Motiv Builds Bitcoin Circular Economies, Powering 750+ Peruvian Families Every Week
In various parts of Peru—from the Andean highlands to coastal and Amazonian cities—Bitcoin has quietly taken root, not through mandates to go down or corporate acquisitions but through grassroots efforts that combine humanitarian aid with Bitcoin’s sense of financial sovereignty.
At the forefront is Motiv Peru, a non-profit organization co-founded by Rich Swisher and Valentin Popescu, who have spent years empowering underserved and underbanked communities to use Bitcoin for daily needs, education, and local commerce. What started as a simple shoe donation program in 2019 has evolved into a network of approximately 10 operational locations with hubs in Lima, Cusco, and Huanchaco and satellite programs in Tarapoto and Iquitos, among others, serving more than 750 families weekly.
The Motiv team is 50 strong, as well as volunteers, and actively demonstrates the potential of Bitcoin as a tool for long-term empowerment in developing countries rather than short-term foreign aid. Most of all, Motiv has created a non-profit strategy with a deep and lasting social impact, while starting the Bitcoin circular economy, fulfilling the original Bitcoin vision, ‘banking the unbanked’.
What has Motiv got that other NGOs haven’t, and what does Bitcoin have to do with it?
Alpaca Socks by Bitcoin and Genesis by Motiv
Peru has an old and curious history with Bitcoin. Another well-documented real-world use of Bitcoin involved Peruvian alpaca socks. In early 2011, vendors such as Grass Hill Alpacas accepted Bitcoin for wool socks and other goods, shipping them from the South American country to the US, as noted in Bitcoin Wiki entries and modern forum discussions on Bitcointalk. These legendary moments in Bitcoin history are similar to Laszlo Hanyecz’s famous pizza purchase in May 2010.
By 2025 Peru’s crypto space had grown among regional trends, emerging as one of the largest Bitcoin adoption areas in the world. Chainalysis data from 2025 shows Latin America holding significant volumes, with Peru recording nearly $28 billion in crypto transaction value—part of a region-wide increase driven by remittances, inflation, and smartphone-enabled wallets.
The origin of Motiv dates back to 2019. It was founded by Swisher, a retired US military officer and international business expert, and Valentin, a Romanian immigrant with experience in non-profit work and logistics, who lived in Peru since 2007.
They met while building a playground in the remote Cusco Highlands. When Valentin comes to Jonathan, a 7-year-old orphan living in harsh conditions—a mud house with few things, malnourished, and alone. His mother had died months ago, and his father was drunk in town. “I carried it on my shoulders, and all the children came shouting ‘Jonathan, Jonathan!’ He was a star,” Valentin told Bitcoin Magazine in an exclusive interview. When given a granola bar, Jonathan began sharing it with other children despite his hunger. “This is an orphan from this village, a child who is looked down upon the most… and he thinks about others. My mind, my heart exploded.”
Realizing the great need Jonathan was in, Swisher and Valentin called some sponsors and were able to buy him a full outfit, jacket, shoes, pants, and a hat, which was essential protection from the harsh cold of the Andes mountains. But there was a problem, seeing the gifts that were brought to Jonathan, other children were jealous, they also needed shoes and much more, in this lonely village in Peru.
Valentin promised all the other children that they, too, would get shoes, good shoes. In the rough terrain of the Andes, high-quality footwear is like a 4×4; for many children, it means the difference between going to school or not, because the journey they need to take is so difficult. It was then that the Happy Steps program was born, and for all intents and purposes, when Motiv found its purpose. Two months later, they returned to the village with shoes for everyone, bought with donations from the Swisher network, starting an annual program to support similar villages that improve their shoes.
As part of the program, the Motiv team and other volunteer adults wash the children’s feet, which are often contaminated by the weather and bad environments. Then they give the child new shoes. Valentin’s experience in this remote village taught him an important lesson, which he shared in an interview: “I realized that it is not me, an outsider, who will feel comfortable doing this.” But what we are trying to do is push for Peruvians to serve and become leaders in society.
The next year came, and Motiv was preparing to release another collection of shoes, but the year was 2020, and the COVID-19 and accompanying shutdowns were wreaking havoc on the country’s health and economy. Valentin called Swisher, “Look, we have this situation; we planned this money for shoes, so I’m going to do one thing. Why don’t you talk to the donors instead of buying shoes now? However, we have to buy food.”
As Valentin may have been, non-profit donations don’t work that way. Swisher spoke to the sponsors but came back with bad news. If donations are made for a specific program or purpose, you can’t just pivot at the last minute; donors refused. But there was another way; Swisher revealed that he “knows someone who knows someone who has Bitcoin” who can buy shoes and food. Valentin recalls his reaction: “This is no time for jokes, Rich.”
But the Bitcoin donor was serious. He would fund the shoe program this year and include other important items such as food for the village, to help them survive COVID. But there was one condition. Everything had to be paid in Bitcoin.
“I started looking for a store, but I didn’t find it. I was looking for a supermarket or something. ” Valentin remembers, “in the end, I found a kiosk that accepts Bitcoin, crypto, everything. And the guy told me, ‘I don’t have many things.’ We bought a few things from him, but it wasn’t what we needed… We’re talking about hundreds of people, right?” At this point, Motiv was looking to provide services to 50 families, a triple digit population. The kiosk seller solved the goal of fast food delivery, but realized that he would have to take orange pills to get the scale.
The second merchant was Olger the shoemaker. Olger had provided Motiv with previous shoe donation campaigns, so the relationship was already there, but COVID had hit him hard. He lost his wife and job during the epidemic and was left with three children to take care of alone. Olger, instead of turning to alcohol as many did in those difficult times, doubled his work and started teaching people how to make shoes, while accepting Bitcoin from Motiv and becoming an important partner of the Happy Steps program.
From there, Motiv began organizing a list of sellers and educating them about Bitcoin. They soon faced negative responses, financial scams of many kinds, including crypto, had attacked the country several times at this point, so a very simple and different way to promote Bitcoin was needed. Rather than promising financial independence or preaching a cypherpunk utopia, Valentin simply sold Bitcoin as a means of payment and taught these merchants to use it as they wished. From this situation, Motiv started to snowball.
Motiv Peru 2026
Fast forward a few years, and Motivn Peru is a well-oiled machine. As merchants were introduced to Bitcoin as a means of payment, they became interested in it as a technology, and basic Bitcoin and financial literacy programs followed, hosted at Motiv centers in major locations throughout Peru. Various educational programs were developed to answer the questions of sellers and users alike in a systematic way.
Valentin tells us that today Motiv teaches Peruvians about Bitcoin from Monday to Saturday in 15 different locations, affecting 750 families. Motiv events in 2025 reached more than 6000 people of all ages, including the Copa Bitcoin soccer tournament, a Christmas event, and various exhibitions and educational activities. The total number of bitcoin transactions made as a result of these efforts ranges between 25 and 30 thousand, with Blink as their level of entry to the fund.
