In Peru’s various landscapes—from Andean highlands to coastal surf cities and Amazonian outposts—Bitcoin is quietly taking root, not by top-down mandates or company adoption however by grassroots efforts that mix humanitarian assist 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 lively 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 device for long-term empowerment within the growing nations moderately than short-term international assist reduction. Most profound of all, Motiv has developed a non-profit technique that’s having deep and lasting social impression, whereas bootstrapping Bitcoin round economies, fulfilling an early Bitcoin imaginative and prescient, ‘banking the unbanked’.
What did Motiv work out 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 previous 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 modern 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 tendencies, rising as one of many largest hubs of Bitcoin adoption on the earth. Chainalysis information from 2025 exhibits Latin America dealing with important 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. navy 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 dwelling 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 instructed 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 about others. My thoughts, my coronary heart exploded.”
Seeing the intense want Jonathan was in, Swisher and Valentin known as in some donors and managed to purchase him a full outfit, a jacket, sneakers, pants, and a hat, important safety from the punishing chilly of the Andes highlands. However there was an issue, seeing the items dropped at Jonathan, the opposite children have been jealous, they too wanted sneakers and far more, on this remoted village of Peru.
Valentin promised the remainder of the youngsters they, too, would get sneakers, good sneakers. 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 Blissful Steps program was born, and for all intents and functions, when Motiv discovered its goal. Two months later, they returned to the village with sneakers for everybody, purchased with donations from Swisher’s community, establishing a yearly program to help comparable villages upgrading their footwear.
As a part of this system, the Motiv staff and different adults who volunteer wash the kids’s ft, typically tattered by the weather and tough terrains. Then they provide the kid the brand new pair of sneakers. 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 locally. Being a frontrunner isn’t speaking; it’s serving.”
Subsequent 12 months got here round, and Motiv was on the brink of launch one other batch of sneakers, 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 known as Swisher, “Look, we now have this example; we had deliberate this quantity for sneakers, so I’m going to do one factor. Why don’t you speak to the donors as an alternative of shopping for sneakers now? Nicely, we now have to purchase meals.”
Proper as Valentin may 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 goal, you’ll be able to’t simply pivot on the final minute; the donors refused. However there was an alternative choice; Swisher talked about that “he is aware of somebody who is aware of somebody who is aware of somebody who has Bitcoin” that might purchase sneakers and meals. Valentin recalled his response: “This isn’t the time for jokes, Wealthy.”
However the Bitcoin donor was critical. He would fund the sneakers program this 12 months and canopy different important provides like meals for the village, to assist them survive COVID. However there was one situation. Every thing needed to be paid for in Bitcoin.
“I began in search of a retailer, however I didn’t discover any. I used to be in search of an enormous retailer or one thing. ” Recalled Valentin, “finally, I discovered a kiosk that accepted Bitcoin, crypto, the whole lot. And the man instructed me, ‘I don’t have many issues.’ We purchased some little issues from him, nevertheless it wasn’t what we would have liked… 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 instant meals provides mission, however he realized he was going to must orange tablet some distributors to get scale.
The second service provider was Olger the shoemaker. Olger had equipped Motiv in earlier shoe donation campaigns, so a relationship already existed, however COVID had hit him exhausting. He misplaced his spouse and job throughout the pandemic and was left with three children to care for alone. Olger, moderately than flip to alcoholism as many did throughout these exhausting instances, doubled down on his vocation and began instructing folks to make sneakers, whereas additionally accepting Bitcoin from Motiv and turning into an important companion of the Blissful Steps program.
From there, Motiv started organizing an inventory of retailers and educating them about Bitcoin. They shortly confronted detrimental responses, monetary scams of many varieties, crypto included, had savaged the nation just a few instances by this level, so a quite simple and totally different strategy to Bitcoin evangelism was wanted. Quite than promise monetary independence or preach the cypherpunk utopia, Valentin merely bought Bitcoin as a funds device and taught these retailers to make use of it as they wished. From this premise, Motiv began to snowball.
Motiv Peru 2026
Quick ahead just a few years, and Motivn Peru is a well-oiled machine. As retailers obtained launched to Bitcoin as a cost methodology, they started getting concerned about it as a expertise, and fundamental Bitcoin and monetary literacy teaching programs adopted, hosted at Motiv facilities in main places throughout Peru. Numerous teaching programs have been developed to reply the questions of retailers and customers alike in an organized method.
Valentin tells us that immediately 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 degree go to pockets.
