Mossel Bay, South Africa.
Bitcoin Ekasi (Mossel Bay, South Africa) is inspired by Bitcoin Beach (El Zonte, El Salvador)
Bitcoin Ekasi is an extension of The Surfer Kids Non-Profit. The Surfer Kids is a registered non-profit organization, founded in 2010. The NPO is 100% donation-based and works to create youth-empowerment in an impoverished South African township.
Similar to what Bitcoin Beach did in El Zonte, El Salvador, Bitcoin Ekasi aims to use a well established community platform (The Surfer Kids NPO) to create a Bitcoin economy in the township already serviced by that non-profit organization.
Wait. How exactly does this work?
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.
All of this happens over the Lightning Network. Bitcoin’s layer-two scaling solution, designed to expand the transaction throughput of the Bitcoin network to a truly global scale.
A Bitcoin economy in a South African township?
But why?
First.
To expand upon the empowerment already effected in this community by The Surfer Kids and, through Bitcoin, spread that empowerment wider than the physical limits of the organization itself.
Second.
To show that it’s possible. Because debates around ‘why Bitcoin cannot work’ all miss the point.
Map overview:
🔵 – The Surfer Kids & Bitcoin Ekasi: HQ
🟠– Vendors Accepting Bitcoin
🟢 – Vendors not (yet) accepting Bitcoin
🟪 – The Surfer Kids’ Recruitment Area (JCC Camp Township)
Bitcoin Ekasi 