Bitcoin Meets Conscious Living in Costa Rica

What's up, y'all? Who here has been to Costa Rica? Who here has been to El Salvador? All right. Not the same.

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We are about to make the argument that Costa Rica is probably the best place to spend your Bitcoin in the world. I will die on the hill that Costa Rica is worthy of your Bitcoin for the lifestyle that it allows us to live.

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We have Lee here, who made it easy to spend Bitcoin. He made the Bitcoin Jungle app down there, and it has spread throughout the whole country. We have Sergio, who will tell us how to get Bitcoin into the country if you're talking about large amounts, whale-sized. And we have Ben, who has something in his portfolio possibly more worthy than Bitcoin, so he is going to explore that later on.

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First of all, I live completely on a Bitcoin standard down in Costa Rica. Zero fiat, even to get gas and everything. Lee made that possible. What is unique about Costa Rica and the app that makes it possible?

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Thanks, Paul. Hey, guys. My name is Lee. I am one of the co-founders of Bitcoin Jungle, which is a circular economy project in Costa Rica. We initially based it on the idea of Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador. I visited there in 2021. I loved the idea. I went back to my home in Costa Rica and started to think about how we could apply that to my town.

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We stood up some open source technology and started the Bitcoin Jungle wallet. It is a Lightning-capable wallet, easy to use, just like the Bitcoin Beach or Blink wallet. We started orange pilling merchants around our town. Initially, it started at our local farmers market and allowed us to buy all of our food with sats day to day.

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Over time, we partnered with a company called Bull Bitcoin, which links Bitcoin through Lightning to the local mobile money system of Costa Rica. Essentially, if you have a bank account in Costa Rica, you can send fiat to just a phone number and the money arrives instantly in the other person's account. The issue is that foreigners cannot use that system, and that is really limiting for someone like me who moved to this country and wants to participate in the local economy.

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So we partnered with Bull Bitcoin. Now you can use Bitcoin, but it gets delivered to any business in the country as fiat instantly for less than 1% in fees. This allows you to live 100% on the Bitcoin standard. If you go to a business and they do not take Bitcoin yet, you can still pay them in Bitcoin and they get fiat.

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What is funny is that before Bull Bitcoin came in with this offramp, Lee used to walk around the farmers market and cash people out. He used to be the one-man bank.

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Exactly. For something to be considered sound money, it has to be exchangeable with other forms of money. Costa Rica at that time did not have any exchange that was available to people. I would go around orange pilling anyone who would listen to me, and they would say, cool, can I pay my rent with it? I would say, well, I am working on it. What is your landlord's phone number? We can talk about it. But there had to be a better way.

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To put this into practice, this is the tool that makes it possible if you want to live off your Bitcoin. At a gas station, you just put in a phone number and you are getting gas with your Bitcoin. It is a really useful tool.

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With that comes the question: what does the government think about all this? Why is Costa Rica Bitcoin-friendly from a government perspective? What do we want more of? What do we want less of? Maybe compare it to El Salvador, Dubai, and places around the world.

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It is a pleasure to be here. I am Sergio. I also lead a family office community, so I am always engaged with high-net-worth individuals, with Bitcoin, and with traditional finance.

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There are places like El Salvador, Dubai, Switzerland, and Thailand that are doing specific regulation for crypto, grace periods, taxation, and everything. It is super interesting what they are doing. But the interesting thing about Costa Rica is that, in my opinion, they implemented somehow the best regulation model, and the best regulation model is no regulation.

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Why? Because the government has not seen a threat or shown much interest in Bitcoin or crypto in general. So we are working with a traditional and long-term model. For example, Costa Rica has a territorial taxation model. Income that is generated outside of the country has no taxes. This is super important because we are not talking about a grace period for Bitcoiners. In this case, you have Bitcoin, you use international or foreign exchanges, and when you bring money in, there is no taxation on Bitcoin, equities, securities, anything like that. That is a really interesting thing.

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The second thing regarding the government is the political stability that we have had over decades. Recently, we had a presidential election. It does not matter which candidate you choose, because nothing dramatic happens. That has been the history of Costa Rica.

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In the case of El Salvador, for example, I am a super fan of what Bukele is doing, and it is amazing. But people have asked me, hey, it is great, but what happens if, for some reason, he is not there anymore? What happens if the opposition comes back? Hopefully that does not happen, but let us run that scenario. In the case of Costa Rica, it does not matter in the same way.

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Another example is Dubai. I have a lot of good friends and clients there. It was probably designed for high-net-worth individuals and Bitcoiners to spend their life with no taxation and everything. But what happens if there is a war, or even bombs nearby? No one would have imagined that six months ago. In Costa Rica, for those of you who do not know, we do not even have an army. This is why, for example, the pura vida lifestyle matters. If there is a war or a global conflict, no one will really look to Costa Rica. We are in a strategic position, and that is amazing.

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What we are encouraging is: we have the best regulation, because there is no regulation. Combined with a lot of value-added factors that our country has, it makes Costa Rica one of the best places to live on the internet.

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Another question I always get is whether you can buy a house with Bitcoin, buy real estate with Bitcoin, or buy property with Bitcoin. Ben helps guide people through that, and Sergio does as well. Can you talk through that process and what that looks like?

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My name is Ben. I run a consulting company, Secret Keys, to help people relocate to Costa Rica, find the right properties, and make informed decisions when they want to make the move.

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I have been in Costa Rica for 10 years. I have been through all of the processes of what it takes to be an expat and move there. I have bought property, sold property, built houses, sold houses. I have had kids there and relocated my family there, the whole nine yards. I have been through every step of the way.

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I was there before these guys arrived and brought this whole Bitcoin revolution. For me, it was just the icing on the cake. It was like, wow, now I am finally living my best life here in Costa Rica, and I can live 100% on Bitcoin. It is amazing.

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What the app cannot do is what Sergio and his company can do, which is make large-scale transactions happen by helping you offramp your Bitcoin, acting as escrow basically, and finishing your property acquisition for you. They can do it on a huge scale, which makes it possible to bypass some of the normal strict escrow-company source-of-funds problems that we have when doing things overseas. Sergio, tell us a little bit more about how that works.

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I would like to add something more. I want to quote Michael Saylor's speech from yesterday. If you did not see it, please go and look it up.

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You cannot buy bananas with MicroStrategy. Continue.

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Long story short, what he is saying is that part of the volatility is because Bitcoin holders need to buy a house, pay college, buy a car, and they need to sell their Bitcoin. They need to break the Bitcoin rule, which is never sell your Bitcoin. In the case of MicroStrategy, what they are doing is giving liquidity so you are able to have liquidity and everything.

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I am quoting that because the majority of the transactions we have been doing for the last months are with people respecting the first law of Bitcoin: never sell your Bitcoin. We are helping people use their Bitcoin as collateral and get liquidity against their Bitcoin. With that liquidity, they can buy the asset: the $3 million house, the $5 million house, the yacht, the jet, the portfolio. We have been working with people who want to do a lot of things, but they keep the Bitcoin.

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This is super important for two main reasons. First, because there is no taxable event. They are not selling the asset. They are just getting debt against the asset. That is super important.

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Second, once Bitcoin starts its appreciation, according to Michael Saylor's presentation yesterday, over the last five years Bitcoin appreciation has been 30% a year. In round numbers, every three years you get 100%. So if you are able to buy a house using Bitcoin as collateral and you plan long term, in dollar terms that house will eventually be almost free, and you still have your Bitcoin.

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What we do, basically, is understand the requirement of the client, usually whales who want to live in a blue zone in Costa Rica and think about longevity. One example is Jack Dorsey, who is presenting today. He spends a lot of his time in Santa Teresa. Another person is the CEO of BTC Media, who also lives in Costa Rica and spends a lot of time there.

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We are able to review the Bitcoin on the blockchain to make sure the coins are clean. We understand the transaction. We do a Bitcoin-backed loan. If for some reason they do not want to use it as collateral, we are able to offer other options. We use a regulated escrow, bring the funds to Costa Rica, and do the payment locally or internationally. We have done real estate transactions from $200,000 up to $50 million. There are multiple ways to complement the amazing thing that Lee is doing for day-to-day and retail payments.

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Let us get back into the day-to-day, boots-on-the-ground work of spreading Bitcoin in countries that were not as fortunate to be born into places like the United States with our financial privilege. What is the pitch? How do you start a circular economy?

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Lee is humble, but he is a unique human who was able to do this. He has the technical ability to build an app. He also speaks perfect Spanish, looks like a pure gringo, and had good relationships with people in the town for a while. What is your pitch to a vendor, and how did this thing start?

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Our pitch is a little bit different than what started at Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador. El Salvador has the unbanked problem. A large percentage of El Salvador did not have access to a bank account. A tool like Bitcoin would enable people to save their first $500, and that was the basis of the pitch at the beginning of Bitcoin Beach.

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Costa Rica is a little bit different. Costa Ricans have access to bank accounts. Actually, almost every bank in the country is a dual-currency bank. They operate in dollars and the colón. So that was not the issue.

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The issue in Costa Rica is connecting foreigners, specifically tourists, with businesses. Historically, the only way to do that has been through credit cards. For a multitude of reasons, the barrier to entry for getting access to a credit card terminal for a Costa Rican business is quite high. It can cost $5,000 a year just to get a credit card machine. For a banana seller on the side of the road, or the person we get raw dairy from every week, $5,000 is way too high of a barrier to entry. That leaves them only available to cash. And of course, going to an ATM in Central America is hit or miss. Sometimes there is just no cash.

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I have not been to an ATM in years. I am not even kidding. It is amazing.

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Exactly. So our pitch to small business owners in Costa Rica is that through Bitcoin, it connects them to a market of tourists and expats who visit and live in Costa Rica. A huge part of the Costa Rican economy is based on tourism, so this is really attractive to them.

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We also have our merchant map, so it is free marketing and free publicity for them. It turns out to be a pretty simple conversation. We actually start our conversations with people in Costa Rica about medium of exchange, not store of value. That is the inverse of what is typical in North America. If you want to talk to your family and friends about Bitcoin, you talk fixed supply, number go up, all that great stuff. But what really hits in Costa Rica is medium of exchange. We start from that, and then after they get Bitcoin and have seen it grow over time in their wallet, we start talking store of value and what I believe is the true value proposition of Bitcoin over the long term.

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Which is number go up and freedom. To add to that, we also have a little commercial going on in Costa Rica. I also wanted to mention that we have an office now where people can come in and we teach about Bitcoin.

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Having a real physical presence in a community is integral to building trust around Bitcoin and around what I do in Costa Rica. We opened an office right in the middle of town. We have a giant Bitcoin Jungle sign. It is open to the public, completely free of charge. We give away free hardware wallets. Thank you, Jack at Bitkey. We train people how to use them. We talk about self custody.

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We offer a Bitcoin education course in English and Spanish, based on material pioneered in El Salvador. Between these services, the educational content, and the hardware wallets, we have been able to build a lot of trust in our community. People know where to find me. They can come say hi, ask a question, and we are there.

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What really blows their mind is that we do not charge any money for this. People get really nervous when they walk into the office because they think we are lying and that we are going to hit them with a bill at the end. Then when they realize the whole meeting was actually completely free, they are really excited to start using Bitcoin in their life.

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That is amazing. Let us shift a little bit to lifestyle. Lee and Sergio, describe pura vida.

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Pura vida, for me, if you do not know, is the national motto of Costa Rica, and it is something that is unique to every individual. What I have learned living in Costa Rica for the past six years is that pura vida is taking the good with the bad and just enjoying life for every moment. Even if it is a bad moment, you can usually find a little bit of beauty in it.

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For me, it is a way to have a very natural lifestyle while combining it with amazing business. This is a real case: I have been in a blue zone where people are focused on longevity and living more than 100 years, while also meeting with billion-dollar family offices, barefoot, with your feet on the ground, doing amazing business while you listen to the sea and are connected with nature. That is something great, because it does not matter how much money you make if you do not have the time and the health to enjoy it. Your numbers do not matter.

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Ben, what is more valuable than Bitcoin?

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Everybody is wondering, because you are not supposed to say something like that here at the Bitcoin conference. It is the end all, be all. But the thing that brought me to Costa Rica more than anything was this: I was living in Asia, India, Indonesia, Australia, all over the world, having a pretty adventurous lifestyle. When I started my family and was raising my kids, I was like, this Asia situation is a little bit problematic. There is too much overpopulation and too much pollution. My kids are breathing plastic fires, and I thought, no, this is not going to work out. I have to find somewhere better to be.

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I work remote, so I can live anywhere. I literally scoured the planet. I went everywhere you could possibly go, trying to find the best place that had everything you need in balance: not too remote, not too inside the system, still on the fringe of reality but not too far outside. To be honest, I found Costa Rica to be the perfect balance because it has community. You cannot move your wife and kids somewhere where there is nobody. It is not going to work out. You have to have community. You have to have clean water, clean air, and clean food. That was the main thing I was looking for.

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The first thing I did when I went to Costa Rica was plant a food forest. Who has a food forest in their portfolio? Anyone? We got one guy. Nice. Let us talk after. Lee has one too. I have one, and my trees are all fruiting now. I have a 20-acre farm with over a thousand fruit trees. I have gravity-fed spring water, so if they turn off the electricity on the planet, I am still going to have water flowing exactly where it needs to go. No need for a pump, no need for support from the grid or supply chains.

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Let us talk about these delicate supply chains. As you know, we are in this war zone, and things are going weird in the economy. I tell you, in Costa Rica, it is the last place people are going to starve. We import things, but we do not need them. If we had to live on what we have in Costa Rica, we are still going to be healthy. There are not many places on the planet that can really claim that.

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For me, that was a really cool thing. I am not trying to be doom and gloom or say it is the end of the world, but I like to have my ducks in a row. I like to have what I call my ultimate insurance policy, which is this food forest. At the end of the day, if I want to go there, retire, and live on the fruit of the land, I can do it right now.

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It is also a really fun way to integrate with my family. I bring them out there. My kids love it. We run around the farm and ask, what fruits are fruiting right now? What is going on? We go with buckets and collect all the food. It is so much fun and so amazing.

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Some people might think that sounds really hard to accomplish, like a really big deal or really expensive. Actually, it is not. It is totally scalable from small to large scale. You can get a rural piece of land for really cheap, like barren land that might have been a cattle field. It is a regenerative project. You plant the farm full of fruit trees, and really the only thing you have to do is watch them grow. There is no irrigation required. It rains plenty. The only thing you need to do is chop it back and make sure the jungle does not take it over.

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It is a very passive farming system that creates huge abundance. At the same time, the property is going up in value over time, not only at the normal market rate, but because you have trees that have value growing on them as well. It is a win-win-win. You are banking your money somewhere that you are never going to lose it, kind of like leveraging your Bitcoin to buy property. You are not spending your Bitcoin, and you are also not really spending your Bitcoin to have this food forest because it is going to hold its value and always be there for you. You pass it down to your kids, and they always have this safety net.

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For me, that is what really turned me on to Costa Rica. That is why I went there in the first place. Being able to live on Bitcoin now at the same time is just the cherry on top. The lifestyle we have there is incredible. Paul and I are surfing at 6 a.m. almost every day. I try to get out there more than I am able to, but I have to bring my kids to school. He is out there. We are loving it.

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During Covid, I already had all of this set up. When Covid hit, I was like, I have my food forest. What is everybody going to do right now? I am going to go surfing. It is going to be chill. I am just so grateful to have found this life. It is an honor to share it with you. I want to inspire you all that this is attainable for you. If you work remote, you can live in paradise. There is no reason why you should not, and your nervous system will thank you.

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It is beautiful. I see places like this in Central America where it is apt for human thriving. It is warm all year round. There is ripe fruit all year round. It is abundant. It is bound to blow up.

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The point of us being here is that we think it is inevitable. I think it is amazing that the Bitcoin piece is already there, because we think that is also inevitable. Sergio and Ben are here to help guide you if you are legitimately thinking about coming down. If you are coming down to visit Bitcoin Jungle, hit me up. You know where to find me.

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I made a movie with my buddy, no sponsors, nothing. The trailer is playing in a second. It is called Hummingbird, and it tells the story of Bitcoin Jungle.

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We are witnessing this shift where we are basically pulling the rug from below the feet of this class of people that are abusing others.

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I have lived with and worked with indigenous cultures all over this planet. Every one of them has a prophecy that we have now arrived at a time of tremendous transformation.

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The project started at a local organic farmers market founded by Hannah and her mother.

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The prophecy says that back in the midst of history, human society decided to go on two different paths. One was the path of the Eagle, which is the path of the mind. The other is the path of the Condor, the path of the heart.

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Points to eliminate the banks entirely.

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The prophecy goes on to say that we would arrive at a time when the potential for the two to come together could create a whole new level of consciousness. This time is now.

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It is now. Thank you, everybody. Amazing. We will be right back here if you want to come talk to any of us.