Has anyone noticed how Bitcoin and surfing usually pop up in the same places? Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador, Bitcoin Ekasi in South Africa, Praia Bitcoin in Brazil, the Surfin’ Bitcoin conference in France. Could this be just a coincidence? Or is there a spiritual connection between the sport and the greatest decentralized network in human history? Let’s get mystical and try out ideas from thinkers heavily invested in both worlds.
Bitcoin Beach Is a Surfing Town
The El Salvador Bitcoin renaissance started in El Zonte, a beach town that became one of history’s most interesting social experiments. The 2021 Los Angeles Times article titled “How a California surfer helped bring bitcoin to El Salvador” is about Mike Peterson and the origins of Bitcoin Beach.
In it, they present Peterson’s partner in crime as “a 32-year-old surfer and community activist named Jorge Valenzuela.” Then, Valenzuela enters the scene, “He was ankle deep in the ocean, dressed in board shorts and a Bitcoin Beach rash guard, helping give surf lessons to a group of local kids. “All of them have bitcoin,” he said.”
https://x.com/Bitcoinbeach/status/1858166499577667824
In that same article, the LA Times presents a then-relatively unknown Jack Mallers in a similar fashion, “After surfing each morning at the beach’s spectacular point break, he would work on Strike, a Venmo-like application that allows people to send bitcoin to each other almost instantly and allows them to freeze their money in a dollar amount.”
Bitcoin and surfing are always present. Even in Bitcoin Beach’s mysterious origin story:
“Mike Peterson was a California surfer whose search for the perfect wave led him to this sleepy beach town in El Salvador. As he tells it, he was doing charity work for young people when an anonymous American donor offered a gift of more than $100,000.
There was just one condition: It would be paid in bitcoin — and distributed directly to residents of El Zonte with the aim of kickstarting a local bitcoin economy.”
One of the distribution methods was paying instructors of the “Surf Para Todos” program in Bitcoin. They gave surfing lessons to the community and helped spark the fire by spending that BTC around town. Nowadays, the “Surf Para Todos” program operates in three locations: El Zonte, Majahual, and Conchalío.
The Bitcoin Ekasi Story
In Mossel Bay, South Africa, we encounter a Bitcoin-Beach-inspired similar story. Of course, the subtle relationship between Bitcoin and surfing reappears as central to Bitcoin Ekasi’s operation.
“The Surfer Kids’ existing program operates 5 days a week, all year round, and is run by coaches from the same township community.
Bitcoin Ekasi pays these coaches’ salaries with Bitcoin, while simultaneously on-boarding township vendors to accept Bitcoin as payment. This allows the coaches to spend their SATs buying groceries in the township, thereby introducing Bitcoin into the township economy.”
https://x.com/BitcoinEkasi/status/1826286564068164035
The co-founder of both organizations, Hermann Vivier, explained to Solo Satoshi how everything started.
The Surfer Kids Story
At the moment, The Surfer Kids employs a 16-person staff that earns “100% of all their salaries in Bitcoin.” How did the experiment start? Vivier’s story is personal and involves his whole life.
“My wife and I did three things in 2010.
We got married.
We started a business, Unravel Surf Travel, which still operates.
And we founded a non-profit alongside the business, to give tourists an authentic South African experience, by combining visits to the non-profit project into our tours. That non-profit was The Surfer Kids.”
Further proof of the subtle relationship between Bitcoin and surfing, the two organizations are inextricably linked. “Bitcoin Ekasi would not exist without The Surfer Kids,” Vivier wrote. “The Surfer Kids provides us with the trusted well-established community platform we need to access to promote Bitcoin adoption within the community. The Surfer Kids has been operating within that particular community for several years.”
Thinking About Bitcoin And Surfing While On Remote Locations
Solo Satoshi asked Bitcoin Ekasi’s Hermann Vivier a question we thought had no definite answer: “Why do you think surf and Bitcoin circular economies seem to pop up in similar places? Is it by chance or is there some kind of cosmic connection going on?” His answer provides a practical reason for the phenomenon and connects Bitcoin and surfing in an original way.
“Surfers aren’t afraid to travel to strange places, in search of empty waves. In surfing, you want to have fewer people in the ocean surfing with you, because there’s limited waves at any particular surf spot. Like Bitcoin, there’s scarcity, and you cannot simply make more waves.
So, surfers travel to empty line ups, often in poor undeveloped countries, away from large crowds of people. And this is also where you tend to find problems with the money system, where the adoption of Bitcoin can help solve immediate problems.”
Insight: Waves are scarce and so is Bitcoin. Looking to get away from crowds, surfers travel to remote locations. There, they find problems Bitcoin can fix.
Introducing Solo Satoshi’s Next Three Guests
In Buenos Aires, Solo Satoshi sent a representative to an event titled “Citadel Scouts Argentina.” The setting was a luxurious, spacious, and well-lit house in Palermo. We met John, Paul, and Micael among spirited discussions about Bitcoin, professionally made Asado Argentino, and Aperol spritz.
https://x.com/jonchenot/status/1834582276551725447
These are their ideas about Bitcoin and surfing.
The Proof-Of-Work Ethos in Bitcoin and Surfing
In surfing, you are “confronted with natural forces,” says Citadel Theory’s John Chenot. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a technology that “allows us to better integrate to natural forces.” The network is connected to those forces through Proof-Of-Work and the difficulty adjustment. Nobody can “manufacture any more bitcoin without actual energy expenditure”
Back to the sport, Chenot thinks that “the surfing persona has become cool over time” because it’s connected to Proof-Of-Work. The sport “requires human skill in combination with technology, immersed in nature.” The surfboard is the technology, a tool to “experience and enjoy this natural force, this wave of energy moving through the water.”
Insight: Both Bitcoin and surfing require Proof-Of-Work. Also, “human skill in combination with technology, immersed in nature.”
A Deep Relationship Between Bitcoin and Surfing
“A lot of successful people try to go surf after they have all the success, and people like me and John have been surfing the whole way through, and they’re like: I want what they got.” According to Primal’s Paul Keating, “There’s something about surfing and freedom. You feel free when you’re out in the water, nothing else matters except for you and that wave.”
https://x.com/thepaulosophy/status/1845959834803556746
One of Bitcoin’s unofficial taglines is “freedom money.” That money runs on a permissionless, uncensorable, decentralized network. Which brings us back to the sport, “as a surfer, I’m always exploring new places for my waves.” Surfers’ main goal is to live in peace, and “there’s not a lot of peace when the government tries to get between you and every financial interaction that you do. There’s something really deep there.” There’s something about the subtle relationship between freedom, Bitcoin, and surfing.
Marco Micael, author of “The Great Parasite,” puts it in a new way. “I’m a BMX Rider and I always have this feeling… I don’t like people telling me what to do. In these freestyle sports, there are no rules. It’s just you and the possibilities are infinite. Your limits are up to you.”
Insight: Bitcoin and surfing represent freedom. Also, they ARE freedom.
Waiting For the Right Moment
Back to the matter at hand, Marco Micael gets philosophical, “If you think about waves, they’re like cycles in life.” How does that connect Bitcoin and surfing, though? “You have to understand the sea, the waves, the ocean. And you have to respect it because it’s dangerous. You have to take responsibility. And then it’s all about preparing for the right time to take the wave.”
You might pick the right one or you might not, but “you go all in into that wave.”
By connecting it with the subject of his book “The Great Parasite,” Marco Micael brings it home. “There’s a connection with Bitcoin because we have to surf this wave. This is happening right now, right here. In order to ride it we have to take all the preparation and all the things we’re learning right now, we have to apply that in order to ride the wave that’s coming: the flood of the fiat system, and the whole scam that it’s. And Bitcoin is the surfboard to ride it with.”
https://x.com/SatoshiSir/status/1850021116657467594
Remember, waves are like cycles. “People from Venezuela and Argentina, they come from the future and they’re telling you what’s coming. It’s the same monetary cycle that’s been happening for centuries, but now it’s worse than ever because we’re in a globalized and interconnected system. So, it’s going to happen on a massive scale and it’s going to be devastating.”
Insight: In Bitcoin and surfing, “most of it is preparation for the right moment.”
Introducing Three New Guests
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnIY0kC5X9c&t=1648s
The Bitcoin Path is our old friend John Chenot’s podcast. In the episode titled “Surfing, Bitcoin, and Community,” his three guests gave invaluable insights about the topic at hand. This is from the podcast’s description box: “We draw parallels between surfing and Bitcoin, discussing how both require patience, learning, and a long-term perspective to master and appreciate fully.”
Bitcoin And Surfing As Great Arbiters Of Truth
“There’s this sense of empowerment when you utilize what Bitcoin has to offer,” Blake Warlaumont says before connecting Bitcoin and surfing practically. “Knowing your limits, and knowing when to take on risk, and knowing when to play a little more conservatively is the same mentality you have to approach surfing with.” Warlaumont concludes that Bitcoin and surfing are “a great arbiter of truth,” because both confront you with your limits right away.
Then, he connects the concepts philosophically. “At the end of the day, it’s really you versus the wave, and the same can be said when we embark on our Bitcoin Journeys. The whole idea is to have some self-sovereignty in our lives and take full accountability for our decisions.”
And, to close off his participation, he uses a familiar Bitcoin trope. “There is this component to having a low time preference in both surfing and Bitcoin, like, you can go a whole session where you might not get more than a few waves, but if you make it count you could still be like that was a session of a lifetime.”
Insight: Bitcoin and surfing are about personal responsibility and patience.
Chasing The Adrenaline Rush
As the analytics lead at Swan Bitcoin, Zach Zager is a numbers man. “Doing something with just enough sense of danger but also adrenaline rush that certain people are just drawn to, and I think there is a parallel with Bitcoin. A lot of Bitcoin is just holding the Bitcoin and feeling like the price is just stuck there or going down.” For Zeger also, patience is key.
Bitcoiners have to endure “a lot of suffering until you’re out there,” until finally there are “a few moments of utter success and jubilation.” A few times every four years, “you get to ride that wave. I think there’s an adrenaline junky component to Bitcoin as well.”
Insight: Bitcoiners and surfers are looking for an adrenaline rush.
Water And the Bitcoin Network
For Proof of Workforce’s Dom Bei, there’s a relationship between “someone’s surfing in Vietnam” and himself. “They’re in the ocean. What’s separating them from me, where I’m surfing? It’s a body of water, and obviously we know that there’s an electric charge that exists in the water, there’s a grounding aspect to it.”
The water connects them, and that makes Dei think “about the network, this concept of transactions based on value. Even though we may be very far from someone across the world, you can zap them, and it’s almost like you’re sending or participating in that value system with very few breakers in between.”
Insight: The Bitcoin network is as ubiquitous as water.
Conclusion: Bitcoin and surfing
Connection confirmed.
Insights, Bitcoin and surfing:
- Represent freedom. Also, they ARE freedom.
- Require Proof-Of-Work. Also, “human skill in combination with technology, immersed in nature.”
- Are about personal responsibility and patience.
- In Bitcoin and surfing, “most of it is preparation for the right moment.”
- Bitcoiners and surfers are looking for an adrenaline rush.
- The Bitcoin network is as ubiquitous as water.
- Waves are scarce and so is Bitcoin. Looking to get away from crowds, surfers travel to remote locations. There, they find problems Bitcoin can fix.
