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In this episode of Niche to Necessity, we dive deep into the exciting world of Bitcoin adoption in Costa Rica. Join host Taylor Zork as he interviews Joshua Pooley, the head of business development at Pura Vida Bitcoin, a company working to revolutionize the financial infrastructure of Costa Rica through Bitcoin. From navigating the challenges of local banking systems to creating a seamless Bitcoin economy, Josh shares insights on how his team is fostering financial freedom for locals, tourists, and businesses alike. Whether you're curious about Bitcoin's real-world applications or passionate about crypto, this conversation offers a fascinating look into the future of decentralized finance in Costa Rica.
Don't miss this deep dive into the world of Web3 finance, brought to you by CryptoCFOs.
Don't miss this deep dive into the world of Web3 finance, brought to you by CryptoCFOs.
Tune in now to stay informed and future-proof your finance strategies!
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What is From Niche to Necessity: Tax & Accounting for Web3 and Digital Assets?
"From Niche to Necessity: Tax & Accounting for Web3 and Digital Assets" is your source for expert insights on the rapidly evolving world of crypto and digital assets. Hosted by Taylor Zork, CPA, and presented by CryptoCFOs, this interview-based podcast delves into the complexities of tax and accounting for Web3 and digital assets. Tune in as Taylor sits down with top finance professionals, and CEOs of Web3 organizations to explore the latest developments and best practices in this exciting field. Whether you're a seasoned finance professional or simply curious about the future of digital assets, this podcast will keep you informed and engaged. Subscribe now to stay ahead of the curve and unlock the potential of Web3 and digital assets in tax and accounting!
Hello and welcome to Niche to Necessity, your go-to podcast for everything tax and accounting in the realm of Web3 and digital assets. I'm Taylor Zork. In every episode, we sit down with the top finance professionals and CEOs from the world of Web3 to dissect the latest developments, solutions, and best practices in this rapidly evolving field.
Our mission is to demystify the complexity of digital assets and blockchain for tax and accounting professionals. Whether you're deep in the trenches of Web3 finance or just starting to explore the impact of digital assets, this podcast is designed to keep you informed and ahead of the curve. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Josh Pooley, the head of business development at Motivated Bitcoin, who is driving the adoption of the Costa Rican Bitcoin economy.
Josh is a certified Bitcoin professional who is focused on educating people about how Bitcoin and the Lightning Network can change their lives by providing financial freedom. From an entrepreneurial level, sorry, from an entrepreneurial South African family, he was exposed to all areas of business. But when he was introduced to Bitcoin in 2017, he found his passion with Bitcoin and furthering Bitcoin adoption.
Josh now lives in Costa Rica, where he and the Motivated Bitcoin team are on a mission to bring financial freedom to Costa Ricans. Motivated Bitcoin is committed to revolutionizing the way we interact with money and are building the infrastructure needed for the Bitcoin economy and full Bitcoin adoption. Welcome, Josh.
Thanks for coming. Thanks, Taylor. Great to see you.
Glad to be able to make this work after a couple of attempts. I mean, it's the first time I've had a guest from the same country as me, and we were going to try to maybe do it in person, but we live on opposite sides of the country, so we figured it'd be better to just do it on Zoom. But this one's fully recorded in Costa Rica this time.
Yeah. And it's amazing to say that this country is big enough, like it's a small country, but it's big enough that we're on opposite sides of the country and can't make it work. So testament to Costa Rica and all its beauty.
It's just about whether or not you want to drive seven hours in a day or not, right? So just jumping into it, on your website, Motivated Bitcoin, you guys say you're building a complete economic solution for Costa Rica. So in your point of view, what does that look like and how close is Motivated Bitcoin to achieving this? Yeah. So for me, a complete economic solution is somebody being able to wake up in the morning.
They don't have to think about the price of Bitcoin. They don't have to worry about if they have to feed their family or if they can pay their suppliers. And we've attended a conference last year together where somebody mentioned the idea of a circular economy where Bitcoin enters and doesn't leave the system.
I think in a nutshell, that is what a full Bitcoin economy looks like. But scaling it back is to reach a circular economy is really difficult. And I forget who it was at the conference that highlighted it, but they mentioned like it is very hard to achieve that circular economy.
So for us, we've broken it out into three different groups. You've got your tourists, you've got your merchants, your businesses, and then you've got your locals. And for each of those segments, it all hinges on merchants.
When a merchant is able to accept Bitcoin from a tourist or local, pay their staff and pay their suppliers without any issues, then everything else functions kind of flawlessly. And for us, what we're aiming for, I guess for context here in Costa Rica, there's two currencies at play. There's the dollar and there's the colone.
And they're used interchangeably in business affairs and day to day life. Our goal is at the very least for Bitcoin to be the third of those options. So we're going to have the dollar, the colone and Bitcoin.
That's our North Star. And I want to emphasize we've come a long way, but we haven't done it alone. There's so many people backing us like yourself and many others that have allowed us to come this way.
And to answer that question of how close we are, we're anywhere between eight months to a year away, I think, from being able to have the option for somebody to live their life in Bitcoin and not have to worry about it. That's amazing. And I think that it's a wake up call for a lot of people in other parts of the world where the adoption isn't as, I would say, ubiquitous.
Because here in Costa Rica, it's just like you see the signs everywhere that these businesses accept Bitcoin. And I do know a lot of people who pay, who kind of are already kind of living in that closed loop. And it's definitely not there for everyone, but there are people who are already doing it.
So I commend you guys for kind of helping to kickstart that as well. So as far as the range of services that you guys offer, can you elaborate a little bit more on like what it is that you guys offer as like a complete package? Totally. Yeah.
So when I explain these services, the thing I want people to keep in mind is our goal is to build the infrastructure for people to live their life in Bitcoin. And so when we built out our services, that's what we have in mind. And we haven't achieved, like from beginning to end, somebody to be able to live their life in Bitcoin, which is why we're saying eight months to a year out before we get that.
But the services we have, we are offering are in line with that. And we're very proud of what we offer. So to stop stalling, what we offer is a lightning wallet.
And in that lightning wallet, we have a marketplace for businesses to advertise their product or for users to have like a Facebook marketplace where you can offer your garage sale items up for sale for Bitcoin. We then offer StableSats, which allows you to peg your Bitcoin to the U.S. dollar. And it functions a lot like a stable coin, but it's slightly different.
And I won't bore the listener with all the details, but a shout out to Galoy for creating it and for allowing us to implement it. We then offer OTC transactions for people who are large scale transactions in the country. And within OTC, we allow people to do real estate transactions as well.
There's something fairly recently that we've added on, but we're very proud of it. We've had a few deals go through and it takes a very complex thing for the user and simplifies it. And finally, the latest thing that we've added is a lightning vending machine, functions like a Bitcoin ATM.
And I'm exceptionally excited about this one because it allows for people to live their life in Bitcoin in a pseudo sense. And to elaborate more on that, you've got people that might not be able to earn money in Bitcoin or don't want to spend their money, their Bitcoin that they've saved for a long time. And I guess before going into that, we also offer a merchant solution so people, businesses can accept Bitcoin as well.
So a business can accept Bitcoin, but then what do they do when they have the Bitcoin if they need to pay their suppliers or what does the staff do if they're not getting paid in Bitcoin? And so the vending machine allows people to buy and sell Bitcoin and go and spend it or sell it as they would normal fiat currency. There's a whole range of stuff and I don't want to get too into the details, but yeah, I don't know. Is there any questions with any of those? No, no.
I think that's great. I mean, for me, like the real estate piece, it's such a huge aspect because our listeners won't kind of fully grasp this, but doing anything with the banks in Costa Rica is a nightmare. And it stems from the history here of like the fact that we had a lot of money laundering going on here and a lot of like AML laws that the Costa Rican government complies with related to the US and other jurisdictions as well.
So for me, like when I bought my house here, a lot of my proceeds were coming from digital asset sales and purchases and just like the work that I was doing and getting paid in different digital assets and explaining to the banks that, because they all want to know where the money comes from, explaining to them like, hey, I can send you the transaction hashes where I, you know, received these funds and then converted them to stable coins and then sent them to my bank. And they're like, what? So having a means to do these without involving the banks as well is huge because it allows you to kind of get around that headache of dealing with the kind of bureaucracy that is riddled in the Costa Rican banking system. So I love that aspect of it.
As far as, you know, the challenges and the opportunities of operating in Costa Rica, well, really any non-native country to your own, right? But specifically Costa Rica, can you discuss the challenges? And again, obviously flip side, the opportunities that you face starting and scaling a business here in Costa Rica as a non-native and non-Spanish speaker. Yeah, the first and biggest challenge that you've already touched on is banking. The banking system is tough here.
You're coming in as a tourist or an immigrant coming into the country and it is so difficult to find out the information that you need, A, to get started as a business and B, how to continue operating. There's this funny thing with Costa Rica where a lot of the laws feel like they're written in paper or pencil and they're totally up for interpretation. And I think there's a lot of bankers that fully grasp onto that.
And I'm not saying that's specifically a Costa Rican thing. I think there's a lot of developing nations that do that. But it makes it very difficult for somebody who's not a Spanish speaker.
And I'm trying to learn. I'm trying really hard. It's difficult when you're talking with lawyers and bankers.
So that's the first one. And the second one as a non-Spanish speaker is actually getting into the community. So here there's tons of Spanish speakers and that's the heart and core of Costa Rica.
That's what we're building this company for. And to be able to connect with them without being able to speak the same language takes a lot of effort. Now, thankfully, because of Bitcoin and the freedom that it gives, there is this kind of transcendence of language that you can communicate with.
We go to the feria markets and although I can't talk with them, if you show them a transfer of money happening in an instant of a second and there's nobody saying, yes, this is allowed or no, this isn't allowed, that blows their mind. I've paid my lawyer a $300 bill through PayPal and it took, I think it was three months to get through and they took a 50% cut of that $300 that went to the lawyer. I know it blew my mind.
It was, it feels like highway robbery. And so to then have that interaction and then explain to them, hey, so this awful thing happened to you, but now you can go and use Bitcoin. Google Translate can use a lot of, do a lot of the in-between talking and cover our backs with that.
But yeah, there's plenty of challenges and I'm sure you've gone through a lot of them as well, being here in Costa Rica. But it makes it fun as well. That's why we all get into this.
We love the space. We love the country. We love the people.
And yeah, we need to learn Spanish and it's important to get there. Yeah. I mean, for me, my Spanish is really good, but it's the challenges, like you're saying, dealing with lawyers and things like that.
I don't want to be speaking in Spanish because it's I don't know the legal terms. It's like, even at the mechanic, I'm like, I can get around and I would call myself pretty fluent in Spanish, but I'm definitely not going to talk to a doctor in Spanish or anything like that. So there's levels too.
And one cool tool that you might want to use is CheckPBTO just came out and they have a live trans, you can put it in between yourselves and translates back and forth. So that'll simplify things for you as well. That's fantastic.
The one thing I do want to add on to that, which is a huge shout out to the community here, is where I have been in those deep conversations with businesses or community members that only speak Spanish and my Spanglish level just can't compete. There are so many people that are invested in Bitcoin and seeing Bitcoin flourish across the world that will come just out of the goodness of their heart to translate. And it feels so good when you can pick up the phone and call somebody and be like, hey, I need help talking to this mechanic.
They want to accept Bitcoin, but I don't know how to sell them on it in Spanish. And somebody shows up and does it. It's a testament to the Costa Rican people.
They are just beautiful hearts and yeah, can't say enough good about them. Yeah, the Tico's are great people for sure. Lots of love there.
So coming back to the regulatory landscape here, how do you guys deal with navigating that? And what are the key regulatory considerations for crypto businesses here? Yeah, it's difficult, especially when we first got down here and got started. We came down in 2021, kind of middle of the pandemic, and there was no information about Bitcoin, let alone just information on how to get started as moving to Costa Rica. And we got lucky with our situation when we landed in San Jose.
We got connected with the right people and we actually got connected right into members of the government. And so navigating those regulatory deals has been a little bit easier for us than other people. And they said to us, we don't have any concerns about Bitcoin.
To be honest, we have so many other bigger concerns that Bitcoin isn't even on that scale. So when you go out and build this business, don't break the law first, then go and do what you need to do. And in a few years, we're going to come and review what's been going on with you and other Bitcoin projects around here and see how you've performed and see if there is any concerns to be had.
And so when we got that green light to say, OK, go build, don't do anything dumb, but go and build what needs to be built, it made it a lot easier for us. And yeah, so being able to have that conversation directly to members of the government makes it a lot easier. But even with that, it's difficult.
So like with OTC transactions, we have to make sure that we're not breaking the money laundering rules. And so to be able to find the fine print where we can transact with Bitcoin internationally without alerting banks and without alerting government, that's been difficult. But with lots of conversations with lawyers, it makes it possible.
I think the one thing I will add on to here, and it made me excited last week, I think it was last week or the week before when I heard this, the government from when we came down here has not been a fan of how intense the bank control is over Costa Rica. And so when we talk about regulatory concerns, I really have no qualms with the government at all. All my qualms come to banking, which I think everybody in Web3 and Bitcoin can agree with.
There's a lot of issues with banks. The government, Costa Rican government, feels hamstrung by what the banks can do in Costa Rica. And you listen to politicians talk, and that could just be hearsay.
But I think it was two weeks ago, I think it was BCR, the government just released a mandate for BCR or BCT, one of the banks down here, that they need to divest their shares because they have too much of a monopoly over the banking sector, which is huge. And so to hear that and then look back three and a half years ago, when we spoke to the Costa Rican government, they said, yeah, we're not a fan of what's going on here. We're looking for a solution.
And then for them to actually be kind of going after the banks, not going after them in an aggressive sense, but saying like, hey, we're after the best interests of our people, makes me so excited because we're building this Bitcoin thing here for the freedom of Costa Rica and its people. And to know that the government is right there with us is so exciting. And I think to have such a close neighbor in El Salvador having so much success and I guess business interest flowing in from international places because of their kind of step into Bitcoin is huge.
And I think that our listeners will probably be blown away with that response from the government agencies saying, go play around with this. Just don't do anything egregious. And we're going to review what you're doing and see how it's working.
That's like unheard of, right? We've got the SEC enforcing without having any rules in place in the States. And so to hear stuff like that happening is just going to blow people's minds, I think. It's so open-minded.
And I really think you're right. Like El Salvador's response to Bitcoin and success from it, I think, has prompted a lot of government positivity in Central America, not just Costa Rica, to be like, hey, there's something going on here. El Salvador is doing something that works.
What are we missing? And so to be open-minded is huge. I just went completely blank on a thought I had that was important to note. But if it's important, it'll come back.
We'll come back to it if it comes back to your mind. So continuing on these challenges and opportunities here, given the innovative nature of your services, how do you engage? You kind of alluded to this a little bit already. But how do you engage with and educate local community to foster adoption? What's your strategy around that? Yeah.
Taylor, it's one relationship at a time. It's slow. It's painful sometimes, but it's so necessary.
The people down here, and not just the Costa Rican locals, people that have lived here their entire life, but also for expats that have lived here for a number of years, there's a level of trust that's needed first before they can engage with you. There's so many tourists that come and go in this area or people that move down for six months and get burnt out because the regulatory landscape, going back to the last question, the regulatory landscape is difficult to navigate here and it's very bureaucratic. And so people get burnt out and they leave.
And so it feels like there's a big guard up with everybody when they're first engaging with somebody. And so from day one, we've said, hey, we're going to take this at a relationship level and we're going to spend however many hours it takes for one person to understand what Bitcoin is and to be able to adopt it or not adopt it. And that's okay, too.
We need to take it on a per case basis. And so, again, we've been working on this for two, three years now, and we're very impressed with where we've gotten to and other communities have gotten to because down here it is entirely individual based. Now we're kind of transitioning to another level where we're known in the community, we're kind of known in Costa Rica.
And so when somebody here is privy to Bitcoin, they can be like, oh yeah, I've heard of your services. I've heard good things. And so now we're transitioning to start doing community engagement.
So getting involved with fairs is actually one tomorrow. It's hosted by Upe, which is a community gatherer here. Can't say enough good things about what they do for people.
But we're going to be there. We're going to be engaging with the community, playing with the kids and just hanging out. And we're going to start transitioning to more of those.
And we are partnering with Upe again later in June, July to start an education. School is the wrong word, but some classes just to get people into the groove, understanding a little bit more in depth and to have different levels of that. So we've gone from one relationship at a time and we will continue to foster that.
But now we're saying, OK, how can we grow that using our reputation and get a little bit more involved with larger scale groups? Very cool. So lots of education, lots of like one step at a time. I think that that's, you know, and ultimately that strategy at first, I would say it's hard, right? Because you're having to go one person at a time.
But then those people, they get excited about the services and they may start to talk to other people about it. And if they're educated enough, they can kind of do some of that education on their own. So I think that ultimately it's one of those tipping point kind of things, right? You work, work, work, work, work.
And then at a certain point, it just starts to feel like you've got momentum behind it. And to add on to that, I found. So in 2017, I was living in Canada.
My family and I, we all got into Bitcoin kind of at the same time. And we were evangelists shouting from the rooftops, hey, everybody, like, get into this thing. Like, this is going to save the world.
This is the future. And no matter how loud we shouted and no matter how good of a friend we were to somebody, nobody really listened. They're like, oh, magic Internet money.
This doesn't matter. And we found from the first time that we mentioned it to somebody, it would take about a year for them to open up to the idea of Bitcoin. And then another 60 months to a year before they actually do their first transaction.
And like the fastest case I've seen was somebody in a year said, no, I get it. I like it. Let's do it.
But we've seen the exact same thing happen down here where it takes about a year to two years for somebody to get comfortable with the idea of Bitcoin. So this is just a statement to anybody out there looking to educate people and spread the word of Web3 and Bitcoin. It takes a long time.
And if you don't see results in the first month or year, it's okay. I've been there too. It's really frustrating, but it comes and people will turn back to you when they open up their heart to it.
Yeah, you got to plant the seeds and it takes sometimes it takes a while for those to sprout. But I think that ultimately people are seeing that their purchasing power is getting eroded. And if you can kind of help people understand that that doesn't happen with Bitcoin, it might happen in the short term, with the volatility, but that volatility is becoming smaller and smaller, especially with institutional adoption.
Whether you feel great or not about big institutions being a part of Bitcoin, it is going to eventually help reduce volatility. And I think all of that is going to continue to demonstrate to people that, hey, if you want to hold on to the dollar or whatever currency you're holding onto, your government is going to continue to devalue that currency because they got a lot of debt in that currency and they need to devalue it in order to stay afloat. Yeah.
Or for a number of different reasons, they need to devalue it. Yeah, 100%. So coming back to the product and the services that you guys offer, how do you guys gather user feedback and what are some key improvements that you've made based on a community response? Yeah, it's a great question.
I think it's so valuable. Feedback is the backbone to every startup and I would argue to any longstanding business. What are you without your customers? For us, it's relatively easy to gather feedback on the one hand, but then also getting the size of feedback is a little bit difficult.
Going back to educating people, because everything is on a relationship basis, it's very easy for us to gather the data because we pass our users in the street. They're shopping at the same places, we're eating lunch together. There's a lot of crossover, like Portreiro, Tamarindo is our area and it's a small town.
So to gather that feedback has been very easy and it is just those conversations of, hey, what do you think about our Lightning Wallet? What do you think needs to be improved about it? Or what do you find is the pain points in Costa Rica and how do you think we can solve it? Now, going back to that, getting the scale of feedback is something that we're working on and we're trying to come up with innovative methods to get surveys done and whatnot to get the feedback from a larger portion of people. But our users' feedback has completely changed the way our business operates. We started as purely being a Lightning Wallet.
We thought that would be good enough. We're just going to create this wallet that's going to function flawlessly and throw it out to the community. And then those in Bitcoin are going to use it and it's just going to naturally explode.
And then we realized that there was a whole, the whole infrastructure of Bitcoin is missing in Costa Rica. And that was from feedback from somebody being like, hey, this is great. You've got this wallet, but how do I get Bitcoin? Because the first solution to get people into Bitcoin is A, to educate them.
And then the second is to allow them to buy it easily. And there's no exchange that connects into Costa Rica. And so we're like, OK, well, we have connections overseas.
We have connections here with Bitcoin. Why don't we just connect the buyers and sellers and create an OTC desk? And that's where the evolution started. So OTC was a user request.
Hey, I want to buy some Bitcoin. We can sell you Bitcoin. Real estate was another user request.
That's great that I can buy Bitcoin. But now with that Bitcoin, I want to buy a house. And we're like, well, that's really interesting.
How do we buy a house in Bitcoin? So now we've got this real estate piece built. StableSats was another feature that somebody was using the app and was like, hey, I'm accepting Bitcoin as a business, but I don't necessarily want the volatility risk and I can't sell it easily. It's great that you have OTC, but I want to be able to sell it in a day.
And so we're like, what if we brought in StableSats so that you can accept Bitcoin and then immediately turn it into dollars so that you don't have to worry about the volatility risk. And then when you want to, at your convenience, sell it to us in the OTC desk and then we'll give you your cash back to you. And so, again, everything has been driven by user feedback.
Yeah, that's great. And I mean, you're in a unique position to be like, because you're providing a service for people to leverage, it's a unique position to be in, to be passing by your clients or customers and to have these relationships built with them to where they're not paying you a monthly service fee or anything like that. They just, as they need services, if they have whatever your baked in spread is, they have that.
But it's like a relationship that's more profound than you would have in a normal business setting with your customers. And to have that direct contact with them where you're providing this really amazing added utility for them with their money. And so it's kind of cool to see that you're walking on the street and you're getting user feedback just from the places that you normally shop at, that you're using your Bitcoin, right? A hundred percent.
And it's a testament to Costa Rica's small community. We know mutual friends from Uvita and up in Guanacaste, even though we've never directly crossed paths with them or whatever, just because the community is so small. And again, you go to San Jose, you'll know people there, you'll have mutual connections.
It's just such a small community. And so for anybody coming to Costa Rica, that's looking to move here or start a business here, really pay attention to your reputation because you need to be conscious of everybody you're interacting with. Because you never know whose mother works as the head of finance at some major bank or whatever it may be.
So it can be really easy to get a good start here where you run into the right people, you make a good reputation, or it can be really difficult where you mess with the wrong person and then your life here is over. It's going to be really difficult. Yeah, for sure.
So looking ahead to kind of future developments and future of Uvita Bitcoin in Costa Rica, are there any upcoming features, services or expansions that you could share? Like how do you guys see your services evolving in the next few years? Yeah, Taylor, there's some pretty big stuff coming. And again, going back to the first like point, eight months to a year, we'll have a full solution for somebody to live their life in Bitcoin here. And so there's a few things I can't go into, but there's some things I can hint at, which I'll come back to.
But first things first, our first vending machine is up and running and that is massive. I think that is the first major step for the country to be able to confidently step into Bitcoin. And in July, we have four more machines coming.
And as soon as those are in place, we're going to have the full fleet come through. Our goal is to have vending machines that can buy and sell Bitcoin using the Lightning Network across Costa Rica so that anybody can have access to Bitcoin to buy and sell at any time, right? Like that's what we need. We can't be playing with just doing peer-to-peer stuff over the long term.
So that's number one. I'm so thrilled about it. It's installed at Sharky's.
I'm not sure when this podcast airs, but as of, I think it's June 2nd, it'll be operational and running. We're just waiting for it to be drilled into the ground and secured and then it's going to be going. So that's very exciting.
And then the thing I will hint at is that North Star of somebody being able to wake up and operate in Bitcoin, be able to interact with financial institutions without a concern for maybe Bitcoin discrimination, for lack of a better term, is right around the corner. We've just signed everything. It's all clear.
It's good to go. And so hopefully by July or August, we can fully tell you what's going on and that should be running by the end of the year, but it will be very exciting for the shape of Bitcoin in Costa Rica. Well, we'll have to do a follow-up podcast discussion and reveal that when you guys have more information on it.
Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So what long-term impact do you hope PortaVida Bitcoin will have on the financial landscape in Costa Rica? So I know that you guys want to be able to have this circular economy, but what do you think the broader impacts of that or what are your goals for the broader impacts of that are? Yeah.
So the main goal, as imagined by the PortaVida Bitcoin team, is to have Bitcoin be one of the three options for currency or payment in Costa Rica. What does that look like? From our end, we can't control if the government's going to accept that. But what we can do is allow for everybody to have a frictionless financial experience from start to finish in the Bitcoin realm, entering into Bitcoin and leaving Bitcoin.
And again, that's why I can't say that we're doing a circular economy here because we are building the ramps for people to get in and out. But we want people to have a painless experience, to not feel trapped, to be able to accept Bitcoin because they believe it is the future and not because they're being pigeonholed into accepting it and holding it. And so for us, that is the future.
It's a frictionless financial experience. And if we can have one person come up to us and say, hey, your entire product line has facilitated my life here and I've realized financial freedom, that would make my life complete. Like one person to say I have financial freedom because of what you guys did.
That's enough, man. That is great. I love it.
Yeah. And I know that you guys also, maybe this is something that's already in the works or not, but I know that there's been a lot of trouble with Costa Ricans here with the volatility of the US dollar versus the cologne recently. And I'm just wondering, I know that you guys in one of our previous discussions, you mentioned that you had a cologne, like a stable cologne coming.
Is that still in the works? Do you guys have something like that coming? It's still in the works. And that is our North Star for the app for StableSets to transition to. But everything that we do is based off of a Bitcoin to cologne conversion.
So our vending machines are entirely operating off cologne. There's no US dollar connection. And part of that comes back to our conversations with the government where they want to be an independent Costa Rica.
They don't want to have to rely on the US dollar or North America or Europe. The people here are already independent. We love our freedom.
We love our autonomy. And so the government is driving towards that. And so are we.
There is this natural bridge between Bitcoin and the US dollar that is a little bit hard to get away from right now. But we are developing that stable cologne and hopefully that could come out in the near future. Awesome.
Yeah, yeah. Because I know that my build for my house, for example, was denominating US dollars. And it was during the point of the worst collapse of the US dollar versus the cologne possible.
So for me, it was fine. But for my builder, there was some struggles there because he's paying out in colognes. And so yeah, it was a cool feature that I heard you guys were working on.
And it's cool to see you guys still working on that. So my last question before we get into the conclusion here is surrounding like what advice you would have for entrepreneurs that are looking to establish crypto or Bitcoin businesses, particularly in foreign markets? Let's get to Costa Rica, like in Costa Rica. I think it's got to be have a lot of patience and resilience.
Things are slow here specifically. And I think that's the case across the world. Nothing moves as fast as we want it to.
Adoption is slower than we expect. I heard this saying, I forget who it belongs to, but nothing is either so good nor so bad as you expect it to be. And I think come into any entrepreneurial venture here or around the world with that in mind.
And I think reputation is something that we need to hang on to with all our might, like whatever community you go into, build into that community because those are the people that are backing you from the beginning. And again, reputation is the only thing that we take with us for our entire lives. So if your startup fails, you at least have a community behind you to back you into whatever you're doing next.
So yeah, resilience, patience and keep that reputation clean. I love it. So any final thoughts you'd like to share with our audience about the potential of Bitcoin to transform economies like that of Costa Rica? Bitcoin is the future.
It's going to solve so many of the issues that we have going forward. And nobody can say for sure if it's going to be the currency of the world or what the future actually does look like with Bitcoin. But I would encourage everybody to get involved where they can.
What we need from the Bitcoin side of things is more tangible routes into traditional finance or traditional living. There's a whole older generation of people that might never get into Bitcoin if there isn't the easy gateways for them to get in and out and look at it like they would look at their traditional banking or be able to go and buy a coffee like they would with cash. And so this is a little bit of a story to get back to that, but I went to travel the world with my family last year and we went specifically to look for Bitcoin infrastructure around the world.
We went through Europe and Africa and North America, but Europe and Africa mainly. And of that, we only found one Bitcoin ATM throughout that entire experience. We went to the shops that said they accepted Bitcoin and looked up all the different stores and whatever it may be.
And there's always an error or something wrong going with the Bitcoin infrastructure. And so we came back and we're like, we need to focus on building a seamless Bitcoin infrastructure for Costa Rica so that when somebody comes here doing that Bitcoin vacation that everybody wants to do, they're not met by the same hurdles that we are. And so that's my encouragement for anybody in the future.
Please get involved with Bitcoin. We need all the help we can get. The markets are huge.
It's no need to compete or think we're enemies. We're all working together. And yeah, to find that niche that is a pain point in the traditional world and solve that.
It's a challenge in the States right now because the way that the new broker regulations are written as they stand right now, if you want to go and buy a coffee with your Bitcoin or other crypto assets, and they accepted it at Starbucks, for example, one of the things they would be required to take down from you is your address and your social security number. So we need more help on the legislative front in the States specifically on some of these overbearing regulations that don't make any sense. Nowhere in traditional finance do you need to give someone your social security number in order to buy a coffee.
And that's absurd. So I think that people need to take your advice and educate themselves and also push on their leaders to help us make sensible regulations because we need regulation, right? The world needs regulation in order to operate, but it needs to be sensible. And we need to be able to comply with it without having to give up the ethos of what digital assets, Bitcoin, crypto is about.
And to you guys as well. You guys are paving the way for that accounting and finance sphere in crypto CFOs. And I absolutely admire the lengths you're going through and the integrity that you're operating your business at.
It's so exciting. And I know it pointed a lot of people to go talk to you and to go look at what crypto CFOs are doing, because it is exactly that. It's exactly what you're saying.
We need people to go in and do something, find your niche and how it can relate to the Bitcoin world. Because like in your example, there's no accounting education, at least in North America, that have seen that as integrity, filled with integrity and actually paying attention to what it means to be in Bitcoin. And yeah, I'm fumbling with my words here, but you guys are filling a very important role.
And I think there's a lot more need for that around the world. For sure. And so just to close things out, for those who are interested in exploring portability of Bitcoin, your services, or just learning more about Bitcoin's potential, where can they get more information? Where could they connect with you or just find more info on what you guys are doing? Absolutely.
You can get in touch with us on Twitter or Instagram. Those are our two main social medias. Or on our website, we've got a portal to contact us on literally every page.
For better or for worse, no matter the page, you can get in touch with us. So our website is PurviewtoBitcoin.io. And that's our handles for both of our social medias as well, PurviewtoBTC for Twitter and PurviewtoBitcoin on Instagram. But yeah, reach out, please.
We're here to help you on your Bitcoin journey, no matter what level you're on. I love talking about Bitcoin. It's what I live for.
So please reach out. I'd love to have a conversation. And if you're a professional in the Bitcoin space wanting to get more involved, reach out with us as well.
We are looking for people to help expand Costa Rica's Bitcoin infrastructure. So if you're interested and you're passionate about Bitcoin, please reach out. We'd love to speak with you and see how you can fit on our team.
I love it. And I mean, just to close things out on the talking to people front, I was at a kid's birthday party the other day. And someone just came up to me and basically was like, sell me on Bitcoin, like out of nowhere.
And I'm like, this is like a dream. Like everyone came up to me and just asked me to sell them on Bitcoin. So anyway, I love what you're doing, Josh.
I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today on the podcast and looking forward to do part two when you guys have more progress on that front. So yeah, appreciate you. Absolutely.
Thank you for having us, Taylor.