Building bottom-up bitcoin economies with Isabella Santos

Isabella Santos is a content creator, educator, and bitcoiner. She runs BTC Isla on Isla Mujeres, where she’s planting seeds of financial literacy, self-custody, and sovereign empowerment—starting with Bitcoin education for locals. In this episode, Isabella joins The Bitcoin Frontier to share how she’s turning a sleepy island into a vibrant circular economy, what she’s learned documenting bitcoin adoption across Latin America, and why saving in sats is changing lives in Mexico.

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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Intro
1:18 – From journalism to bitcoin advocacy
3:02 – Why she moved to Isla Mujeres
4:38 – Building BTC Isla and teaching bitcoin to locals
6:01 – Financial literacy, circular economies, and bottom-up adoption
9:10 – Saving in sats vs. fiat: real stories from her students
11:00 – Why Western bitcoin narratives don’t always resonate globally
13:02 – Documenting bitcoin in Peru, El Salvador, and beyond
15:03 – Adapting messaging to different cultures and education levels
17:03 – Launching Get Based TV for sovereign storytelling
20:41 – What “awakening the sovereign individual” really means
25:33 – Cultural hurdles to long-term thinking—and how Bitcoin helps
27:04 – Escaping abusive systems via bitcoin circular economies
29:34 – Lightning vs. on-chain: what matters on the ground
31:04 – How self-custody education meets infrastructure limits
34:18 – BitFit Games: gamified bitcoin education + community fitness
36:07 – Building her own bitcoin citadel, gym, and villas
39:02 – Accepting bitcoin at the gym and beyond
40:05 – What’s next: villas, education reform, and new docs
42:13 – How to support BTC Isla

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