60 minutes overtime this week on 60 minutes we reported on bitcoin beach a small coastal town
in el salvador called alzante that has created a bitcoin economy it's one of the first places in
the world you can use the cryptocurrency bitcoin to pay for just about anything mike peterson is
the man who started the bitcoin beach initiative the goal from the beginning was to create a
circular economy with bitcoin where the store is accepting it but then they're turning around and
paying their employee in bitcoin and then their employee can pay their water bill in bitcoin and
do it electronically rather than having to go to the you know water office and wait in line
and so that was the goal was circular economy with bitcoin and everybody said we couldn't do
it but you know you guys are here and you see the results to make it happen peterson needed
to get locals on board with his plan he got help when out of the blue someone offered to launch a
better bitcoin wallet app in elzonte chris hunter is a tech entrepreneur who saw an opportunity to
deliver a faster and cheaper way to transact with bitcoin using the new lightning network before
connecting with mike peterson and bitcoin beach he'd shopped his idea at a venture capitalist
who told him he was five years ahead of his time they acknowledged that the technology existed but
they thought it was simply academic or not usable for people in the real world in the year 2020. so
how did you get here after we got rejected from literally every venture capitalist that we
approached in summer 2020 we had read about mike peterson and forbes we had heard him not speak on
a podcast so we cold called him he had no idea we existed and we said hey let us build for you pro
bono some custom tech to support this community initiative that you're trying to get going to
support or create a circular bitcoin economy what was the problem you were solving here with the
way bitcoin was being used at the point you came here people didn't have a solution here in terms
of just a simple easy to use wallet that allowed them to do two things number one save their money
and then spend their money the vast majority of individuals here have never had a bank account the
vast majority of the merchants here and businesses don't have a credit card terminal or anything that
approximates that so in a cash economy introducing something novel like bitcoin and a wallet there
you have to have a good user experience in order for them to actually adopt it otherwise
they'll just push it to the side what was the user experience like in early days of bitcoin
here in el salvador and what's it like now well in the early days i think a lot of the times
it was um slow and expensive and so much is that there were on-chain bitcoin transactions right and
so you can send money on the bitcoin protocol but it typically takes 30 minutes for final settlement
which if you're buying a coffee or paying for lunch is not very effective if you're waiting
around for 30 minutes for the transaction to say check out your money okay and so we
introduced a new wallet building on lightning right and lightning is a layer on top of bitcoin
that allows for these effectively free instant settlements right something that's actually faster
than a credit card transaction right and that's the essence of the technology
behind the wallet that we brought to alzante chris hunter's bitcoin beach wallet is the most popular
way to use bitcoin in el zonte the experience of using it feels similar to venmo or apple pay
even though you're paying with bitcoin the wallet shows you the value of the transaction
in whatever currency you're used to so you know exactly how much you're spending it also includes
a map that shows users which vendors accept bitcoin it all feels very high tech for a beach
town with no paved roads but chris hunter and mike peterson are betting that if it works here
it may be a sign of things to come everywhere else this is a postcard from the future to show the
world that bitcoin is money and everyday people can use it as such they're using this advanced
money and an advanced wallet that's more advanced than many of us are using in the us
you