Bitcoiners - Live From Bitcoin Beach

Is El Salvador safe enough to run a business that takes Bitcoin and go running at night? This Salvadoran entrepreneur says yes!
Mike sits down with Byron Espinoza, a young Salvadoran who opened a car repair shop with his cousin at 23. He grew up in a neighborhood where the gang members were his childhood friends, and he's had guns pointed at him more than once.
So when neighbors warned him that drug dealers would show up at his new shop and pressure him to sell for them, he was afraid. It never happened. The crackdown on El Salvador gangs was underway, the extortion payments that drove many businesses under came to an end, and Byron says business owners finally keep what they earn. Today he feels comfortable running his shop anywhere.
That freedom let the shop grow in a direction he didn't expect. About three months after opening, a Bitcoiner named Richard started bringing him cars to check, on one condition. Byron had to accept Bitcoin. He was nervous, studied it, and said yes. Customers pay him in Bitcoin today, he decides whether to keep it or move it to dollars, and he's encouraging his friends to start accepting it in their businesses too.
Taking Bitcoin brought him customers most local shops never see. For expats living in El Salvador who don't speak Spanish, a mechanic who speaks English and accepts Bitcoin is a big benefit, and 20 to 25% of Byron's customers are foreigners. For anyone browsing cars in El Salvador for sale, his used car inspection checks the VIN history for hidden damage and mileage before they commit. He tells the story of an American couple who skipped a car agency because so few accept Bitcoin, and says that if he ran one, he'd take it without thinking twice.
Byron is honest about what the change has cost. El Salvador crime hasn't disappeared, he has noticed theft that didn't happen before, and two of his friends were arrested without evidence and have spent two years in jail. He sees all of it as a process the country is still working through.
He calls himself a survivor of the old El Salvador who can go out at 11 at night, and Mike calls him one of the success stories of the new one!
If you're thinking about opening a business here or accepting Bitcoin, listen to this one first.

—Bitcoin Beach Team

Learn more about Byron Espinoza:
Mobile #: +503 6863 2519
IG: https://www.instagram.com/tallerexpressx/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/p/Taller-Automotriz-Express-61555288906787/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tallerautomotrizexpress

Support and follow Bitcoin Beach:
X: https://www.twitter.com/BitcoinBeach
IG: https://www.instagram.com/bitcoinbeach_sv
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livefrombitcoinbeach
Web: https://www.bitcoinbeach.com

STAY AT BITCOIN BEACH:
https://www.stayatbitcoinbeach.com/punta-mango-villas

Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:
00:00 Intro
01:44 How did a young Salvadoran start a repair shop in El Salvador?
03:39 Why do expats living in El Salvador do car preventive maintenance?
06:50 What's it like starting a business in El Salvador at 23?
10:42 How did a Salvadoran mechanic start accepting Bitcoin payments?
13:39 Can you buy a car with Bitcoin in El Salvador?
15:36 Buying cars in El Salvador, imported used car or agency car?
19:11 Can a used car inspection and VIN check spot odometer fraud?
21:40 Is El Salvador safe after the crackdown on El Salvador gangs?
36:59 Where to find a mechanic in El Salvador that accepts Bitcoin? 
Live From Bitcoin Beach

Is El Salvador the freest country on earth for a Bitcoin business, or the most heavily KYC'd place a Bitcoiner could choose? Anyone who has bought El Salvador real estate lately has an opinion, and so does the lawyer who reads the regulations for a living.

You already know this is Bitcoin Country. What you can't tell from the outside is why the El Salvador banks turned Bitcoin companies away for years, what the digital assets law lets you build here, and who is actually asking the questions at a property closing.

Mike sits down with Jose Rodriguez, a lawyer with Nodeman, a Bitcoin-centric legal firm that helped draft some of these regulations and has followed this since day one.

Jose explains the bank refusals in layers. The first is political and goes back to who owned the banks when the Bitcoin Law passed. The second is the AML KYC pressure that reaches every Salvadoran bank through FATF, GAFILAT and the US correspondent accounts it depends on to move money in and out of the country. Then he explains what changed in the US that finally opened the doors. Three banks now hold licenses, and a Bitcoin bank is on the way.

Then the conversation turns to KYC requirements on property. Jose describes who is asking where a buyer's money came from, and in most cases it isn't the seller. He also says the KYC regulations changed recently, raising the threshold from $1,000 to $25,000, while one government office still hasn't issued the guidelines eight months later. Buying property in El Salvador should look different once that clears.

The second half covers the Digital Assets Law. Jose describes what real estate tokenization means today, which company structure makes it legal, and the two laws still standing between El Salvador and a property title that lives on a token. He's blunt about lawyers who wave through deals they don't understand.

El Salvador has spent five years writing clear rules for Bitcoin businesses, and this is what those rules look like from inside the paperwork!

If you're planning to run a business here, bank here, or buy here, listen to this one before you sign anything.

—Bitcoin Beach Team

Learn more about Jose Rodriguez:
X: https://x.com/nodemanbtc
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nodeman
Website: https://nodeman.co/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nodemanbtc/
Email: j@nodeman.co

Support and follow Bitcoin Beach:
X: https://www.twitter.com/BitcoinBeach
IG: https://www.instagram.com/bitcoinbeach_sv
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livefrombitcoinbeach
Web: https://www.bitcoinbeach.com

STAY AT BITCOIN BEACH:
https://www.stayatbitcoinbeach.com/punta-mango-villas

Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:
00:00 Intro
01:55 Why did El Salvador banks refuse Bitcoin companies after the Bitcoin Law?
04:21 How do FATF and GAFILAT rules apply to Bitcoin in El Salvador?
09:19 How many El Salvador banks work with Bitcoin companies in 2026?
15:15 What are the KYC requirements for buying property in El Salvador?
18:42 Does the bank or the seller do KYC on a Bitcoin real estate purchase in El Salvador?
22:16 Is there no KYC under $25,000 in El Salvador under the new regulations?
23:14 What is El Salvador's Digital Assets Law and is it Bitcoin-only?
35:25 Is real estate tokenization legal in El Salvador?
39:34 What license does a Bitcoin business need to operate in El Salvador?
Live From Bitcoin Beach

Is Bitcoin still legal tender in El Salvador? Plenty of people say it isn't, so Mike put the question to a Salvadoran lawyer who has followed every change to the law.

You've seen the IMF headlines and decided the experiment ended. What you can't see from outside is how the El Salvador economy looks to someone who was born here, practiced law through the worst years, and now builds his firm on Bitcoin.

Mike sat down with Jose Rodriguez, founder of Nodeman, a Bitcoin-centric legal service provider in San Salvador. Jose became a lawyer in 2008, lost money on a taxi app before Uber arrived, got fired in 2016, went surfing at Sunzal to celebrate, and never went back to a job.

Jose has compared more than 15 jurisdictions, and he'll tell you what still makes El Salvador legal tender law different from every one of them, even after the changes cut articles out of it. He and Mike don't fully agree on what El Salvador IMF pressure should have changed about the government's options, and that disagreement is the best part of the conversation.

Then there's El Salvador tax. In 2021 you could pay Ministerio de Hacienda in Bitcoin through Chivo Wallet. Today there's no direct option, and Mike pushes Jose on why the government hasn't set up a third party to convert it the way it already accepts cards. Jose's answer comes down to who carries the risk, and it isn't the answer Mike wanted.

For anyone weighing El Salvador business opportunities, Jose is blunt about what an El Salvador business still runs into: company formation, corporate structure, banking. Nodeman grew from one desk to a 10-person team and has kept adding people since, and he turns clients away when they don't fit.

Living in El Salvador through 2012 and the years since gives Jose a longer memory than most people arguing about this country online. He calls this a renaissance, and he says it while admitting the government still runs a fiat treasury with a Bitcoin treasury off to the side.

A Salvadoran lawyer who reads every Bitcoin book he can find and gives his baby son a self-custody wallet is exactly who this country needed in the room!
If you're deciding whether El Salvador is still a place to build on Bitcoin, listen to this one before you make the call. Part two comes next week.

—Bitcoin Beach Team

Learn more about Jose Rodriguez:
X: https://x.com/nodemanbtc
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nodeman
Website: https://nodeman.co/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nodemanbtc/
Email: j@nodeman.co

Support and follow Bitcoin Beach:
X: https://www.twitter.com/BitcoinBeach
IG: https://www.instagram.com/bitcoinbeach_sv
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livefrombitcoinbeach
Web: https://www.bitcoinbeach.com

STAY AT BITCOIN BEACH:
https://www.stayatbitcoinbeach.com/punta-mango-villas

Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:
00:00 Intro
00:59 Who is Jose Rodriguez, the Bitcoin lawyer in El Salvador?
05:26 What was it like starting a tech business in El Salvador before the Bitcoin Law?
10:09 Are electronic signatures and digital contracts legal in El Salvador?
13:09 How did the pandemic change the legal industry in El Salvador?
16:05 What happened in El Salvador when Bitcoin became legal tender in 2021?
19:01 How do you go from shitcoiner to Bitcoin maxi?
23:43 What is Nodeman, the Bitcoin law firm in El Salvador?
31:29 Is Bitcoin still legal tender in El Salvador after the IMF?
35:04 Can you pay taxes in Bitcoin in El Salvador?
Live From Bitcoin Beach

Would you put your kids in public schools in El Salvador, 40 to a class and no English spoken, to give them a future you couldn't see in Canada? Charity Hagenaars did. Her family of five lives on $3,000 to $3,500 a month, and if you've searched cost of living in El Salvador you've probably seen her videos on living in El Salvador. What you can't see from a video is whether rent in El Salvador comes with a stove, or whether a public school takes report cards printed in Ontario.

I sat down with Charity, a retired Canadian government worker, former foster parent, and YouTuber who moved her family from Ontario to Lourdes in August 2024. Her $850 house has four bedrooms and sits in a complex with pools and soccer fields, where six families of expats living in El Salvador have built a small community. Getting there meant Marketplace listings that were photos of posters on telephone poles, and leases where leaving early costs the full year.

Car shopping took a friend, a mechanic, and seven phone numbers, because the Chivo ATM caps withdrawals at $1,000 a day per number and she needed $7,000 in cash for a car she ended up passing on. Opening a bank account took a residency card and an hour in the waiting room, and then Banco Agrícola made her wait three months before YouTube could wire her a dollar. Bitcoin and Wise carried the family's money down instead. She'll also tell you what happened at Dollar City when the cashier skipped Lightning.

The school story is the honest one. Her daughter got the same classmates two years running, was bullied, and stopped learning, so she's in a homeschool hub now. Her older son is out too, halfway through grade 11. Charity funded the school's parking lot and paint through her channel anyway. Then there's the spare bedroom. Two months ago Maria, the grandmother of two boys from Charity's Saturday English class, lost her home, and Charity offered the room. The boys swim every day.

Her WhatsApp group grew to almost 200 members, about 30% already here, four more arriving this week. Some came to retire in El Salvador on a pension, and young families came because they couldn't see a future where they were. If you want an expat El Salvador group that screens out the salesmen, she runs one. Charity describes what it costs a foreigner to live here so nobody arrives with the wrong picture, then chose to stay and put eight people under one roof. That's what belief in this country looks like! If you're weighing moving to El Salvador with kids or a pension, listen to this one.

—Bitcoin Beach Team

Learn more about Charity Hagenaars:
X: https://x.com/HagenaarsFamily
WhatsApp: 503-7291-1480
Website: https://hagenaars.com/
Email Address: YouTube@Hagenaars.com
YouTube Channel(Main): https://www.youtube.com/@HagenaarsFamily
YouTube Channel(2nd): https://www.youtube.com/MakingItInElSalvador

Support and follow Bitcoin Beach:
X: https://www.twitter.com/BitcoinBeach
IG: https://www.instagram.com/bitcoinbeach_sv
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livefrombitcoinbeach
Web: https://www.bitcoinbeach.com

STAY AT BITCOIN BEACH:
https://www.stayatbitcoinbeach.com/punta-mango-villas

Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:
00:00 Intro
02:53 Why are Bitcoiners moving to El Salvador from Canada?
07:23 Is Canada safe for Bitcoiners after frozen bank accounts and the trucker convoy?
09:10 How to rent a house in El Salvador as a foreigner
12:47 Where do expats live in El Salvador: Lourdes, the beach, or San Salvador?
15:47 How to buy a used car in El Salvador and what to check first
25:40 How do expats move money into El Salvador with Bitcoin, Chivo ATM, Wise, and banks?
35:46 How much does it cost to live in El Salvador for a family of five?
42:15 What is life like for an expat family in El Salvador?
48:15 Are public schools in El Salvador good for expat kids, or is homeschooling better? 
Live From Bitcoin Beach

How long does Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador have to work before the press admits it worked? Kevin Rivera has been covering this country since the Bitcoin Law passed, and he'll tell you the people writing the obituaries are measuring adoption with a broken clock. He grew up in Chiltiupán, the municipality El Zonte sits under, about 15 to 20 minutes up the road from Bitcoin Beach. He was 20. He heard people down at the beach were taking some kind of digital payment, Googled it, hit the words decentralized technology, and bounced off it completely.

He landed at Diario El Salvador covering the economy with zero background in economics, right as the country was about to pass the Bitcoin Law, so he picked up The Bitcoin Standard and started hunting interviews. Max Keiser is the one who took him down the rabbit hole. Kevin saw a tweet saying Max was in the country, cold messaged him, showed up, and got him explaining how Bitcoin works and the role it plays in the financial ecosystem, coming at it from a traditional finance background.

Then came Cubo Plus, and this is the part most Bitcoiners outside El Salvador still sleep on. The economics track starts with money itself, how we ended up trading with gold, and how the financial system really works, and only then moves into cypherpunk philosophy and cryptography. Pierre Rochard explains the mining side and Giacomo Zucco is the main teacher, through Plan B Network, which links Cubo Plus El Salvador to students in Lugano and around the world. Kevin says around 1,000 students have come through the program. What they walk out with is the switch from asking how do I survive to asking what can I build.

That switch is why he launched TH3 Labs the day we recorded. They build platforms for digital asset service providers, handle asset tokenization on Liquid and Taproot Assets for the new capital markets forming on Bitcoin, and Kevin gets into how L402 Lightning opens the network to AI agents so agentic payments can happen between them without payment server errors breaking the process. His read is that El Salvador's economy will grow through technology and innovation, especially once the small businesses that make up 90 percent of the businesses here get tools to export.

Kevin also wants to bring something back to Chiltiupan, which still has poverty in some areas while the rest of the country runs ahead. That part stuck with me. He's trying to be the guy kids in his hometown can point at. If this one hits, subscribe and send it to the friend who still calls Bitcoin a Ponzi at family dinners. Then drop a comment telling us what you'd build if you had legal clarity, two solid devs, and a government that wanted you to ship. Kevin's already building, so the clock's running.

—Bitcoin Beach Team

Learn more about Kevin Rivera:
X: https://x.com/kealrive22
X: https://x.com/th3labssv
Web: https://www.th3labs.com/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kevinrivera_token

Support and follow Bitcoin Beach:
X: https://www.twitter.com/BitcoinBeach
IG: https://www.instagram.com/bitcoinbeach_sv
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livefrombitcoinbeach
Web: https://www.bitcoinbeach.com

STAY AT BITCOIN BEACH:
https://www.stayatbitcoinbeach.com/punta-mango-villas

Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:
00:00 Intro
02:58 What did locals think when Bitcoin Beach started in El Zonte?
07:55 How to learn Bitcoin from zero without a finance background?
10:59 What did Max Keiser teach a Salvadoran journalist about Bitcoin?
15:14 What is Cubo Plus and what do you learn in the program?
21:47 What is the Plan B Network and what do they teach in Lugano?
25:58 How Bitcoin changed the builder mindset in El Salvador
29:11 How to start an AI and Bitcoin company in El Salvador?
34:58 What is L402 and how do AI agents pay each other on Lightning?
42:58 Is Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador actually working? 
Live From Bitcoin Beach