After four years of building, My First Bitcoin is proud to announce its next chapter: a transition from leading Bitcoin education locally to empowering communities worldwide with support and tools.
A transition from being teachers in one country, to providing tools and resources to educators everywhere.
From Local Roots to Global Reach
Founded in 2021, we began as a pioneering project in independent education in El Salvador. Since then, we have taught more than 27,000 students in person, the vast majority in El Salvador.
Now, after months of preparation, we are ready to go beyond borders, as founder John Dennehy explains:
“Our ambition was always to change the world, but we had to start with a single student, then a single city, then a single nation and now we are ready to raise the potential impact from 6 million people to 8 billion.
It’s a huge jump, and that’s why we are focusing on empowering educators and projects everywhere, rather than trying to do it ourselves. We want to help others get started and be successful in their own communities, then link everyone together to create a global movement.”
Mission Refocus
While we go global, we will stay grounded in our bold mission: to work towards a free society in which individuals have agency in their lives, achieved through independent Bitcoin education. With Bitcoin being the ultimate tool for prosperity and freedom, we aim to empower humanity.
When people have more control over their own life, it allows them to look farther into the future, and that has profoundly positive second order effects for the individual. Bitcoin brings this control over your finances.
A New Direction
With full transparency and gratitude to our community, we want to share a few key updates that mark this new phase:
Rebranding: The organization will move forward globally as My First Bitcoin, retiring the local name Mi Primer Bitcoin.
New Roles, New Leadership: The team has been restructured with new roles and directors to reflect this global mission. While some members shift their focus to the global scene, new members are added to double down on our mission: Open Source Bitcoin Education for the World.
Empowering Others: Our new focus is teaching the teachers; creating the tools, systems, and guidance for everyone that wants to start their own Bitcoin education initiatives: circular economies, meetups and community builders. Empowering those who empower others.
Node Network Expansion: We’re focusing even more on the Node Network, a self-governing network of independent educators and community builders worldwide that are already using our open source resources. As of today, this network consists of over 70 projects from 38 countries.
Focus on Curricula: As we transition into a more facilitating role, we will double down on building and improving new and existing curricula, for all audiences.
Social Layer: We focus more and more on creating spaces for educators to come together, connect and share best practices, such as Unconferences (for the public) and General Assemblies (for the Node Network). This is not only resembled in physical spaces to meet, but also the creation of new digital tools, platforms and spaces.
Remote-First: As part of this shift, we’ll be closing our physical office in El Salvador and moving to a fully remote, globally distributed structure.
Community Handover: Our weekly and monthly meetups in San Salvador will now be owned and run by a collective of local projects, My First Bitcoin steps back, and empowers others to take initiative. We’ve also created an open-source blueprint for meetups and Unconferences for anyone to replicate these events anywhere in the world.
End of Public School Program: As of spring 2025, My First Bitcoin is no longer operating within El Salvador’s public schools. After running dozens of cohorts, and training hundreds of teachers, our collaboration with the Ministry of Education has ended.
Looking Ahead
We’re deeply grateful for the years spent in El Salvador and where we learned many lessons on how to grow a grassroots, independent, and impartial educational movement.
We invite the global Bitcoin community, educators, meetup organizers, builders, and circular economies, to join us in writing the next chapter. Reach out if you want to join the network, are in need of certain resources or would benefit from curricula, structures, frameworks or tools.
Together, we’ll make My First Bitcoin not just a program, but a movement.
Onwards.
For questions and media enquiries: arnold@myfirstbitcoin.io
