Espirito Bitcoin: Fostering Crypto Education and Adoption in Espirito Santo, Brazil

I'm launching Espirito Bitcoin, an initiative to foster Bitcoin education and adoption throughout Espirito Santo, Brazil. This Vrbs-branded venture will onboard the public to crypto, uplift our local community, and reach break-even within six months through a proven sponsorship model.

What We Do

We host monthly meetups at universities and innovation hubs while fostering local businesses to accept Bitcoin and stablecoins as payment methods. Our events start by explaining our purpose of fostering the crypto ecosystem in Espirito Santo, followed by Bitcoin and blockchain 101 presentations with branded ebook downloads via QR codes.

We then present ecosystem and adoption research for Brazil/LATAM (which I conduct annually for Sherlock Communications) or facilitate debates with local builders on audience-specific topics. For example, we discuss extreme sports onchain at marketing universities, or how Flows empowers an infinite impact machine in post-graduation courses. We always bring real use cases - I presented Flows at the ReFi Costa Rica meetup in March and they were amazed. I'll be presenting again online on July 8th.

Team

Luiz Hadad (Community Builder): I bring extensive community building experience from EOS Rio (2017-2019), Muda (2019-present), Ethereum Brasil (2022-2023), and Gnars/Nouns (2023-2025). I've hosted several meetups, organized hackathons and conferences throughout Brazil. Now it's time to give back to my home state and create educational content that will be open source for other Brazilian states fostering grassroots adoption. LinkedIn

Bernardo Nassar (Operations Lead): Gnars athlete and content creator who will lead our operational efforts.

Marcelo Silva (Education & Fundraising): From Blockchain na Escola and former ReFi DAO member, helping with educational efforts and fundraising.

Revenue Model & Path to Break-Even

We have a sponsorship model targeting $2.5k USD monthly to reach break-even within six months:

• Binance: In talks for main sponsorship at $1.2k
• InvestorTech Ventures: Already committed $100 monthly plus coffee breaks and media coverage from their marketing team
• Apex Partners: Expected commitment of $300-$500
• Additional sponsors: Pipeline development at upcoming crypto conferences (Blockchain Rio, DevConnect Argentina, ETH LATAM)

Launch Timeline & Current Progress

First meetup scheduled: July 16th, 7pm at Na Capital Coworking space Businesses already onboarded: 5 local businesses accepting crypto payments Press release: Ready to publish about the Espirito Bitcoin movement

Success Metrics

• Monthly meetups: Minimum 30 attendees per event
• Business onboarding: 50 businesses accepting crypto by December 2025
• Educational impact: Measurable through ebook downloads and follow-up engagement

Unique Value Proposition

Our approach combines:

• Tailored educational content adapted to specific audiences
• Real use cases like Flows to demonstrate practical blockchain applications
• Two educational ebooks: Bitcoin/blockchain basics and crypto payment guide for businesses
• Strategic PR campaign to amplify our impact across the region
• Open-source materials that other Brazilian states can replicate for grassroots adoption

Overcoming Challenges

The biggest challenge will be educating and onboarding businesses. We plan to gather university students to help educate and support local businesses while assisting with marketing and operations. I'd like to hire 2-3 students as interns to scale our impact.

Why Vrbs Accelerator

This project connects high-tech initiatives to grassroots adoption, educating and bringing people onchain. Crypto gave me freedom in many aspects of life, and I'm excited to share experiences and knowledge that can bring freedom to others.

As an early Flows builder in the Nouns ecosystem, I want to continue experimenting with the platform, giving feedback, learning and iterating. I like being funded by a crypto-native community and giving this example to our local community. Mixing funding sources from Vrbs, Binance, and InvestorTech will give our project financial resiliency and diverse backgrounds to learn from.

The Flows experiment is an amazing use case of AI and blockchain serving impactful projects. Showcasing Flows' real community impact and leveraging our Gitcoin experience to support future Vrbs fundraising demonstrates how we can give back to the ecosystem that supports us.