#25 - El Salvador's National Bitcoin Office

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Stacy, welcome to the Network State Conference. Thank you for speaking on behalf of the government of El Salvador. Great to have you here.

Stacy Herbert (0:05)

It's great to be here. You know, I posted this on X and people are so excited to watch it. So I can't wait to get into this interview.

SPEAKER_1 (0:14)

Amazing. So, you know, as we know, El Salvador was put on the map by President Bukele over the last four years, had a meteoric ascent. Nobody really talked about it or cared about it before 2021 2020 And now, you know, it's a start up country. Why don't you tell me a little bit about El Salvador and then yourself and your position there?

Stacy Herbert (0:36)

So first of all, my name is Stacy Herbert and I am the director of the National Bitcoin Office of El Salvador.

I am in El Salvador because El Salvador is Bitcoin country. As you mentioned, that's the beginning of a network sort of state. And the remarkable thing about El Salvador is Bitcoin country. So everybody knows El Salvador is Bitcoin country, right? You know it, your audience knows it, everybody knows this. Now, before that, like literally the month before that, if you had googled El Salvador, all you came up with was El Salvador is homicide capital of the world. After Bitcoin became legal tender, it was El Salvador is Bitcoin country. This is one of the greatest rebrands in history, if not the greatest, to go from murder capital of the world to Bitcoin country within one single day.

SPEAKER_1 (1:31)

Now, the thing is, it wasn't just, it was a rebrand, but it was also a substance.

Stacy Herbert (1:35)

Yes, I was just going to get into that.

SPEAKER_1 (1:36)

Yes, yes. Go ahead.

Stacy Herbert (1:38)

Yeah, I mean, you can't just have a marketing gimmick, especially with Bitcoiners, right? So we have the new layer one capital, we have gold, US treasuries and Bitcoin. So how are you going to get these best and brightest in the world who now have your attention? You have not only the attention of the financial press, right? And that's the most important press in the world, because it's not politics, it's not culture, it's not entertainment, it's not local and domestic, it's international. Wall Street media has international attention, because everybody wants to know what interest rates are, US interest rates are, what the stock market is doing, what gold prices are doing.

This translates internationally. So suddenly, when El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, the world's financial press had to cover El Salvador. They had no choice but to cover El Salvador. They tried to at first be quite flippant and mocking of us, but President Bukele is witty, he's smart, he's charming, he's quite brilliant, and they then couldn't turn away their lens. They kept on focusing on him and hoping he made a mistake, but he didn't. Part of it is because he just kept delivering actual results. It wasn't just a marketing campaign, because if it had been, they would have sussed it out, but they couldn't stop because we did start building real things. And one of the things we started with is that I knew that Bitcoiners would suss it out if it were just a marketing campaign, right? We had to build real things.

SPEAKER_1 (3:17)

And the first thing was the security environment. So that's why I think of him as Bukele Lee Kuan Yew, right? Where the first thing was physical security, and then on top of that, international capitalism. Go ahead.

Stacy Herbert (3:26)

Yeah, sure. You know, I'm actually reading Lee Kuan Yew. I know you're in Singapore, so you are a big fan of what Lee Kuan Yew has done for Singapore. And many people compare El Salvador to Singapore, naturally, because we're two small countries in tropical climate, no resources. Now, I'm reading from Third World to First, and one of the things that strikes, you know, has struck me about it was that he was very much inspired by Israel, right? So that how Israel was a start up nation that had with no resources, and how they leapfrogged to the top was through education, innovation and discipline. So these are the things that we also have in El Salvador. It's the discipline part of it from the Bitcoin office is staying very focused on Bitcoin country. This is what we are. This is our brand. We've got the world's attention with this. The best and brightest are looking at us. Now we need to deliver not only the regulatory framework. And remember at that time in 2021, 2022, we had the Biden administration, we had Gary Gensler, and there was, there was everybody was seeking some regulatory clarity. So I said, well, let's give them regulatory clarity and just do exactly, because, you know, how it is in America's backyard as they like to think of Latin America is, there was already a lot of blowback in the US from the Democrats about El Salvador adopting Bitcoin. And so I said, let's just do exactly what they're saying, right? Let's build the regulatory framework with what the builders want. And what Gary Gensler is saying is Bitcoin is a commodity, everything else is a security.