Based in 2021, My First Bitcoin started with a single class of 4 college students. Over the subsequent 4 years, it grew quickly, instructing 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 focus is on empowering educators, not working applications straight.
“We wish to assist others reach their very own communities and hyperlink them collectively,” Dennehy mentioned in a observe to Bitcoin Journal.
The mission can also be embracing a completely distant construction, closing its workplace in El Salvador. Native meetups will now be run by impartial 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 training offers folks company, encourages vital thought, and builds long-term freedom. Bitcoin is the instrument, training is the pathway.”
The transfer represents a brand new part for the initiative. By coaching academics, sharing sources overtly, and supporting community-led tasks, My First Bitcoin goals to ignite a world motion. The group invitations educators, organizers, and Bitcoin advocates to hitch the community and assist develop entry to data in every single place.
My First Bitcoin background
Based in August 2021 by John Dennehy, Mi Primer Bitcoin (My First Bitcoin) started as a small, community-led mission in El Salvador with a mission to empower people by Bitcoin training. Dennehy, a soft-spoken and introspective thinker, noticed training as a way to revive private company and sovereignty, particularly in a world the place folks typically really feel powerless.
The concept took root through the COVID-19 pandemic, when Dennehy spent lengthy walks in New York considering society’s challenges. Concluding that the answer lay in training, he initially traveled to Ecuador to show buddies about Bitcoin.
Nonetheless, pandemic restrictions made in-person engagement troublesome. 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 neighborhood management a core precept, making certain that each one instructors had 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 had been repeatedly taking part.
In 2022, Dennehy and his group formalized their curriculum into the “Bitcoin Diploma” program. The diploma contains ten classes masking financial techniques, Bitcoin fundamentals, wallets, nodes, mining, safety, the Lightning Community, and Bitcoin’s future. By the top of that yr, 38 highschool college students in El Salvador had earned their diplomas.
The group’s affect 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: impartial, neutral, community-led, Bitcoin-only, high-quality training targeted on empowerment slightly than revenue.
In Might 2025, the nonprofit obtained a $1 million grant from Jack Dorsey’s Begin Small to scale its international efforts, together with enhancing the Bitcoin Diploma, intro programs, trainer workshops, and its On-line Faculty and Neighborhood Hub.
Regardless of the funding, Dennehy emphasised that the nonprofit won’t ever settle for authorities funding and punctiliously vets different sources to protect independence.
