Bitcoiners - Live From Bitcoin Beach

Are Bitcoiners In El Salvador Just Rebuilding The System They Tried To Escape? | Will Lehr

• Mike Peterson

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What happens when Bitcoin meets real estate, alternative assets, and personal freedom? In this episode, Will Lehr breaks down how he went from helping clients invest in gold and silver IRAs to building a self-directed IRA platform that lets people hold Bitcoin, real estate, and more, all outside the traditional financial system.

We talk about the mechanics of setting up a self-directed IRA, what makes the IRA LLC model different, and how to stay within IRS rules when it comes to physical gold, silver, and cold storage for Bitcoin. Will also explains why tools like the Unchained IRA are changing how people think about retirement planning.

Then we shift to life in Surf City El Salvador, where Will is now developing land with like-minded Bitcoiners who care about sovereignty, sustainability, and long-term vision. If you're interested in real estate in Surf City, this conversation covers what kind of properties are still available, what’s already sold out, and how demand is shifting fast.

Whether you're holding metal, sats, or land, this episode is for anyone rethinking how to build a life and a portfolio that actually reflects your values. Hit subscribe, and drop a comment: Would you ever use your IRA to buy land in El Salvador?

-Bitcoin Beach Team


Connect and Learn more about Will Lehr
https://clubcocal.com/ 
https://unboundassets.com/ 
https://x.com/thewilliamlehr 
https://x.com/ClubCocal 
https://x.com/UnboundAssets 


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Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:

00:00 What makes El Salvador feel like a 24/7 Bitcoin conference?
02:15 How did Will get started with self-directed IRAs and Bitcoin?
04:45 What is a self-directed IRA and how does it work?
07:35 How to hold Bitcoin, gold, or silver in your IRA legally
10:52 What’s the risk of storing gold and silver at home in an IRA?
13:21 Why are Bitcoiners moving to Surf City El Salvador?
19:45 What makes real estate in Surf City such a strong long-term play?
26:46 How is Will’s land development attracting liberty-minded investors?
33:45 How does his Bitcoin community support locals and nonprofits?
39:16 Who’s moving to El Salvador and what are they building?

Live From Bitcoin Beach

Will Lehr:

That common thread is what really hit me when I discovered El Salvador. Because what's happening here is this congregation of all these like minded people, and after being here two years and building a team and friendship and family and community, here it's like we it's it feels like a a freedom libertarian Bitcoin Conference. 24/7 The people here are incredibly warm and welcoming. The overall spirit of freedom that, again, to most of these locals, is like deer in the headlights. What is happening, you know? But those of us that get it, oh, man, the Liberty that's exploding here like a volcano right now, it's just this, and it's, it's like Ron Paul said, man, you can't stop an idea whose time has come, specifically referring to the concept of of liberty and self, sovereignty and that passion. And that's what's happening here. This place is lit, and it you can't put that genie back in the bottle. Hey,

Mike Peterson:

Will. It's good to get you here in the

Will Lehr:

studio. Good to be here. Mike, thanks for having me.

Mike Peterson:

Ran into you at Vegas, at the conference, and I you're doing a real estate development right up the road from us here. And I didn't even know about it. That's That's how things are here. There's so many different projects and things going on that I feel like anytime I drive somewhere, I see something new. So it was exciting to hear what you guys are doing. But before we get into that, I want to talk about kind of what brought you to that you came out of the self directed IRA field, and I think that's how you were introduced to Bitcoin, if I'm not wrong, by a client that wanted to put that in. So would love to get a little bit of your background in your Bitcoin story and kind of what's eventually brought you here to El Salvador. Yeah,

Will Lehr:

yeah. Thank you, buddy. Well, I my background started in the in financial services, and then I, you know, was, was red pilled a number of a number of years later, and realized that, gosh, everything that I've been told about the financial system and savings, and you know is, is is not entirely true, right? Your broker tells you you're diversified when I watch my friends and clients and parents and over the years, over the crashes get wiped out. Why didn't your fixed income bond portfolio save you, you know? And so I quickly got into alternative assets. I was a, you know, initially gold and silver guy got into the self directed IRAs. Started a company in 2013 where we were doing self directed IRAs.

Mike Peterson:

And did you? Did you sorry to interrupt you, but did you get into that just because you saw like, Hey, this is a good thing for clients to have, but there's no real good way for them to do it where they're actually holding the physical properties, rather than than just an ETF.

Will Lehr:

Exactly. Yeah. It, it dawned on me that all of this, you know, Phantom financial system, instruments, paper, electronic, isn't real wealth, and that this unique type of self directed IRA allows the individual who thinks like me too to get their money, often, a large chunk of their life savings, right out of that stock, Bond, mutual fund, you know, space and into something they believe in, right? Which, for us, or in the early days, was gold and silver, right? We Vic. I knew about Bitcoin. In fact, Jeff Berwick got me into big or maybe max. I can't remember. I knew about Bitcoin early, but it was, and I was, it was interesting to watch the gold industry, the gold and silver industry, the Peter schiffs and the other guys of the world, because most of them, like, dug their heels, yeah. Like, Oh no, that's and then some of us, I guess maybe the more libertarian minded ones, like, like, you know, we were like, wait a minute, this is, this is potentially a new asset class. This is something tangible, physical outside of the banking system, you know. And so, yeah, the the self directed divers, in the early days, we were doing them for, for metal stackers that wanted to buy physical metal and store it in the location of their choice, you know, not in some government controlled warehouse.

Mike Peterson:

Well, get into that because you told me something interesting that people still, even with a self directed IRA, can't hold it in their their home, which, which I was not aware of. But maybe before we get into the details, give a little background of what a self. Directed IRA is because there'll be a lot of people that you know they've heard of an IRA. Maybe they didn't have an IRA, but they don't understand what a self directed IRA is and why there's a need for it.

Will Lehr:

Yeah, the so you've got 401, KS, IRAs, a number of different tax favored retirement savings vehicles, and when you have one of those, you are generally limited to the investments that that fund or institution offers, stocks and bonds, mutual funds. Hey

Mike Peterson:

guys, just a brief interruption. We'll get back to the exciting show here. But I just want to really ask a favor that you guys could make sure that you're subscribed if you're watching this on YouTube, if you are listening to this on a podcast, please take take a second and review this. You know, you don't even have to write a lengthy review or anything at all. Just click the number of stars that you want to give us. It really helps us in the algorithms to make sure people are finding out about what's happening here. All right, back to the show.

Will Lehr:

So a self directed IRA is where the individual basically has more control, has more flexibility, can invest in things like real estate, Bitcoin, gold and silver, private equity, you know. So it's a flexibility thing. It allows you, and there's different types of self directed IRAs, I should clarify and but, yeah, it gives the individual the ability to invest that capital, invest that money that's in that, you know, special tax qualified space. It allows them to have more control over it and more flexibility and invested in, you know. So it was for me as a the clients that I gathered over the years were like minded. They were people who were coming to me because, hey, I saw you on this podcast or heard about what you guys are doing. Yeah, I've got a chunk locked up in wherever, and I want to get it out, you know. So not not get it out like tax distribution, get it out, but get it out and put it into something

Mike Peterson:

I believe in, without, without triggering that tax event Exactly. And, and because I have looked, I did look into setting up self directed IRA early, just for because I wanted to own Bitcoin in it. And it's, it is a little involved. So maybe talk a little bit about how I think you generally have to set up a corporation or LLC that basically holds your IRA for you. Maybe give a little bit of the details, just so people get an understanding of what's involved.

Will Lehr:

Yeah, yeah. So there's different types of self directed IRAs. The most common is where one goes directly to the custodian, the self directed custodian, like in trust, forge trust. These are all you know, self directed custodians. They'll they'll roll over their their fidelity, money to one of these self directed custodians. And you know, you can purchase gold through that custodian, but it has to go in there approved vault, and you're limited to just gold and silver. What happens if we wake up and your gold and silver skyrocketing, and you want to take profits and put it into something else? Well, now you got to go set up a different type of self directed IRA. So there's also Bitcoin IRAs, right where one can, and that's a custodial direct model as well. And you have some great ones out there now, like unchained and Swan, I think does them as well, but they have multi SIG options. They have, it's not just an ETF Bitcoin holding, okay, but the self directed IRA that that we set up, and that I full wholeheartedly believe in, is the IRA LLC. It's called and it does involve the creation of a limited liability company that your IRA purchases. This limited liability company functions as a holding company, an investment asset holding company that you're the manager of. So you're now the investment manager of your IRA portfolio under this shell company, shell that word has a bad rap, but they're not all just a wrapper. They're not all illicit, right, right? So these are just honest people trying to protect their own savings, you know? So and then that LLC, it can. We've, we've done them in just about every there's certain states to avoid, obviously, for regulatory and tax reasons, and there's flexibility to go in other states too. So we counsel and advise people. Through that. We do all the work. There's paperwork and regulatory stuff, and that's our job,

Mike Peterson:

and you want to make sure you don't screw that up, because if you do, then it becomes, I've heard horror stories of people messing something up or running afoul of one of the guidelines, and then it's basically like all our assets were distributed to them, and they paid the penalty, plus the taxes on it.

Will Lehr:

Yep, big tax hits, Yep, yeah. So you have to be careful on the regulatory side, and then also on the do's and don'ts, you know, making sure that you don't cross any of those boundaries. One of them you mentioned was the the metal storage, right? So, and that's relative, that was gray or. Area until a handful of years ago, arguably gray area, you know, and there was finally a court, Court precedent set after someone was audited. So

Mike Peterson:

I know another one with with real estate, you can't live in that so you can't buy yourself a home and put in or even vacation home. I believe that you can't use it.

Will Lehr:

You're not supposed to use it. That's right? Investment only? Yep, you can't. There can't be use or benefit between the individual and his or her retirement assets. So it's investment only. If it's real estate, you don't want to, you also don't want to provide sweat equity. You know? You want to outsource everything, because that's providing benefit from the individual to the account, right? Vice versa. If you stay there, that's the account providing benefit to you. So, but it can be an investment, buy a piece of land, sit on it later, distribute that to yourself, whatever.

Mike Peterson:

So you were working in this realm, and you had somebody come to you and say, Hey, we want to put Bitcoin in it. Yeah.

Will Lehr:

So 2013 you know, again, we were most I knew about Bitcoin, but I, you know, it wasn't like something I would think, gosh, you know, it dabbled back at 345, $100 Bitcoin we were, but it wasn't like, you know, gosh, sink 100 grand into this right now. You know, you obviously had some people do that, and God bless them, they'll never work a day again in their lives. I know some of them, but yeah, for us, it just, you know, and yeah, I remember one of my friends and clients saying, Yeah, I'm using this to buy it, to put Bitcoin in it. And I was like, my god, we have this is like the best platform, because you have full control on, on, on storage, on custody of the asset, you know, and so, yeah, things, things just led from there. I think we were the first, that was the first person to put Bitcoin in an IRA back in 2013 because it was way before even Bitcoin IRA, or any of the, you know, the custodial programs. Yeah. So we've had, you know, 15 years of of like minded clients buying Bitcoin, buying gold and silver with their IRA funds. And you know, it's there's been a common thread with these conversations with people over the last 15 years and that, you know, oh well, it's so nice to talk to you, because I seldom, very rarely, if ever, get to talk to like minded people, you know, and, and that's been a real common thread, you know, everybody thinks I'm crazy. My kids think I'm crazy. My wife, you know, my you know, hopefully the spouses are aligned, and usually they are close enough, but that common thread is what really hit me when I discovered El Salvador, because what's happening here is this congregation of all these like minded people, and after being here two years and building a team and friendship and family and Community, here, it's like, we it's, it feels like a a freedom libertarian Bitcoin Conference, 24/7, you know, it's like the conversations that we have around the table are just, you know, we got clients coming down, experiencing it for the first time. So there's all this, you know, positive emotion and just great, giddy experience around what's happening here.

Mike Peterson:

No, that's how I always explain it to people, exactly that way. It's like living at a Bitcoin Conference. You just run into people the street. You go to eat at the local restaurant. There's Bitcoiners there. You strike up these conversations. And so that, I think, is what makes it so fun to live in El Salvador. Before we delve into that, I want to circle back and and get into the details a little bit and finish off the things with the IRA, just because it something you mentioned, I think it's important for people to know you'd said that recently, there was a court case saying that if, if you have gold or silver in this you can't have that in your home safe like that's considered a distribution so obviously that brings up the question, well, how does that relate to to Bitcoin? Can you just have that in your hardware wallet that you're custodian? Or are they going to look at that the same way? Obviously, we know Bitcoin. You don't physically possess it in your home. You just possess access to Bitcoin. That's that you know sits on the blockchain. It's not in any one physical place. And so how is the IRS dealing with that? What are the what do you tell your clients? What's the safest way? Obviously, Bitcoiners you want. I'm assuming most of them want access to that. They want to if things hit the fan and they got to leave the whether the US these are going to be Americans, obviously, because this is a product only for Americans. If they need to leave the US. They want to be able to take that Bitcoin with them and not have to worry about getting access from somebody else. And so, how does that work? Like? What? What are the risks and and what do you advise people?

Will Lehr:

Yeah. So prior to about three or four years ago, there wasn't, there was no Court precedent for even gold and silver, which people been putting in IRAs for a long time.

Mike Peterson:

And were a lot of these people cussed in in their own

Will Lehr:

home. Some were, yeah, yeah. Some were, and because, again, these were people that had come to the point where they're like, fed up with the inflation and the government massive loss. Of

Mike Peterson:

last thing you want to do if you're going down that rabbit hole is have somebody give them all your

Will Lehr:

money, right? So they're, they're like, look, I mean, they're just going to take all this out and take the tax hit. But okay, here's a way where so some people you know were improperly storing it at home, I can imagine. But yeah, that that court case, a couple was audited. Basically no one prior to that had ever been audited that had an IRA LLC that had gold under their pillow, so to speak. So that, few years ago, set the precedent, they were slapped on the wrist with the distribution and penalty taxes, interest, whatever. So that set the precedent, you can't store the gold and silver at home. It was always in the code, albeit vague, so it was still like, don't recommend this, yeah. But, you know, it does allow you to store the asset in the, you know, Vault, or storage facility of your choice, right,

Mike Peterson:

which including outside of the US, yeah, oh, yeah.

Will Lehr:

And there's a vault in Texas that the South Texas small town that I love. I mean, I personally use that. I recommend it to clients. There's certain, you know, vaulting places like this one that I think are probably safer than home storage, quite frankly, and you have instant liquidity. You can pick up the phone and liquidate dollars hit your bank account, you can flip into Bitcoin or whatever. So, yeah, but as it pertains to Bitcoin cold storage within an IRA, we don't have Court precedent. We're not we're still in operating in total gray area. So as it pertains to cold storage in your Bitcoin in an IRA LLC, there's a couple things to consider. The IRS is, in this case, talking about, with the gold and silver, the actual physical possession of the underlying asset. As you mentioned with Bitcoin, it's an it's there's no custodial it's all about access. You're not holding the asset, you're holding the keys. Well, what else can you hold keys to in your IRA? A rental property, right? You can own a rental property and your IRA that's sitting right over there, just like the Bitcoin that's sitting right on the blockchain that we can verify right the rental property sits there. I have the keys. I can go in there. I can walk around in it. And, you know, so I imagine that when it does come up in court, I if it's properly argued, if it's properly presented, if the individual holding a treasure or something, an uninformed judge might go, Yep, you're holding that Bitcoin right there. But if they have it in a brain wallet, all they have is the word seed. You know, what's that word seed? It's a key. It's a string of random words. Your Honor. How am I in possession of the asset here? This is a key, like the key to my rental property in my real estate. So that would be the ideal scenario argument when that day comes, because it will come, and I

Mike Peterson:

wonder if the IRS will even be a little reluctant to bring the case because they don't want to set the precedent. A lot of times they don't want to take a case that they're going to lose, they'd rather leave it as a gray area that they can kind of hold over people's heads.

Will Lehr:

Correct, correct, yeah, because once they lose, there's that precedent, you know, and with Bitcoin, yeah, I think the powers that be want to control they want to custodially control it as best they can. Look at the ETFs, look at the big push coming out of the Black Rock and the government, right? So, yeah, I mean, as a as a hard asset, you know, libertarian minded individual, you know, if you don't hold it, you don't own it. But again, that was, that was my motto with silver and gold for a long time. But, you know, after being in the industry a long time dealing with clients, a lot of clients, and a lot, you know, there are, there are places to store that are that are just as safe, I think, you know, yeah, so we'll,

Mike Peterson:

at the end, we'll make sure people have all your contact info over there. If they're interested in contacting you about the, you know, setting up an IRA, they'll be able to follow up on that. But now shift gears back to El Salvador and how, you know, you saw that these had all this like minded people in the world, people you'd been maybe dealing with on phone calls in your prior business. Now, in real life, they are here, moving their families, moving their businesses. You know, some of them getting passports, like, making this their home.

Will Lehr:

Yeah, it's, it's so gosh, rewind a little bit, COVID. You know, COVID happened. I was living in San Diego, California at the time, and that was just not a great place to be during COVID, if you're, if we're. Freedom lover. So we, my family and I kids, we migrated back to Central Texas, outside of Austin area. We got an RV, and, like, traveled around when everything was like crazy and shut down. That was really fun, like, all right, well, the kids aren't in school. Let's go, you know, Dad, get the laptop. You can work from anywhere. So, you know, and then kind of that post COVID, like depression, if you will, like, I whatever I was there, you know, it was like, this is ugly, yeah, it's just painful to watch humanity go through, right, especially loved ones and others. And then I got a phone call that said, we have to go to El Salvador, Bitcoins, legal tender, Elizabeth Warren wants to throw us in a concentration camp, like, we gotta go. Let's go check it out. So I came down April of two years ago and stumbled, landed, you know, took the cab right to sante, and it just hit me like a like, a big old ton of bricks, um, kind of like, feels like the early Bitcoin days, like I remember that Austin conference in 2014 I think it was like Charlie shrim was still under house arrest. He was there on Skype, you know, Antonopoulos was there speaking to an empty room, you know, it was, and I remember it, and I remember it really hit me. Then I was like, Oh, my God, this is going to change the way we do everything. So that's how I felt when I landed in Zonta a couple years ago. Because, you know, I have a lot of real estate experience, just marketing, sales, investing, lived in a bunch of different markets, you know, places that I knew were going to be amazing, and I've watched them, watched it happen the last 25 years, Charleston, South Carolina, Park City, Carolina, Park City, Utah, Ocean Beach, San Diego, Austin and I got the same feeling here, right? And Costa Rica too. I've traveled. I've studied abroad, I've, you know, watched Costa Rica develop over the last 25 years, and this is a real interesting parallel study, because it's we're two doors down and very similar, right? Only this country just opened its doors. It was literally all but shut down for 30 years from violence and corruption. And so that pendulum has peaked and is now shifting the other way. And I the development of Costa Rica, watching that and then seeing this opportunity, I'm like, and you have even other things that make it even I think a better opportunity than Costa Rica, accessibility. I can fly on a two and a half hour flight from Houston, land, right over there, and I'm 45 minutes I'm home. Yeah, in Costa Rica,

Mike Peterson:

a lot of times you're driving for six hours from the airport just to get just to

Will Lehr:

get to the point break, which we have 12 of in Surf City, from Punta, Roca to K 61 I mean that alone when you talk to like, surfers that have traveled the world and surfed a lot of my buddies myself, you know, I've had buddies come down there. Like, what you have all these point breaks like, oh, go check this one I go to. So it's really rare. Accessibility is huge. I've never been in a country and felt so welcomed like never. And, you know, there's places in Mexico and Costa Rica now where they're like, Get out of here Gringo, you know. And here it's very warmly welcoming. Sometimes in the lineup, when it's firing, you can probably, I imagine, get into some but not if you're, you know, if they know who you are,

Mike Peterson:

yeah. And if you're mellow, if you're not being hyper aggressive and paddling around people and stuff. I mean, it's, you know, it's all,

Will Lehr:

yeah, yeah. I said. I said, Man, I've never it's amazing here. I said, it'll, probably, we won't really see it change much until, you know, the guys are taking the taking the waves and the girlfriends that'll slowly start. But no, I've the people here incredibly warm and welcoming, the overall spirit of freedom that, again, to most of these locals, is like deer in the headlights. What is happening, you know? But those of us that get it, oh man, the Liberty that's, uh, exploding here like a volcano right now. It's just this, and it's, it's like Ron Paul said, man, you can't stop an idea whose time has come, specifically referring to the concept of of liberty and self, sovereignty and that passion. And that's what's happening here. This place is lit, and you can't put that genie back in the bottle. I really, I don't and, and what's happening here, there's so much spiritual energy behind it. This land is so ripe for that, with the with its history. And, yeah, I see a I see an incredible revolution, Renaissance. Happening here. I mean that reverse brain drain, this huge concentration on this tiny little, little country and economy of of Bitcoiners coming here, and I've been talking to these people on the phone for 15 years. I like and working with them down here, the last two and these are some of the smartest people in the world. You know, coming here, the heart capital, the brain capital, the actual capital. All descending on this tiny little place is like just, you know, you think of that market cap scenario, right? So, yeah, man, it's this place. What's happening here is revolutionary. I feel like it's not only a gift to the Salvadoran people who've been, you know, suffering for 30 years, but it's also a gift to these liberty loving people all over the world. It's a place for them in real life to actually drop in. And that's that common thread that I keep hearing from people that I've talked to over the years, and that's what we as a conscious, liberty, loving minded community are thirsty for. We're thirsty for this community, right?

Mike Peterson:

So you found all that, and then I think, like a lot of us, you're like, Okay, I want to be a part of this. I want to be a part of creating this community and unlocking the potential that's here. And so you, you came across a property, or you had already bought one place first, and then, how did that develop, that you started developing this, this property that's going to be targeting kind of liberty minded individuals. So

Will Lehr:

I got here in April, two years ago, and, you know, I love the beach. I'm a beach guy, although I'm about to become a mountains guy, after discovering the climate and the proximity and what you can get in these mountains right behind us, only 30 minutes from the beach, maybe 45 and, yeah, I saw, okay, Zante is sold out, untouchable. There's nothing beachfront in Zante. Two years ago, like and there were maybe a half a dozen peppered across surf, all Surf City, you know this, 12 towns, 10 towns of what is it about a five mile as the crow flies? And I said, Okay, well, bazante is already priced out. There's tons more Bitcoin capital that's gonna be coming here. They're gonna just, it's likely they're just gonna spread this way. And so I watched over the last two years that all the beachfront of Surf City sell out. There were a couple Concha Leos a few months ago, but those are gone. So there's nothing in Surf City, beachfront on the market. And so anyway, yeah, playa cocaul, which is about 20 minutes just the other side of Surf City. Here we're on the west side. I live over on the east side. Bought that property, and that was a really great move, you know, it's just about kept pace with Bitcoin, you know, which is pretty impressive. That is, I can't surf on my bitcoin. I don't get coconuts off my bitcoin or mangoes, you know. So I'm not saying go in. They'll go all in. Keep some bitcoin, please. But, uh, diversifying into the into the offerings of this land are you'll be rewarded, you know? So, yeah, we we scored some property, actually, just west of zonte, about 10 minutes from here to the west, right above a pretty famous surf break. And 23 acres. We came across it. It was like too good to be true. And I went to my friend, who's an old bitcoiner capital partner, and said, Hey, dude, this is if this is real. We got to find out if this is real and if it is, like, let's figure something out. And so we did, and we partnered on a development project that we're doing. It's about 23 acres. We're gonna do 21 like minded. It's a like minded community of 21 liberty lovers. You know, we're gonna leverage the glorify and leverage the natural resources of the land. We've got 100 plus fruit trees

Mike Peterson:

so we can have up here on the screen. This is kind of something we took from your website, but that's kind of the the view from from the land, I believe. So, yeah, Ocean View from some of

Will Lehr:

the you've got ocean view from some of the properties. You've got pretty awesome rock formations and mountain views and valley

Mike Peterson:

views Paco. Can you cycle through some of those other Yeah, yeah. There's

Will Lehr:

one of the rock formations in the valley to the back. There's a aerial of the little town right below us, and that's the bluff right above our property, which we also own. We're in the right now. We're in the. Permitting and engineering and architecture and all of that process, which will probably be another six to 12 months, hopefully closer to six before we're, we're platted and approved, and can, can close on home sites. It looks steep right there, but it's actually not that the cliff is, yeah, backside is, but the rest of the properties pretty, pretty well, pretty well sloped.

Mike Peterson:

So you have, you, do you have the lots all drawn out already, or just the first four or one?

Will Lehr:

No, those first four are pre sales, where they get a discount off of the what the launch prices will be. They put in a deposit, and then they'll get first pick too, of that, of that phase two, which is probably going to be all those ridgeline lots. So no, we haven't been able to cut the lots out yet, but we've had, we've had engineering and LIDAR work out there. We're in the process now. We are the experts we're working with. I've talked through kind of the vision, after hiking the property lots of times now and seeing just visioning out where it's okay, the road, okay. We've got runoff water, you know, we got a fruit tree forest we're not going to touch. We met with the engineers and permitting people, and they were like, Okay, well, if there's any tree over 20 centimeters that you want to cut, we have to go through this. I'm like, we're not cutting any trees over 10 centimeters, you know, because we don't have to. I mean, we don't have to. And so, yeah, the when we get to phase two, which will basically be once everything is designed, platted, okay, you know, those first four will pick theirs, and then by then, I imagine we'll have a waiting list, because there's already been a decent amount of interest, and we're pretty early. It's really cool, though, everybody's like minded. We're all my partner and friend. He's an early Bitcoin er, this isn't about you see the developments going on around here, and some of them make me just where they just cram as many lots as they can into the community, and there's a little tiny piece of green space over here, and it's clearly just all profit, and it just packed in. And so we're doing the opposite of that. This isn't about making 10s of millions of dollars. This is about making an awesome impact and just being a part of something so rad, you know. And I'd like to, you know, think of it as a way like this is, this is a way to take people with capital that might be bored, right? They're just sitting on capital. And this is a way to put some of that to work. What we're doing with my friend, he wanted to buy a, you know, beach Rancho house here, and do like a wellness Wellness Center, you know, cold plunges and spas and massages and, you know, the organic juices and T bar and all that stuff. So we're basically going to do that on a community, you know, we want to do like a really cool wellness community. There's, there's really strong Mayan vibes over there. You're kind of at the very southern end of the Mayan, the Mayan territory. And so we want to do like rain, from an architecture standpoint, community planning standpoint, rainforest Mayan meets Japanese Buddhist vibes. So we'll be using the some of the best builders in the in the country, and people can pick their builder. I imagine we're not, we're not really there yet. You know, we're libertarians at heart. But like Mike and I were talking about before the podcast, you can be like a staunch libertarian and not want any rules until your neighbor, you know, puts a whatever does something next to you that that

Mike Peterson:

infringes put the disco tech in that infringes on

Will Lehr:

your liberty, doesn't it? It infringes on your privacy. It's, it's so it's kind of like this libertarian social contract thing, but we have to take it a step further in order to protect the community. I mean, I'm in this way, I'm kind of like the fiduciary for this development, like, how do we make this win? Win for the forest, for we're donating. So we had a fundraiser at our beach house, for the house of life. Give them a plug. Bob is the gentleman that that runs that organization, and they basically rehabilitate and provide housing for rescued pregnant teenage girls that are rescued from number of different scenarios,

Mike Peterson:

not just housing like help them think about what they're gonna do with their future and go forward and education. They're doing Bitcoin training with them now.

Will Lehr:

Totally setting up treasuries. Yeah, it's really incredible. They have this whole multi stage process that they that they have to be rehabilitated, right and then, and then, once they get to that last stage, they need housing and employment a path forward. And so we're like, holy crap. We're at we have this fundraiser, one of our. Our local bitcoiner friends, God bless him, was inspired by the story of the of the of the orphanage, and he said, I'm going to, I'm going to build you guys a house on I'm going to build on the donate a house to the girls. And I'm sitting here, we're planning out this development. And I go, we got the land, we're going to donate you a little portion of the land on the community, and we'll have our friends or other investable build housing for you, and we'll House House of life girls and their babies that can manage the community, but not just clean floors and pools. I want to start. I want to provide entrepreneur so much entrepreneurial capital coming here and great ideas and guys and like us that we don't really need the capital. We just want to do something fun and uplift people. So we, you know, we have so much fruit on the property. We have the thoughts of doing a mango tamarind jamming company, chutneys and jams, you know, which the gringos will pay top dollar for. And that can all be owned by the girls, you know. So we've already been walking that walking that walk in the last couple years. As far as uplifting locals, our local pool guy, Kevin, is his name. He we helped him take three months for a special scholarship training to get this really high level Surf Training Certification. They taught him English. So now we've helped him start his own surf school. So he's not just a pool guy anymore. He's still our amazing pool guy, and I love him, but, yeah, hopefully he'll, you know, he's training other guys to do the pool work so he can, you know, so stuff like that. We actually just went to his house. He got hit by a car last week.

Mike Peterson:

And was he on a motorcycle, no

Will Lehr:

bicycle, on a bicycle, bicycle that we just bought him literally two days before, because he was walking all the way from El Faro to cocaul, you know? So we got him a bicycle, and he gets hit by a car, and then we go by. We go to the store. We get, luckily, nothing's broken. He saw a little local MD, but we, we go and got his medicine, and we come to see him. And, you know, we go into the shanty town, village at the end of Punta, Roca over there, which is, we didn't we just, we went deep in it too. Like, yeah, we were the only great ghost there. Yeah, we were getting some head turns. But just, you know that when you get that experience, and it was cool because I had some of my team members with me, I was like, Guys, this might be, we might be stepping into a little culture shock here, but you get that and you realize it doesn't take much, man, it doesn't take much for us to elevate these people in a way that's unbelievable. And, you know, it's not about handouts. It's not about, you know, handing them $100 bill. That's the worst thing you can do, you know. But you can create opportunities and uplift people, man. And that just feels good, you know. So, yeah, we're stoked, dude, we're it's like, everything that's supposed to come together. It's, it's divine, it's, you know, I couldn't do this by myself. I'm a sales and marketing guy, you know, but I'm literally getting all of the pieces coming together to make it a reality. And we're going to keep doing these. We want to keep doing these, these like mini conscious communities, not, not huge ones, you know, 2050 homes, whatever. And the land opportunities here are such that it's just jaw dropping, you know, so I can get a capital investor who's like minded, who says, Yeah, let's build a community. All right, let's work out a deal. Okay, we'll get you the land. We'll build the dream, sales, marketing, all of it to engineering, architecture, and we're talking permaculture and regenerative technologies. I mean, I don't even know where this thing's gonna go. It could be one of the coolest little micro communities ever, you know. And so when you're doing this with heart and passion and you're just trying to make a difference, it's not about the money everybody's got to get paid, obviously, but when you're dealing with Bitcoin capital that you know has pretty deep roots and isn't in this for, you know, no,

Mike Peterson:

and you find there's a lot of people that you know they were in Bitcoin early. And what are you going to do? Just sit on your Bitcoin like it's it's still just money. So if you're not using it to do something productive, it's kind of a waste.

Will Lehr:

Yeah? I mean, it's probably the rarest asset on the planet, you know? So I understand we don't want to part with with it. But if you haven't been here, come here and and you we could show you some properties that are like, probably, like, buying Bitcoin, you know, at $1,000 No kidding, yeah, it's what's happening here. Is incredible, because of this 30 years of of you. Tyranny, I'll call it chaos. There's a huge market divergence. You've got people like us coming in here that get it, that see what's happening. I mean, I'm watching global wealth managers that I follow talk about El Salvador becoming the next Singapore of Latin America. If we get an even a fraction of that, it's crazy. So you've got that incoming vision and capital coming from Bitcoin and expanding, you know, source of capital, and assuming the price keeps going up in dollar terms. And then you have this, this local populace, a third of which left right during the during the chaos. A lot of those thirds are our landowners, yeah, that are now coming back, and don't really know what's happening. And so there's this, there's opportunity here. Put it that way, there is so much opportunity here, and there's such a powerful Renaissance rebirth taking place here, and there's so many people like us scattered all about and it's so cool to like, you know, like Murph. Like Murph and what he's doing over at murph's life, and we've been in contact. Hopefully we're gonna go over there and shake hands next week. But, like, Yeah, his place is beautiful up there, dude. I only found out about him, like, six months ago. I'm like, How are you, what this you're doing? Like, we want to, we want to piggyback a lot of what he's doing, you know, like creating Bitcoin retirement accounts for the for the staff, and regenerative bio, organic farms. I mean, dude, that's so, yeah, it's incredible, man. I'm stoked. I'm stoked to be here. I'm blessed. I this is the mecca El Salvador, the mecca for libertarian liberty, loving, you know, red pilled, orange pilled, you got to come. You know,

Mike Peterson:

think that's a good note to end on. Was there anything else we didn't cover? Or is that?

Unknown:

I think we, I think we covered it, hammered it out. I think we hammered it, brother.

Mike Peterson:

So make sure let people know where they can follow you on Twitter or noster or wherever else you are. You know, give, give people all the ways to get a get a hold of it. Yeah? So we'll put them in the show notes too, but it's cool. It's good for them to have them verbally, yeah?

Will Lehr:

Club CO, call club coca, call.com is our local company, and presence unbound assets is the Texas based alternative asset consulting company IRAs and stuff. On Twitter, I my personal profile is will in Paradise, and I produce a lot of fun El Salvador sunset photos and whatever. So yeah, feel free to visit either website or both, shoot us a contact us or email or call. You can call and the number will probably ring right to me, so

Mike Peterson:

perfect. Well, we'll put that in the show notes. Too Cool. Yeah, people can get a hold of you for whether, I mean, they could even set up their their self directed IRA, and then use that to buy property in El Salvador, right? Yes, yeah,

Will Lehr:

yes. I mean, you know the right property offerings down here. And you could, yeah, you could buy something and sit on it and it might give you Bitcoin returns in 10 years. Yeah, all

Mike Peterson:

right, well, well, I'm excited to see how this comes along. And when you guys have some construction up and going, we'll have to have you back on to give us an

Will Lehr:

update. Awesome brother. Appreciate you. Man, thanks for paving the way down here for all of us, by the way.

Mike Peterson:

Hey, it's been, it's been a wild ride, but it's been a privilege.

Will Lehr:

Amen. Brother. Appreciate you. You.