This is Atan and Paul, my companions at Kalayaan Homestead. Every month this year, they’ve been receiving Sats or Satoshis in addition to their salaries. Like half of the Philippine population, they belong to the “unbanked”—people who have no bank accounts and have no access to the financial rails of the country. To be unbanked is to be handicapped and have impaired ability to buy and save. This is a global problem.

Bitcoin solves this problem because 12 words give you access to money and a savings account that cannot be inflated by governments. With a few conversations here and there, they’ve started to know the meaning of sound money.

Imagine when this becomes a reality for families, barangays, indigenous peoples, cooperatives, savings and loan associations. People individually and collectively having access to a new financial system, bypassing the old one.

A former President famously said, “you can’t eat human rights.” Bitcoin makes the right to property real for the disadvantaged, allowing them to plan for the future and save their labor in a form of money secured by energy and protected from politics.

Bitcoin is hope.