A Bitcoin Circular Economy is a geographically concentrated effort (an effort that is focused on a relatively small area/population) that promotes the use of bitcoin as an everyday form of money, without, as far as possible, converting to and/or touching the fiat system in any way, whatsoever.

This includes services where Bitcoin is used to make purchases, but where the merchant never sees any sats. These services are preferable to using fiat on both ends, but they're not ideal. Ideally we want both the customer and merchant interacting directly with one another, and directly with Bitcoin only. These services can however be (and very often are) an ideal stepping stone and should be treated as such.

A Bitcoin Circular Economy promotes using bitcoin to pay salaries, make grocery purchases and do everything with bitcoin that would otherwise normally be done with fiat, in a way that is p2p and direct, as far as possible. The idea first emerged in Arnhem, in the Netherlands, in 2014, with ArnhemBitcoinstad, but really exploded with the founding of Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador, in 2019.

We (Bitcoin Ekasi) and others, like nostr:nprofile1qyg8wumn8ghj7nn0wd68ytnhd9hx2qg4waehxw309ajkgetw9ehx7um5wghxcctwvsqzphzherl5fg2s5hhm3vq4zegc38gtea0e45svswdmy3w9g2kph5dxndvn70

and nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgqgcwaehxw309akxjemgw3hxjmn8wfjkccte9e3k7mgqyz49tfre445nf58a0reahky9zhx3egxh5yggztn3zwqdt80htxyn2xct0pm , copied the Bitcoin Beach

model and adjusted for local context, starting around 2021. Several more projects have followed. nostr:nprofile1qydhwumn8ghj7cmgwf5hxarsd9kxctnwdaehgu339e3k7mgpyemhxue69uhkvars9e5xzmrfveshstnjwa6xsttpv93ksetw9ejx2tmwdaehgusqyraa7ccvgk7n27zzkcdjz3gtmc2y07guyd9u949lwqccyjn7guvnua00dkf is, in part, an effort to track, catalogue and provide a blueprint of the various circular economies and their different models, so that the idea may spread even further and be more easily and widely adopted.

Ultimately, we're all working towards the same thing: To establish Bitcoin as global money, and we believe the best way of doing that is through establishing circular economies.

The separation of money and state, which is perhaps the only thing Bitcoiners can agree on, is, in essence, nothing more than a global Bitcoin circular economy, which, in turn, is nothing more than countless smaller interlinked circular economies.

These do not have to be formal projects. In fact, many aren't. All it needs to be is an attempt to solve both ends of the adoption equation:

Who will spend the sats? And where will they spend it?

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This is the way. I'm trying to further the digital circular economy on Nostr by building nostr:nprofile1qqs2xugc5jyguqkj36rk0syv4tmnkjdtmtperttl7x9rqjy3ustdcvcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qg6waehxw309aek2mnyd96zumn0wdnxcctjv5hxxmmd9uxa0uz8, ultimately to help expand the reach and sustainability of the physically present circular economies. If there's any way your mission could be supported via an online presence, I'd love to help.

Nobody will spend the sats non-custodially. It's a store of value and not meant to be transacted. Besides that it lacks onchain capacity and LN for 95%+ users is undesirable usage.

However I spend my Monero daily. Building a circular economy on Bitcoin is insane. Use something that works out of the box for 95%± of the people.

Here's Uvita, Costa Rica. I am able to live the bulk of my life with Bitcoin here... You say it's insane, but it actually exists. Does the same exist for monero?

Asking custodians permission to move around IOUs on centralized servers is living on Bitcoin?

That's what vast majority are doing in these places with Wallet of Satoshi, Strike, Blink, Chivo, etc

https://xmrbazaar.com/

https://moneromarket.io/

https://monerica.com/

It’s a choice though, right? Anyone can participate on LN in a permissionless way if they want.

Sure, but those using those wallets aren't really "using" Bitcoin are they

In my experience, almost nobody is actually interested in sovereign money when buying/selling $1 coconuts at a farmer's market. But the successful coconut vendor who has now received $500 of Bitcoin IOUs is more interested in learning more about sovereign money. Which is where we come in with free hardware wallets, education & advice. I view it as a back door to hack the mindset of your average person into caring about self-sovereign money.

Curious what type of HW wallets do you provide in that environment? Am thinking of a similar project where I live.

Recently we’ve been recommending nostr:npub1tcnvkw8fu29zspw54tuhfrk0tkzn6qdupmc45slt4zmase3dzqask6ctu0 and nostr:npub12ctjk5lhxp6sks8x83gpk9sx3hvk5fz70uz4ze6uplkfs9lwjmsq2rc5ky's ColdCard. We keep some Jade’s, BitBox, TapSigners and Trezors in the office. We walk people through each, talk about the pros/cons, and let each person make their own informed decision.

Sounds like a cool project I'll donate some sats 🤙

🙏🫂

My wife just spent sats non-custodially over lightning for medical appointment. The clinic actually uses a fork of Blink, but my wife has non-custodial wallet.

In most of these circular economies people use forks of Blink, especially for the merchants that's a really good experience.

And users can easily get Phoenix self custodial wallet that runs ln node on your phone and is very easy to use. Phoenix also supports BOLT12, so you can have a static QR code that you can print and receive over lightning with good privacy.

Yes but who is going to part with it for poor quality fiat garbage? Why would they?

There isn't alot right now that is worth it.

"We know that software can’t be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can’t be shut down."

It's urgent to get Bitcoin into the hands of as many people as possible to ensure the success of a widely dispersed system.

If not you, then who?

That's as may be but how are you going to convince people to spend something valuable on crap when they can just spend the crap currency on it?

It's the same reason gold & silver are hoarded as soon as fiat shows up on the scene...

They'll spend what will have less value tomorrow, not what will have more.

Great questions to ask! 👏👏👏