After four years of construction, My First Bitcoin is proud to announce its next chapter. It’s a shift from locally leading Bitcoin education to empowering communities around the world with support and tools.
The transition from being a teacher in one country to providing tools and resources to educators around the world.
From local roots to global expansion
Founded in 2021, we began as a pioneering project for independent education in El Salvador. Since then, we have directly taught over 27,000 students, the majority from El Salvador.
After months of preparation, we are now ready to cross borders, as founder John Dennehy explains:
“Our ambition has always been to change the world, but we had to start with one student, then a single city, then a single country, but now we are poised to increase our potential impact from 6 million to 8 billion people.
This is a huge leap forward, and that’s why we’re focused on empowering educators and projects everywhere, rather than trying to do it ourselves. We want to help others get started and succeed in their own communities, and then bring everyone together to create a global movement. ”
Refocus the mission
As we expand globally, we remain firmly rooted in our bold mission to work towards a free society where individuals have agency over their lives, achieved through independent Bitcoin education. Bitcoin is the ultimate tool for prosperity and freedom, and we aim to empower humanity.
When people have more control over their lives, they are able to look further into the future, which has very positive second-order effects for the individual. Bitcoin gives you this control over your finances.
new direction
In the spirit of complete transparency and gratitude to our community, we would like to share some important updates that mark this new phase.
- rebranding: The organization will retire its local name Mi Primer Bitcoin and move forward globally as My First Bitcoin.
| - New role, new leadership: The team has been restructured with new roles and directors to reflect this global mission. While some members have shifted their focus to the global scene, new members have been added to further strengthen our mission of providing open source Bitcoin education to the world.
- empower others: Our new focus is on teaching teachers. We create tools, systems, and guidance for anyone looking to start their own Bitcoin education initiative (circular economy, meetups, community builder). Empower those who empower others.
- Extending the node network: We are increasing our focus on the Node Network, an autonomous network of independent educators and community builders around the world who are already using open source resources. The network currently consists of more than 70 projects in 38 countries.
- Focus on curriculum: As we move into a more facilitative role, we will redouble our efforts to build and improve new and existing curriculum for all audiences.
- social layer: We are increasingly focused on creating spaces for educators to gather, connect, and share best practices, such as unconferences (for the public) and plenary sessions (for the Node network). This is similar to the creation of new digital tools, platforms and spaces, as well as physical encounter spaces.
- remote first: As part of this transition, we are closing our physical office in El Salvador and moving to a fully remote, globally distributed structure.
- Community takeover: The weekly and monthly meetups in San Salvador will be owned and operated by a collection of local projects, allowing My First Bitcoin to step back and allow others to take the lead. We’ve also created open source blueprints for meetups and unconferences so that anyone anywhere in the world can recreate these events.
- Termination of public school programs: As of Spring 2025, My First Bitcoin does not operate within public schools in El Salvador. After conducting dozens of cohorts and training hundreds of teachers, cooperation with the Ministry of Education ended.
Looking to the future
We are deeply grateful for the years we spent in El Salvador, where we learned many lessons about how to grow a grassroots, independent, and equitable education movement.
We invite the Bitcoin community, educators, meetup organizers, builders, and circular economy members around the world to join us in writing the next chapter. If you would like to join our network, need specific resources, or benefit from our curriculum, structure, frameworks, and tools, please contact us.
Together, we will make My First Bitcoin a movement, not just a program.
Next.
For questions or media inquiries: arnold@myfirstbitcoin.io