Welcome to the jungle — the Bitcoin Jungle.
Bitcoin Jungle is a bitcoin round financial system positioned within the Puntarenas province of Uvita, Costa Rica, the place over 600 retailers settle for bitcoin. It’s additionally the place Francis Pouliot has known as house for the previous three years.
And the Canadian expat and founding father of Bull Bitcoin needs different Bitcoiner expats who go to the area, and Costa Rica at giant, to really feel how he feels within the nation — welcomed.
Because of this, he and the staff at Bull Bitcoin created an online app that works each inside the Bitcoin Jungle pockets, an open supply, custodial Lightning pockets, and together with different Lightning wallets.
By the online app interface, Bitcoin fanatics will pay for nearly something with bitcoin over Lightning, no matter whether or not the service provider or counterparty with whom they’re transacting accepts it.
Utilizing the Bitcoin Jungle app or the online app immediately, customers will pay with bitcoin and have their invoice settled within the native fiat foreign money, colónes, over the nation’s nationwide digital cost system, SINPE (Sistema Nacional de Pagos Electrónicos). (That is corresponding to how Strike, Bringin, and Bull Bitcoin allows customers to pay with bitcoin over Lightning to settle fiat payments through the US’ ACH system, Europe’s SEPA system, and Canada’s Interac system, respectively.)
With greater than 90% of the nation’s residents over the age of 18 utilizing SINPE for day by day funds, the Bull Bitcoin app makes it very simple for nonresidents of Costa Rica to take part within the nation’s digital financial system (you should be a resident of the nation to open a SINPE account) and/or for many who need to stay on a bitcoin customary.
“This permits folks to stay completely off of bitcoin,” Pouliot informed Bitcoin Journal. “Each service provider that accepts fiat funds over SINPE in Costa Rica can now settle for funds from a Bitcoiner.”
How the Bull Bitcoin Costa Rica Internet App Works
When customers use the Bull Bitcoin internet app in Costa Rica, they make a cost to a Bull Bitcoin Lightning node on the backend. As soon as Bull Bitcoin receives this cost, it makes a fiat cost through SINPE on the consumer’s behalf.
Bull Bitcoin processes lots of of such funds day by day in Costa Rica. From Could 2024 to Could 2025, Bull Bitcoin processed 32,774 bitcoin-to-fiat conversions.
Pouliot prides himself on ensuring the Bull Bitcoin internet app is as reliable as a bank card, as a result of he is aware of that many within the nation, himself included, rely on it day in and time out.
“When you’re on the fuel station in Costa Rica and also you don’t have a bank card and also you simply crammed up your automobile, you want that Lightning-to-SINPE cost to work as a result of in any other case you’re screwed,” defined Pouliot.
“That is how a whole lot of us stay right here. We don’t use bank cards. We don’t have money. So, if I’m going to the fuel station, this app higher fucking work. In any other case, I simply crammed up my automobile and I’ve a really offended fuel station attendant,” he added.
“The success price is effectively over 99% — virtually 100%. I don’t even keep in mind any Lightning funds failing. And that’s as a result of the Bull Bitcoin is managed by hardcore Bitcoiners that know how one can navigate Lightning Community liquidity.”
Pouliot added that the toughest a part of holding the app functioning correctly isn’t working the Lightning node or plugging within the banking API, although. As an alternative, he mentioned the most important problem is sourcing the fiat liquidity in a not-so-widely-accepted fiat foreign money just like the colón.
“There isn’t a worldwide open market for very low-liquidity fiat currencies and bitcoin,” defined Pouliot.
“Neither Kraken nor Binance or Coinbase checklist the colón — there’s no bitcoin-to-colónes order e-book. We have to promote that bitcoin to another person to get the fiat in an effort to pay out the fiat service provider,” he added.
Pouliot defined that, as a result of main bitcoin and crypto exchanges don’t checklist the colón, he primarily units the alternate price for it by developing what he calls a “digital bitcoin-to-colón alternate price.” To calculate this price, Pouliot elements within the colón-to-U.S. greenback price and the USD-to-bitcoin price after which provides a 1% gross margin price to assist Bull Bitcoin not lose cash on the alternate price whereas nonetheless holding the product accessible to customers.
He confused that sustaining liquidity is actually the most important problem on this course of, and he tipped his hat to others around the globe who provide the same service with a comparable diploma of reliability.
“Everytime you see a bunch of people who have achieved this seamless move, know that whereas it sounds so easy, it may be very difficult on the again finish”, mentioned Pouliot. “That’s why, for instance, I discover Tando so spectacular.”
Kenya’s Tando
Kenya’s model of the Bull Bitcoin app isn’t an online app, however a correct app, although the staff behind Tando was influenced by what Bull Bitcoin has achieved in Costa Rica.
“The Bitcoin Jungle staff posted a video on their X the place they went right into a fuel station and spent bitcoin whereas the service provider obtained the native foreign money,” Jason, one among Tando’s cofounders, informed Bitcoin Journal.
“I used to be like, ‘That’s fairly cool.’ We thought that may most likely work right here if Safaricom [a Kenyan mobile network operator] has an API,” he added.
“And with just a bit analysis, we discovered that ‘Yeah, we are able to do that.’”
Jason and his co-founder, Sabina Waithira, launched the app in July 2024, enabling Kenyan customers to settle payments in Kenyan shillings over M-PESA (Safaricom helped launch M-PESA), a cell cash system that operates in additional than a half dozen African international locations, whereas paying with bitcoin over Lightning.
Utilizing Tando, customers will pay payments, purchase items, and ship Kenyan shillings with nothing greater than a recipient’s cellphone quantity and a Lightning pockets. (M-PESA solely requires a recipient’s cellphone quantity for cash transfers.)
The consumer sends bitcoin from the Lightning pockets of their selecting, Tando’s Lightning node receives the bitcoin, and Tando settles the fiat M-PESA invoice for the sender.
All of this occurs inside seconds.
I do know firsthand as a result of I used Tando whereas I used to be in Kenya for the African Bitcoin Convention in 2024.
Whereas in Kenya, I paid taxi fares and restaurant payments over M-PESA utilizing Tando, one thing I in any other case wouldn’t have been capable of do, since I wasn’t within the nation lengthy sufficient to get an M-PESA account and fund it with Kenyan shillings. As a short-term customer, it was a lot simpler to spend bitcoin into the native financial system with Tando, which doesn’t require a sign-up course of.
Making Bitcoin Simpler To Spend For Kenyans
Waithira wasn’t accustomed to what was occurring with Lightning-to-fiat funds in Costa Rica earlier than Jason introduced it to her consideration.
What motivated her to convey Tando to life was as an alternative her personal expertise of attempting to spend bitcoin in Kenya.
“I used to work for Bitcoin Dada [a virtual Bitcoin education platform and sisterhood for African women] and would typically receives a commission in bitcoin”, Waithira informed Bitcoin Journal. “It was onerous to spend that Bitcoin immediately.”
Whereas Waithira got here up with inventive methods to spend her bitcoin, like tipping waiters and waitresses at eating places with it, she ended up going through the identical query from these service employees time and time once more: “How can I spend this bitcoin?”
“We didn’t have an incredible reply to this query”, mentioned Waithira. “So, that is additionally what impressed Tando.”
Waithira added that “Kenyans are very quick learners and really curious”, which makes it simple to onboard them to Bitcoin and Tando, whereas Jason shared that Kenyans have been primed for Bitcoin, as they’ve already gone via the cell cash revolution with M-PESA over the previous decade and a half.
Waithira additionally famous that she and Jason have aimed to make Tando as simple to make use of as M-PESA is — to not scare customers off with an advanced interface.
“We needed to imitate the expertise of utilizing M-Pesa”, defined Waithira.
“I don’t like pondering after I use apps, and I don’t suppose our clients do both”, she added. “We saved this in thoughts as we designed Tando.”
Waithira and Jason apparently did one thing proper, as Tando has been gaining traction with on a regular basis Kenyans slowly and steadily. It now processes over 100 transactions per day.
And past simply serving to extra Kenyans stay on a bitcoin customary, the app impressed a developer on the opposite facet of the African continent to create one thing comparable for the residents of his house nation, Ghana.
Ghana’s BitSpenda
Vivid Kportiklah additionally attended the 2024 African Bitcoin Convention and was one among many attendees who used Tando whereas in Kenya.
Drawing from the inspiration he felt in Kenya in addition to the connections he made on the convention, the pc programmer headed again to Ghana after the convention with the intention of constructing his personal model of Tando.
Inside a couple of months, Kportiklah had the beta model of a Lightning-to-fiat interface he’d created — BitSpenda — up and working. And he did this thanks partially to assist from seasoned Nigerian Bitcoin entrepreneur Bernard Parah, founder and CEO of Bitnob, whom Kportiklah had met on the convention.
Bitnob is an virtually decade-old monetary companies firm that leverages cost infrastructure constructed on Bitcoin and Lightning. Parah and the staff at Bitnob helped Kportiklah connect with native off-ramps in Africa, together with cell cash networks in Ghana and Kenya and financial institution accounts in Nigeria. (BitSpenda at the moment serves the residents of those three international locations.)
“It’s very troublesome to hook up with these native off-ramps through API as a small fintech,” Kportiklah informed Bitcoin Journal.
“After I informed Bernard on the convention that I needed to construct one thing just like Tando, he gave me a contact to succeed in out to in Ghana,” he added.
This contact helped Kportiklah join BitSpenda to Ghana’s cell cash system.
Kportiklah additionally added that Kgothatso Ngako, the founding father of Machankura (which permits customers to ship bitcoin over Lightning utilizing a function cellphone), and Onionsman of Bitpension (a bitcoin pension account platform based mostly in Nigeria) have additionally suggested him on the challenge.
“I met all these folks on the convention in Kenya, they usually have been so instrumental in serving to me construct this,” Kportiklah mentioned.
BitSpenda went stay on March 7 this yr.
To make use of the online app, senders can lookup the recipients they need to ship cash to by cellphone quantity in Ghana and Kenya and by checking account quantity in Nigeria.
As soon as the sender has discovered the recipient they’re in search of and decides to make a cost, a Lightning bill or QR code is generated, and, virtually immediately, the bitcoin the consumer sends is transformed into the recipient’s native foreign money and the transaction is settled.
“Inside 30 seconds, the recipient will obtain the cash, and the sender can see on BitSpenda whether or not the cash was obtained or not,” defined Kportiklah.
If a transaction fails, as has solely occurred in lower than 1% of transaction makes an attempt so far, Kportiklah can manually ship the cost to the recipient and notify the sender that the transaction has gone via.
As of late April 2025, the app had processed hundreds of U.S. {dollars}’ value of transactions. Kportiklah claimed that the app has inspired extra Ghanaians to make use of bitcoin not simply because they really feel that bitcoin is a greater cash than Ghanaian cedis, the nation’s fiat foreign money, however for one more vital cause, as effectively.
“Ghanaians are extra keen to make use of Bitcoin due to the worth it gives by way of finance,” defined Kportiklah.
“For instance, in Ghana, should you preserve your cash in your financial institution accounts, on the finish of the month, the financial institution will cost charges, however this isn’t the case when folks use bitcoin as an alternative of their financial institution,” he added.
“Some folks additionally simply see bitcoin as a foreign money that has extra worth as in comparison with the Ghanaian cedi and select to make use of it for that cause.”
Kportiklah additionally famous that an app like BitSpenda is especially useful in Ghana, the place exterior of the Bitcoin round financial system that Kportiklah serves because the technical advisor for — Bitcoin Dua — virtually no retailers settle for bitcoin.
And he aspires to not solely provide this service to Ghanaians, however to Africans in over a dozen international locations.
“A yr from now, we must be in at least 15 African international locations”, mentioned Kportiklah.
It’s onerous to doubt he’ll accomplish this when, in beneath 4 months, he was capable of roll out BitSpenda in three international locations.
Kportiklah mentioned he’s at the moment finishing the mandatory paperwork to make BitSpenda out there to members of the remaining 12 international locations he needs to service.
He’ll need to hurry, although, on condition that the staff from Tando is trying to broaden into Uganda quickly and {that a} new internet app constructed by a Senegalese developer — Banxaas — now allows bitcoin-to-fiat funds in Senegal, as effectively.
A Labor Of Love
The irony in what Pouliot, Waithira, Jason and Kportiklah have created is that they’re much less motivated by being profitable than they’re by making bitcoin cash.
“This isn’t a worthwhile endeavor”, deadpanned Pouliot about Bull’s Bitcoin Costa Rica internet app.
“Really, this has a really excessive value for us — it’s very difficult and there’s a whole lot of overhead. So, it’s achieved with the mindset of ‘Positive, possibly sooner or later it’s going to be worthwhile,’ however we do that extra to be a part of the Bitcoin Jungle mission of sustaining infrastructure to facilitate Lightning”, he added.
“To not say that it’ll by no means be a worthwhile enterprise. I truly encourage folks to think about that to be a probably worthwhile enterprise. However at scale, it’s actually onerous to drag off.”
Neither the founders of Tando nor Kportiklah have discovered a monetization scheme but.
“Our enterprise mannequin is we get bitcoin”, mentioned Jason half-jokingly.
He added that he and Waithira have fielded various requests for different wallets who need to use their Safaricom API, and that they’re contemplating charging a charge for these different wallets to take action. This doesn’t appear to be as a lot of a precedence for them as getting Kenyans to view bitcoin as a medium of alternate, although.
Kportiklah is of the identical thoughts:
“The objective for now’s simply to create a device that may assist folks to spend Bitcoin with ease”, he mentioned.
Towards the top of my interview with Pouliot, he highlighted as soon as extra how vital it’s to understand that it takes a whole lot of work from devoted Bitcoiners to drag off the “with ease” half, noting that initiatives like these are greatest created and managed on the native stage by those that have a strong understanding of the standard monetary system with which they’re interfacing.
“These merchandise are higher constructed as grassroots tasks, as a result of they require information of the banking system on the bottom”, defined Pouliot.
“This is the reason we don’t have that many enlargement plans, however I’m blissful to assist the opposite native initiatives with know-how and recommendation”, he added earlier than noting that he thinks what NostrPIX, one other Lightning-to-fiat cost app, is doing in Brazil is cool.
He concluded by as soon as extra providing reward for his colleagues around the globe who’re efficiently constructing and managing such interfaces:
“Everytime you see a neighborhood group of Bitcoiners pulling it off, make sure that they’re fucking superior and that it wasn’t simple to do.”
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This piece is an article featured within the newest Print version of Bitcoin Journal, The Lightning Concern. We’re sharing it right here to point out the concepts explored all through the total challenge.
