El Salvador shook the world in 2021 when President Nayib Bukele made bitcoin (BTC) legal tender, giving the cryptocurrency the same status as the U.S. dollar, the Central American nation’s official currency.Since then, El Salvador has constituted a bitcoin reserve worth roughly $630 million, established one of the most advanced crypto regulatory frameworks in the world, promised to issue $1 billion in bitcoin-backed government bonds and even convinced stablecoin giant Tether to relocate its headquarters to the country.But one of the country’s most rewarding successes has been its extensive Bitcoin-centric education program, according to Stacy Herbert, director of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office.“Bitcoin country needs Bitcoin engineers, right? We’re producing them, and it’s a long manufacturing process, but it’s creating a wonderful positive feedback loop,” Herbert told CoinDesk in an interview. “They graduate, they get jobs, they all become friends. … You can feel a tech vibe emerging in San Salvador.”The idea, Herbert said, is that when massive companies like Tether or Bitfinex decide to relocate their headquarters or open offices in El Salvador, they have no issue finding the highly-educated workforce necessary to run their operations.“A lot of students are finding ample opportunity to work at these companies because there’s huge demand [for them],” Herbert said. The quality of the Salvadorans’ Bitcoin education incites even more firms to consider El Salvador as a jurisdiction in which to set up shop, and that, she continued, motivates more students to study Bitcoin.President Bukele has a “vision for a renaissance. Singapore 2.0. Florence 2.0. How do you get there? You need to build a strategy,” Herbert said. “You need the talent pool. You need smart, optimistic, bright people. And that’s what we have here in El Salvador.”Herbert is a longtime bitcoiner — she was one of the first people to talk about the cryptocurrency on international television back in 2010. She came to El Salvador in 2021 with her husband Max Keiser soon after bitcoin was made legal tender and almost immediately spun up an educational program, CUBO+, to train Bitcoin developers in the country. Bukele subsequently selected her to run the Bitcoin Office, which was formally established in November 2022.The Bitcoin Office advises on policy and legislation and does marketing for El Salvador’s bitcoin initiatives. But the first thing Herbert did upon her appointment was to work on bringing Bitcoin education into high schools. The program initially targeted only five institutions but has now been rolled out on a nationwide level.Students are shown how to set up Bitcoin and Lightning Network nodes, and the technical details behind ASICs — specialized computers exclusively used to produce bitcoin. The ASIC lessons in particular have been met with enthusiasm, Herbert said. “They were able to hold something, and that really helped them understand
Sab. Gen 18th, 2025
