So, I had an idea to spread BTC in my local area: Gracia en Barcelona.
I think this area is
PERFECT for BTC growth, but there are serious gaps in knowledge on it. Even among tech heads in Barcelona, BTC is basically a fringe topic.
Adoption in the Spanish capital, Madrid is going very well - but IMO Barcelona could be an even bigger BTC hit, if they just knew the story on it.
I think the Gracia area in the heart of BCN city could even be a genuine BTC hub, possibly the first real one in the world.
So I put together a plan, I decided to go for crowd funding to give it the best possible shot and submitted it to kickstarter (copy and pasted below).
It was rejected without explanation twice. They just said 'read our rules' but I didnt see what rule I broke - but whatever.
So Ive decided to reach out to the BTCTalk forum to see if I can get something together.
All details below, feel free to reply/spam/make suggestions/ask questions etc
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Kickstarter submission (most of it):
The short version: This is a very simple project: I've been living in Gracia, Barcelona for a while now and I feel that it has huge potential to be a BTC hub (in terms of business who accept it) - it just needs an education boost.
The people of other parts of Spain are very receptive to Bitcoin, as we can see from the uptake in Madrid - but Barcelona has, so far, been lagging behind - even though the people of the region have
more reason to be excited about it...
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Reasoning / Why should you care?:Bitcoin is a global force, but (like anything) it is stronger if it spreads from the ground up regionally - rather than from the top down from large corps/organizations or 'abstract spaces' like websites.
Having pockets of community areas (like Gracia) that accept it gives it a more tangible place in society at large, as it gives BTC a
place in the day to day life of the ordinary person and so has more chance of spreading.
While most people who understand the value of Bitcoin are the 'internet centric' type, many people are not of this mindset - I believe Bitcoin is for
everyone, and in order to get one step closer to real mass adoption the
bridge needs to be built from the Bitcoin literate community to the more 'traditional folk'.
This bridge, I believe can be built with a face to face 'grass roots' style campaign, as it gives people and businesses more confidence in Bitcoin and a chance to ask a human being some questions and see it in action and even be guided to adopting it. This route to adoption may
seem strange to many BTC enthusiasts, but in fact many people respond better to this approach!
Even though this project targets a small area geographically,
thousands of people live and pass through this popular area of Barcelona everyday (tourists and residents). Also, spreading BTC education in any small area is still
helping BTC generally and it can only spread further from there and lead to it having a stronger place in the general public's paradigm as it grows.
Finally, the creation of a Bitcoin hub in Gracia will certainly create
positive media attention - BTC has predominantly negative press these days, and many lay-people have a very bad view of it because the ties with criminality as highlighted ad nauseum by the media.
Campaigns like this one, if successful or not, go a long way to challenging the media's bad mouthing BTC with people on the street as they get to use it for themselves and see it functioning in everyday life.
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Why Gracia? Why now? For those who don't know, this is a very 'community' oriented area in the heart of the modern and diverse city: Barcelona.
Gracia hosts
hundreds of [genuinely] independently owned small businesses. The population is very diverse: ranging from young families, to retired couples to young fashion conscious cool kids, to anarchist sit-in protesters, to computer programmers to drunk sports fans etc etc; everyone is here. The locals are social and generally very open and accepting to all sorts.
One of the most important aspects that I believe would give BTC a huge appeal to manyhere is that BTC is independent from the banks and governments - currently Barcelona is the
focal point for the Catalan independence movement where they are seeking to secede from the political rule of Spain. The movement is at fever pitch right now as there is a lot of discussion from a recent independence 'vote' (which gained 80% support) so the iron is white-hot right now for something that would give the people of Catalunya some type of vessel for financial independence (even just symbolically, if many customers do not use it yet).
Tied in with the social and political aspect of the independence effort, is a
criticism of the local banks: they are seen by some as 'taking from the local region and expatriating their money to "Spain" (which they consider as a foreign nation)' - which gives BTC further appeal here, to young and old.
(edit: there is actually an old bank building that is occupied by independence protesters where they sell crafts and host discussions etc - its pretty far out but how could these guys not be using BTC already?! I'll post some pics soon)
All of this is a great
combination for potential strong BTC adoption and a growth point.
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Why not do an efficient internet campaign instead of face to face? Business here is very much done
face to face. For people to get behind BTC, it would require someone to talk in person to as many business owners as possible and
show them how it works, give them the chance to ask questions and build some trust. People here would simply
ignore an internet campaign (which would be most of our first instincts to do).
Of course face to face is much more inefficient in terms of reaching people, but the goal is to get people to sign up; to be
effective to the people talked to, not necessarily to reach 1000's of people 'easily' with only a headline message.
Having hundreds of businesses in the area takes time to get around to however, and would require a small team of people to achieve in any reasonable time frame. The amount of funding received will determine how many people can be armed and sent out to reach the businesses.
Gracia is the perfect starting ground for this type of campaign because it is small enough to reach many independent businesses (depending on amount of funding). To reach the larger regions of Barcelona city, a much larger campaign would be needed. Additionally, the other areas in Barcelona do not have such a high density of independent businesses.
**Project execution: This kickstarter project is aimed at raising funds to hire and enable a team of people to reach these businesses to educate them. They will need to be educated on what to say, they will need to be able to speak Catalan and Spanish and English and have some sales skills of course. So some informal recruitment and therefore remittance is necessary.
***To aid the team, they will need leaflets with all the info to leave behind in each store, so the business owners can have a reminder and the info to browse at their leisure. The funding will also go to printing these up and having them translated from English into Catalan (and possibly Spanish).
***The team will also have some 'BTC accepted here stickers' to leave with people and have some actual BTC to demonstrate transferring between wallets and how the store could run it and use it to spend in some stores that do sign up and to give extra confidence to the new users.
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Numbers (original kickstarter idea):
I believe that the team can reach at least 15~30 businesses per day with one person. Ideally each store that is interested can get a follow up visit too. Important key stores will targeted first. It's hard to determine exactly how many businesses can be reached as it will vary very much on how long each one takes (some will want to talk for hours, some will say 'no thanks, go away' and only take seconds :p)
1 'sales' person for 1 day is paid e40 (8hrs) which reaches 15-30 stores.
(+e20 per day bonus per person to have 15 stores fully sign up to accept BTC)
Design, translation and printing of necessary leaflets for 'sales' team: e75
Bitcoin stickers for stores to use if they sign up: e15~20
e50~70 worth of Bitcoin to use in stores that sign up.
NOTE THAT THE MORE FUNDS RAISED MEANS MORE HOURS SPENT ON THE PROMOTION THE MORE BUSINESSES REACHED!
E400 is a minimum to raise to gather materials and to reach a number of key stores in the area, however the more funds donated the more places we can reach (the better the campaign).EDIT:
The level of execution now that it's not going through kickstarter will depend on the level of funding, so the good thing is that no donation is wasted. The core is that with x amount of money I can print up a number of info leaflets / purchase stickers. With more donations I can hire promotion teams to hand them out to businesses and talk people through adoption process.
I plan to at least get the materials together privately*** regardless of how much sponsorship I get (any minor donations I get will go towards this) and all substantial donations sent will go to hiring a promo team**.
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Goal:Gracia could be the first true
Bitcoin shopping hub / first Bitcoin 'village / community area' in the world. Our goal is to obviously get as many businesses to sign up to accept BTC as possible. The closer we reach 100% adoption with the Gracia businesses, the more we can call it a 'BTC hub'. This would
attract BTC tourists world wide and benefit the businesses with extra custom and generate
good media attention.
It could also be a part of the
Catalan push for independence. Whether BTC does actually contribute meaningfully to this cause or not would be up to the people of the region and how far they are willing to take it. The aim of this kickstarter is not political, but as stated, to simply promote BTC and hopefully get businesses to sign up to accepting it for customers - the possible connection and part it could play in the independence movement is obvious, but it's not within the goals/scope of this project to achieve anything regarding it (it will be pointed out to the business' how BTC could be potentially helpful to the Catalan independence effort, but that's it).
Edit: now that this isnt going through kcikstarter, we'll probably not adhere to this too closely.
Of course any amount of adoption from our efforts can't be guaranteed. Our expected
worst case scenario is that the people we do talk to will be more educated on BTC and more likely to adopt it at some stage in the future (if not immediately). Additionally, this could
inspire similar projects for other community areas around the world whether successful or not. The more the merrier! So even if 0 businesses sign up from our efforts, the general seeds of education will be planted.
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Follow up / additional potential:
Obviously if this goes well it could lead to a similar campaign targeting other community areas in Catalunya and beyond, possibly even gaining some political support (to compliment the indiependence effort) which would generate very large media attention.
Other aspects that would benefit could be interest in hosting BTC ATMs in the area.
Outside links:
Some not-great videos of the area that give you a vague idea of what its like:
http://youtu.be/aoLOFGRewgQhttp://youtu.be/ygfEMDvCQ-Mhttp://youtu.be/hkVcqqsd3wMhttp://youtu.be/UMCRDMuOKDoWiki travel entry:
http://wikitravel.org/en/Barcelona/Gr%C3%A0ciaWikipedia main entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%A0cia----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you wana help:
BTC donations
1HV7izWdhLhFfx1cmRLxxMRD9yc5FYNJcq
If you do decide to help Im welcoming ideas on rewards - in the kickstarter I had an option of a book being printed up with a guide to the area focused on the BTC friendly stores.
My other idea (which KStr doesnt allow) was to use some of the donations to actually buy products from the newly BTC friendly stores and businesses and distribute these among the doners (marijuana shops not applicable lol). Suggestions welcome.
Thanks
