Welcome to Bitcoin Beach

Can El Salvador’s seaside crypto experiment really work as a national policy?

Episode Notes

For nearly two years, an unprecedented experiment has been taking place in the town of El Zonte, El Salvador. Funded by a mysterious donor, the town’s residents built a Bitcoin economy, using the cryptocurrency to purchase just about anything.

Now, El Slavador has passed a new law making it the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. Can they replicate El Zonte’s success at a national scale?

Guest: Ezra Fieser, reporter at Bloomberg

About the Show

Every Friday and Sunday, Slate’s popular daily news podcast What Next brings you TBD, a clear-eyed look into the future. From fake news to fake meat, algorithms to augmented reality, Lizzie O’Leary is your guide to the tech industry and the world it’s creating for us to live in.

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Host

Lizzie O’Leary is the host of What Next: TBD, Slate’s show about technology, power, and the future. Previously, she created and hosted Marketplace Weekend. She has reported for CNN, Bloomberg News, and the New York Times Magazine, among others. She is also a contributing writer at the Atlantic.

What Next: TBD