Bitcoin Educational Center Launches in El Salvador

The initiative by Paxful will teach Salvadorans about Bitcoin and related topics for free.

Peer-to-peer bitcoin platform Paxful has launched an educational center in El Salvador to help citizens learn about and better utilize Bitcoin. The initiative, called La Casa Del Bitcoin, aims to propel bitcoin adoption with free knowledge as the majority of the Salvadoran population still struggles with the technology.

Paxful said in a Wednesday statement that the center would provide the population of San Salvador, El Salvador, with free training and events that increase awareness around the benefits of having bitcoin as a medium of exchange in the local community.

“The center will further drive the next wave of Bitcoin mass adoption and equip growing segments such as small merchants and local businesses with tools to connect to a global community of users,” the statement said.

Classes and training will go live to the public starting Thursday, February 3, as the center welcomes anyone interested in better interacting with Bitcoin and Lightning.

“Peer-to-peer platforms are driving adoption in emerging markets, and as a people-powered platform, we understand that education is crucial to the next wave of adoption,” Paxful CEO Ray Youssef said in a statement. “The center will provide education, accessibility and opportunity to a population that has been ignored by traditional finance, and demonstrate the real-world benefits of Bitcoin to emerging markets.”

In addition to providing educational resources, the center will also house offices of Paxful and of Built With Bitcoin Foundation, a humanitarian organization devoted to leveraging Bitcoin to create equitable opportunity through clean water, access to quality education, sustainable farming, and humanitarian support.

“The projects that we are launching demonstrate the power of Bitcoin as a philanthropic tool to aid change and further financial freedom,” the director of philanthropy of Built With Bitcoin Foundation, Yusuf Nessary, said in a statement. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to deliver resources and continue building equitable opportunities for countless people and communities who bring our mission to life.”

Paxful is a global peer-to-peer platform founded in 2015 for people to make payments, transactions, and send money by buying and selling Bitcoin as a means of exchange. Youssef and Nessary later teamed up to set up the Built With Bitcoin Foundation to support emerging markets; to date, the nonprofit has built and repaired eight schools, seven solar projects, and over a dozen water and farming systems worldwide.