Based in 2021, My First Bitcoin started with a single class of 4 college students. Over the following 4 years, it grew quickly, educating greater than 27,000 college students, creating the world’s first Bitcoin Diploma in public colleges, internet hosting educators’ unconferences, and constructing a Node Community now spanning 50 tasks in 27 international locations.
Now, My First Bitcoin is shifting from native school rooms to a world motion. Founder John Dennehy says the main target is on empowering educators, not working applications immediately.
“We need to assist others achieve their very own communities and hyperlink them collectively,” Dennehy stated in a notice to Bitcoin Journal.
The challenge can be embracing a completely distant construction, closing its workplace in El Salvador. Native meetups will now be run by unbiased collectives, utilizing open-source blueprints developed by My First Bitcoin.
The group will proceed creating curricula, creating digital platforms, and fostering connections amongst educators worldwide.
“Our mission stays the identical,” Dennehy provides. “Impartial, neutral Bitcoin schooling offers individuals company, encourages vital thought, and builds long-term freedom. Bitcoin is the software, schooling is the pathway.”
The transfer represents a brand new part for the initiative. By coaching academics, sharing assets overtly, and supporting community-led tasks, My First Bitcoin goals to ignite a world motion. The crew invitations educators, organizers, and Bitcoin advocates to affix the community and assist develop entry to information all over the place.
My First Bitcoin background
Based in August 2021 by John Dennehy, Mi Primer Bitcoin (My First Bitcoin) started as a small, community-led challenge in El Salvador with a mission to empower people by means of Bitcoin schooling. Dennehy, a soft-spoken and introspective thinker, noticed schooling as a method to revive private company and sovereignty, particularly in a world the place individuals typically really feel powerless.
The thought took root in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Dennehy spent lengthy walks in New York considering society’s challenges. Concluding that the answer lay in schooling, he initially traveled to Ecuador to show associates about Bitcoin.
Nonetheless, pandemic restrictions made in-person engagement tough. Shortly afterward, Dennehy realized of El Salvador’s historic adoption of Bitcoin as authorized tender and relocated there to help the nation’s efforts.
Touchdown in El Salvador, Dennehy drafted the group’s mission and lesson plans, recruiting each college students and native academics. He made group management a core precept, making certain that every one instructors have been Salvadoran to raised relate to college students. The primary class had only one attendee, held in a yoga studio, however the initiative grew steadily. By the top of the primary month, 5 college students have been often taking part.
In 2022, Dennehy and his crew formalized their curriculum into the “Bitcoin Diploma” program. The diploma consists of ten classes protecting financial programs, Bitcoin fundamentals, wallets, nodes, mining, safety, the Lightning Community, and Bitcoin’s future. By the top of that 12 months, 38 highschool college students in El Salvador had earned their diplomas.
The group’s impression has since expanded globally. In 2023, Mi Primer Bitcoin launched the Impartial Bitcoin Educators Node Community, now encompassing over 65 tasks throughout 35 international locations. These initiatives vary from round economies to native meetups, united by six core ideas: unbiased, neutral, community-led, Bitcoin-only, high-quality schooling centered on empowerment somewhat than revenue.
In Might 2025, the nonprofit obtained a $1 million grant from Jack Dorsey’s Begin Small to scale its world efforts, together with enhancing the Bitcoin Diploma, intro programs, instructor workshops, and its On-line Faculty and Group Hub.
Regardless of the funding, Dennehy emphasised that the nonprofit won’t ever settle for authorities funding and thoroughly vets different sources to protect independence.
