{"id":4624,"date":"2025-08-20T16:16:29","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T16:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/20\/from-the-bitcoin-jungle-to-the-sea-let-lightning-be-free\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T16:16:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T16:16:29","slug":"from-the-bitcoin-jungle-to-the-sea-let-lightning-be-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/20\/from-the-bitcoin-jungle-to-the-sea-let-lightning-be-free\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Bitcoin Jungle to the Sea, Let Lightning be Free!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

From the Bitcoin Jungle to the Sea, Let Lightning be Free!<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Welcome to the jungle \u2014 the Bitcoin Jungle.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin Jungle is a bitcoin circular economy located in the Puntarenas province of Uvita, Costa Rica, where over 600 merchants accept bitcoin. It\u2019s also the place Francis Pouliot<\/a> has called home for the past three years.<\/p>\n

And the Canadian expat and founder of Bull Bitcoin wants other Bitcoiner expats who visit the region, and Costa Rica at large, to feel how he feels in the country \u2014 welcomed.<\/p>\n

For this reason, he and the team at Bull Bitcoin created a web app that works both within the Bitcoin Jungle wallet, an open source, custodial Lightning wallet, and in conjunction with other Lightning wallets.<\/p>\n

Through the web app interface, Bitcoin enthusiasts can pay for almost anything with bitcoin over Lightning, regardless of whether the merchant or counterparty with whom they\u2019re transacting accepts it.<\/p>\n

Using the Bitcoin Jungle app or the web app<\/a> directly, users can pay with bitcoin and have their bill settled in the local fiat currency, col\u00f3nes, over the country\u2019s national electronic payment system, SINPE (Sistema Nacional de Pagos Electr\u00f3nicos). (This is comparable to how Strike, Bringin, and Bull Bitcoin enables users to pay with bitcoin over Lightning to settle fiat bills via the United States\u2019 ACH system, Europe\u2019s SEPA system, and Canada\u2019s Interac system, respectively.)<\/p>\n

With more than 90% of the country\u2019s residents over the age of 18 using SINPE for daily payments, the Bull Bitcoin app makes it very easy for nonresidents of Costa Rica to participate in the country\u2019s digital economy (you must be a resident of the country to open a SINPE account) and\/or for those who want to live on a bitcoin standard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis allows people to live exclusively off of bitcoin,\u201d Pouliot told Bitcoin Magazine. \u201cEvery merchant that accepts fiat payments over SINPE in Costa Rica can now accept payments from a Bitcoiner.\u201d<\/p>\n

How the Bull Bitcoin Costa Rica Web App Works<\/h2>\n

When users use the Bull Bitcoin web app in Costa Rica, they make a payment to a Bull Bitcoin Lightning node on the backend. Once Bull Bitcoin receives this payment, it makes a fiat payment via SINPE on the user\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

Bull Bitcoin processes hundreds of such payments daily in Costa Rica. From May 2024 to May 2025, Bull Bitcoin processed 32,774 bitcoin-to-fiat conversions.<\/p>\n

Pouliot prides himself on making sure the Bull Bitcoin web app is as dependable as a credit card, because he knows that many in the country, himself included, depend on it day in and day out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re at the gas station in Costa Rica and you don\u2019t have a credit card and you just filled up your car, you need that Lightning-to-SINPE payment to work because otherwise you\u2019re screwed,\u201d explained Pouliot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is how a lot of us live here. We don\u2019t use credit cards. We don\u2019t have cash. So, if I go to the gas station, this app better fucking work. Otherwise, I just filled up my car and I have a very angry gas station attendant,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe success rate is well over 99% \u2014 almost 100%. I don\u2019t even remember any Lightning payments failing. And that\u2019s because the Bull Bitcoin is managed by hardcore Bitcoiners that know how to navigate Lightning Network liquidity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pouliot added that the hardest part of keeping the app functioning properly isn\u2019t running the Lightning node or plugging in the banking API, though. Instead, he said the biggest challenge is sourcing the fiat liquidity in a not-so-widely-accepted fiat currency like the col\u00f3n.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no international open marketplace for very low-liquidity fiat currencies and bitcoin,\u201d explained Pouliot.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither Kraken nor Binance or Coinbase list the col\u00f3n \u2014 there\u2019s no bitcoin-to-col\u00f3nes order book. We need to sell that bitcoin to someone else to get the fiat in order to pay out the fiat merchant,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Pouliot explained that, because major bitcoin and crypto exchanges don\u2019t list the col\u00f3n, he essentially sets the exchange rate for it by constructing what he calls a \u201cvirtual bitcoin-to-col\u00f3n exchange rate.\u201d To calculate this rate, Pouliot factors in the col\u00f3n-to-U.S. dollar rate and the USD-to-bitcoin rate and then adds a 1% gross margin rate to help Bull Bitcoin not lose money on the exchange rate while still keeping the product accessible to users.<\/p>\n

He stressed that maintaining liquidity is truly the biggest challenge in this process, and he tipped his hat to others around the world who offer a similar service with a comparable degree of reliability.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever you see a group of people that have achieved this seamless flow, know that while it sounds so simple, it can be very complicated on the back end\u201d, said Pouliot. \u201cThat\u2019s why, for example, I find Tando so impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kenya\u2019s Tando<\/h2>\n

Kenya\u2019s version of the Bull Bitcoin app isn\u2019t a web app, but a proper app, though the team behind Tando was influenced by what Bull Bitcoin has done in Costa Rica.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bitcoin Jungle team posted a video on their X where they went into a gas station and spent bitcoin while the merchant received the local currency,\u201d Jason, one of Tando\u2019s cofounders, told Bitcoin Magazine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018That\u2019s pretty cool.\u2019 We thought that would probably work here if Safaricom [a Kenyan mobile network operator] has an API,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd with just a little research, we figured out that \u2018Yeah, we can do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason and his co-founder, Sabina Waithira<\/a>, launched the app in July 2024, enabling Kenyan users to settle bills in Kenyan shillings over M-PESA (Safaricom helped launch M-PESA), a mobile money system that operates in more than a half dozen African countries, while paying with bitcoin over Lightning.<\/p>\n

Using Tando, users can pay bills, buy goods, and send Kenyan shillings with nothing more than a recipient\u2019s phone number and a Lightning wallet. (M-PESA only requires a recipient\u2019s phone number for money transfers.)<\/p>\n

The user sends bitcoin from the Lightning wallet of their choosing, Tando\u2019s Lightning node receives the bitcoin, and Tando settles the fiat M-PESA bill for the sender.<\/p>\n

All of this happens within seconds.<\/p>\n

I know firsthand because I used Tando while I was in Kenya for the African Bitcoin Conference in 2024.<\/p>\n

While in Kenya, I paid taxi fares and restaurant bills over M-PESA using Tando, something I otherwise wouldn\u2019t have been able to do, since I wasn\u2019t in the country long enough to get an M-PESA account and fund it with Kenyan shillings. As a short-term visitor, it was much easier to spend bitcoin into the local economy with Tando, which doesn\u2019t require a sign-up process.<\/p>\n

Making Bitcoin Easier To Spend For Kenyans<\/h3>\n

Waithira wasn\u2019t familiar with what was happening with Lightning-to-fiat payments in Costa Rica before Jason brought it to her attention.<\/p>\n

What motivated her to bring Tando to life was instead her own experience of trying to spend bitcoin in Kenya.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to work for Bitcoin Dada [a virtual Bitcoin education platform and sisterhood for African women] and would sometimes get paid in bitcoin\u201d, Waithira told Bitcoin Magazine<\/em>. \u201cIt was hard to spend that Bitcoin directly.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Waithira came up with creative ways to spend her bitcoin, like tipping waiters and waitresses at restaurants with it, she ended up facing the same question from those service workers time and time again: \u201cHow can I spend this bitcoin?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a great answer to this question\u201d, said Waithira. \u201cSo, this is also what inspired Tando.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waithira added that \u201cKenyans are very fast learners and very curious\u201d, which makes it easy to onboard them to Bitcoin and Tando, while Jason shared that Kenyans have been primed for Bitcoin, as they\u2019ve already gone through the mobile money revolution with M-PESA over the past decade and a half.<\/p>\n

Waithira also noted that she and Jason have aimed to make Tando as easy to use as M-PESA is \u2014 to not scare users off with a complicated interface.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to mimic the experience of using M-Pesa\u201d, explained Waithira.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like thinking when I use apps, and I don\u2019t think our customers do either\u201d, she added. \u201cWe kept this in mind as we designed Tando.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waithira and Jason apparently did something right, as Tando has been gaining traction with everyday Kenyans slowly and steadily. It now processes over 100 transactions per day.<\/p>\n

And beyond just helping more Kenyans live on a bitcoin standard, the app inspired a developer on the other side of the African continent to create something similar for the citizens of his home country, Ghana.<\/p>\n

Ghana\u2019s BitSpenda<\/h2>\n

Bright Kportiklah also attended the 2024 African Bitcoin Conference and was one of many attendees who used Tando while in Kenya.<\/p>\n

Drawing from the inspiration he felt in Kenya as well as the connections he made at the conference, the computer programmer headed back to Ghana after the conference with the intention of building his own version of Tando.<\/p>\n

Within a few months, Kportiklah had the beta version of a Lightning-to-fiat interface he\u2019d created \u2014 BitSpenda<\/a> \u2014 up and running. And he did this thanks in part to help from seasoned Nigerian Bitcoin entrepreneur Bernard Parah, founder and CEO of Bitnob, whom Kportiklah had met at the conference.<\/p>\n

Bitnob is an almost decade-old financial services company that leverages payment infrastructure built on Bitcoin and Lightning. Parah and the team at Bitnob helped Kportiklah connect to local off-ramps in Africa, including mobile money networks in Ghana and Kenya and bank accounts in Nigeria. (BitSpenda currently serves the citizens of these three countries.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to connect to these local off-ramps via API as a small fintech,\u201d Kportiklah told Bitcoin Magazine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I told Bernard at the conference that I wanted to build something similar to Tando, he gave me a contact to reach out to in Ghana,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

This contact helped Kportiklah connect BitSpenda to Ghana\u2019s mobile money system.<\/p>\n

Kportiklah also added that Kgothatso Ngako, the founder of Machankura (which allows users to send bitcoin over Lightning using a feature phone), and Onionsman of Bitpension (a bitcoin pension account platform based in Nigeria) have also advised him on the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met all these people at the conference in Kenya, and they have been so instrumental in helping me build this,\u201d Kportiklah said.<\/p>\n

BitSpenda went live on March 7 this year.<\/p>\n

To use the web app, senders can look up the recipients they want to send money to by phone number in Ghana and Kenya and by bank account number in Nigeria.<\/p>\n

Once the sender has found the recipient they are looking for and decides to make a payment, a Lightning invoice or QR code is generated, and, almost instantly, the bitcoin the user sends is converted into the recipient\u2019s local currency and the transaction is settled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin 30 seconds, the recipient will receive the money, and the sender can see on BitSpenda whether the money was received or not,\u201d explained Kportiklah.<\/p>\n

If a transaction fails, as has only happened in less than 1% of transaction attempts thus far, Kportiklah can manually send the payment to the recipient and notify the sender that the transaction has gone through.<\/p>\n

As of late April 2025, the app had processed thousands of U.S. dollars\u2019 worth of transactions. Kportiklah claimed that the app has encouraged more Ghanaians to use bitcoin not just because they feel that bitcoin is a better money than Ghanaian cedis, the country\u2019s fiat currency, but for another important reason, as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cGhanaians are more willing to use Bitcoin because of the value it offers in terms of finance,\u201d explained Kportiklah.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, in Ghana, if you keep your money in your bank accounts, at the end of the month, the bank will charge fees, but this isn\u2019t the case when people use bitcoin instead of their bank,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people also just see bitcoin as a currency that has more value as compared to the Ghanaian cedi and choose to use it for that reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kportiklah also noted that an app like BitSpenda is particularly helpful in Ghana, where outside of the Bitcoin circular economy that Kportiklah serves as the technical advisor for \u2014 Bitcoin Dua \u2014 almost no merchants accept bitcoin.<\/p>\n

And he aspires to not only offer this service to Ghanaians, but to Africans in over a dozen countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cA year from now, we should be in no less than 15 African countries\u201d, said Kportiklah.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to doubt he\u2019ll accomplish this when, in under four months, he was able to roll out BitSpenda in three countries.<\/p>\n

Kportiklah said he\u2019s currently completing the necessary paperwork to make BitSpenda available to members of the remaining 12 countries he wishes to service.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll have to hurry, though, given that the team from Tando is looking to expand into Uganda soon and that a new web app built by a Senegalese developer \u2014 Banxaas<\/a> \u2014 now enables bitcoin-to-fiat payments in Senegal, as well.<\/p>\n

A Labor Of Love<\/h2>\n

The irony in what Pouliot, Waithira, Jason and Kportiklah have created is that they\u2019re less motivated by making money than they are by making bitcoin<\/em> money.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a profitable endeavor\u201d, deadpanned Pouliot about Bull\u2019s Bitcoin Costa Rica web app.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, this has a very high cost for us \u2014 it\u2019s very complicated and there\u2019s a lot of overhead. So, it\u2019s done with the mindset of \u2018Sure, maybe one day it\u2019s going to be profitable,\u2019 but we do this more to be part of the Bitcoin Jungle mission of maintaining infrastructure to facilitate Lightning\u201d, he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNot to say that it will never be a profitable business. I actually encourage people to consider that to be a potentially profitable business. But at scale, it\u2019s really hard to pull off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither the founders of Tando nor Kportiklah have figured out a monetization scheme yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur business model is we get bitcoin\u201d, said Jason half-jokingly.<\/p>\n

He added that he and Waithira have fielded a number of requests for other wallets who want to use their Safaricom API, and that they\u2019re considering charging a fee for these other wallets to do so. This doesn\u2019t seem to be as much of a priority for them as getting Kenyans to view bitcoin as a medium of exchange, though.<\/p>\n

Kportiklah is of the same mind:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal for now is just to create a tool that will help people to spend Bitcoin with ease\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of my interview with Pouliot, he highlighted once more how important it is to keep in mind that it takes a lot of work from dedicated Bitcoiners to pull off the \u201cwith ease\u201d part, noting that initiatives like these are best created and managed at the local level by those who have a solid understanding of the traditional financial system with which they\u2019re interfacing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese products are better built as grassroots projects, because they require knowledge of the banking system on the ground\u201d, explained Pouliot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why we don\u2019t have that many expansion plans, but I\u2019m happy to support the other local initiatives with technology and advice\u201d, he added before noting that he thinks what NostrPIX, another Lightning-to-fiat payment app, is doing in Brazil is cool.<\/p>\n

He concluded by once more offering praise for his colleagues around the world who are successfully building and managing such interfaces:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever you see a local group of Bitcoiners pulling it off, be sure that they are fucking awesome and that it wasn\u2019t easy to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Don\u2019t miss your chance to own\u00a0The Lightning Issue<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 featuring an exclusive interview with Lightning co-creator Tadge Dryja. It dives deep into Bitcoin\u2019s most powerful scaling layer. Limited run. Only available while supplies last.<\/p>\n

This piece is an article featured in the latest\u00a0Print\u00a0<\/a>edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Lightning Issue. We\u2019re sharing it here to show the ideas explored throughout the full issue.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

This post From the Bitcoin Jungle to the Sea, Let Lightning be Free!<\/a> first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine<\/a> and is written by Frank Corva<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin Magazine From the Bitcoin Jungle to the Sea, Let Lightning be Free! Welcome to the jungle \u2014 the Bitcoin Jungle. Bitcoin Jungle is a bitcoin circular economy located in the Puntarenas province of Uvita, Costa Rica, where over 600 merchants accept bitcoin. It\u2019s also the place Francis Pouliot has called home for the past […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bitcoin"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}