Speaker: Enrique Berrios
Conference: Bitcoin Atlantis | Day 1 | Open Source Stage
Presentation Date: March 01. 2024 Click to watch original presentation
Lunaticoin
Thank you. So, now I want to call to the stage Enrique Berrios, who’s going to be talking about Bitcoin Smiles. It’s a beautiful project that is possible thanks to Bitcoin. It’s one of these real experiences, that without Bitcoin probably would be very difficult or impossible. Enrique, are you here? Okay, he’s preparing. He’s coming from El Salvador, so let’s welcome Enrique with a big applause, please.
Enrique Berrios
Hi. Hello. Thank you very much for the warm welcoming. It’s an honor for me to be here in Madeira, and it’s a pleasure for the invitation to be here again. I’m grateful, you know, in my life with Bitcoin and totally with free Madeira, a beautiful island and a wonderful time in our lives.
So, Bitcoiners, I’m from El Salvador. I honorably represent Bitcoin Smiles. Bitcoin Smiles, it’s an initiative set up by BTCPay Server, Bitcoin Design, and the Dientezon. BTCPay Server is a Bitcoin payment processor for excellence, and it’s a free open-source software. Bitcoin Design is a free open-source software for designers who design Bitcoin non-custodial products. Dientezon is my personal private practice that’s in the middle of the tropical jungle in El Zonte, a small town in El Salvador, on the Pacific coast of this beautiful country.
As a background, I used to work as a radio broadcaster and a TV broadcaster while I was working with public relations, etc. But at the same time, I was studying to become a doctor of dental surgery. I had a chance to go abroad studying in the U.S., in this case, California, Boston, and it’s where I decided to study or to become a specialist in digital dentistry.
Digital dentistry is similar or has similarities with the technology of Bitcoin. For example, I’m part of a group that is working, teaching other professionals how to use digital dentistry. We use software for design and software for manufacturing, and there are professionals that don’t even know that our technology exists, and more in a country like El Salvador. Obviously, there are private practices that have the digital dentistry offering, but in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of El Zonte, in a rural area, it’s quite weird, rare, but it exists.
I’m originally from the city, San Salvador, but I live here in El Zonte, in the ocean, since 2005. In 2005, to become a dental professional, I had to do my work, social work, and I was sent to the highest part of the mountain. It’s a place that 12,000 to 13,000 people are living there, and some of them in not very good conditions. Since I was like 24 years old, I was working with orphanages, I was working with people in need, in impoverished communities, mostly in churches as well, and mostly in the Pacific coastal communities of El Salvador. This is the Pacific. Here it’s wonderful to be in the Atlantic as well.
I was working with these people, but I was managing the work by myself, so it was quite hard to get some funds or some help from colleagues, from private practices, from companies, etc. So normally I was waiving my fees, I was trying to get help from other people, but it was quite difficult. When the law announcement in El Salvador of Bitcoin becoming legal tender, I saw a tweet from BTCPay Server, in this case from Pavlenex, on June 21, and it said, “just to be clear, if you are from El Salvador and want to set up a few BTCPay instances for your local community, get in touch.” I called him, and we became friends on Bitcoin Twitter in that time.
This patient that I was working with, while I was talking with Pavlenex, he was the first patient, a 65-year-old person. A construction worker, doesn’t know how to read, doesn’t know how to write, is a farmer as well. He always dreamed about having his own dentures. He has critical problems, he has rotten teeth, he has no education at all about how to get oral health, etc.
He says, “oh, doctor, I save for my dentures.” And well, it’s a wonderful thing, you know. Not everyone in the country has the possibility to save money, but he could. And the best comment he had was like, “I save in Bitcoin.” In that time, in the community, it started a circular economy where some employees or people living in El Zonte started to get payments in Bitcoin. And he saved it. So his name is Adrian.
A few days later, Bitcoin magazine, because all these people were working in the ground on El Salvador in that time, posted this, “Meet Adrian, a construction worker who’s saving BTC until he could buy new teeth.
Bitcoin is literally bringing smiles to the people of El Salvador.”
Well I was talking with BTCPay Server, and they noticed this tweet and knew about my history and about the work I’m doing since almost 20 years, they decided, and they said, “hey, Enrique, we want to help, and we will help, and we are going to do meaningful work with people like Adrian.” Because in the community, we have several issues, you know, but we focus on elderly people because we identified critical dental health issues in these people, in the elderly, mainly.
So Adrian, after that tweet with Bitcoin magazine, and the work we started to do, he became quite a famous person in every documentary, journalists, etc., trying to find him and our story working together. Here, obviously, it’s Adrian in the small dental office that we have. It’s quite a basic dental office, but we combine, you know, conventional work in dentistry with the digital dentistry as well.
I mean, and here is the story, you know, a few days later, and when we’ve been talking with BTCPay Server and Pavlenex, my friend, the story of Bitcoin Magazine has started, and that’s why Bitcoin smiles was born, right? An initiative to provide critical dental care to impoverished people living in communities in the Pacific coast of El Salvador. People always talk about, “oh, I save in Bitcoin, I’m investing, I’m never going to sell,” etc., but we are a tangible example that Bitcoin is a useful platform, a useful tool to spread and to change humanity for good.
Why we decided to work with elderly and not with kids first or the general population?
- Because we identified an oral health crisis among elderly people from the community. The problem, it’s not just dental issues. They are linked to diseases like Parkinson’s disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. So out all the patients we’ve been helping, almost 85% of them had some issues with diabetes, for example.
- We want to provide equity and inclusiveness in oral health. Oral health, it’s quite expensive in the whole world, but we decided to try to provide quality dental treatments for people that cannot afford it.
- Promote innovation in dental care with digital dentistry. We provided wonderful solutions, upgraded solutions for challenging treatments; in this case with cases that they were so affected, not just physically, but even with their self-esteem and confidence.
- And obviously trying to promote prevention in our community program, not just rehabilitation. With the elderly, we did rehabilitation. Now we are providing prevention and correction.
This is our platform, BitcoinSmiles.org.
It’s currently active. Our soft cap goal in the ‘21 was 1 bitcoin but the Bitcoin community was so generous that we raised almost 2 bitcoin. We have a 1,173 donors at the moment and it’s like so exciting.
I mean, yesterday when we landed at Madeira, I met a person from Canada and he asked me about what I’m doing in the Bitcoin world. So I talked about my initiative and he right away in the plane he said, “hey, I want to donate.” And I said, “Why don’t we go to bitcoinsmiles.org?” He went to the page, he created an invoice and he paid in Lightning. So it’s quite easy and he’s helping people in need in El Salvador.
So it’s an easy platform where you could create an invoice on-chain and anything you know to help this initiative. Almost 80% of the donations we got or we received are on-chain payments and the rest it’s through Bitcoin Lightning Network.
These are some of the patients we’ve been working with. All of them are older than 60 years old. They have bone loss, they have rotten teeth, they cannot chew, they have malnutrition, they have no education, they have no formal job or even a formal salary.
Normally, the 70% of our trade, for example, is informal in El Salvador. So they survive the way they can. So it’s totally fulfilling for me and for the initiative working with these people. Some of them went through a lot of extractions, bone healing, bone grafts, etc. Waiting maybe three, four months before they get dentures. So we correct them and we rehabilitate them with the best dentures in the market. So they don’t have to envy nothing to people who can afford a dental treatment.
We are open to volunteers.
We have volunteers from many parts of the world. Some of them want to remain pseudonymous.
For example, her, it’s a girl, recent graduate from Brazil. She came for one month to El Salvador and we worked on the ground and we worked together and she had quite an experience knowing our initiative and how we implement Bitcoin in our platform.
Here we are in house calls because sometimes we have to walk up to the mountain, there is no transportation. The transportation is not very good so sometimes we have to walk two hours to go and make the house calls for people living in rural and remote areas. We had time to visit some parts of El Salvador, Mayan ruins, but we were really focused on our work.
Digital dentistry, correct. Here we have a scanner, we scan a model, we scan your mouth, and this scan goes to our dental software, or CAD/CAM. It’s the way we work in a remote area. Sometimes we use the cloud. Why are we using this platform? Because the digital fluency is way better. We save time. Practically, we save money too. We don’t have to go to the city, to the dental lab. We have our own dental laboratory on the cloud. We design our own structures, veneers, etc.
But what are we creating? We are creating a platform among professionals from the whole world. So I could send the STL file or the scan to Africa and someone in Africa could design and he could send me that design to El Salvador and we could manufacture it in just a matter of hours. So this is really quite excellent.
Excuse me, it’s my alarm from El Salvador, it’s 5:30am in the morning so I’m waking up right now.
So anyways here we have like, the way we manufacture what we design, you know. It’s the way we are like providing people with dignity, confidence, with the best quality of our treatments, high quality that you sometimes just found out in other countries and not in a rural area like El Zonte.
Here we are in our office working with people. As I said, our goal to work was 50 elderly people, rehabilitate them and even in a bear market we managed to work and to help a hundred people. More than a hundred. And we promote and we create a prevention community project for kids. So we are working with a hundred kids between 6 and 15 years old in a school age, you know. Providing dental and fissure sealants, corrective treatments, rehabilitation, emergencies, etc.
We’ve been part of many documentaries around the world but this is one of the latest. It was the national television of Holland. We have a short time period to show you the whole video but mostly we go make the house calls. We research about people in need that want or needs help. Everything, bills electricity materials dental laboratory providers, etc. were paid in bitcoin. I didn’t need to exchange for fiat money or anything. I didn’t need to get the money. The Bitcoin community has to be sure that their donations are in good hands, in this case with BTCPay, and they are going straight ahead to the patients in El Salvador.
So okay, so maybe we could share this video in the future or in our platform. We are on Twitter or X and other platforms but it’s the real world you know. It’s not the city, it’s not a big great neighborhood. It’s the real people that live in poverty in El Salvador that are getting this help, and in dentistry it’s sometimes unachievable but with Bitcoin Smiles it’s a reality. We are literally bringing smiles in El Salvador thanks to Bitcoin.
Actually we are going to neighboring countries. The initiative, it’s in great shape. I mean we need help obviously. We use the donations to help these people but we are working with a Mayan community in Guatemala where we are spreading Bitcoin right now. But we work with another 20 kids in a Mayan community so poor in the surroundings of Lake Atitlán. So we are trying to spread to the neighboring countries in Central America and maybe the world. It’s a great example of what we could do in a tangible way with Bitcoin.
So here, more pictures of our practice and these people are part of the kids we are working in the preventive community program.
This, it’s a surprise. We used to rent a small room. But we have a blessing with bitcoin as well. This is going to be our office number two in El Zonte for us to be in better shape providing confidence, dignity and rehabilitation, correction and prevention for kids, the population, elderly and even foreigners coming to our practice and we probably are going to get a new office. It’s like a good thing for us.
So we’ve been featured in many platforms and we are glad and grateful to be here in Bitcoin Atlantis as well. Thank you for our partners and if you want to donate or know about our experience, know our backgrounds and you could visit bitcoinsmiles.org.
You could donate@btcpay.bitcoinsmiles.org and these are our platforms.
People say Bitcoin fixes these but it’s a reality and we are fixing teeth, Bitcoin Fixes Teeth and it’s a reality. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here so Bitcoin Smiles it’s open for everybody and thank you so much for for being here.
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