We traveled âin bitcoinâ before it was a thing.
Me and Rikki started âBitcoin Explorersâ in El Salvador in 2021, then kept moving: Central America, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa. And Iâm not saying this to flex. Iâm saying it because the timeline is the timeline. The content exist. The story speaks for itself.
Now. El Salvador was an engagement cheat code (and everyone knows it).
The uncomfortable truth: when we posted El Salvador content, everything grew faster. Like⌠four times as fast.
My tweets got reposted by Bukele. I got 4000 followers in a day for this picture you see here.
Our videos about El Salvador hit 10k views while being shot like amateurs (because we were amateurs). We werenât filmmakers. We werenât a production studio. We were just there, documenting what we were seeing with the tools we had in the most honest possible way.
If we wanted, we couldâve turned that into a visibility machine.
We didnât.
Because we didnât want the easy path. We didnât want to go where everyone goes just because it performs. We didnât want to become a tourism brochure for an algorithm or even worse, a government.
And eventually we had to admit something most people wonât say out loud: realistic reportage takes time, money, and resources. We didnât have enough of them to keep doing it the way we wanted...properly.
So we stepped back. I found other jobs I'm super happy with and my voice remained independent.
Now let me ask you something. genuinely.
Why do you think so many Bitcoin creators focus on El Salvador? Why do you think so many creators post about it like itâs the only place on Earth where Bitcoin exists?
Because itâs simple:
- Post a beach breakfast and you get quadruple the reposts of a normal post.
- Post a critique? You risk getting dogpiled, losing followers, losing access, losing 'opportunities.
Thatâs the part people donât post.
And yes: there are people in the space who will make it personal, who will lean on social pressure, who will remind you that stepping out of line has a cost. Iâve seen and heard enough to know the incentives are real even if nobody wants to say it clearly.
The saddest part is who ends up paying for this illusion: not the insiders. Not the people doing the reposting. Not people who threaten you over tweets.
Itâs the people at home:
- liking
- retweeting
- booking flights
- buying tickets
- chasing a â Bitcoin paradiseâ that mostly exists in social media posts apart from a few exceptions and small communities
A lot of content creators arenât documenting reality. Theyâre documenting what the algorithm and their paycheck rewards.
And at that point⌠whatâs the difference between them and the journalists they love to hate?
Same dynamic:
- follow the narrative
- repeat what powerful people want amplified
- avoid the messy parts
- monetize the attention
Different ecosystem. Same playbook.
We didnât want to be that. We couldâve milked it. We didnât. Not because weâre morally superior, spare me that story.
Because it didnât fit who we are, and it didnât fit what we wanted to build long-term.
If Iâm going to talk about Bitcoin âin the world,â I want it to be real:
- not just the pretty parts
- not just the safe parts
- not just the parts that get you reposted by the right accounts
Reality is complicated. Adoption is uneven. People are people. Politics are politics. Incentives are incentives.
And if your content never shows the trade-offs, the friction, the contradictions⌠then youâre not educating anyone. Youâre doing marketing.
â¤ď¸ If youâre new here, read this twice: Bitcoin doesnât need fairy tales. It needs adults.
It needs people who can handle nuance without turning it into a loyalty test.
So next time you see a creator post a perfect âBitcoin countryâ shot, ask yourself:
- What are they not showing?
- What canât they say without losing access?
- What gets rewarded here. and what gets punished?
The algorithm isnât truth. Itâs the incentive map. And most creators are just following it like obedient little tourists.
