Beyond Borders #2: Unstoppable Movement
Independent educators are changing the world. They unite once a month in a General Assembly of the Node Network, an initiative from My First Bitcoin, to create a thriving ecosystem of educators around the banner of “independent, impartial, bitcoin-only and community-led bitcoin education”. The GA from May 30 was attended by 28 individuals, a new record!
Welcome to this second write-up of all progress that has been made in the past month. Welcome to the stories from 13 countries!
Before diving into their updates, let’s start with a quote that was shared in the meeting by Armand from YesBitcoin Haiti:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
In retrospect, this collective vision of all nodes is exactly what brings us together. This quote from Buckminster Fuller resonated well: we’re building our future together and making the old system obsolete!
1. Jaime — Canadian Bitcoin Education Network
Let’s kick off with an update from Jaime Garcia, the leader of the Canadian Bitcoin Education Network, formerly known as MPB Canada. He visited the Canadian Bitcoin Conference.
Together with MPB friends Gabe and Tristan, the three of them represented My First Bitcoin on stage right after the opening by Francis Pouliot. They gave a wonderful presentation about how we can change the world together!
This resulted in numerous inquiries, and they sold a significant portion of the 100 printed Bitcoin Diploma workbooks at cost. Consequently, many bitcoin education resources were distributed across Canada!
During the third day of the conference, networking continued with the recruitment of many French translators, new potential Light Nodes from the Philippines and Lebanon, and universities interested in offering bitcoin classes. The Telegram group expanded from 7 to 60 members!
2. Quentin—Mi Primer Bitcoin (El Salvador)
In El Salvador, the MPB team also generated a lot of work. First of all, the Spanish version of the Bitcoin Diploma 2024 is finished, and the first classes have been given from it in San Salvador already.
The team also released the Lesson Plan Guide, a tool which makes it easier for teachers to plan classes. It’s available for free and open source in both English and Spanish.
Also, the mission to Open Source Everything has been expanded with new documents:
The progress with a new Bitcoin for Business Course continues, and the collaboration with the Ministry of Education (MINED) is flourishing. The team has trained 129 teachers from 3 departments. Three MPB teachers are now visiting schools where bitcoin classes are taught and supporting the public school teachers.
Finally, the collaboration with the team from the Little Hodler continues, together with the MINED. This curriculum focuses on the youth. Weekly classes in Ataco, Atiquizaya, San Salvador, Usulután, and at the MPB house are still part of the core activities of My First Bitcoin El Salvador!
The last update is regarding the network itself: three new projects have been promoted to become Full Nodes: The Core (Kenya), Operation Bitcoin (USA) and BPUK (United Kingdom).
3. Gabe — OPERATION BITCOIN
Operation Bitcoin has been growing as well! The team gained approval to give bitcoin classes at the Georgia Veteran Education Career Transition Resource (VECTR). This is a state run veteran training program.
The first introductory session was a big success!
“We’ve been approved based on the feedback from attendees. This opens the door for us to deliver the Bitcoin Diploma in a state-led and approved program across the state of Georgia. This will help us to build the model here, and replicate it to other states in the US. We’re going to flood the state with marketing and promotions!”
Operation Bitcoin will attend the Bitcoin Conference and have a booth to conduct workshops and sessions. In addition to that, the team is involved in the Mi Primer Bitcoin Unconference, happening on July 24, a collaborative event for bitcoin educators.
As most nodes do in the General Assembly, Gabe shared his experieces about how to conduct feedback sessions with students and attendees of the Diploma classes.
“Feel free to take it and share results. Having the feedback is important for us to grow and become better [bitcoin] teachers.”
4. Huxley — Bitcoin Policy U.K.
As the energy level of this inspirational General Assembly increased, Huxley from BPUK shares his light on the past month of work:
“We continue to focus on finding and training new teachers. This is how we can scale our operations, so we had two more teachers on Saturday and will have three more soon, and another training session in August.”
This will eventually result in having more teachers in community centers and secondary schools, and Huxley encourages the projects to create proof-of-work and become Light Nodes in the Node Network soon too.
He shares his insights about how other nodes in the network could look into fundraising through selling bitcoin nodes during meetups:
“Computer hardware [nodes] is sometimes a big liability for a lot of companies. So we try to take this e-waste, recycle them into nodes and then sell them on a small margin. And send it to new teachers, together with the Bitcoin Diploma workbook.”
Huxley already shares his plan to open source this work too. Open Source Everything, all of us together!
5. Felix — The Core
Felix from Kenya shared how his cohorts have reached Chapter 9 of the student workbook, which will be taught in collaboration with Huxley. It’s wonderful to see such cross-collaborations happening!
Felix also started the Bitcoin Pathfinders thread on X, to share success stories of graduates that attended previous cohorts from The Core. Several alumni found their way into the bitcoin space after finishing the Bitcoin Diploma classes!
At the 27th of June, The Core will celebrate the graduation of the current cohort with students from all over the world: from Afghanistan to Haiti and from Tanzania to Kenya. The team from The Core also shared a blogpost about their best practices from Cohort 1 and running a meetup.
6. Sassa — Bitcoin Ekasi
Bitcoin Ekasi continues to impress. Every day a week, they teach the Bitcoin Diploma in their township.
In the month of May they had 19 classes, each time attended by several locals. They handed out flyers to shop owners who accept bitcoin as a form of payment, so the message can be shared through these vendors.
The previously shared Lesson Plan Guide has already been implemented by the Ekasi-team. Great to see how it’s making a direct impact already!
Sassa and Slulami from Ekasi are sharing a request: Could it be possible to translate the Bitcoin Diploma into (more) African languages? Being educated into native languages makes more impact.
If you want to help to collaborate, please send a message to arnold@miprimerbitcoin.io.
7. Bart — Bismarck Bitcoin Meetup
The seventh speaker in the General Assembly is Bart from the newest node: Bismarck Bitcoin Meetup!
This brand new meetup goes straight into the open source My First Bitcoin resources, and most energy goes into getting the ball rolling with getting hardcopy printed workbooks and also digital tools, like the Google Classroom.
They had two workshops so far, and there are two more meetups planned. Keep up the good work, guys!
8. Trevor — Bitcoin School Argentina
Moving on to Argentina! The biggest news is that the funding is secured for Bitcoin School Argentina, in addition to some donated materials from CoinKite.
The classes with Universidad Siglo 21 are still ongoing, with 100+ people that signed up! The next round is planned for next month, after receiving great feedback.
“They love that it’s impartial, and not shilling or about trading.”
Trevor was joined by Micael from Sovereign Friends, who elaborated on the collaborations with universities in the country. Micael is also translating the book Broken Money by Lyn Alden into Spanish. He recommended a book he's reading called Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller from 1981, which is still highly relevant today, especially for bitcoiners!
Additionally, Trevor started the Bitcoin School Podcast with projects from all over the world, origin stories and challenges!
9. Armand—Yes Bitcoin Haiti
A fairly new node is YesBitcoin. Project leader Armand shares the progress from the Haitian initiatives.
An inspirational story is about 21-year-old Milfort, a.k.a. Papouche, who is living his dream by pursuing bitcoin education through reading clubs.
Educational Creole materials are shared in the community, offering practical explanations on how to use the Blink wallet and Bitrefill. Some internal proof-of-work involves setting up leadership layers in the project.
“It’s amazing how everyone here is working independently on their own little projects, but we’re all contributing to the bigger project. I’ve been amazed to find Mi Primer Bitcoin, which has helped tremendously with our work in Haiti.”
Multiple meetups are planned, fundraising is a work-in-progress, and merchandise is being printed. Haiti is going in full force!
Additionally, Armand is taking the accounting to the next level and suggests creating a 10-page Bitcoin Diploma. Let’s create it together!
10. Humphrey — Bitcoin Victoria Falls
Humphrey from Zambia kicks off his update with sharing his the feeling, that all nodes feel with him:
“I’m so inspired to hear stories from all over the world. It gives me so much hope for the future!”
Bitcoin Victoria Falls organized the biggest bitcoin meetup so far, in which they spoke about inflation, the difference between crypto and bitcoin and much more.
The next cohort started the 7th of June, in which the Mi Primer Workbook is comprised into 5 classes of 2 hours (of each two chapters).
11 + 12. Forte — Bitcoin Cuba, and Pedro — Bitcoin Dominicana
Also Bitcoin Cuba will start a new cohort soon! It will be the fourth group, but the first time it is also set up as virtual classes.
Simultaneously, Cuba and the Dominican Republic announced their collaboration! As Cuba starts an online cohort, joining forces and sharing logistics make a lot of sense!
“Interactions are the strings that hold communities together. These tiny communities are making big differences! The more people see how many people do the same things, the stronger it is.”
Pedro continues to announce the work on the Telegram chatbot, a tool for students to go through the workbook digitally.
13. Zussel — AmityAge
AmityAge celebrated two celebrations, of the 6th and 7th cohort.
The project also launches a very exciting initiative soon, which is Miners4Kids. AmityAge will donate a bitcoin miner to the kids in Roatan, and the revenue will be directed to the Bitcoin Diploma graduates.
Additionally, Ronald from Christian Life School and Anurag from Rikto Xonghoti (India) shared their updates. Ronald shared the idea about having a screening of a bitcoinmovie, and Anurag worked on the 2nd bitcoinmeetup, and a collaboration with a local education center.
See you all next month, again!
Join the Network!
If you are a community leader and bitcoin educator and want to be part of the Node Network, check out our GitHub page.
If you want to use our open source Bitcoin Diploma workbook, you can! It’s available on GitHub as well.
For any questions about the Node Network or any other international collaboration, feel free to reach out to Arnold Hubach (arnold@miprimerbitcoin.io).
