained Herbert.
“You need at least a portion of his 80,000 civil servants to understand what he is actually trying to achieve. Remember, as the keeper of the vision, we have to pull everybody along to understand President Bukele’s vision for El Salvador,” she added.
In efforts to get the rest of the country on board, Herbert has hired well-known Bitcoin figures to educate and train Salvadoran Bitcoin developers as well as members of the Salvadoran government.
This work started with Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song coming to El Salvador in March 2022 (before the ONBTC was officially established) to teach developers how to work on Bitcoin Core.
“Jimmy Song taught his Bitcoin course to seven Salvadorans,” recalled Herbert. “One of them was a guy named Mario Flamenco, who ended up becoming my assistant, my number two at the Bitcoin office.”
Giacomo Zucco also came on board to not only teach developers, but also provided three days of Bitcoin education to El Salvador’s civil servants. Herbert explained that the educational efforts are not just to provide El Salvador’s bureaucrats with a deep technical knowledge of Bitcoin, but to reshape their mindset.
“They’re the people that interact with the population,” said Herbert of El Salvador’s civil servants, “so, they need to understand why they are Bitcoin country in terms of the mindset.”
Herbert often referred to the importance of mindset during our discussion. She explained that the work the ONBTC does is about more than just helping people to understand what Bitcoin is, but it’s about mentally and emotionally prepping them to be great.
“In order to be extraordinary, [you have to have] people in the government and in the population who are ready to be extraordinary,” she said.
“We’re training a population to have the mindset to be Florence 2.0, to be Singapore 2.0 — to be something extraordinary,” she added.
“You need everybody to be on the same page in terms of just how important they are. What we’re doing here is extraordinary. What President Bukele has delivered to the country is quite extraordinary.”
Passport Programs
Through ONBTC, Bukele is prepping Salvadorans for great things, while through El Salvador’s passport programs, he’s looking to attract those who have a track record of doing great things.
On April 6, 2024, Bukele announced that El Salvador would issue 5,000 passports to the likes of scientists, doctors and even philosophers.
We're offering 5,000 free passports (equivalent to $5 billion in our passport program) to highly skilled scientists, engineers, doctors, artists, and philosophers from abroad.
This represents less than 0.1% of our population, so granting them full citizen status, including…
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 6, 2024
As Bukele shared in his tweet, these 5,000 passports are technically worth $5 billion. El Salvador now issues passports nearly instantly for those who make a $1 million investment in the country with either BTC or USDT.
While this program was designed to attract top talent from abroad, it also had positive effects on the psychology of the Salvadoran people, according to Herbert.
“What we did with the million dollar price tag worked,” said Herbert.
“If you go back, Salvadoran people started saying, ‘My God, some people were paying $10,000 to coyotes to take them over the border in the US, and my passport is worth $1 million.’ Even if a thousand Salvadorans think that, it changes the mindset enough that it’s a critical seed of change,” she added.
What’s Next for The Bitcoin Office?
Herbert said that ONBTC has some big announcements coming in the next three to four weeks. For now, though, the ONBTC is focused on unveiling the first Bitcoin banks, which she believes will help El Salvador build capital markets.
“Bitcoin banks will come here, and we’ll start seriously building the capital markets that are needed — like we’ve laid the foundation for greatness over the past 21 months,” said Herbert.
Beyond Bitcoin banks, Herbert seems confident that the sky’s the limit as far as what comes next for El Salvador. Thanks to the ONBTC, a foundation has been set for the revitalization of the country.
“We have the education, we have the mindset, we have the rebrand — the greatest rebrand in history — as I call it for El Salvador, and we have an increasing amount of popularity for President Bukele, because he keeps winning,” she said. “We’ve walked a thousand miles in the last 21 months, and we now have another thousand-mile journey to start.”
Editor’s note: We normally profile founders of startups for our Founders series, but, this week, we chose to profile the head of a government institution who’s led that institutions since its inception.