El Salvador is a small country. In fact, it is the smallest nation in the Americas. Still, many visitors stick to the region surrounding the capital, when towards the east of our country sits a true hidden gem—which also happens to be a Bitcoin hotspot.

When Gerardo and his girlfriend chose to leave San Salvador and move to the mountains, they first spent some time traversing the country to find their new home. Nestled amongst volcanic peaks and coffee farms, they found the small town of Berlín.

Both of them had been passionate about Bitcoin for some time. On their travels they witnessed several Bitcoin circular economies in action, one of which in particular inspired Gerardo: “We went to Bitcoin Beach, we saw what they were doing, and we knew that the moment we moved to the mountains, we would replicate it.”

The couple started out small, teaching street vendors and business owners how to use Bitcoin, showing them that, against popular belief, it was simple and easy to do so. With persistence, they soon had a dozen businesses and vendors accepting bitcoin. Then things got tricky.

Unlike the Bitcoin Beach project, they did not have the financial backing to roll out an onboarding campaign at scale. Berlín needed an injection of bitcoin if the dream of a circular economy was to become a reality.

“So we created a Twitter account called Bitcoin Berlín SV, and we started to make some noise,” Gerardo recalls, “we invited people. We were going to San Salvador for Bitcoin meetups in an attempt to convince people to come to Berlín.”

Berlín sits a good two- to three-hour drive from the capital—too far for many, especially for such a fledgling initiative. Or so you’d think, except, people heeded Gerardo’s call. “All of a sudden, people started to come and amplify our efforts.”

With tourism on the rise and the local interest in Bitcoin growing in tandem with the number of vendors, Bitcoin Berlín gained momentum. Gerardo turned to educating people about the why of Bitcoin rather than just the how.

This brought with it the need for a dedicated space. “We knew that it was important for us to get a location, a physical location, a big orange wall with a Bitcoin ₿… You know, it’s a statement.”

The Bitcoin Center was born. Today it is the hub for Bitcoin in Berlín. There are a coffee shop, a podcast studio, a Bitcoin ATM, two classrooms, and a dedicated remote work space with high-speed internet. As Gerardo puts it, “This is the place where you come to learn about Bitcoin.”Every Monday, Bitcoin Berlín hosts an open meeting. “We actually have no filter,” Gerardo says, “we teach about Bitcoin, about history, about politics, tourism, the economy. The whole purpose of having the Bitcoin Center is education.”

Compared to conventional Bitcoiner wisdom—which tends to start at the why before even considering the how—Gerardo and his girlfriend seem to have done things backwards. And it worked: today, more than 170 business and service providers in Berlín accept bitcoin. You can use Bitcoin for just about everything from putting gas in your car to paying your plumber.

For Gerardo, the job is not nearly over. He hopes that what he accomplished in Berlín can be replicated elsewhere. “The plan is to copy and paste. Now we have more knowledge than when we began here in Berlín. We made mistakes and learned from them. We know what works and what doesn’t. And the plan is to have another Berlín. We need three, four, five, ten Berlíns. We need more communities.”