Ready to orange pill? How to Accelerate Bitcoin Adoption in Your Community with Dusan Matuska

Live from Bitcoin Beach in El Zonte, El Salvador, Dusan Matuska, a pioneer and advocate of Bitcoin education, delves into the impact of Bitcoin on society as a decentralized finance currency and what efforts are made to educate more people about it.

Dusan Matuska shared how his Bitcoin journey went, talking about the values of Bitcoin such as freedom, and fellowship, and how Bitcoin can create a cooperative and harmonious world. The concept of “Amity,” a term that captures the spirit of cooperation and peace is what Bitcoin technology can help to achieve. It’s a reminder that Bitcoin’s implications in society are more than just finance and investments.

One way Dusan Matuska aims to foster Bitcoin adoption is through educational initiatives like the 2-day workshop conducted in El Salvador aiming to empower educators in the Bitcoin community, enhancing their skills so they can effectively share their knowledge and passion about Bitcoin. This helps reach more people because spreading Bitcoin knowledge is just as important as Bitcoin itself.

With his company Amity Age’s goal to introduce Bitcoin to a hundred million people, he knows it’s a big challenge to take. As he discusses the contribution of Bitcoin in community development and economic empowerment, how Bitcoin mining funds education efforts, and how the development of a Bitcoin-centric community in Honduras can serve as a model to developing countries, Dusan Matuska’s valuable experience is a powerful asset that can help reach more people and truly leverage Bitcoin for economic and educational growth.

Learn more about Dusan Matuska and Amity Age:
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Amity Age tours: https://www.amityage.com/tours 

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Live From Bitcoin Beach

Transcript

Dusan Matuska  
We're sitting in my kitchen in my apartment and we're just chit-chatting about what Bitcoin means to us. And we of course, we got to a words like freedom, and all of that. And then we said like, okay, but how does the world where freedom is around us? How does it look like? And we realize it's a world where people cooperate on a much better level, there is much more harmony and peace because governments can just print money infinitely and finance, wars, and stuff. So, and there is a word in English kind of archaic words not used or used very much. And that's amity, which translates into fellowship, friendship, and harmony. And we realize that Bitcoin is a technology that can get us to the world of friendship and fellowship to the world of amity to the age of amity. So we put together these words, and that's how amity was created.

Mike Peterson  
Glad we were able to pull this son into the studio with us to talk about the exciting things that he's got going there. You just finished a, was a two day workshop that you were doing here?

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah, today between educators. Exactly.

Mike Peterson  
And where did the idea, is this something that you do outside of this? Or was this something you did specifically for the people here in El Salvador? Or where did the idea come about?

Dusan Matuska  
I piloted it last week in Slovakia, it was a project that I had, in my mind for some time, to help educators get better at educating the Bitcoiners who are passionate for Bitcoin, and they would love to spread it across the globe. Like how to get better at spreading the knowledge. How to understand the other party, how to use analogies, how to mass bust Bitcoin myths, how to handle objections. So all of these kinds of soft skills have an educator. We were practicing for two days here.

Mike Peterson  
Okay, so you guys weren't just talking about Bitcoin specific things.

Dusan Matuska  
It was very, very specific for educators. So there are two girls actually from Volcano Energy supermarketers, they're not educators, specifically. But marketing is also a form of education. So we were also chatting how to apply everything we learned into marketing as well. Like how to show people where's the problem, and what might be the solution where they can get with where Bitcoin can get them. So it was like a lot of mental frameworks and models that you can not only apply to Bitcoin education, but basically to any education. And when I say even better to relationships to raising your kids, so I'm applying bunch of that to my own relationship with my girlfriend. So and it's basically how to get better at communication in general, and how to listen to the other party and so on. That was the whole today's experience.

Mike Peterson  
Okay, so I know there was some people from our team from the Bitcoin Beach Team, the Mi Primer Bitcoin had a few people there. Bitcoin Berlin, Volcano Energy. Am I missing anyone?

Dusan Matuska  
I think those four, yeah.

Mike Peterson  
Yeah. And everybody seemed very, like excited and impressed us. You know, I came in on the tail end, after you guys had done two full days. Usually, at that point, people are ready to go home, but everybody who seemed pumped, they were excited. And they, didn't seem bored at all. So however you did it, they seem that seemed to be energizing for them.

Dusan Matuska  
Thank you. And I put a lot of work into it. And I'm super happy that it worked. And I hope that people are going to spread the knowledge and, and educate other peoples in those things as well. So it was very intense. We had like 10 hours a day, basically with one hour for lunch. But we started at 8am. And we were finishing it almost 6pm. So it was very, very intense and big credit to everybody who participated and a huge thanks to you and your team for allowing this to happen. So we chatted with Roman in adopting Bitcoin and I proposed this idea to him was like yeah, let's do it. Let's find a time but we're starting to chat like January before going to rob and he was like, nah, maybe I'm gonna have a baby that week. I'm not sure I'm a grandma. Let's try to figure it out. It was like okay, let's do it.

Mike Peterson  
So he had his baby last night.

Dusan Matuska  
Yes, actually he's one day father right now. That's brilliant.

Mike Peterson  
So is this connected to AmityAge is the name your company. So I'm curious first off where that name comes from, but then also how this connects with the broader vision of what you guys are doing and is this something that other people that are interested in having this type of training can contact you for so.

Dusan Matuska  
Definitely. So where the name comes from, when me and my colleague Gabriel, were sitting together like three years ago when we're putting together the company. We're sitting in my kitchen in my apartment, and we're just chit-chatting about what Bitcoin means to us. And we, of course, we got to a words like freedom, and all of that. And then we said, like, okay, but how does the world where freedom is around us? How does it look like, and we realize it's a world where people cooperate on a much better level, there is much more harmony and peace because governments can just print money infinitely and finance, wars, and stuff. 

Dusan Matuska  
So and there is a word in English kind of archaic words, not used very much. And that's amity, which translates into fellowship, friendship, and harmony. And we realize that Bitcoin is a technology that can get us to the world of Frenchmen fellowship, to the world of amity to the age of amity. So we put together these words, and that's how amity was created. And then you see the little girl. So who that is, that's Amity Nakamoto, the granddaughter of Satoshi, because Satoshi disappeared, he left us with an amazing tool, and right now we are the ones who should take the tool and spray it around the world. So that's the role of Amity Nakamoto to be the holder of this torch of knowledge and help people get them educated on Bitcoin. 

Dusan Matuska  
So we kind of created this this character that will lead people on these journeys. So that's how Amity was born. And in the program, the educators Academy, that's something I would like to put much more effort into it's very fresh thing in my mind, and we piloted it in Slovakia and here as well. Because the vision that we have, or the mission of Amity  is to welcome 100 million people in the Bitcoin rabbit hole, why 100 million because we wanted to put a number that's crazy big enough to think differently. And it's also we wanted to say that we want to educate as many people as there are Satoshis in one Bitcoin, that's why 100 million. 

Dusan Matuska  
And then how to achieve it, it's, I cannot imagine achieving it ourselves. It's impossible. So we would like to help others get better in education get better in what they love to do, or maybe they feel like, like they love Bitcoin, and they are figuring out what to do in Bitcoin. And if they believe in education, maybe that's the thing that they want to perceive and pursued, but maybe they're afraid to speak out, maybe they are afraid to share their message to create content. And this program should help them to not be afraid to do it and have the tools of of how to do it. So the idea is to help new Bitcoin educators get into the space, get them excited, get them the tools, get them to knowledge, and get to the welcome 100 million people in the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Mike Peterson  
I love it. Curious as to how's that finance? How does that is this setup as a for profit company? Is it a a nonprofit that you guys, you know, are are supported through donations? Or how does that work?

Dusan Matuska  
So um, I used to my background is in teaching so I used to teach Mathematics, Physics and English. And I used to be part of a couple of students, nonprofit organizations. We also started in 2017. Maybe you heard about the Project Parallel Police from Czech Republic. It was the first crypto only cafeteria in the world. At the time, the Bitcoin was there was no Lightning Network. So you needed to use Litecoin for small transactions and coffees.

Mike Peterson  
So yes, I think yes, I have.

Dusan Matuska  
So maybe you heard about Brock, and we said the same partner company or nonprofit in Bratislava. So I got to experience from nonprofits and doing education on Bitcoin, where you need will depend on donations. And it was very exhausting. You know, we started as a team of 30 people, and we ended up as a team of five because people just you know, volunteers just burned out. Yeah. So what I was starting, when we were thinking with Gabriel like okay, let's do the education. I was thinking like how to do it so that we don't need to depend on donations, we can be self sustained. And at the time, Gabrielle's mother in law, she owned the power plant in Slovakia kind of a small on biogas. So we were actually it was funny thing because we are turning cow shit into Bitcoin. So we were mining we started like, let's explore if we can mining this power plant and maybe we can use the proceeds to finance education.

Dusan Matuska  
But she had this existing way prior to even Bitcoin exactly?

Dusan Matuska  
Exactly. She was doing it for like 10 years. She was the first woman in Slovakia to start a power plant. So she's like very visionary.

Mike Peterson  
How much power are we talking about?

Dusan Matuska  
Very small, like, 600-700 kilowatts.

Mike Peterson  
How many how many homes would that power?

Dusan Matuska  
In terms of homes? Oh, that's a tough question. I don't know how much.

Mike Peterson  
I'm just trying to get a frame of reference that people would be able to relate.

Dusan Matuska  
So if Bitcoiners are listening, so regular AntMiner, air cooled as 19 consumes like three kilowatts per hour. So what you can run, let's say 200-250 over the miners, at one spot.

Mike Peterson  
And who were her customers? I'm very curious about this, like, who were her customers prior to it being used for money?

Dusan Matuska  
She was selling basically to the grid. So it was a power plant, you were turning, you know, corn and cow shit into methane, burning the methane putting it back to the grid. It was in a very remote area in Slovakia. So we went to her and was like, Can we do this? And she was like, yeah, guys, you know, I like it. She's very visionary. She's very technologically oriented socially, like, yeah, come and do the Bitcoin mining. 

Dusan Matuska  
And at the time, I was doing a little bit communication, I had my clients that I was helping setting up tresors and wallets. So I just send them a message like, guys, you know, we're gonna do some bitcoin mining, we have a container. And if you want, you can buy machines, we will be hosting it for you. And in just like three weeks, we fill up the whole container. I'm like, what the heck. And then they have like the the guy who helped her to maintain the power plant, he had another power plant in different locations. So we set up a new container at that location and fill it up as well in like, maybe a month or two.

Mike Peterson  
So what is the cost of power from that?

Dusan Matuska  
So this was in 2000, like three years ago in 2021. And we were paying like eight cents per kilowatt hour. Yeah.

Mike Peterson  
Which is a little high for now. Right? That's kind of borderline if you can make it or not.

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah, that's true, that's true. I mean, at the time, it was we started actually very close to when the the difficulty drop after China came in. So it was excellent, you know, the price of Bitcoin was like 35,000, or even almost 40. The difficulty was like, yeah, like 20% of today. And it was like, even less, I think. So it was a great time, at the time, we thought like, were geniuses. And then the price was going down difficulty. I was like, oh, my God, what did we started here. So but we didn't give up, we were kind of figuring out how to do it better. 

Dusan Matuska  
And then sadly, the, in Europe, the price of electricity went super high, because of the Russia and Nord Stream or all of that, then the war came in. And suddenly they call us from the power plant until like, guys, there is something called an "economic mobilization" would means that we can turn it off anytime, because the government can call us and tell tell us like you need to deliver to the grid.And we were like, that's pretty risky. So what to do, okay, we moved to Czech Republic, because it wasn't there yet. And, it took us maybe like a month to set everything up. We spent like $50,000, just for the infrastructure, everything and moving it out. And after like two months, we just turned off the machines, because we were just running at a cost and even lower. I was like, oh, damn.

Mike Peterson  
So were you just buying from just the grid and Czech Republic? Or did you have a similar setup?

Dusan Matuska  
Similiar set up but if you're competing with the grid, they will not give you such a low price because you're not consuming megawatts and megawatts. So we were like, little bit lower than the grid. But in the end, you know, they were like, guys, we don't care, you know, we either sell to you or to the grid, you want this price, you know, you need to go higher, and so on. So it was a tough times, but at a time, I was already setting my residence in Paraguay, because of the tax purposes and you know, all the stuff. Just when I saw what's happening with the war and COVID and restrictions, I was like, okay, I want to be able to leave the country. Shit hits the fan. 

Dusan Matuska  
So I set up the residency, and suddenly, I was like, wow, Paraguay is interesting. It is the largest electricity exporter in the world. 100% is hydro. And there are miners like coming in. So let's explore. At the time, it was cheaper than right now. Like the base price was like three and a half, almost four cents, which is good. Right now. It's grown a little bit. But it was still like it was it was perfect. So we were like, okay, let's explore it. 

Dusan Matuska  
So after a couple of months, like we found a great partners there and we partner up with they have the largest power plant largest farm there. And we moved all the machines from Slovakia and Czech Republic. And last year in August, we turned on all the machines and right now we're operating close to five megawatts, nothing super huge, but pretty OK. It's a tough business. All the people who are listening and doing mining, you know, they know what I'm talking about. We were expecting that it's gonna be easy, like just the miner into a plug in, you're just earning Bitcoin. If it wouldn't be like that, it would be super happy. And this helps to sustain the education activity, so this is one of the business models, the only one that we have. And we will be exploring, like if we can make the academy itself sustainable, which is the ideal scenario, but it may take us year two or three.

Mike Peterson  
So it's not right now the model is not necessarily that it's still kind of a nonprofit in a sense, it's just you have a for profit entity yourself.

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah, exactly. So, but the economic part, or the education part is not even nonprofit is like the loss currently.

Mike Peterson  
Yeah, yeah. But um, but um, that's what I'm saying. Like you have a you have an economic entity, that's basically you're one donor, supporting exactly the entity. Yeah, it's because it is tough, it's tough education is so needed. But it's, most people don't realize how much they need it. So they're not going to pay for it upfront, or it's challenging to charge enough that you can actually make it profitable so.

Dusan Matuska  
That's the thing. So this is the current way. And I see that, you know, once people realize that it's important thing that they are willing to donate a little bit, but you cannot sustain if you want to have like a proper teacher kind of full time. And, you know, you need to pay salaries, you want to pay salaries for so that people are doing this full time. And they don't need to like, go to work there. And then just couple of hours, maybe do some education, I would like them to like just dive deep into it and just be inside of Bitcoin and do the education. So we need to pay salaries, you need to get the money somehow. So that's the tough part.

Mike Peterson  
We'll figure that out. So I want to dive into that. I want to go down a rabbit hole a little bit here, because I'm curious about the mining component. And your opinion on some of the prospective ventures here in El Salvador that they're talking about doing. From my perspective, energy is crazy expensive. And El Salvador, the climate is warm. It just doesn't make sense to mine here. But there appears to be some big projects in play. And they know people that I really respect and know much more about it than me. So they obviously have a plan to make it profitable. But how would you view mining in El Salvador? And what do you think from what you've heard so far?

Dusan Matuska  
I'm a big believer in geothermal, actually, we're exploring this way in Slovakia as well. But it's very expensive to just put it into place, then take some time to really like get it to the older capacity. So we actually didn't want to leave Slovakia. So we were exploring hydro, solar, geothermal, even nuclear, we actually had a call with a company that's building small, modular Modular Reactors, like if they plan or if it's possible to have this reactor in Europe, and they just laughed us out. Like, guys, like your regulation sucks. Like, it's never going to be in Europe.

Mike Peterson  
Because I mean, electricity costs are insane in El Salvador but that's that. And, I mean, I think it's like, I think I pay like 30 cents a kilowatt hour. And you know, that's obviously at residential level. But that's a lot. I mean, our electric bill is insane. I won't even say what it is because I'd be embarrassed. I mean, it's more than the average family makes here in a month.

Dusan Matuska  
That's crazy. At that time we have the same problems, like 40 cents per kilowatt hour so it's insane. I'm like, I'm just sweating because I don't want to just turn on the AC.

Mike Peterson  
Yeah, I'm kind of a wimp, when it comes to that I knock down my AC. During the day, I'm fine. But at night, I just can't sleep without it. He understands for business for a lot of businesses that's very important, the cost of power. And so they brought hydro one, they have a big natural gas, the liquefied natural gas plant that was brought online. So they've done a lot of things to bring down so so prices are definitely cheaper than they used to be. But it still has a long way to go. So that's why I'm curious. I mean, I would love to see nuclear come in here even what you were talking about. I'm I'm very curious to using cow dung and and, you know, corn husks like that stuff that's available here in El Salvador and labour's cheap? Is that something that they could be doing?

Dusan Matuska  
I mean, this is very interesting. Like in Slovakia, it's kind of big. There used to be, there were some subsidies for that. But about like 30 or 50 of these power plants, like popped up. They cannot be very huge. They're very hard to maintain. Like, it's a bunch of chemistry and alchemy. But you can really use resources that sometimes they even pay you to take it. Because they they would need to pay somebody to like drop it out. So they pay you to even like you can use the resource and you don't need to pay for it anymore. So that's pretty interesting to explore.

Mike Peterson  
Well, there's a number of people that have even come down and have contacted us and we've met with that. Have these ideas to do different plants that burn tires or waste and things but you're the first person I've talked to you actually has like seen a plant that's up and running. Every time they start, I'm just like, oh, that all sounds too good to be true. So if it's that easy, why isn't everybody doing it?

Dusan Matuska  
See it works. But it's, it's very tough to maintain, like, you need to have people who know what they're doing. And the problem is with these plants, is like, once you mess it up, once you mess up the chemistry and like, the bacteria kind of dies out there. Just to start again, it takes weeks. So you need to like an even if you're starting the power plant, it takes even months to prepare the, the cocktail of, of everything in such a good way that it produce enough methane to run it. So that's, that's a tough business very, very tough business, a lot of actually, of these power plants went bankrupt in Slovakia, because the people were like, oh, I have a donation for a power plant. Excellent. I'm gonna be selling power to the government, you know, easy money. They went like they even sometimes even didn't start or they went bankrupt in a year because they just couldn't handle that. But getting back to the nuclear and Salvador are not nuclear, but the volcanic. So I don't think big believer in that, because it's very like a constant stream of power, which you cannot achieve with solar and wind. So solar and wind currently for mining are not the best sources, because there is a huge volatility of supply.

Mike Peterson  
And from my understanding, that's what the volcanic energy company is doing initially is solar and wind.

Dusan Matuska  
I heard that I actually that's in the name is like volcanic. So I was like expecting, okay, it's going to be volcanic only. And I learned that it's like, first, wind and solar. I'm like, whew, good luck with that. Because the ROIs and all of that so far, as far as I know, they don't match up very much. Because for to run it 24/7 batteries, which are extremely expensive today. So going this direction, I know, maybe there are some SOPs.

Mike Peterson  
And with the cost of the miners is, it makes sense to just like, only run them half the time or then you have miners sitting idly and it doesn't matter even if your energy is cheap. 

Dusan Matuska  
You want to run it 120% of the time, because of the difficulties going so fast up that you just don't want to do this 50% like, it can even, it doesn't even need to pay off or like it can not pay off the miners. If you're running them like 50% of the time, it I wouldn't do that, or you need to buy like super cheap equipment. Which, you know, maybe you have a great deal with a manufacturer. So maybe in that case, so but I would definitely love to learn more about like, the intricacies of their like, how they have it calculated, and what deals they have, but I don't know what they're doing. Yeah.

Mike Peterson  
I do know, they have brought on, you know, a lot of hydropower recently, like I was saying, and they have the volcanic.

Dusan Matuska  
Hydro is great. I mean, in Paraguay, it's 100% hydro. There's the third largest power plant in the world, which basically is the first one in the world in terms of produced electric electricity. It's a massive project insanely huge. Imagine that the one that we have the small one in Slovakia that does like less than a megawatt. This is like 14,000 megawatts. So it's 14,000 of these small biogas power plants. It's insane capacity. So that's powering basically almost the whole Paraguay and in hydro stable, that's excellent. And Paraguay, the benefit of Paraguay is that Paraguay is selling is the largest seller of electricity in the world. So they are selling 40% of electricity to Brazil and Argentina. So that's why they have a motivation.

Dusan Matuska  
The Brazil is buying for like less than two cents. So they're, they're actually buying lower than the production price. So Brazil was very happy for that. And that's why Paraguay is motivated to have miners inside, because they can sell them for a higher price in home and get taxes and get, you know, everything people employed. So that's why Paraguay is very interesting in this setup is like, they, as a government kind of support it, right? They see benefit of some new and larger consumers of electricity.

Mike Peterson  
And yet, they haven't really been super Bitcoin friendly, have they?

Dusan Matuska  
No, not that much. Actually, people would expect that that's like a super Bitcoin friendly thing. But the government in power is still left leaning, in a sense, although like they are educating themselves and there are a lot of amazing people, you know, our partners penguin infrastructure, they're doing an amazing job in like, educating people about what Bitcoin is and how it can help out. So maybe Samsung can go and just do something there. But so far, it's people would expect that it's, it's better suited for Bitcoin, but it's still in development. 

Mike Peterson  
Okay, that makes sense. So, is that still the long term plan that the mining operations will be able to keep funding or is that you're still looking for the business model? Or do you guys take donations? Or how does that all come together right now?

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah, so we we take donations, kind of small ones, like the biggest donations that we got, were basically in terms of mining, which is funny, because when people saw what we were doing and they visited our classes, they were like, guys, you know, I love what you're doing, how can we support and I told them, like, okay, you can donate to us, and you know, pay for a kid and right on to go through Bitcoin diploma. Or if you want to go, regular donate to us, like you can buy machines, and hose them with us. And you're mining Bitcoin, and fraction of the electricity that we are charging you goes immediately to education. And they were like, excellent, so they bought machines from us, they're mining with us. And this is kind of what's helping us on a regular basis. 

Dusan Matuska  
So that's kind of the idea of how the mining is helping the education and the head education is also doing the proof of work of like, we are really doing that and not just talking about it. If it's a long term thing, I spoke with some really big miners, like, very big names like marathon or different ones, they are going in such a fast pace, that they are basically creating the difficulty and for them, it doesn't matter that much is for us the small guys. So first of all, our goal is to survive the halving. That's the biggest thing right now.

Mike Peterson  
And you have to make a decision at that time, hey, we should shut down our miners till things balance out or.

Dusan Matuska  
Maybe, nobody knows, like, we have very efficient miners. But basically, we are running the hydro machines from bitmain, which, which are like very efficient at 20 joules per per TeraHash. So that's a very good hardware that we have. So we might not be switching off, or we might not need to switch off the whole thing. But we are kind of getting ready to do it for a couple of weeks, we also tell our clients that guys get ready, you know, this really might happen. So in the long term my ideal vision is that the academy itself can sustain itself. Ideal that that will be the business model. And we also are exploring the kind of the OTC market a bit because our our investor owns an OTC desk in Europe. And he's a like very early Bitcoiners. And so he has experienced there.

Mike Peterson  
As far as opening some type of exchange in Ravencoin. 

Dusan Matuska  
I mean, no, not exactly an exchange, but helping with facilitating transactions. So for example, there's already a bunch of people that wants to buy properties with crypto, with Bitcoin, and the local guys, the REMAX or the others, they don't know how to handle that. So we can be in between because we know we know what to do to help them out, and to charge them some percentage. And we can do it maybe in Europe as well, in a sense. So this is some kind of like a second branch that we might this year explore, that can sustain us as well.

Mike Peterson  
I know even El Salvador that's a huge need. There's lots of Bitcoiners coming in, they want to pay for the property and Bitcoin. But still, there's a lot of Salvadorans that aren't ready to accept it.

Dusan Matuska  
Maybe we come to solar as well. It's just one short flight away.

Mike Peterson  
Exactly. Next door neighbors.

Dusan Matuska  
That's true. That's true. So, so yeah, this is kind of like the idea that we have in mind on the in the long term. And, but again, ideally, Academy itself, you know, what I figured out during my education journey, is that once you educate for free, like people, you know, they don't take it as something valuable to them, then they feel like, if you're doing it for free, there must be some catch in it. And like, where's the catch. 

Dusan Matuska  
And there's a saying that I kind of like and I resonate with that over time, he's like, if people don't pay for education, they don't pay attention. And this applies for me as well. Like I downloaded sometimes over torrents some online courses that normally cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. And I was like happy, like, while I get it for free. And I never watched the course, I've just just stayed on my harddrive forever. But once I paid for something, even like $100 I was just focused and I just finished it and I just did it. 

Dusan Matuska  
So I kind of like to pay for for things because I know that me myself, I dedicate much more attention into it. And I see it in the events like when we do a public event free of charge. Some people say yeah, I'm coming or like, we have 50 registrations and then maybe 10 people show up because I don't bad weather or he was tired or whatever. But when when we would charge like $5 suddenly the show up rate is like 90%. So there's money involved in education like changes perspective so much. So I want to figure out a way how we can get we can give scholarships to people who really want but they can't afford but I want people to appreciate the value that we're giving out and they should see the value in that. And yeah, so this is kind of the way we would like to go. 

Mike Peterson  
I think that's the thing that that most nonprofits including the work that we did you wrestle with because it's true when you give something to people they you know, at times have become entitled or they don't value it. But then a lot of times they're not in position to be able to afford the pay and so it's finding those creative ways so that they have skin in the game.

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah, and you're fighting with yourself as well because one side of you is telling you like you would like to spread it to everywhere like if the money is a problem just I will do it for free. But the other party is telling you okay, but you need to sustain yourself to make it long lasting and then you're also not doing the job for that person because they're not going to value it that much. These actually interesting, there's Alan Jackson I don't maybe you met him he was here in Salvador as well. He's maybe in his 60s 50s 60s private jet pilot amazing God Bitcoin or Harley driver, Harley Bitcoin, you know, amazing guy, and visit us on the right time. And we had like a chat about onboarding, Bitcoiners or wanting onboarding businesses and paying with Bitcoin and what he's doing I love the strategy and we are doing it in the right time and everywhere, everywhere else is that if the business doesn't want to accept yet okay, no problem. We are tipping in Bitcoin. So we say that we only give tips in Bitcoin. But we're not doing in a way that we are kind of that it seems that we are we want to spend the Bitcoin and get rid of it, because then people are like, if bitcoin is that good, as you're saying, Why are you spending that? Like, just keep it right? 

Dusan Matuska  
So what he's doing is like, you know, you did such a good service to the bartender, like you did such a good service, that I'm willing to spend my precious Bitcoin and give you the best money that I think that is. And this lecture changed perspective a lot. And this is what I feel in, like, the free education as well. Like when everything's for free people like okay, so if bitcoin is so valuable, and the knowledge is valuable, like, where's the catch? So this is also an audit what connects to it.

Mike Peterson  
So, I'm curious as to so this didn't start in Roatan?

Dusan Matuska  
Nope. We started three years ago that, like, I'm doing Bitcoin education for six years, full time, maybe 4-5. And right, and started like a year ago.

Mike Peterson  
Okay, so tell me how that happened. Because I think you're spending a good portion of your time now.

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah, I mean, like, I'm, like, 50-50, between Slovakia and Roatan, and maybe switching a little bit more Roatan over time. Because, you know, I'm sailor for 20 years, I love to be around water. And that's the place where you want to be when you want to sailing. So how I ended up there. Going there, for the first time was our client reminding client to send me a message that Dusan, you need to come here. I'm like, okay, where are you? And he started to send me pictures of his family on the beach and their palms and beautiful water. I'm like, Okay, what is that place? It's Roatan and you just need to come. I'm like, okay, where it is, if Africa is in Asia, and then I check, like a Caribbean, perfect. And then actually, okay, it belongs to Honduras. 

Dusan Matuska  
And Honduras is a kind of a dangerous country. I'm like, Robert, are you okay, there? He was like, it's perfect. It's super safe,come. And when he told me what made me to come there is like, there is a Czech village here. I'm like, okay, what are the checks? What the hell are the checks doing in the Roatan. You know, I'm from Slovakia used to be one nation before Czechoslovakia. I was like, okay, the checks are, they can get anywhere they can like, they're crazy guys. But Honduras, like, what? So the funny thing is that, what I found out after that, you know, Czech are the biggest beer drinkers in the world, per capita. Yep. And of course, then being on the roadside has something to do with beer. Because there was an agreement, like the Honduras government, somehow they wanted to have a Czech brewery in Honduras. And there was one Czech guy that was crazy enough to take a chance to take the challenge and he built a Czech brewery on raw time. So he dig like 100 meters down, make it like to find the water good enough for a beer. And he built a brewery, they started to brew a beer 15 years ago. And then they were like selling across Central America. And after three years,

Dusan Matuska  
But that seems like I mean, on an island. Usually everything's more expensive. You have logistical issues. That seems like a crazy place to open a brewery.

Dusan Matuska  
i mean, exactly. And he was crazy enough. He's a kind of famous artist in New York. He's living in New York right now. And he's kind of famous painter there. So he was a crazy guy, okay, let's do a brewery. And he did it. He was like exporting round. And then some big brands came to Roatan and they dumped him with the prices so they need to close down. So after many years, for three, four years, they closed down the brewery. And the next thing he did, he built a replica of a black peril. So he was crazy enough to go to, to Britain to find a plants of a black parallel of the real ship. And he built a replica of it on raw time. So it was the biggest pirate ship in Caribbean. They was kind of taking tourists and stuff. Amazing stuff. 

Dusan Matuska  
Then the ship was I think it was stolen, broken. So there was some backstory to it. And then the checks stayed there. And they were like, hey, what are we going to do here and they were very good. And building staff, they were very handy. So they started to build houses, and they build a check village. So right now the Czech are the third largest community on Roatan, there is a village of like 60 houses on Roatan.

Mike Peterson  
Is it like Czech style architecture, or they built more like,

Dusan Matuska  
More like local style, local style, but the most of the houses were built by Czechs. And they have even Czech Hospital, which is the Czech pub there. And every Tuesday, there is the founder of this village playing on the guitar Czech songs, and people are having fun and drinking beer. It's like, so I was like, okay, I need to see this thing. So we came last year in 2022, in March, first time to Roatan. And for 12 days, we were just roaming around enjoying the place. And I just fell in love with the people, with the vibe, with everything. 

Dusan Matuska  
And two days before we were leaving, I was just scrolling Twitter. And there is something like a prosperous summit happening like crypto Bitcoin friendly jurisdiction, like what is this place? And I so many of these Satoshis islands and then this can rock pools and stuff. I was like, very skeptical. It's it seems very futuristic and but I was like, okay, let's check it out. I'm here, nothing to lose. So I was really expecting, you know, five people on the beach under a tent with a beer, having fun, and like cheering for liberty. And I came there. And I was blown away, there was this huge building beautiful architecture in our co-working space. And 60 people mingling around, there was a place where a factory was kind of coming up a huge, like 14 storey building residential. I'm like, okay, this is not only on paper, it's a real thing happening. 

Dusan Matuska  
And I met people like very like OG Bitcoiners there, there was a guy who ran the first online radio show that talked about Bitcoin in the world in 2010. And he had a Gavin Andresen there talking about Bitcoin and it is said that show motivated Roger Ver to get into Bitcoin. So very, very old OG stuff. So we chat about Bitcoin was like, oh, my God. So these people around very interesting from all around the world. So we had the opportunity to present some ideas that we would like to delve on Roatan. And at the time, I had like this idea of Bitcoin Academy. So I was like, okay, let's give it a try. So I told about the idea of Bitcoin Academy. And the guy in the first row was sitting there and said, like, I liked the idea and audits. We would love to have it here in Roatan. It would make sense here. And so do some, like, what are we doing afternoon. And I was like, I'm going to snork with my girlfriend, okay. He was like, okay, before you go snork with your girlfriend, let me take you to a building. If you like it, you can have it from July. You can start to build your academy there. And you can name your rent. I'm like, okay, that sounds like, that sounds pretty cool. 

Dusan Matuska  
And he drove me to the highest viewpoint of raw time, which is this building? So this is the highest viewpoints 360 degree view on of the whole island, you see the both sides. Beautiful, beautiful place, it used to be a restaurant before. And when we were taking over it used it was a Montessori school, but the kids were growing up in numbers, they need a larger space. So they were moving away and these plays was available. I was like, okay, so that's a challenge. So I was talking with my girlfriend like should we do it it's a new chapter it's like completely is gonna change our lives like what it's a huge opportunity and you know, to be with the place and the prospera is actually a jurisdiction that has Bitcoin as a legal tender. You can pay your taxes in Bitcoin and right now from last week is the jurisdiction the first jurisdiction in the world where we can do bitcoin is unit of account.

Mike Peterson  
Yeah, I saw that.

Mike Peterson  
Even in El Salvador you still have to put things in dollar terms but they're in front and it won't happen in Bitcoin only.

Dusan Matuska  
So that's like the last frontier you know, suddenly you can run a whole business on Bitcoin and nobody just telling you, you need to calculate $2 and no, just fucking you know, just Bitcoin only. So I'm super excited about like prosper in general it's a project is a free private city and maybe we get to it like what it is, but just this vibe of, you know, people coming in and didn't want to build stuff, they want to explore the opportunities. So we took over the building and we start to build the academy. So this is one of the first Bitcoin diploma that we did, you know, developed hearings, El Salvador. So we were one of the first countries running Bitcoin diploma outside.

Mike Peterson  
That's the one that meet Primer Bitcoin. 

Dusan Matuska  
So we took the same curriculum and right now running maybe like fifth graduation already. This is the Bitcoin run with it so we're running from the beach all the way to the Bitcoin sign and we're doing like every Wednesday so taking people up and doing a Bitcoin talk so come a Bitcoin. This is one of the conferences that were held there. In the back you can see the Bitcoin ATM. This is the only Bitcoin ATM on Roatan. So it's this is actually a way that helps us you know, pay the rent as well so people are buying selling. It's both way and actually for selling we have 0% which helps with merchants because when we opening merchants. We tell them guys, if you really need the cash, just come to the academy and for 0% you can get cashed out.

Dusan Matuska  
And you have, do you have more people buying or selling?

Dusan Matuska  
Buying. Yeah, definitely buying. Yeah, it works out and sometimes we need to figure out what to do with the cash. So I'm motivating maybe I will even go like Sub Zero percentage to kind of keep that discount. Because I don't want to go to bank and deposit. I don't want to do it's like without the bank.

Mike Peterson  
And is it people cashing out and limpers or?

Dusan Matuska  
Dollars dollars, it's mostly dollars. And it's non KYC as well. Okay, so it's perfect stuff. So this is the Bitcoin diplomas that we did. Our teacher, she is teaching the Bitcoin in Spanish, because I'm not there yet. You know, I'm still learning so I can only do English. So this was this was amazing for like a second Bitcoin diploma on a school. So this is the first Bitcoin meetup that we did. So in the corner, on the left, you'll see some bitcoin devices, lightning ATM and lightning POS systems bunch of stuff. And there in the audience is a guy who yeah, you can see him there. On the left the bold guy, he was a neighbor of last line edge, the guy who, who made a transaction of 10,000 Bitcoins for the pizzas. So they were living together like next to each other, basically on the street. So super interesting people I met on the right time. It's pretty crazy.

Mike Peterson  
I love going back to the ATM. Because we have that same we saw that same thing here when we brought we kind of snuck the first ATM here and Salvador some extent. And we thought, because we're doing all this stuff with all these businesses, and they'd want to cash out that it'd be mostly people wanting to sell Bitcoin to get dollars. And then people just came out of the woodwork from everywhere that like wanted Bitcoin. And we'd see these kind of middle class, you know, doctors or whatever, from San Salvador driving down every week to buy $300 in Bitcoin. So it was because the fear before was like, oh, if you introduce an ATM, it's gonna suck Bitcoin out. But really, it was something that expanded the amount of bitcoins circulating.

Dusan Matuska  
We see the same thing. Like, I was also thinking like a lot of businesses will be selling. But we have one chain of cafeterias there on the island, called being crazy. And the owner got so hooked to Bitcoin that he's buying like crazy all the time. And he's accepting, he's thought, he's tough, have to how to accept tips. So we have some really hardcore merchants that are like, going full.

Mike Peterson  
A lot of times they start wanting to sell and then they switch around. And they're like, no, no, I'll buy.

Dusan Matuska  
Exactly. Sometimes, I'm like, guys, like, leave the Bitcoin for the others as well. You're not the only one. So I'm topping up the ATM and I'm like, Jesus. So yeah, there's some, there's some some good to turn out of. We have like 60 businesses right now accepting. But we don't want to push more businesses because we want to kind of go hand in hand with people using Bitcoin.

Mike Peterson  
The problem is, if you go too fast on the businesses, and there's not enough people spending, they're like, well, it's not worthwhile to keep our staff up to date and have the separate device and so you really do need to try to balance that.

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah, totally, totally. There's a bit of consent during the night so. What an mazing facility. It's beautiful place and this is actually very interesting place because this is the first thing you see when you're entering Prospera. This pristine Bay Resort so when we were designing these things. I was selling sending it to Eric who is the CEO of prosper and and we'd like you know, fear of my fear in heart like fully accept that this huge Bitcoin logo is like two meters in diameter or more even and because the real the first thing you see when you're coming and then he sent it to the president of Prospera was like a huge Bitcoin Maxi like a huge one and he was like we're fucking doing that like we're definitely want to have that Bitcoin. So yeah, I'm super happy that we managed to put it there and right now, it's like marketing. So people coming entering going in and out, just like resonates with them and they're asking the company stop buying us like what is bitcoin so we can educate them and yeah.

Dusan Matuska  
So tell the audience in some people have some familiarity with Prospera. But even me, I have a lot of questions. So give us the rundown on what prosper is, how it's able to exist kind of as a stand alone entity within Honduras.

Dusan Matuska  
Very interesting thing because Honduras allowed something called the ZED. A law which is in translational zone of economic development and employment. And it allowed these economic zones to exist to come to existence, which basically, the motivation of the government was okay, if this place right now, we get to Texas, like very low taxes of that place. But if you allow somebody to run that place, in a private manner, set up their own rules, maybe they attract foreign capital, and 12% of the tax is earned there goes to Honduras. So that was one of the motivations, more employment, you know, higher quality of living. So three of these setups exist.

Mike Peterson  
And they no longer have to really do anything there like, they've turned over exactly everything to this entity.

Dusan Matuska  
Exactly. Of course, the entity needs to buy the property legally from the owners. So there's no expropriation possible. There's no like, somebody comes out and does land and then the government comes like, okay, guys, sorry, this is taken. Nothing like that. And some people are still afraid. Today, the Hondurans that prosper, whichever other ZED they will come and just take their land, which is not true. So three of these came to into existence, prosper is one of them, is the biggest one. It's the one that really has the most even capital, the dollar capital, but the mental and HR capital as well.

Mike Peterson  
And there was from my understanding, there's some some people that really believe in this from a philosophical perspective, and they've been willing to put their money into this.

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah. So in terms of investments, Prospera attracted more than 100 million I think right now in in dollar terms. One of the biggest investors are Pronomos Capital, which is run by Peter Thiel. So it's a it's also run by Patri Friedman, which is a grandson of Milton Friedman. So there's a lot of libertarians involved in that. And the founders, actually, one is Erick. He's from Venezuela. The other is Gabriel Delgado from Guatemala. Gabriel's grandfather is the founder of the most famous libertarian university in the world in Guatemala, Francisco Marroquín.

Mike Peterson  
I'm yeah, I'm very familiar with the university. But I always think it's crazy that it exists in Guatemala. Exact very contrary to most of the society in Guatemala.

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah, that's true, in a sense. So Gabriel, can they both kind of had the same idea of the governance is one of the most important things in terms of prosperity. Because once people are restricted to free trade, to interact with each other because of regulations, there is so much potential that we even don't know how much is not. How much is unrealized? So if you unlock these regulations, suddenly there's there's so much options, opportunities. So they both had the idea to solve the problem of governance. And when they got together and they met together, they realize they have the same idea. So they were searching for best place to start. And they realize there is this Zedillo in Honduras. 

Dusan Matuska  
So they came and they figured it out, they started proscribed the first initial talks and everything was like maybe eight years ago. And then the groundbreaking like maybe 2020, or 2018, I'm not sure. So the idea is that it's a free private city. So it's a city that's run privately. And it basically to succeed, they need to treat you as a customer. The only way to opt in to the city is not the model that you know, they can somehow force you to do it, you need to really sign something called agreement of coexistence. And this is super interesting, because for me, that was one of the these things that motivated me to stay was like, once you sign the agreement,

Mike Peterson  
And you sign this agreement as a person or as a property owner?

Dusan Matuska  
As a person. So you can set up e-residency, that's the first level it's cost like $150 a year, so pretty okay.

Mike Peterson  
And does that, how does that interact with Honduran residency?

Dusan Matuska  
Not at all. So if you want to stay long term on the Roatan or in general, like grow in Prospera, you basically need to have also the Honduran residency.

Mike Peterson  
Even if you leave even if you say I'm not, I'm never leaving Prospera, you'd still need to get Honduran.

Dusan Matuska  
Maybe if you really don't leave Prospera maybe not but you're still need to go somehow in Prospera and prosper doesn't have an airport so far. So maybe later. So you still need to go through Honduras, basically. And when you sign this agreement as a physical person, there is also a study like was the level of Texas for example, which is pretty low, there are only three taxes 1% for companies sales tax, 5% for physical persons, 1% land tax, and 2.5% VAT, nothing else. And the interesting part of that is like if prospera in future decides to raise the taxes, they don't apply to you because you sign agreement between you and prospera that says this is the tax regime. 

Dusan Matuska  
And for me this was like super interesting because in Slovakia, new government comes they change taxes for example, right now they change the tax on crypto, they even increase it it's 40% so 40% of the profits you need to pay in taxes that's insane. And imagine you come to a country because of also the tax regime or other stuff and every four years it changes and you're like what the heck. So I was I was super surprised like okay here you know, if they change it, this applies for you or you can sign a new agreement as well if you want if it better for you, but they cannot cannot unilaterally one way change it for you. 

Dusan Matuska  
And I was like, this is how it should be working everywhere else. So this is just one part of like, why Prospera was kind of forming a very interesting experiment to really like dedicate my energy into and the people I met around were very like, builders, libertarians. We were chatting about Ayn Rand about Atlas Shrugged for like two hours with Erick on our first meeting. We're sitting actually on the top of that, that building and chatting like two hours about about these ideas, because I have a company in Slovakia named John Galt LLC. And one of the motivations why to name actually the city of prospera on the road town is named St. John's Bay. And the John the most motivational for that was John Galt from from Atlas Shrugged. So we were like, immediately connected on the value level. And it's like prospera in general, it's very, like low time preference project. It's like just building the city comings, like ground up communities like it takes time it takes resources. So it's, as I said, it's still an experiment. So there is some tensions with the government, of course, because the socialist government doesn't like the capital.

Mike Peterson  
That was my other thing I wanted to ask how when the Zeds came into being was it written in a way that makes it very difficult for them to undo it, because my understanding the current government, she doesn't the current president, she hates the zone.

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah, she really hates that, like she's, from my perspective, very socialist leaning, and respecting bid with China as well, which I'm not a fan of. So the constitution of Honduras basically allows the settlers to exist even after the Zedillo was was cancelled last year. It prevents newsletters to come up and they were like seven or eight other applications. So it'd be very interesting to see how they would compete with each other, but no new can come up.

Mike Peterson  
And how many exist right now?

Dusan Matuska  
Three. And Prospera have 50 years of lifespan at least, but is guaranteed the others have 10 years. So 50 years because they have some agreements that there was it was in the charter, like if you have these agreements with other countries and other countries, then you can have 50 years of free. So even right now for Honduras to delete Prospera of existence, they will need to change their own chargering constitution, which is like very difficult actually in Honduras. And the current government doesn't have the capital, the political capital to do it anymore. So this seems that prosper will live on. But as I always say, you know, the Honduras is, these are the guys with the guns, Prospera doesn't have their own army. So the Honduras will kind of decide to do some some mess, they can, but they will, basically they will do a huge, bad name to Honduras, internationally. 

Mike Peterson  
And Roadan's dependent on tourism and foreign activity in general. So I'm sure they want a big black guy.

Dusan Matuska  
That's true. That's true. And the people initially they were like doing this marketing level people don't want to say this. But interestingly enough that there is a place called crawfish rock on the map as you see, that's where there's the village next to prospera. And people initially were like very skeptical oh, what is this place and you know, they're gonna steal our land. But right now, like 50% of the village, works in prospera as a carpenters, gardeners, you know, whatever works, you can imagine. And they're actually fighting for prospera, to still be around, because they give them jobs, they earn decent money that their first job they ever had, sometimes. 

Dusan Matuska  
So even this, this narrative of like people doesn't want it doesn't hold true anymore, right? And the longer prosper exists, and do the proof of work. And then people are really like, this is like this is working like it's a good thing, right? So there you can see the Pristine Bay Resort, which is something that Prospera have brought. It's like a resort for families. And you can come there as like a beach club right now there is a big conference happening there called Vitalia, which is like people from the longevity community. 

Dusan Matuska  
So talking about how to live to see the last Bitcoin being mined. That's my goal, actually. 2140. So there's a bunch of stuff happening right now in prosper, and more people are coming in figuring out like, what is this place about. So, you know, I love to dedicate my energy into Bitcoin Education, and doing it as well in a place where it's an experiment that can be very, very interesting and begin in the future. And that plays around with Bitcoin as a unit of account. Bitcoin is legal tender, so a lot of flexibility. That's like, a place to, to spend some time.

Mike Peterson  
So I'm curious, just on some practical things, one, how many people are considered residents or citizens or whatever of Prospera people who have signed that agreement. And then also just curious as to like, the cost of properties and just the cost of living in general, I'm assuming Roatan being an island things are not super cheap. So just curious for some perspective on that.

Dusan Matuska  
Got it. So Prospera right now, a couple of 100 people signed the agreements. And there are a bunch of people that are like, e-residents, but are not living inside of prosper. And then there are people who are like living inside. So since Prospera is not a huge place right now.

Mike Peterson  
So did the founders buy up a bunch of land initially, and then they're selling off the people? Or how does that work?

Dusan Matuska  
So the only way how you can buy land right now is like if you're a developer, so right now you cannot buy land as a physical person, you need to be a developer to build something of a sense, would you come buys like accommodations like or apartments right now. So there is the tower that's being finished in a month in like February, you can buy already some apartments there and ranging from like 80,000 to like maybe 200 to 50,000. And you can pay in Bitcoin, you can pay in Bitcoin, and they're already couple of Bitcoins. I know that came, and after a week or two on Roatan, they buy the studio for Bitcoin. So that's, that's pretty crazy. 

Dusan Matuska  
So you can already do that. But if you want to, Prospera motivating developers to come and like, guys, you know, this is the master plan. This is how we kind of imagined the place to be. Just help us to build it. Right. So that's what you can do right now. And the cost of living. I coming to Roatan I was really expecting like, oh, it's okay. It's Honduras. It's going to be kind of expensive, cheap, but it's not. For me, it's a slower guy. And I would say maybe it's like 10-20% more expensive than in Slovakia. For US citizens, it's a little bit cheaper. And in terms for example, right now we are renting a two bedroom apartment, two bedrooms, and we are paying like 900 to $900 a month or 1000 a month plus energies. You can go for lunch for 10-15 dollars so that's roughly, for example, if you're earning like maybe 2000, you can live quite well. 

Mike Peterson  
With them now allowing the denomination of things and SATs, have you seen any businesses yet start to price in SAT that has come yet?

Dusan Matuska  
It's super early. And actually you need to apply there is a period for example, right now there is application period till end of January, where you apply for this upcoming accountant year to account in Bitcoin. So it's very fresh, it's actually Prospera, let's just okay, let's do it. And they figure out the feedback, and maybe they change something as well. So I would like to motivate Bitcoin companies or Bitcoiners would like to have a company and denominate everything in sets. And today conference insights just to apply, try it out and give feedback. And it's a work in progress. 

Dusan Matuska  
So they asked us like, okay, guys, so how many companies you think will come I had, like, I don't know, you know, for companies who account in Bitcoin, or like would love to account but they have also some dollar expenses and this and that, so they will need to kind of decide which way to go. So it's very fresh, it's very new, it's still an experiment as well. And we would like to see this year how it goes, you know, I'm going to set up probably my company for that as well so that we can really explore ourselves and just have it firsthand experience.

Dusan Matuska  
So what percentages of the businesses in Prospera are accepting bitcoin right now?

Dusan Matuska  
In Prospera, almost all of that. And so far, they're like, not so many businesses in Prospera. They're like these hotels, resorts, restaurants, for example. I'm paying for my car rental in Bitcoin and this is the guy that works for Prospera as an architect. So I'm paying a lot of things on Bitcoin.

Mike Peterson  
Does it has it spread to the surrounding areas at all?

Dusan Matuska  
Bitcoin accepting? Yeah, as you can see on the map, this is the whole Roatan. And right now as you see the Western there's like 24 businesses accepting bitcoin. They're a touristy place, they're the most cafeterias, restaurants, businesses. So the rest of the island is kind of like a, it's not very populated with businesses in general. So the West is the most one. So altogether, like 60, but the majority is on the west outside of Prospera. So most business cities accepting bitcoin are outside of prosper right now.

Mike Peterson  
So do you see long term? And like, is this what you're gonna wind up living? Or what's your, what's your goal?

Dusan Matuska  
I can see kind of long term, although I like diversity, in the sense that, for example, when I came after five months, living in Roatan, back to Slovakia, and I experienced being at 9pm sitting next to a lake, you know, sunset slowly going down. I was like, oh, that's, that's beautiful, or just going to a woods and just breathing the fresh air, kind of the cold air. I was like, this is nice. So Slovakia is four seasons, and I like four seasons. Roatan is kind of the same weather all year long, although I love it. But this kind of diversity I like. So far, I cannot imagine like, not like living full time on Roatan. I like flying around and coming back and forth. 

Dusan Matuska  
But having it's one of the main basis for me and my girlfriend, and late next year, maybe an hour, our kid definitely can't imagine, you know, my dad is going there for three months with his dog right now flying through half of the world. Because he was so moved and inspired by, you know, leaving there. Right now, he'll be renting our little catamaran there for people. So doing some work to kind of feel it. He's not only on the vacation, but he can work there. So it's going to be very exciting. I'm flying there in two days. So looking forward a lot, you know, for how the debt is we were doing.

Mike Peterson  
Now, I understand there's the I mean, islands are beautiful. But like you said, you can't you know, sometimes I get tired of the you know, the beach here in El Salvador's warm. And it's and so occasionally we'll drive to the mountains in El Salvador, where it's like cold at night. And so it's at least we can drive. But if you're on an island, it's a little bit more chill.

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah, exactly. There's like not so many things that you can do there in these terms. So just just being flexible and have the opportunity to go places. I think that's how I see myself at this moment. And when we're gonna have a family, Diana would like to be more in Slovakia. Because she has supported the family there. And so probably maybe six months, we're going to stay in Slovakia. We will see. So it's very in the progress still, you know, this year will be kind of a year where we've got to figure out a bunch of stuff.

Mike Peterson  
That makes sense. Is weather wise, would you say it's like similar to here in El Santi?

Dusan Matuska  
similar. It's like in terms of temperature is like 26 to 30. All year long. The only thing that changes humidity and rains. We also rainy seasons. But it's it's kind of windy place, which I love because I'm doing sailing. And that that makes it not that things off. Yeah, definitely. It's like, even though there's you're on the sun, you don't feel it, you're kind of chilled out. So the geographic part, and it's very safe place actually, it's a complete western part of Caribbean, which is the most secure part of the whole Caribbean in terms of hurricanes. So the last one they had there was like 27 years ago. So super safe place. All the hurricanes, sadly goes to Florida in Miami, and rotten is kind of protecting against it.

Mike Peterson  
And as far as just physical safety on the island. I know, Honduras, as a country has, I think it's like one of the highest murder rates in the world. They used to compete with El Salvador for that they go back and forth. Now Salvador is one of the safest, but is Roatan impacted by that or is it kind of its own little micro?

Dusan Matuska  
It's a microcosm. Definitely. It's that's why I was very afraid to go there. But you can walk in the night as well. No problem there. Areas that you wouldn't like to go in the night of course, but since it's very dependent on tourism, it's very safe. Actually, I've never had any bad encounter. Anytime that I was there. Anybody that I know of?

Mike Peterson  
And English is pretty widely spoken.

Dusan Matuska  
Yeah. Yeah. Since it used to be a British colony in 1800s. Then Britain, British gave it to Honduras. Very well spoken. So you can go along with Spanish and English pretty well, pretty well. What you can see here is the bit going scuba shop, the diving center that we have in Prospera. So this is run by Emilio, who is an amazing Bitcoin owner, great Maxi guy. So he's accepting bitcoin, of course for the dives and giving you a 10% discount. He built this thing like two years ago. And he came up with an amazing idea to build a Satoshis grave, a dive site called Satoshis grave. He reduced it originally officially in the marine park. So when you go diving there, it's like a proper thing. And if you go one step back, so that's Emilio. Right there, the divemaster and Anita on the right, is our Bitcoin teacher right now she's long term in us, but we still are in contact. And that's what you see down therev it's treasure chest that we came together with. I bought it on Amazon just put some bunch of stuff. They're like, old tresors, hardware wallets, old Bitcoin coins, and seed phrase, metal plates and bunch of stuff. 

Dusan Matuska  
So this was the journey when we were bringing the treasure chest down to Satoshis grave. And to lock it up there. So you know, people sometimes when they go there, they can just open it up and see themselves was inside. But the interesting part of it if you can scroll one more. So this is how it looks like this is just the huge Bitcoin logo underneath with Satoshi quotes all around. That's the chest that we put in, we want to put some more artifacts. So if your Bitcoiners you want to send us something to put into Satoshi engrave. So I can take in two days, something with me and just put it there. The thing is, like maybe we need to figure out like a metal chest because the wooden one like it was there like six months. And the woods kind of was very weak. So this is how and you need to clean it frequently because just the water just got settled. 

Dusan Matuska  
And what happened like after six months of leaving the chest there, we were kind of ready to get it out and see like what's inside and like how powerful you know how it survived. So we were, I remember Anita was having like this underwater camera and taking video of that. And I was just bringing it up. And she just signaled me like open it up, open it up, and I will just look inside what is there. So I opened it up, and suddenly there was like, the huge black clouds coming out of it. I had no idea what it was. Probably it was like a rotten wood or something. But we were joking. Like they took like the spirit of Satoshi leaving the chest. But it was so unexpected. Like it's so insane. I don't know, like what was it about like, two three meters around us and the old the black stuff around? I was like what the bog you know. So right now we need to figure out a stronger and larger chairs and just put the merge there and just, you know play with that a little bit more.

Mike Peterson  
I love that though. That's so fun.

Dusan Matuska  
Kind of we are having fun around the island. The island, I didn't mention that it's one of the most famous pirate islands in the world in the Caribbean. And the Captain Henry Morgan wanted on the Morgan rum, Captain Morgan rum bottle, real person. He used to have a base there on Roatan  and he built a wall to kind of shoot the Spanish ships and the wall is still there till this day. So there is, and imagine this this there's there's an island that belonged to him like a little little island. The wall is still there. You can go and snorkel around beautiful snorkeling, amazing grief. And we just see the wall that you know Henry Morgan built. And that's the best protected area. 

Dusan Matuska  
Some people say there's the best protected bay in the whole Caribbean. It used to be it's called port Royale. So they were the parents were hiding there because there's only one way inside of the channel. So they were basically shooting the Spanish ships from all of the sides because that was the only way to get there. And so till this day, there should be like two or three treasure chests pirate treasure chest still hidden on the island that nobody found yet. And so some people got come there every year you're searching in the caves because there's a lot of caves on the island. And one day we were just walking across the on a hike across the woods. And we found an old puddles like pirate rum bottles, they were like very thick, thick glass black glass that nobody does today. And I spoke with the locals and they told me like yeah, these are the old bottles from like the 1718s. And like what? So I took this discharge with me and I have it as a as a gift as a souvenir. 

Dusan Matuska  
So there's a lot of pirate history you can speak with the locals. For example, our marketing girl Ariana, she's the descendant of a pirate. She's a Captain Dixon you know very, very famous pirate Dixon. She's Ariana Dixon and it's like her grand grand grand grandfather was this pirate and in their family actually said that there should be on their land. They have a big land on the rocks and there should be a pirate treasure somewhere. But her father told all the kids that they shouldn't look for it, but because it might be cursed and stuff, I'm like, tell me what it is give me a shovel and I just go, I don't care about the curse. So you know, it's, uh, this piracy. Also kind of is something that inspires me and attracts me to write time because it gives you the feeling of freedom and rebellion against these establishment is in a sense. So that's like, all these elements kind of made me like, this might be a nice place to stay for some time.

Mike Peterson  
Yeah. Well, I think that's a good note to wrap up on unless there's something that you want to talk about that we missed.

Dusan Matuska  
What we missed we talked about the educators Academy, and the mining, the education, Bitcoin Roatan, not grown in Roatan but in Honduras, and you can pay for the Bitcoin so you can get it in our Bitcoin Academy. So just to say, you know, I would like Bitcoiners to follow our education journey. If somebody is interested, this is what we mentioned in the beginning. The educators Academy is a project that I would love to spread all around the world, this is how I would like to contribute a little bit into the Bitcoin. And right now, we already have plans to do it in Hungary, in Paraguay. So if there are communities, or countries or local Bitcoin economies that would like to do it, they can write us on https://twitter.com/AmityAge on Twitter. 

Dusan Matuska  
And we would like to create a plan of where we can go and where can we deliver that. And later on, we want to open source the materials, we want to teach other teachers how to teach that. So we want to kind of something like the premiere is doing, you know, just multiply, multiplying itself, with this note structure, something like that we would like to do with this educate the educators. And that's where I feel I have my passion right now, the most and I want to dedicate 2024 to developing that program.

Mike Peterson  
And if people want to donate to this, you said it's it's not the primary driver, but people can donate. Would that be through the Twitter page?

Dusan Matuska  
We have a we have a link on our Twitter page to Geyser Fund where people can donate directly. And I will be grateful for that.

Mike Peterson  
And what about you? Where are they? Where can they follow you on Twitter? My

Dusan Matuska  
Twitter handle is do some underscore Matsusaka, which is my surname. So you can find me there and just Twitter is the best connection to have. And then maybe we move to signal or wherever, but Twitter is a good one.

Mike Peterson  
And if people are interested in coming to visit you guys, is that possible?

Dusan Matuska  
Definitely, this year, we start to do a project called Bitcoin Experience Tours or what we call the Bitcoin Pirate Tours, where people can come to the island and we show them the best places and right time, we go to Bitcoin places, we support the local economies, we onboard new bartender tours and cashiers. So we piloted last year in September, it was amazing. And this year, from February to April, we have some open spots. So if they go to https://www.amityage.com/tours they can learn about more about that and just come as a friend as a couple. It's like, maximum 12 people. So it's not like huge. And you know, 10 days on Roatan in a Bitcoin paradise.

Mike Peterson  
Oh, that sounds amazing. I might have to look into that. Or wait and get away with my wife for a little bit.

Dusan Matuska  
Definitely come, Mike. Thanks.

Mike Peterson  
Awesome. Well, I appreciate so much you being willing to come here to El Salvador to lead this course. Like I said, everybody just raved about it. And a lot of times they'll pull me aside average wasn't worth it. But I didn't have a single one of those all of them were like, oh, yeah, no, this was amazing. Your program, I think is going to have a big impact on the world. So thank you for that. And we'll hopefully get you back here in another six months or something.

Dusan Matuska  
Definitely. I'm coming actually in April. 

Mike Peterson  
Is it because of the having party? 

Dusan Matuska  
Probably as well and also for the Berlin is going to have some little coins there.

Mike Peterson  
I think they're going to do that related to that because I just had Shawn who's leading the party. He was we did a podcast earlier today. And yeah, he was I know Berlin's doing an event kind of around that.

Dusan Matuska  
So definitely coming maybe bringing my dad maybe bring Diana to show her around because this Roatan  and El Zonte kind of is something that I would love to know more explore.

Mike Peterson  
Perfect. Well, thank you so much.

Dusan Matuska  
We're looking forward to it. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you.

Mike Peterson  
Thanks.