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El Salvador’s Secret Weapon? Its Extensive Bitcoin Education Program, Says Stacy Herbert

El Salvador shook the world in 2021 when President Nayib Bukele made bitcoin (BTC) legal tender, giving the cryptocurrency the same status as the U.S. dollar, the Central American nation’s official currency.
Since then, El Salvador has constituted a bitcoin reserve worth roughly $630 million, established one of the most advanced crypto regulatory frameworks in the world, promised to issue $1 billion in bitcoin-backed government bonds and even convinced stablecoin giant Tether to relocate its headquarters to the country.
But one of the country’s most rewarding successes has been its extensive Bitcoin-centric education program, according to Stacy Herbert, director of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office.
“Bitcoin country needs Bitcoin engineers, right? We’re producing them, and it’s a long manufacturing process, but it’s creating a wonderful positive feedback loop,” Herbert told CoinDesk in an interview. “They graduate, they get jobs, they all become friends. … You can feel a tech vibe emerging in San Salvador.”
The idea, Herbert said, is that when massive companies like Tether or Bitfinex decide to relocate their headquarters or open offices in El Salvador, they have no issue finding the highly-educated workforce necessary to run their operations.
“A lot of students are finding ample opportunity to work at these companies because there’s huge demand [for them],” Herbert said. The quality of the Salvadorans’ Bitcoin education incites even more firms to consider El Salvador as a jurisdiction in which to set up shop, and that, she continued, motivates more students to study Bitcoin.
President Bukele has a “vision for a renaissance. Singapore 2.0. Florence 2.0. How do you get there? You need to build a strategy,” Herbert said. “You need the talent pool. You need smart, optimistic, bright people. And that’s what we have here in El Salvador.”
Bitcoin Education
Herbert is a longtime bitcoiner — she was one of the first people to talk about the cryptocurrency on international television back in 2010. She came to El Salvador in 2021 with her husband Max Keiser soon after bitcoin was made legal tender and almost immediately spun up an educational program, CUBO+, to train Bitcoin developers in the country. Bukele subsequently selected her to run the Bitcoin Office, which was formally established in November 2022.
The Bitcoin Office advises on policy and legislation and does marketing for El Salvador’s bitcoin initiatives. But the first thing Herbert did upon her appointment was to work on bringing Bitcoin education into high schools. The program initially targeted only five institutions but has now been rolled out on a nationwide level.
Students are shown how to set up Bitcoin and Lightning Network nodes, and the technical details behind ASICs — specialized computers exclusively used to produce bitcoin. The ASIC lessons in particular have been met with enthusiasm, Herbert said. “They were able to hold something, and that really helped them understand in a deep way.”
But Bitcoin lessons aren’t limited to high schoolers only. CUBO+ runs a course which Herbert described as a “very intense bootcamp” that expounds on Bitcoin theory, history and philosophy. Open to roughly 100 to 125 applicants — who get university credits for attending — the program eventually selects 21 students with the best technical skills and pushes their education even further. Some of the students have been flown to Tuscany and Lugano to participate in Bitcoin workshops.
“100% of the students [in the inaugural year] found a job,” Herbert said. “Some of them are making close to $4,000 a month. You know, the average starting salary for a computer science graduate in El Salvador in 2023 was $600 a month.”
Close to 80,000 civil servants have also taken three-day Bitcoin certification courses. And another program will roll out in schools — from first grade to ninth grade — on the topics of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. “We’re laying the foundation upon which we can build a great economy,” Herbert said. “It’s not just the technical details of Bitcoin. It’s a mindset shift, to understand what sovereignty and independence mean.”
CUBO+ has already paid off for Herbert on a personal level. Three employees work under her at the Bitcoin Office, all of which graduated from the program before coming to work for the government.
Let the good times roll
The Salvadoran government recently agreed to wind down its bitcoin wallet and make bitcoin payments acceptance voluntary in the private sector (instead of mandatory) as part of a new $3.5 billion deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Herbert said that the Bitcoin Office had not been part of the negotiations but that, in her view, the concessions made by El Salvador changed nothing at all. “The priority is always the people, so [let’s do] whatever helps the people the most, while also maintaining our sovereignty, and our strategy to execute on our vision.”
Still, since the IMF deal was announced, El Salvador has slightly changed up its bitcoin acquisition strategy. In addition to buying one bitcoin a day, the government has purchased, on three separate days, 10 extra bitcoin. When asked whether the change of pattern was a reaction to the IMF deal, Herbert said: “You would have to ask the President directly. … [But] he’s ready to accelerate. Donald Trump is coming to office in a few days, and the race is on. Globally, there’s a race to follow us.”
For Herbert, El Salvador earned its place in the history books from the moment it created the very first national strategic bitcoin reserve, and the U.S., if it does end up constituting its own reserve, will simply be walking in the Latin American country’s footsteps. It’s a competition, then, and El Salvador isn’t necessarily an underdog — according to Herbert, other countries will have to put in the work to keep up with Salvadoran initiatives, which are beginning to bear fruit.
The Central American nation has never experienced peace and prosperity, at least not in living memory, a Salvadoran lawyer told Herbert recently. In the 1970s, while the U.S. was enjoying disco music and the golden age of Hollywood, El Salvador was undergoing social unrest that would eventually trigger the Salvadoran Civil War, which left the state too weak to deal with the growth of violent gangs in the 1990s.
But Bukele’s leadership, combined with the Bitcoin initiatives, are completely changing the population’s frame of mind, Herbert said. All of a sudden, the future looks exciting.
“I think El Salvador deserves the good times that are coming — that are here,” Herbert said. “We’re just starting these good times.”
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Michael Saylor’s Strategy Adds Another 22K Bitcoin for $1.92B

The Strategy (MSTR) bitcoin (BTC) acquisition machine continued to roll on last week.
The company added 22,048 BTC for $1.92 billion, or an average price of $86,969 each, per a Monday morning filing. Total holdings are now 528,185 bitcoin purchased for $35.63 billion, or an average price of $67,458 each.
At the current price around $82,000, those holdings are worth more than $43 billion.
This latest purchase appeared to be funded mostly by additional common share issuance, a total of $1.2 billion worth in the week ended March 30, according to the filing. Strategy also tapped its STRK preferred share ATM for $18.52 million during the week.
The company additionally closed on its STRF preferred share offering last week, raising $711.2 million.
MSTR is lower by 4% premarket alongside bitcoin’s roughly 3% decline in price since the Friday close of the stock market.
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It’s Back to Bitcoin for Darknet Markets After Monero’s Binance Delisting: Chainalysis

Darknet markets are increasingly returning to bitcoin (BTC) as their primary cryptocurrency because of rising liquidity and accessibility challenges associated with privacy-focused coins like monero (XMR), according to Eric Jardine, cybercrime research lead at Chainalysis.
«After major exchanges delisted XMR, we observed a significant increase in bitcoin inflows,» Jardine said in an interview with CoinDesk. «Reduced accessibility is steering users back toward bitcoin.»
Many Western markets on the darknet — a part of the internet hosted within an encrypted network and accessible only through specialized anonymity-providing tools — had either fully moved to monero or operated with it in parallel with bitcoin before the delistings. XMR dropped off after it was removed from major exchanges.
OKX removed XMR and other privacy-focused tokens including dash (DASH) and ZCash (ZCH) at the end of 2023. Binance announced in February 2024 that it planned to de-list monero.
«When a coin or token no longer meets this standard, or the industry changes, we conduct a more in-depth review and potentially delist it,» Binance said at the time.
On-chain data from BitInfoCharts shows that the daily number of monero transactions has halved from this time last year.
«In order to be an effective kind of medium of exchange, you need a certain amount of liquidity and a certain amount of accessibility,» Jardine said.
Jardine emphasized that illicit cryptocurrency transactions represent only a minor share of total crypto activity.
«Typically, illicit transactions constitute at or below 1% of total crypto activities. While addressing these issues is essential, broadly labeling crypto negatively is inaccurate and counterproductive.»
Chainalysis data shows that about 0.14% of all transactions in crypto, some $50 billion, involve illicit activity, with a rise in stablecoins as an illicit payment mechanism.
The stablecoin issuers are fighting back, with the Tron-led T3 Financial Crime Unit, a group comprising of Tron, USDT-issuer Tether and TRM Labs freezing over $100 million in illict funds.
Jardine also noted that law-enforcement agencies prioritize darknet markets primarily based on their scale and involvement in the fentanyl trade.
Its presence significantly escalates the likelihood of a darknet market attracting law enforcement attention, he said, because fighting the drug is a priority for international law enforcement.
«Markets have sort of varying levels of sensitivity to fentanyl-related sales,» he said. «Some claim they don’t do it, then don’t police vendors; some claim they don’t do it, but then they do. Some will be selling precursor products but not finished products.»
Indeed, one of the most recent darknet market busts was the Nemesis online market. The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) specifically cited the market’s role in the fentanyl trade as a reason for the bust.
And, as a result, OFAC sanctioned a number of crypto wallets tied to its operator, Behrouz Parsarad: 44 BTC addresses and 5 XMR wallets.
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Archax Buys FINRA-Regulated Broker Dealer to Offer Tokenized Assets in the U.S.

Archax, a U.K.-regulated crypto exchange and custodian focusing on tokenized assets, has acquired a U.S. broker-dealer in an effort to enter the booming institutional market in the country after recent positive changes on the regulatory environment.
Globacap Private Markets Inc, a broker-dealer and alternative trading system (ATS) regulated by FINRA and the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), is being bought by Archax and being renamed to Archax Markets US.
The new entity will serve as the company’s foothold on American soil and serve the institutions and professional investors in the country, two Archax executives told CoinDesk.
Asset tokenization is a fast-growing sector in crypto as global banks, asset managers and digital asset firms are increasingly using blockchain rails to move traditional financial instruments. They do so to achieve operational efficiencies and speedier,around-the-clock settlements.
Just in the past weeks, asset manager Fidelity Investments filed to launch a tokenized money market fund and is reportedly working on issuing a stablecoin.
Derivatives exchange CME Group started tokenization tests with Google Cloud with plans to launch new services next year, while the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company partnered with Circle to explore services built on USDC stablecoin and tokenized fund USYC.
Archax specializes in the issuance, custody, and trading of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), including money market funds, corporate bonds, carbon credits and uranium. For example, Archax’s recently-issued tokenized Treasury fund on XRP Ledger with asset manager Abrdn saw $45 million in deposits to become a top 10 product by assets under management, rwa.xyz data shows.
Archax has been exploring entering the U.S. market over the past years, but stayed on the sideline due to regulatory uncertainty, Graham Rodford, CEO of Archax, said in an interview with CoinDesk.
«Under this new administration, which seems to be more crypto positive, we are getting more interest from the U.S. as well, which obviously we can’t easily serve from the UK, so it makes sense for us strategically to go there,» Rodford said.
Archax also plans to expand its offerings to tokenized U.S. equities and bonds, building on its existing partnerships across several blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Hedera Hashgraph and XRP Ledger.
The firm’s U.S. entrance follows the recent purchase of a Spanish brokerage firm to expand services to the European Union, pending regulatory approvals.
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