Dušan Matuska is — amongst many different issues — a Bitcoin educator and guide. The Slovak’s dream is to coach 100 million folks about Bitcoin by 2030 by talks, podcasts, webinars, workshops and even a Bitcoin schooling middle in a far-flung vacation spot (plans are at present beneath wraps).
Alongside his Bitcoin educating aspirations, he assists on a small-scale Bitcoin mining facility in Slovakia, he co-founded the crypto café often known as Paralelni Polis within the nation’s capital, Bratislava and he’s translated well-known Bitcoin books into his native tongue, Slovak.
However, how did he get right here? And, what does assembly Satoshi should do with it?
It begins with Bitcoin, which he first heard about Bitcoin in 2015. However, like many individuals, “I did not take plenty of discover. I assumed it was a rip-off, it was a pyramid scheme and all these sorts of issues,” he advised Cointelegraph.
Nonetheless, outfitted with a background in arithmetic and buoyed by the keenness of a tenacious buddy fascinated by open supply applied sciences, Matuska not a lot fell however swan dived down the rabbit gap in the course of the 2017 bull run.
He immediately realized, “Oh my God, this Bitcoin factor is one thing actually superb.”
He took day off his educating and consulting jobs to check Bitcoin. Inside months, he deployed his public talking expertise to offer the primary free talks of many about Bitcoin. At his first “open workshop, the place 40 or 50 folks got here” in early 2018, one thing had begun to click on.
“Instructing one thing that I’ve a ardour for feels pure to me. I gave webinars, consultations, free talks, all these sorts of issues associated to Bitcoin. Then, we based Paralelná Polis in Bratislava.”
The crypto cafe — because it’s additionally identified — is the newborn brother to the Paralelni Polis café in Prague, Czechia. It’s a restaurant rooted in different studying, or “parallel schooling,” which harks again to when Czeckoslavia endured communist rule.
It’s an apt epithet for a protected house to study, tinker with and finally use cryptocurrency, “no fiat is allowed,” Matuska added.
The parallels of educating about restricted worlds in the course of the communist regime and studying about another monetary world the place fiat foreign money is surplus to necessities are clear-cut on the cafe. Matuska defined:
“So, the concept was to not battle towards the system however to construct up a parallel system. The identical as Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a peaceable protest towards the system. It‘s not going to interrupt issues, however slowly it should make them out of date.”
Whereas serving to out as a barista on the cafe, Matuska spoke to unassuming crypto fanatics, from 73-year-old former bankers to senior residents inquisitive about transacting with crypto.
“I usually use the instance of the 73-year-old man when educating folks about Bitcoin. If he can discover ways to use a Bitcoin pockets and tips on how to pay with Bitcoin, anybody can.”
Higher but, the explanation why the septuagenarian transacted through Bitcoin is that it was “simpler for him than it was to make use of on-line banking.” Matuska confirmed to Cointelegraph that the aged man was not, in actual fact, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Whereas sadly, the Bratislava crypto cafe closed final 12 months because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Prague cafe lives on. Plus, the foundations had been laid and Matuska had two epiphanies: Bitcoin is for everybody and Bitcoin solves issues.
For Matuska, whether or not it’s sending cash to a cousin in america, bequeathing cash to grandchildren or just “serving to folks get monetary savings to battle inflation,” it’s not just a few cool tech or “number-go-up know-how.”
At some point, when his girlfriend queried “my educating colleagues are asking about tips on how to educate children about Bitcoin. Is there a e-book for them?” Matuska shifted his focus from educating adults to educating youngsters as effectively.
Due to the assistance of different Bitcoin educators within the house,in addition to a profitable crowdfunding marketing campaign, Matuska has despatched over 2,000 Bitcoin books to varsities throughout Slovakia, translated by himself and his crew into Slovak.
Increasing his Bitcoin schooling aspirations into faculties was a deft transfer. He‘ll want all the assistance he can get to succeed in the aim of training 100 million folks about Bitcoin by 2030. To maintain observe of the numbers, Matuska used to maintain “an excel spreadsheet, then I used to depend YouTube video views however there was an excessive amount of overlap.”
He’s now engaged on a sequence of metrics to succeed in his aim, undoubtedly monitoring the variety of downloads on the Bitcoin podcasts he data.
Within the podcast sequence, the Slovak solutions widespread questions and thought experiments he was uncovered to throughout his Bitcoin educating. Among the many hottest questions and, in actual fact, the primary podcast he recorded, is a riff on Satoshi Nakamoto’s anonymity.
It’s known as, “How I met Satoshi,” and refers to a theoretical assembly with the creator of Bitcoin. Matuska defined:
“Identical to Pythagoras and his theorem, we don’t truly have to know if he was a superb man or a nasty man; if he was orange, blue, yellow or black, no matter. The important thing factor is that the Pythagoras theorem works repeatedly.”
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It’s attainable to mathematically show that the Pythagoras Theorum works hundreds of years after his loss of life. “It is going to be the identical for Satoshi‘s calculations.”
Whereas Matuska “meets” with Satoshi, it‘s extra about the true “assembly” that happens if you start to interact with the works of a genius, whether or not it‘s Einstein, Michelangelo or Aristotle.
In the end, for the founding father of Bitcoin, Matuska shares that we “needs to be glad that we don‘t know who this particular person is.”
“The very best factor that Satoshi did was to create Bitcoin. The second smartest thing Satoshi did was to evaporate.”
