In Peru’s numerous landscapes—from Andean highlands to coastal surf cities and Amazonian outposts—Bitcoin is quietly taking root, not via top-down mandates or company adoption however via grassroots efforts that mix humanitarian help with Bitcoin’s sense of economic sovereignty.
On the forefront is Motiv Peru, a non-profit co-founded by Wealthy Swisher and Valentin Popescu, which has spent years equipping underserved and unbanked communities to make use of Bitcoin for on a regular basis wants, schooling, and native commerce. What started as a easy shoe donation program in 2019 has advanced right into a community of about 10 energetic zones with hubs in Lima, Cusco, and Huanchaco and satellite tv for pc applications in Tarapoto and Iquitos, amongst others, serving over 750 households weekly.
The Motiv staff is 50 robust, plus volunteers, and is actively demonstrating Bitcoin’s potential as a software for long-term empowerment within the growing nations somewhat than short-term overseas help aid. Most profound of all, Motiv has developed a non-profit strategy that’s having a deep and lasting social affect, whereas bootstrapping Bitcoin circular economies, fulfilling an early Bitcoin imaginative and prescient, ‘banking the unbanked’.
What did Motiv determine that different fiat NGO’s haven’t, and what does Bitcoin must do with it?
Alpaca Socks for Bitcoin and the Genesis of Motiv
Peru has an outdated and curious historical past with Bitcoin. One of many first documented real-world makes use of of Bitcoin concerned Peruvian alpaca socks. In early 2011, retailers like Grass Hill Alpacas accepted Bitcoin for wool socks and different items, exported them from the South American nation to the U.S., as famous in Bitcoin Wiki entries and up to date discussion board discussions on Bitcointalk. This paralleled legendary moments in Bitcoin historical past just like the well-known Laszlo Hanyecz pizza buy in Could 2010.
By 2025 the Peru’s crypto panorama had grown amid regional developments, rising as one of many largest hubs of Bitcoin adoption on the earth. Chainalysis knowledge from 2025 exhibits Latin America dealing with vital volumes, with Peru recording round $28 billion in crypto transaction worth—a part of a broader regional surge pushed by remittances, inflation hedging, and smartphone entry enabling wallets.
Motiv’s origins hint to 2019. Based by Swisher, a retired U.S. army and police officer with expertise in worldwide enterprise, and Valentin, a Romanian expat with expertise in non-profit work and logistics, who had lived in Peru since 2007.
They met whereas constructing a playground in a distant Cusco highland village. Whereas Valentin was approached by Jonathan, a seven-year-old orphan residing in dire circumstances—a mud hut with few possessions, malnourished, and remoted. His mom had handed away months earlier, and his father was the city drunk. “I carried him on my shoulders, and all the youngsters got here round shouting ‘Jonathan, Jonathan!’ He was the star,” Valentin informed Bitcoin Journal in an unique interview. When provided a granola bar, Jonathan began sharing it with the opposite children regardless of his personal starvation. “That is the orphan of the village, probably the most looked-down-on child… and he’s fascinated by others. My thoughts, my coronary heart exploded.”
Seeing the intense want Jonathan was in, Swisher and Valentin referred to as in some donors and managed to purchase him a full outfit, a jacket, footwear, pants, and a hat, important safety from the punishing chilly of the Andes highlands. However there was an issue, seeing the presents dropped at Jonathan, the opposite children have been jealous, they too wanted footwear and way more, on this remoted village of Peru.
Valentin promised the remainder of the youngsters they, too, would get footwear, good footwear. Within the tough terrain of the Andes, high-quality footwear is sort of a 4×4; for a lot of children, it means the distinction between going to highschool or not, as a result of the journey they should make is that tough. That’s when the Glad Steps program was born, and for all intents and functions, when Motiv discovered its function. Two months later, they returned to the village with footwear for everybody, purchased with donations from Swisher’s community, establishing a yearly program to help related villages upgrading their footwear.
As a part of this system, the Motiv staff and different adults who volunteer wash the kids’s toes, typically tattered by the weather and tough terrains. Then they provide the kid the brand new pair of footwear. Valentin’s expertise on this distant village taught him an necessary lesson, which he shared within the interview: “I understood that the story isn’t me, a foreigner, coming to be ok with doing this. However what we try to do is push in order that Peruvians can serve and be leaders in the neighborhood. Being a pacesetter isn’t speaking; it’s serving.”
Subsequent 12 months got here round, and Motiv was on the point of launch one other batch of footwear, however the 12 months was 2020, and COVID-19 and the corresponding lockdowns have been ravaging the nation’s well being and financial system. Valentin referred to as Swisher, “Look, we now have this case; we had deliberate this quantity for footwear, so I’m going to do one factor. Why don’t you discuss to the donors as an alternative of shopping for footwear now? Nicely, we now have to purchase meals.”
Proper as Valentin might need been, non-profit donations don’t fairly work that approach. Swisher talked to the donors however returned with dangerous information. When donations are made for a selected program or function, you’ll be able to’t simply pivot on the final minute; the donors refused. However there was another choice; Swisher talked about that “he is aware of somebody who is aware of somebody who is aware of somebody who has Bitcoin” that would purchase footwear and meals. Valentin recalled his response: “This isn’t the time for jokes, Wealthy.”
However the Bitcoin donor was severe. He would fund the footwear program this 12 months and canopy different important provides like meals for the village, to assist them survive COVID. However there was one situation. All the pieces needed to be paid for in Bitcoin.
“I began on the lookout for a retailer, however I didn’t discover any. I used to be on the lookout for an enormous retailer or one thing. ” Recalled Valentin, “finally, I discovered a kiosk that accepted Bitcoin, crypto, the whole lot. And the man informed me, ‘I don’t have many issues.’ We purchased some little issues from him, but it surely wasn’t what we wanted… We’re speaking hundreads of individuals, proper?” At this level, Motiv was seeking to present provides to 50 households, a triple-digit variety of folks. The kiosk service provider solved the fast meals provides mission, however he realized he was going to must orange capsule some distributors to get scale.
The second service provider was Olger the shoemaker. Olger had provided Motiv in earlier shoe donation campaigns, so a relationship already existed, however COVID had hit him onerous. He misplaced his spouse and job in the course of the pandemic and was left with three children to handle alone. Olger, somewhat than flip to alcoholism as many did throughout these onerous instances, doubled down on his vocation and began educating folks to make footwear, whereas additionally accepting Bitcoin from Motiv and changing into an important associate of the Glad Steps program.
From there, Motiv started organizing an inventory of retailers and educating them about Bitcoin. They rapidly confronted destructive responses, monetary scams of many sorts, crypto included, had savaged the nation a couple of instances by this level, so a quite simple and totally different strategy to Bitcoin evangelism was wanted. Somewhat than promise monetary independence or preach the cypherpunk utopia, Valentin merely offered Bitcoin as a funds software and taught these retailers to make use of it as they wished. From this premise, Motiv began to snowball.
Motiv Peru 2026
Quick ahead a couple of years, and Motivn Peru is a well-oiled machine. As retailers obtained launched to Bitcoin as a fee technique, they started getting fascinated by it as a know-how, and fundamental Bitcoin and monetary literacy education schemes adopted, hosted at Motiv facilities in main places throughout Peru. Varied education schemes have been developed to reply the questions of retailers and customers alike in an organized method.
Valentin tells us that right this moment Motiv teaches Peruvians about Bitcoin from Monday to Saturday in 15 totally different places, touching over 750 households. Motiv occasions in 2025 reached over 6000 folks of all ages, together with the Copa Bitcoin soccer match, a Christmas occasion, and varied gala’s and academic actions. The entire variety of particular person bitcoin transactions made on account of these efforts ranges between 25 and 30 thousand, with Blink as their entry stage go to pockets.
