Meet Hitesh Matlani, The 33YO Who Has Been Travelling Around The World Only With Bitcoin Since 2021

In a year that has witnessed trillions of dollars being lost in crypto crash and the Indian government imposing 1%TDS and 30% tax on it, a 33-year-old Indian seems to be living the dream of many crypto enthusiasts.

Meet Hitesh Matlani or Paco de la India as he goes by on social media. The 33-year-old Indore resident has been travelling around the world for over a year now with only bitcoin, traversing 25 countries starting from Thailand, and Cambodia in Asia to over a dozen countries across Africa and South America.

ET

Paco, as he prefers to be called, wants to travel to another 15 countries across the Americas, Asia, and Europe before putting an end to his nomadic life.

He is far from done even amid the bear market. But the bitcoin part isn¡¯t all that makes his travel different.

His stories also capture the inequalities in third-world countries, throw light on crypto adoption in African countries, and what it looks like when Bitcoin is a legal tender.

Also Read: US Man Pays 10,000 Bitcoins For Pizza

The Early Years

¡°I am a silly Sindhi boy from Indore, who left my parents¡¯ house in 2013 to travel.¡± This is how Matlani describes himself.. Having completed his education in Indore, Matlani worked in Oman and Muscat in a variety of roles including ad sales, electronics sales and finally as an operations manager.

¡°It was a high-paying job. But they gave me only a 2% hike after a year. I was like, I am not a 2% boy but a 100% boy. And I just quit,¡± he tells ET Prime. That was 2015 and he decided to take a six-month holiday, which turned out to be four years.

¡°When I ran out of money during travels, I started working on the streets. I taught English, volunteered in hostels, sold peanuts in Peru, did dumpster diving, and was an English-Spanish guide. I did anything and everything to just keep moving forward. Four years later, I came back home in 2019,¡± he adds.

Then the pandemic struck in 2020 and Matlani was without a job. When calling his friends for a job didn¡¯t yield any results, he was more than ready to take up one on the farm that makes natural soap and shampoo in Gurugram.

How He Decided To Travel The World With Bitcoin

¡°It was a full-moon day when I got a two-minute message from one of the friends I had reached out to for a job. He asked me if I want to travel the world but with Bitcoins. He said nobody's done this in the world,¡± Paco recalls.

This friend also gave him the book The Bitcoin Standard, which Paco finished in three days. It must have made an impression, enough to take this challenge up. ¡°I started contacting people from August 28, 2021. I sent 1,000 DMs to people and 45 got back. This included Web3 founders who wanted to sponsor,¡± he says, as per ET Prime report.

Also Read: 3,300 Crypto Accounts Reportedly Linked To Illegal Activities

The Bitcoin Journey Begins

Then 21 days later, on September 17, 2021, he started his Bitcoin journey. His LinkedIn profile mentions him as the founder of Run with Bitcoin, since Sept 2021.

Lost in adventure/ @sanjaylk/Twitter

Paco¡¯s first stop was Bengaluru since he wanted to connect with the Bitcoin community in India. ¡°I had zero followers on Twitter. Nobody knew me. For all they know, I could be a scammer with the bull-run going around,¡± he explains.

From Bengaluru, he travelled to 14 other cities including Pune, Mumbai, Baroda, Rajkot, Surat, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Delhi, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kochi, where he hosted Bitcoin meetups. Then he moved east covering Thailand, Cambodia and Singapore, where he started meeting the local cryptocurrency network and was able to buy daily essentials like bread, and do payments for bike rentals, hostels, restaurants and tourist guides using Bitcoin.

¡°I went around six or seven places, and I paid everywhere in Bitcoin because it was like magic for me,¡± he said, as per the report.

The First Hurdle In Bitcoin Journey

The first stumbling block came when he visited Sri Lanka. ¡°It was all chaos (in Sri Lanka). It had no dollars, electricity, or petrol. The money was plummeting. We waited hours to get fuel,¡± Paco recounts.

Sri Lanka¡¯s economic crisis, which has been brewing over the last two years, spiralled into an unprecedented economic crisis at the beginning of 2022.

As for Paco, he was still able to use Bitcoin. He visited Sigiriya, a remote picturesque village in Sri Lanka, where he was able to get food and stay for Bitcoin, and buy headphones, which he said he was using during the call with ET Prime.

Amid the political and economic turmoil, Sri Lanka saw rising adoption of cryptocurrency. A CoinDesk article reported a 730% rise in trading volume between April 2020 and April 2021 in Sri Lanka. The report also cited P2P trading platform Paxful¡¯s communication director, who said that monthly trading volume in the first quarter of 2021 was 3X more than that of 2020. Multiple media articles reported how Sri Lankans are investing in cryptocurrencies to tackle the crisis.

As a result, Sri Lanka¡¯s central bank warned the citizens against the use of crypto and potential scams.

But nothing prepared Paco for what he would see and experience in Africa ¡ª where he would spend 200 days ¡ª as a person and also a Bitcoin user.

Also Read: 'Bam Bam Bitcoin Beach' In Portugal

The 200 Days In Africa

Africa had been on Paco¡¯s agenda right from the beginning. ¡°I wanted to go to four or five countries and then move to South America, because I was scared for my life in the country. I will be honest. I went full on with my racist vibes ¨C it is a poor country and all that,¡± he admits, as per ET Prime report.

¡°But it was all bullshit,¡± he says. Paco visited 16 countries in the continent and spent a lot more than he wanted to, about 200 days. In his own words, he fell in love. ¡°I started understanding why Bitcoin was needed by Africa probably more than by any other region,¡± he elaborates.

Chainalysis/ET

African countries have been facing significant currency depreciation. Take for instance Zimbabwe, where hyperinflation has been a perennial issue. The annual inflation in 2020 reached 737%, according to a Bloomberg report. It is bad enough to the extent that Zimbabwe has Z$50 trillion currency. ¡°This is happening throughout Africa and people here have been losing their (currency) value like this,¡± Paco says.

¡°When I was in Kenya six to seven months ago USD1 was 100 Kenyan Shilling. Now it is 120. You have lost 20% of your value. When I was there, I really felt like Bitcoin will be adopted here because the difference between the rich and the poor is just too dramatic,¡± he adds.

Paco reportedly says access to electricity is a key concern in the continent.

Not all countries have legalised the use of crypto. While the Central African Republic has made crypto legal and has launched its own token, Sango Coin, there are restrictions and explicit ban in other regions.

For instance, there is an explicit ban on cryptocurrencies in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Cameroon, Congo and Sierra Leone, whereas Zimbabwe and Liberia have implicit bans that are in the nature of ceasing operations of a particular crypto start-up or banks not processing crypto transactions.

This made Paco¡¯s experience in the region tough. ¡°What has happened is the cops are catching people if they are seen opening a crypto wallet, they call it money laundering. So, it is very scary,¡± he explains.

Paco relied on Telegram and Twitter to get to know people. ¡°One neighbouring country is connected to another neighbouring country on Telegram. So, most of the time, these people wish to connect me to someone or the local Telegram group. In those groups I used to say, ¡®hey let's meet up for coffee¡¯. But it was always me trying from scratch trying to find people in every country. Sometimes Twitter helps me,¡± he narrates.

Over the course of his travels, usage of Bitcoin for day-to-day transactions had come down. ¡°If I sum it up, the first 200 days of my journey, I was a 95% Bitcoiner. I used Bitcoin everywhere. As I moved forward, it came down to as low as 40%. But still, I would end up finding places that use Bitcoin like two hostels that accept Bitcoin in Mozambique. But my journey evolved from traveling with Bitcoin, to hosting Bitcoin meetups and finding these pocket places and doing Bitcoin awareness,¡± he adds.

Freedom In El Salvador

Compared to this, he felt liberation and freedom in El Salvador, the first nation to officially make Bitcoin a legal tender.

Reuters

After travelling for more than 400 days across the world, Paco says he finally found the place where he can talk and use Bitcoin without worry.

¡°The experience was magical. I was able to use Bitcoin all throughout (in El Salvador). I just used cash on the last day to take my bus ride to the airport. It was such a beautiful experience,¡± he adds, as per the report.

This is the first time that experiment is happening. ¡°In other countries I had to worry about using Bitcoin because of government laws. But here you just felt freedom. It made El Salvador magical,¡± he adds. According to him, the world is watching El Salvador and if this experiment succeeds, there will be a ripple effect in other countries.

While his journey so far has been possible due to a combination of sponsorships, contributions, and crowdfunding, the bear market will make things tough.

¡°Will Sell My Kidney To Get Bitcoin¡±

¡°At the India Bitcoin Conference in Goa in November, someone gave me USD500 worth of Bitcoin as a contribution. Today that USD500 has become USD400. This is going to get worse. When Bitcoin goes to USD12,000 I will sell my kidney, and will get a whole coin. Keep it for a year and become a monk and come back after a year. It¡¯s so bad now,¡± Paco says, as per the report.

On a serious note, Paco admits that things have been difficult in recent times due to the crypto market crash and the situation would get worse.

¡°There was a company that used to support me for a year. After a year, recently, the founder sent me a message saying ¡®Hey, the markets are tough. We cannot continue our sponsorship with you.¡¯ and I'm like, ¡®It's all good man¡¯,¡± he says.

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Plans Ahead

Paco plans to travel to Central America, South America, a little bit of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. While he hopes to crowdfund his journey, he is still not sure where this is going to take him.

¡°But the Bitcoin family is warm. I don¡¯t know what else I can do except believe in it,¡± he says, with a note of hope in the end.