In Peru’s various landscapes—from Andean highlands to coastal surf cities and Amazonian outposts—Bitcoin is quietly taking root, not by way of top-down mandates or company adoption however by way of 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 developed 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 crew is 50 sturdy, plus volunteers, and is actively demonstrating Bitcoin’s potential as a instrument for long-term empowerment within the growing nations moderately than short-term overseas help aid. Most profound of all, Motiv has developed a non-profit technique that’s having deep and lasting social affect, 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 this planet. 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 dwelling in dire situations—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 children 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 with others. My thoughts, my coronary heart exploded.”
Seeing the acute 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 items dropped at Jonathan, the opposite children had been jealous, they too wanted footwear and far more, on this remoted village of Peru.
Valentin promised the remainder of the children 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 high school or not, as a result of the journey they should make is that tough. That’s when the Joyful Steps program was born, and for all intents and functions, when Motiv discovered its goal. Two months later, they returned to the village with footwear for everybody, purchased with donations from Swisher’s community, establishing a yearly program to assist comparable villages upgrading their footwear.
As a part of this system, the Motiv crew and different adults who volunteer wash the youngsters’s toes, usually 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 vital 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 are attempting 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 footwear, however the 12 months was 2020, and COVID-19 and the corresponding lockdowns had been ravaging the nation’s well being and economic system. Valentin referred to as Swisher, “Look, now we have this example; we had deliberate this quantity for footwear, so I’m going to do one factor. Why don’t you speak to the donors as an alternative of shopping for footwear now? Nicely, now we have to purchase meals.”
Proper as Valentin may need been, non-profit donations don’t fairly work that means. Swisher talked to the donors however returned with unhealthy information. When donations are made for a selected program or goal, you possibly can’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 might purchase footwear and meals. Valentin recalled his response: “This isn’t the time for jokes, Wealthy.”
However the Bitcoin donor was critical. 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 things 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 a giant retailer or one thing. ” Recalled Valentin, “finally, I discovered a kiosk that accepted Bitcoin, crypto, all the things. 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 trying to present provides to 50 households, a triple-digit variety of individuals. The kiosk service provider solved the rapid 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 equipped Motiv in earlier shoe donation campaigns, so a relationship already existed, however COVID had hit him laborious. He misplaced his spouse and job in the course of the pandemic and was left with three children to maintain alone. Olger, moderately than flip to alcoholism as many did throughout these laborious instances, doubled down on his vocation and began educating individuals to make footwear, whereas additionally accepting Bitcoin from Motiv and changing into a vital companion of the Joyful Steps program.
From there, Motiv started organizing a listing of retailers and educating them about Bitcoin. They shortly confronted unfavorable responses, monetary scams of many sorts, crypto included, had savaged the nation a number of instances by this level, so a quite simple and completely different method to Bitcoin evangelism was wanted. Moderately than promise monetary independence or preach the cypherpunk utopia, Valentin merely offered Bitcoin as a funds instrument 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 number of years, and Motivn Peru is a well-oiled machine. As retailers received launched to Bitcoin as a fee methodology, they started getting inquisitive about it as a know-how, and fundamental Bitcoin and monetary literacy teaching programs adopted, hosted at Motiv facilities in main areas throughout Peru. Varied teaching programs had 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 completely different areas, touching over 750 households. Motiv occasions in 2025 reached over 6000 individuals of all ages, together with the Copa Bitcoin soccer event, a Christmas occasion, and varied gala’s and academic actions. The whole 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.
