Jorge Andres
Telecommunications engineer, 38 years old, based in Latin America with active grassroots Monero adoption projects in Venezuela since 2023. My work focus on bridging the gap between privacy-preserving cryptocurrency and real-world adoption among non-technical populations in economically restricted environments. Native Spanish speaker with professional English proficiency. I have participate in cryptocurrency conferences in Caracas and organize community-driven initiatives that combine privacy education, merchant integration, and freedom technologies. My background in telecommunications give me a practical understanding of the connectivity and surveillance challenges that users in the Global South face when trying to adopt private, decentralized financial tools like Monero.
Session
Since 2023, I have been doing grassroots Monero onboarding in Caracas, Venezuela — a country with hyperinflation, capital controls, and government surveillance of financial transactions. This presentation share real findings from three years of field work: onboarding 50 to 100 individuals and integrating more than 15 local merchants accepting XMR.
I cover three areas. First, the methodology for introducing Monero to university students and merchants who never use crypto before, in a context of limited internet and deep distrust of financial systems. Second, why Monero privacy features are not abstract in Venezuela — they are a direct response to real government financial surveillance. Third, the honest challenges: merchant attrition, liquidity barriers for XMR-to-local-currency conversion, wallet UX problems in low-bandwidth environments, and social stigma around cryptocurrency.
The presentation conclude with a replicable framework for grassroots Monero adoption in economically restricted countries of the Global South.