South African Bitcoin Circular Economy Project Deepens Community Ties
Bitcoin Ekasi, located in Mossel Bay, South Africa
Frank Corva
Founded in August 2021, Bitcoin Ekasi, a Bitcoin circular economy project based in a township in Mossel Bay, South Africa (Ekasi is slang for 'township' in Afrikaans) continues to expand thanks to the efforts of its dedicated members.
Hermann Vivier, founder and Chairman of Bitcoin Ekasi, shared that the continued success of the project hinges in part on the work of The Surfer Kids non-profit, which Vivier founded in 2010. The Surfer Kids is an organization that teaches marginalized youth commitment and dedication through surfing and also provides them with after-school educational support.
'Bitcoin Ekasi operates with The Surfer Kids as its umbrella organization,' Vivier told me in an interview.
'The secret to Bitcoin Ekasi's success is the fact that we have a long-standing relationship with the community with which we work. We started operating in this particular community where Bitcoin Ekasi is based in 2015,' he added.
This isn't to say that introducing Bitcoin into the community — one in which many of the residents have never even opened a bank account — was easy, though.
Luthando Ndabambi, Project Community Leader at Bitcoin Ekasi and The Surfer Kids, recalled how challenging it was to onboard both merchants and everyday people alike to Bitcoin three and a half years ago.
'In the beginning, it was tough,' Ndabambi told me in an interview.
'Most shop owners in the township had never heard of Bitcoin, except perhaps from negative associations with scams, which made them understandably suspicious,' he added.
'I spent a lot of time walking them through how it worked. I demonstrated the process by using bitcoin myself to buy products. It took a lot of patience, and building trust was a slow process.'
Now, however, 32 shops in the community accept bitcoin and the 21 employees for The Surfer Kids program earn their salaries in bitcoin. Many have been excited to see their bitcoin holdings increase in value since late 2022.
And some of the most recent community members that the Bitcoin Ekasi team has onboarded to Bitcoin are the principal and teachers at the local public elementary school.
Recently, the Bitcoin Ekasi team has been working more closely with the staff at T.M. Nanda Primary School, the local public school that approximately 75% of the youths who are part of The Surfer Kids program attend.
'We've built trust with the principal, teachers, and students through consistent engagement,' Thinus Mouton, Special Projects Coordinator at Bitcoin Ekasi and The Surfer Kids, told me in an interview.
'This has included regular visits as well as sponsoring a newly designed school emblem and entrance board,' he added.
'We also introduced the school staff and the students to international Bitcoin community members during the road trip that followed the Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town conference, which Hermann and Kgothatso Ngako, founder of Machankura, put on in conjunction with a local organizing committee including several of South Africa's most notable Bitcoin enthusiasts.'
Vivier highlighted some of the other work that the staff members from The Surfers Kids and Bitcoin Ekasi have done with the school.
'We do quarterly meetups with the teachers and the principal where, amongst other things, we discuss Bitcoin,' said Vivier. 'We have created wallets for all of them and they have some sats (fractions of a bitcoin) in those wallets that they spend at the local shops.'
Vivier, Ndabambi and Mouton all also mentioned that, for the past two years, the Bitcoin Ekasi team has recruited students from the school to join the Mi Primer Bitcoin diploma course that they offer at the Bitcoin Ekasi Center, a physical space dedicated to Bitcoin education in the community.
The team is looking to build a bigger and better version of this space by the end of this year.
The Bitcoin Ekasi project has had a center since the middle of 2022, as Vivier believed that it was necessary to have a location for in-person support if the community's residents were to truly adopt this new monetary technology.
'I knew from the very beginning we needed a place for support and education in the township itself,' said Vivier.
'It's for people who have issues with their mobile bitcoin wallets or for people who are curious about how to use Bitcoin. It's basically a walk-in support center,' he added.
'Imagine giving an iPad to your grandmother. If something goes wrong with it, she would have to have someone explain what happened and how to fix it to her in simple terms. You can't give her online resources to go and figure out what's wrong with the thing. This is what the Bitcoin Ekasi Center is for.'
The current center, though, is simply a house in the community that the Bitcoin Ekasi team turned into a small educational hub. Vivier never planned for this location to be permanent.
The current Bitcoin Ekasi Center
Frank Corva
'Our current Bitcoin Ekasi Center has always been a temporary thing, and we've been planning to build a proper support center for a long time,' said Vivier.
In April 2024, he submitted an application to the local government to purchase a small plot of land in the community, and, as of March 27, 2025, he received a preliminary 'yes,' though, the details of the purchase still need to be negotiated.
If approved, the center will become a more official hub for the community, something to complement the newly-renovated Surfer Kids center and freshly-built international-standard skate bowl, which was funded by a Discovery Grant from Block last year.
The recently-renovated center for The Surfer Kids
Frank Corva
If you take a closer look at the header image for this article, you'll notice the logos of Bitcoin companies and organizations painted on the sides of houses in the township.
Vivier conceptualized this, as he wanted to freshen up the look of the homes, which are set against the picturesque backdrop of the ocean.
He decided to use some of the organization's donation money to pay the residents of the homes 7000 sats per week (just over $6 at today's bitcoin-to-USD rate) under the agreement that they either save the sats or spend them in the community — they just can't trade them for South African rand (the local fiat currency).
'It's been a great way to get extra sats flowing into the community,' said Vivier.
'Plus, now we've come up with an additional requirement, which is that the people receiving those payments also clean up around their homes, which helps to drive the idea of being responsible for your property and taking pride in the appearance of your community,' he added.
Ndabambi, who's been on the front lines of the Bitcoin Ekasi project since its inception, said that aside from the number of shops he's onboarded to Bitcoin, he's most proud of being able to reward the youths in The Surfer Kids program with sats for their successes and to see people in the community beginning to embrace Bitcoin.
'People are starting to feel hopeful, realizing they can save with bitcoin and build something for the future, which is an option they didn't have before,' said Ndabambi.
With that said, Ndabambi noted that education is still a major challenge.
'Many people in the community struggle with reading and writing, so explaining Bitcoin, something they can't physically touch, to them is challenging,' he said. 'People are afraid of losing money or being scammed, so I'm always working to help them overcome those fears and build their confidence in the technology.'
Mouton seconded the notion that education is a challenge and added that he, a white South African who isn't from the township, like Vivier, sometimes feels that simply earning the community's trust can be difficult.
'Winning the trust of residents directly can be challenging due to language and cultural differences, said Mouton. 'But by enabling these trusted locals to lead, I help bridge the gap indirectly, which feels like the most effective way to build credibility in a community I'm not originally part of.'
For Vivier, the project's biggest success is simply that he can continue to run a daily program through The Surfer Kids to support dozens youths from a low-income neighborhood.
'It's amazing that we can sustain this, because, for the kids in the program, The Surfer Kids is everything,' said Vivier.
The biggest challenge that persists, according to Vivier, is simply managing funds as a non-profit.
'Being a non-profit, you're reliant on donations,' said Vivier. 'I'm grateful for the 10 years that I spent running The Surfer Kids before starting Bitcoin Ekasi project because I learned the hard way that you have to manage funds today as if there is no future funding.'
Vivier also noted that fundraising and spending in bitcoin is what gives the project leverage that other non-profits don't have.
'We're entirely reliant on donations, but because we operate on a bitcoin standard, we get three times the amount of work done with the same amount of funds donated,' he explained.
'Not only are the donations put to good use in supporting the kids, but our low time preference approach means we think very carefully about what we spend on so as to benefit from the long-term price appreciation of our reserves,' he added.
'Meanwhile the fact that we spend in bitcoin, which drives adoption, means that the positive ripple effects of the bitcoin has far wider wider effect than fiat donations would.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
3 Reasons Bitcoin's Momentum Could Continue Into 2026 and Beyond
High-level support from the Trump administration is generating new momentum around Bitcoin. Inspired by the success of Strategy (MicroStrategy), new Bitcoin Treasury companies are emerging as major buyers of Bitcoin. Thanks to the launch of the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, sovereign governments around the world now have a template for buying Bitcoin. 10 stocks we like better than Bitcoin › For the year, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) might only be up 13%. But let's put this into context: Almost all of the world's top cryptocurrencies are down double-digits this year, and Bitcoin has clearly broken away from the pack. If you're thinking about investing in Bitcoin, the good news is that this momentum is likely to continue into 2026. Here are three reasons why. The most obvious reason, of course, is high-profile support from the Trump administration. President Donald Trump came into office this year promising a pro-crypto agenda, and he has delivered just that. The big move came in March, when he announced the creation of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Currently, the big focus is on blockbuster new crypto legislation that will further legitimize the role of crypto within the U.S. economy. New stablecoin legislation is likely to be signed by the end of this summer. Next up will be broad crypto market reform legislation. This, too, could be ready by the time of the congressional recess in August. Bitcoin is already going mainstream, and bipartisan support in Washington, D.C. is only going to make it easier for banks, corporations, and institutional investors to buy and hold crypto. In theory, this means that Bitcoin could continue to increase in value from now until 2028. The next major factor is the emergence of Bitcoin treasury companies. Ever since Strategy announced it was transforming into a Bitcoin treasury company in February, a slew of copycats have followed. Everyone, it seems, is buying Bitcoin this year. And when I say "everyone," I mean everyone. Medical device companies are buying Bitcoin. Media companies are buying Bitcoin. Luxury watchmaker companies are buying Bitcoin. At the same time, investors are using every form of financial alchemy possible -- from reverse mergers to special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) -- to create new companies that do nothing but buy Bitcoin. On the surface, this might just seem like the trendy thing to do: buy Bitcoin because everyone else is buying Bitcoin. But, as they say, always follow the money. And the money trail leads directly to FASB ASU 2023-8. This is a rather arcane accounting rule from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) dating back to December 2023 that enables companies to mark to market the crypto assets they hold on their balance sheets. The rule went into effect in December 2024, so we're seeing the impact in 2025. Previously, companies were only able to mark to market their crypto holdings if they were selling these assets. Unless you're an accountant, this might not seem like a big deal, until you realize the potential impact that it has on shareholder value. If Bitcoin is soaring in value, this means your company -- if it chooses to buy and hold Bitcoin -- will also be soaring in value. At the beginning of the year, for example, Tesla was able to post $600 million in gains, simply due to the Bitcoin it was carrying on its balance sheet. Thus far, sovereign governments have been relatively quiet when it comes to Bitcoin. But this is likely to change very soon. Last year, many people expected sovereign wealth funds to lead the way. But in 2025 and beyond, it looks like strategic Bitcoin reserves will lead the way forward. In order to keep up with the United States, a number of governments around the world have already announced intentions to launch strategic Bitcoin reserves of their own. The most high-profile of these is Brazil. And, within the United States, three U.S. states have already approved the creation of strategic Bitcoin reserves of their own, with many more on the way. The big question, of course, is how much Bitcoin these strategic reserves are going to acquire. According to Michael Saylor, founder and executive chairman of Strategy, the U.S. government should plan to acquire 20% of the world's total Bitcoin supply. That's a lot of Bitcoin. Obviously, this type of buying pressure is only going to push Bitcoin higher. Based on the above, it's pretty easy to put together an informal calendar for what happens next in 2025 and 2026. This summer, look for new crypto legislation to be signed into law. In the fall, look for a major corporation -- most likely, a Silicon Valley tech behemoth -- to announce plans to add Bitcoin to its balance sheet. And, this winter, look for signs of an impending "Bitcoin arms race," as nations around the world compete to buy as much Bitcoin as possible. As a Bitcoin investor, it will be fun to sit back and watch. Yes, Bitcoin might seem to be priced into the stratosphere right now. But just wait a few years, and a small investment in Bitcoin now might turn out to be the best investment you ever make. Before you buy stock in Bitcoin, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Bitcoin wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $664,089!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $881,731!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 994% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 Dominic Basulto has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 3 Reasons Bitcoin's Momentum Could Continue Into 2026 and Beyond was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Metaplanet Buys 1,111 Bitcoin for $117M, Pushes Total Holdings to Over 11K BTC
Metaplanet, the Tokyo-listed hotel firm known for its bitcoin BTC acquisition strategy, has acquired 1,111 bitcoin for $117 million. The firm bought bitcoin at an average price of about $105681 per BTC. The crypto markets fell during the weekend after the U.S. bombed several nuclear sites in Iran, pushing bitcoin to lows of $98,000. Bitcoin has recovered from the weekend fall and is now trading over $101,000 at the time of writing. The latest acquisition pushes Metaplanet's total BTC stash to 11,111 bitcoin, worth over $1.1 billion, with an average buying price of $95, in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Watch These Bitcoin Price Levels Amid Volatile Trading After U.S. Strikes Iran
Bitcoin briefly fell below $99,000 on Sunday to its lowest level in more than six weeks as news that the U.S. had struck Iranian nuclear sites caused investors to reassess their appetite for risky assets. After trending sharply higher between early April and late May, the cryptocurrency has consolidated within a descending channel. Investors should watch crucial support levels on Bitcoin's chart around $100,000 and $92,000, while also monitoring resistance levels near $107,000 and $112, (BTCUSD) briefly fell below $99,000 on Sunday as news that the U.S. had struck Iranian nuclear sites caused investors to reassess their appetite for risky assets. The digital currency moved as low as $98,200 on Sunday afternoon, its lowest level since May 8, amid uncertainty about the geopolitical and economic outlook after the U.S. late Saturday entered a conflict between Israel that had intensified over the past week. In recent trading, bitcoin had rebounded to about $101,200 but was still well down from its high last Monday of near $109,000. Below, we take a closer look at bitcoin's chart and apply technical analysis to identify crucial price levels worth watching out for. After trending sharply higher between early April and late May, bitcoin has consolidated within a descending channel. Over the past week, the cryptocurrency's price has retraced toward the pattern's lower trendline, an area on the chart that closely aligns with the psychological $100,000 level. Moreover, recent selling has coincided with the relative strength index falling below its neutral threshold, signaling weakening price momentum. Let's identify crucial support and resistance levels on Bitcoin's chart. Investors should initially monitor the $100,000 level. This area on the chart is likely to gain significant attention near the descending channel's lower trendline and a range of corresponding trading activity stretching back to last November. A decisive close below this level could see the cryptocurrency's price revisit lower support around $92,000. Investors may seek buying opportunities in this area near a horizontal line that links a series of price action on the chart between November and April. The first resistance level to watch sits around $107,000. The cryptocurrency could face overhead selling pressure in this location near the descending channel's top trendline, which also closely aligns with prominent peaks that formed on the chart in December and January. Finally, buying above this level could see BTC bulls push the price toward $112,000. Investors who have accumulated bitcoin during its recent retracement could decide to lock in profits near last month's high, which also marks the cryptocurrency's all-time high. The comments, opinions, and analyses expressed on Investopedia are for informational purposes only. Read our warranty and liability disclaimer for more info. As of the date this article was written, the author does not own any of the above securities. Read the original article on Investopedia Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
