YouSaid · the spoken record

John Dennehy

lines on the record: 48
first: 2023-07-19
most recent: 2023-07-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And just I want to give a quick shout out to the team we are doing on Twitter right now, which is my first Bitcoin underscore. We are doing a share your story campaign because the team, which is about 25 people here in El Salvador, they all are doing such incredible work. And this is the product of so many different mind, so much labor from so many different people. And everyone is sharing their story how they arrived at this point. And we're a couple days since the campaign. And it's so inspiring even for me. And like, I know these people, right? But it's still to read what brought them here and like why they're doing this. It's really inspiring. And I would love to get more eyeballs on the individual personal stories of everyone on the team. And yeah, why they want.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It through yourself, if you can join the project, reach out to us. And if you have a special skill, like you could help with translations, with web design, with literally anything that whatever you're great at, and you could donate your skills, your time, your energy, your passion, then that is super helpful to us because we need so many different skills. And then the third part is you are, you can do this in your own community. This is a global movement. This is El Salvador is the genesis block, but it's not the only one. El Salvador is the example the mission is the world.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take control over their present, therefore their future. That's it. That's all you have to do, right? And we have a toolkit that we share with people that reach out to us that are interested in doing just that. And we can connect you with other people who are doing similar things in other places to make it easier to do that on your own. And just all our materials are open source. We're actually the long-term plan is open source everything. So it's not just the Bitcoin diploma. It's also our accountant practices. It's also how we do marketing, how we make internal decisions, all that stuff. So it's just, and again, people do it in their own way, but to create a framework and a guideline to help people get started because the first step is very often the hardest. Yeah, so the call to action is do donate if you can. Do come to El Salvador and”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Objective is to change the world And because that is so broad, we need all the help that we could get. And that help comes in a variety of different ways. Like the simplest way is money, right? It's just a donate. You can donate on our webpage, which is my first Bitcoin.io. Or we have an open campaign on geyser, on the geyser platform. So either of those are great ways to donate. If you want to, if you have some spare sats, and that's very helpful. Other ways to help and we have, we try to stick to an order of priorities. One is the mission. Two is the project. And three is the individual. If you could help the mission and the mission is to reimagine what's possible by allowing and encouraging people to think for themselves, have agency in their own lives.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like that becomes centralized then, right? So the whole point of this is to empower others. That means the students that we teach, it means the people that work for the project here in El Salvador, but it also means the people that want to do something similar wherever they are. All of this is about creating positive examples and empowering others to take control of their own life, their own situation.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is something we can all support. We all come at Bitcoin from different angles with different perspectives. We have different end goals, but this is something that we could all align on, right? This is common ground for all of us. And so we want to create that space where we could all come together there. So it's this three-pronged strategy that we have. But it all starts with creating a positive example here. That's the basis of everything. The basis of our scaling philosophy is not for us to go to other places, other parts of the world, and do the same thing. It's to help others do it there. It's to encourage others to do it where they already are. They know the local context. And it's about decentralization, right? That's a whole, that opens up a whole can of worms if we are actually doing this everywhere.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they are teaching the Bitcoin diploma where they are in their own way that fits best for the local context. And we're trying to encourage that and speed that up and ensure a high quality of that. So we are linking teachers who have experience with it, who have gone through it with teachers who are teaching it for the first time so they could share best practices. We're trying to create multidirectional communication channels between these different nodes in the network. So you can share best practices, not just from one teacher to another, but one accountant to another, one manager to another, you know, just in the different facets that it takes to make this successful. And then the third part is to create a space where we could all come together because Bitcoin education, independent, impartial, community-led Bitcoin education.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something that's already happening is to empower others to do it in their own communities. So we are working, and this is just people who have reached out to us. We've never advertised this. This is literally the first time that I'm saying it publicly. But people have reached out to us from places around the world, whether it's Bitcoin Akassie in South Africa or OmniAge, Honduras, or so many others.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, that's a great question. We can expand it. We are expanding it. We will expand it. And the way that our strategy for that is our strategy for everything is to empower others. So the book that we're talking about and everything that we do is either open source now or will be open source. So the Bitcoin diploma is open source every time we have a new edition, it's open source. You can find it on the website or GitHub. And we are also This is at the moment of recorded not yet released, but by the time the recording is live, I presume it will be in that interim. We'll release our vision statement, which is this three-part process. The first part is what we're doing in El Salvador. That is to demonstrate that Bitcoin education could be a tool for empowerment at mass scale. The second part of that, which is”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They've cried at like the moment that they're in, at the, you know, whether they're hugging their teacher when they get the certificate and they're crying, or they go back and they go to their mom or their dad and they hug them and tears in their eyes because this is the students, again, it's about empowerment. They haven't, they are feeling their own power maybe for the first time in their own life. They are feeling their own importance, their own that they matter, right? Like that's one of the things that we like to try to impart is that you matter, right? You matter. This is your life, your decision, your sovereignty, your destiny, your future. And yeah, you see that at every graduation. Like the students, they feel it in ways that maybe they're Not used to feeling it.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You will change everything. You are the precedent. You are the example. And they feel it and they really feel it. Like I think at most, if not all of the graduations that I've been to, at least some of the students have cried.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Yes. Yes. So, you know, I had mentioned the graduations that we have. And what we do with the graduation after they finish the course, then we bring in people to verify their knowledge. And these sometimes are Salvadorians, but sometimes they're foreigners. These are people who are already well versed on Bitcoin. It's actually sometimes former students that come back to do this part. But as part of the ceremony, We talk about that. We talk about how important what's happening here is how important what's happening in El Salvador is like El Salvador is the tip of the spear. And then within that, you are. You are this first generation in the first nation to learn about this, to have this knowledge as part of a normal aspect of your life. And that will change everything.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, people don't really, it's such a great thing to watch because, you know, I learned about Bitcoin first and then Lightning was this thing that came afterwards. So in my mind, it's very clearly separated because Lightning didn't even exist in the first place. But now here in El Salvador, people use Lightning. People don't really use on-chain. So if you go to Starbucks and you want to buy a coffee or whatever, it's with Lightning. People aren't using on-chain. They think of them much more interchangeably than I do. I separate them a lot more in my head than they do. They think of”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, a big part of it is, and yes, I think a lot of people do start using alternatives to Chibo after this. But part of that is because they didn't know there was an alternative before that. So like Chivo is kind of the default option here. And this is only for the older students because you have to be 18 and above to use Chivo. So this doesn't apply to high school students. But for the open enrollment courses, if they do have a Bitcoin wallet already, then it's like Leacho. And yes, less of them use Chi-Wo afterwards, but I think part of that, I don't think they become like crusaders against it, but they weren't even aware of the differences between that and other products. So just that basic awareness that they have is inevitably going to lead them to reduce that market share.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's a custodial wallet. And that's a reference point for a lot of people and a lot of people come to the course with an opinion about that already. If their opinion is already positive about that, then maybe they don't see it as such a bad thing. If their opinion is already negative about that, then they're like, yep, I knew it. This gives me a framework for identifying why I didn't like it. So that is a bit mixed, but it trends towards people not liking it, right? And the further into the course they go, it trends further in that direction.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's mixed, right? Here in El Salvador, people are usually familiar with Chiva Wallet, which is a self-sorry, not self-custody, but.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Excitedly tell in their peers about things that they've learned, concepts that they learn. And that is one of my favorite things to see is to see not just that students are able to absorb this knowledge, but they're able to disseminate it as well.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Again, this kind of depends a bit on the set in. So when we teach it in the high school set-in, then maybe, you know, they don't have time afterwards. They have to go to the next thing. But not only do they have questions, which is true, but they want to share what they learned. One of my favorite things is, so we have these graduations at the end. And, you know, so it's in a school. We usually only have the graduations if it's in a public school. you see students and you could identify who the students are because we'll give them a t-shirt right that's like they pass this test at the end and and they get a t-shirt like i made it whatever so you know who the students are and who the other students are at the high school who haven't gone through this course and just walking around you know you go to the bathroom you go to get like some water or whatever then you see all these little micro interactions of people who have taken the course who are really”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People, you know, we teach this in high schools, so it's like 16 years old, 17 years old, but we teach it. We also have open enrollment. We have a house that is effectively a school and office for us. We teach it out of community centers. And we have people who are great grandparents that come and they learn about this.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think the book does a great job generally, not just here, but throughout of breaking down complex topics in a way that is easy to understand. And I want to shout out Dahlia Platt and the whole curriculum team for doing an excellent job there. You talk about the difficulty of this, right? About this particular chapter, but I think you could say the same thing for the whole course. I believe that we underestimate ourselves. We underestimate humanity. This is pretty high level stuff, but the assumption in much of the world is too much for you. You can't handle this. Our assumption is the opposite. Our assumption is you can. Our assumption is that you are capable of understanding these high-level concepts. And what we have found, we have We have found that to be true, right? That's been proven true.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Students are generally excited to hear this is a subject that I think people are interested in without knowing. This is a brand new concept. But it's interesting because it's a brand new concept for people to think about money and to think about their relationship with money. And it's interesting because it's a brand new concept, but it's also something that is so relative to their own lives that they could feel that they could see how it affects them. Usually it's one or the other. Usually things that affect us so much we're familiar with. And things that we're unfamiliar with don't affect us that much. This is that rare case where it's something that students see like this has real effect on me, on my own life, and I don't know anything about it. Like, I want to learn more. Let's keep going”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, they don't realize that there's an alternative. They don't realize that there is something different. And, you know, back to Venezuela, like people have, we have had students. It has flagged them and created headaches for them. They already know that's a broken system. They just don't know that there's a different way. So, yeah, again, I think in many ways this is the crux of everything, really centralization versus decentralization is the...”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this is one of the more important chapters. And maybe that's what the whole book is about. And that's what this whole question is about. Centralization versus decentralization. And again, students understand this without realizing it yet. Some students have talked to us ones that have had accounts with centralized system, like let's keep with money and with banks they have had people have had their accounts frozen. People have, you know, kind of come up against these systems, these centralized systems, and they have had experiences with it. So they know that they know it without realizing it. And it comes up in every part of our life, this centralization versus decentralization question. But most students”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is that pretty much the yes? Because it doesn't really, I mean, I don't know, this is a whole different debate that we could talk about, whether the benefits of something like that, which I would not be on that side of the debate. I'd be on the other side. But yeah, the financial system that we have doesn't really hold up, right? Like the deeper you probe, the less is logical.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The more that students learn about Bitcoin, the more confidence they have in it. The more students learn about fiat, the less confidence they have in it. To be like, wait, so when I put money in a bank, they don't actually, like that, that money's gone then? But again, they don't question. That's not something that we're taught to question generally. So, yeah, the more they learn about fiat, the less confidence they have in it.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Yeah. And that is, again, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities because we're so used to someone else having authority over us. And to show people that not only does it not have to be that way, but it's easier than you think is a really powerful company.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you don't need permission to do it and they don't need permission either. And it's something that like when they do it, they have one aha moment of how easy it is. And then when you explain it to them, then they have a second aha moment where they're like, right, okay, so that's.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Person next to them or somebody else in the class, but it's a very easy step to be like, and they don't even think about it. So they download a wallet and, you know, the student next to them downloads a wallet, will send them a few sets over Lightning. They'll send it to the next person. And it's an aha thing. They're like, wow, that was so easy. Like, is Bitcoin easy? I didn't think Bitcoin was easy before this moment. I thought it was going to be really complicated. That's really easy. And then you have to usually explain to them and break it down even further. You didn't need your ID for that, right? You didn't need to verify like a bank account for that, right? No, no, I didn't. I didn't. Okay. And then when you sent it, did you have to, did it have to go through a process where it passed through someone else? No. So that's direct. You were just sending it to that person. And they don't have to be right next to you. They could be in Venezuela. They could be in China. They could be anywhere.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's about control. It's not about whether it's physical or digital. It's about control. Do you have control or does somebody else have control? And here in El Salvador, and this is contextual, right? So in different environments, then you would use different things to teach this lesson. But we're not too far from Venezuela here. And there are Venezuelan migrants here. And people are instinctively aware of this. You can't send dollars to Venezuela easily. You can't send value to Venezuela easily because you need somebody's permission. You need a bank's permission, a government's permission. And people know that. They know that there are restrictions with their money. And then to show them, again, with all the courses in an effort to try to make it interactive and show rather than tell, then we have students actually make Bitcoin transactions. So they're just sending it to the”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First place. But if you explain it to them, and it's not even that complex of a concept, right? Especially when you could make it interactive and you could like the students physically get up and they're moving around and trying to find the other person and has this thing that you want. And it's like, why we need money why like the benefit of having money but again that's a concept that i never learned in school right i learned that because bitcoin because you know after i got into bitcoin then i started reading more about what money was and why money was but it's the same sort of thing like it's not even that complex it's just something that we never think about”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why we have money money cuts away all that fat and it'll let it allows I forget what the example was that we're using it allows the book that you want you could give me money this this agreed upon thing dollars Bitcoin whatever and then I could use that to get the shoes that I want or whatever the other product it is because it's this common denominator in the middle that we all agree as a unit of account But that is something and you know there is like an interactive exercise that we do with that that like students have a piece of paper what they have and what they want and like you just have to try to figure it out in a class of 20 30 students and it's a very inefficient process to do that and then it's like well imagine there was something something in between imagine there was something in between which is what money is and that is something like people don't even realize why we need money in the”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not just understand why money is broken, it's also understanding why money is. So the double coincidence of wants is a really good example of why money is. Like money serves a purpose. If we all have different things that we want and different things that we have, and the double coincidence of wants is that it only works if what I have is the same thing as what you want, which usually is not the case, right? Like I have mugs and you have books and you want shoes. I don't have that though. So we need to find a third person or a fourth person, a fifth person, a sixth person to create this chain to actually arrive at the two of us ending up with a product that each of us wants, which doesn't really happen, right? That's a very cumbersome, inefficient process, which”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's empowering, right? To be like, wait, this is this very important concept that dictates much of my life, which is money, which is synonymous with power. And wait, I could, there's an alternative, like there's, I could be involved with this. Like this isn't something that I have to be passive about. Like I could be active about this. I could have a say. Like that, that by itself is very empowering.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, one of the really interesting things is so much of this is obvious in hindsight. It's obvious once you ask the question, but we just never ask the question. We grew up in a world in which we just accept. We accept the way things are. We don't question them. And we're not really encouraged to either specifically with money, specifically with money, we're not encouraged to question that. We're encouraged to just accept it. And it's actually obvious, right? It's like once you take a big step back and you remove yourself from this. And a lot of students get it, right? Like we try to encourage them to take that step back and remove themselves and like kind of see it with fresh eyes. And yeah, students, there's like, you see it. You see this aha moment that they have. And that aha moment is often, you know, it's often before we even get to Bitcoin because I think it's very important in order to understand the solution.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To allow people to think for themselves, to encourage people to think for themselves, then it's important that we don't tell them what to think, right? That they have to come to their own conclusions. So we try to prompt that. We try to prompt the right questions, but the students actually come to their own conclusions.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Never done before. Why is this paper and ink more valuable than this paper and ink? And it's the fact that we don't question it, which allows that to continue. And so much of what we do is trying to lead students to their own conclusions, but just kind of setting it up for them, making it a little bit easier for them to ask themselves the right questions. So this is probably worth saying that we are very careful to never dictate to students what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, but encourage them to think about these questions for themselves. Because at the end, this actually isn't about Bitcoin. This isn't about Bitcoin education. This is about what that encourages, what that incentivizes. And our ultimate goal is to allow, if our ultimate goal”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You said we start the course not even talking about Bitcoin, we're talking about money. And most people never even think about what money is or why money is. So one of the things that we do in the class, so with much of what we do, we try to make it as interactive as possible. So one of the things that we do with the class is we give them a piece of candy and we ask them if they would trade it for $1, one US dollar, which is the currency here in El Salvador in addition to Bitcoin. And everybody raises their hand. Everybody would trade this little piece of candy for a dollar and who would trade it for one monopoly dollar and nobody raises their hand. That is a really powerful way to demonstrate to students that to encourage students to question, right? Encourage students to question why one piece of paper has more value than the other, which is something that they probably”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Feel that they have the same tools at their disposal as everyone else, or if they're at the will of others. And many students get that Bitcoin is a way for them to have more control in their own life, to better control their present and therefore their future.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there have been times where they actually staple pages onto that so they could keep writing. And one of the things that we tried to do with this course, and I think it resonates at least with these super writers at the end, is we do not teach trade-in. We do not teach Bitcoin as an instrument to have more dollars. Our focus is Bitcoin is a tool for empowerment, is a tool to take control in your own life. And so that comes across with these students' answers at the end, that this is a way for them to be involved, to like be able to create their own future, define their own destiny, which again, so 70% of El Salvador is unbent. And this is a way to, I hesitate to put too much emphasis on whether someone has a bank account or not, but it's access, right? It's like whether people”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, this is one of my favorite things about the book, actually. So it's probably worth stating that our target demographic are Salvadorians who are brand new to the space so they know little or nothing about Bitcoin when they begin. And what that means is the first page, that first blank page, why Bitcoin, is mostly left a blank page. They don't know. Like they sometimes literally leave it blank and if they do write something, then it's like a sentence or two. It's effectively they just don't know how to answer that when they start the course. And then you compare that with what students write at the end. And this is, so the first page, the first blank page is just one page. So then we leave three pages for them. Sometimes students don't have enough room at the end.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, we're always with each new group, we try to learn from the previous one and update it. So the one that will be coming out, well, the English version is already out, but the Spanish version that will be coming out soon is, I think we added like 60 or 70 pages. Wow.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah And that's that 10-week program that the course material that you had seen. And that has doubled every, the number of students has more than doubled every session that we do. So every like 10-week period. So we started with 38th and we did 100, 200, 500. The group that had just graduated that cohort, you know, were teaching it in different places, but a similar timeline like we start and finish around the same time. The one that just finished that group was 500 students. The next one was...”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We actually have a few different offerings. So we started out with just intro classes. In 2021, it was just intro classes, just a 90 minute one-off. What is money? Why do we need to change it? And then what is Bitcoin, which is effectively what the Bitcoin diploma is, right? It's just a longer version of that, explaining how we arrived at this moment, like the issue of money and how we've gotten here, and then how Bitcoin could be an alternative to that. So with intro classes, we've had much more students. We had 400 in 2021. We had 10,000 in 2022. And this year we have as many as 5,000 per month now.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a good idea. So, yeah, I arrived in August 2021 shortly before the law went into effect, with not that much more than an idea. You know, there was a website and like a mission statement and some basic stuff, but really it's taken off because it's attracted the right people, both here on the ground, the people that teach these courses, the people that develop the next courses, the people that create the financial infrastructure. They're just really wonderful people that are committed to this idea. And then outside of El Salvador, like just even coming on this podcast and helping with that. It's really taken on a life of its own since then.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To be honest, like it took me a few days to come around that is real. This is really happened. I'm very interested in Latin America. I'm very interested in Bitcoin. Both of them have made up good portions of my adult life focusing on these two things. And this is Bitcoin, Latin America. And it was not on my radar, right? It was like, okay, wow, this is an earthquake. And then so I thought, okay, I want to help. I want to do something to make sure that Els Alvare would be a success. So I'm going to go there. I'm going to go there. I'm going to live there. And then from that, it was like, well, what should I do? And then it was like, well, I wonder if this education thing. I wonder if that would have more traction in El Salvador. So I went there after having some initial analysis, conversations with friends, just trying to work through some stuff, but not having any idea if it would be successful, if it would get any traction, if anybody else would think.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tail end of the pandemic, I had moved back to Ecuador, which is a place that I had spent years in previously. And I thought that I wanted to help people learn about Bitcoin there, Ecuador was a much different place than New York. It was a place that needed it more than New York and that I thought would be more open to change because they weren't at the top of the Beck and Order in the financial system. So I gave a little bit of Bitcoin to some people to teach to their neighbors, co-workers, try to get something started. It didn't really get any traction. Part of that was the pandemic was still going on and this was focused on like interactive in-person stuff. But I kind of forgot about it. And then a few months later, then El Salvador announced that they were adopting Bitcoin as legal tender, which was a really, it like shook me, right? It wasn't displayed.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Seemed as clear as ever that we were on the wrong path. So I spent a lot of time having pretty negative thoughts, to be honest, thinking about like what the logical conclusions are to the path that we're currently on. And then it kind of dawned on me that there is a hope. There is something that we can do. And I think Bitcoin symbolizes that for me. So during the pandemic, I thought, okay, we're on the wrong path, but Bitcoin could be a way to get on the right path. And the reason why I say that we're on the wrong path and Bitcoin could be the right path is because I think one of the main things that is important to me is critical thinking is self-sovereignty is having agency in our own lives. And it was as obvious as ever that we had lost that, that we had gone away from that. And I think Bitcoin naturally brings us back to those values. That was in my head already by the”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I'm from New York originally, and I happen to be there when the pandemic hit. That would have been early 2020. And it was an interest in time to be alive, right? It was an interest in time to be in New York. And I had a lot of free time. So I spent that ponder in the world, right? Like thinking, it seemed very clear that we were on the wrong path.”
2023-07-19 · We Study Billionaires · BTC139: Educating the World On Bitcoin w/ John Dennehy (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT