Fiatjaf’s Adventures Escaping To El Salvador

Richard Greaser

May 31, 2023 — 6 min read

One of the most amazing stories about how Bitcoin will change the world

by DarthCoin

The Fiatjaf

Many wouldn’t know him, he likes to stay a nym, due to his sensible position, living in a recent communist country, Brazil. He is a Bitcoin Lightning Network developer and creator of NOSTR, OBW (Open Bitcoin Wallet), LNTXBOT and many other wonderful tools used in Bitcoin.

You could read more about his story in this recent Forbes article, describing his life, more or less, not revealing too much.

The story

So, few years ago, Fiatjaf seeing what is going on in his country, Brazil, decided to work on a new protocol that could help people communicate and trade more freely, in a decentralized way, so he created NOSTR. All went OK, even Jack Dorsey came to fund the project with a large amount of money. But this bring more attention of Brazilian authorities over Fiatjaf individual.

We don’t know yet how they were able to find who is Fiatjaf but is clear that he was harassed by police, even jailed for few nights, threaten and persecuted, because NOSTR was a “danger for the democracy” in Brazil, not talking also that he developed a powerful bot in Telegram that was using Bitcoin. In the end the Brazilian Secret Service were DDoS-ing Fiatjaf’s server hosting the LNTXBOT until he was forced to shut it down, in late 2022. Remember that after that Brazilian authorities even banned Telegram totally, scared that Fiatjaf will create another bot.

The Plan

Based on all these happenings, Fiatjaf decided to take action and escape from Brazil, his life was in danger and the future of the whole Bitcoin ecosystem was in jeopardy. Fiatjaf plan was to escape to El Salvador, the Bitcoin Country, using a small undetected plane Cesna.

So he started to took private pilot lessons, paid in Bitcoin (with coinjoined UTXOs), in an undisclosed location near to Amazonian jungle.

The original plan was to fly a small plane carrying a huge load of shit (literally bullshit and other faeces) and throw it over the government building, then hide. But then he realized that this kind of protest will achieve nothing and better find a way to destroy in totality the Brazilian government in another manner, more powerful than nobody can imagine: using Bitcoin.

So he final plan was to fly directly to El Salvador, where is awaited by Nayib Bukele (president of El Salvador) himself. There were previously negotiations about this aspect, but we cannot disclose too many details. This plan was organized by the Bukele’s Chief Strategist, Max Keiser, in a package together with Saifedean Ammous and Giacomo Zuco.

Saifedean recently arrived in El Salvador and he was given the position of Strategic Economist Advisor in Bukele’s cabinet. He will be in charge of organizing everything is possible to slowly diminish all government role in Salvadoran economy and society, until will be eliminated totally and The Great Bitcoin Order will be in place, to bring free market, peace, prosperity and total freedom for The Bitcoin Country.

Giacomo will come later, right now is offering remote classes to salvadoran students, brainwashing them into being toxic maximalists and shitcoin slayers. Later he will join forces with Saifedean to establish a total voluntarist system in El Salvador.

Fiatjaf will be assigned for the position of Chief Technology Strategist, creating applications and solutions to empower the salvadorans using Bitcoin. Also his main focus will be to totally replace the disaster of Chivo system with a new wallet based on his OBW (Open Bitcoin Wallet), designed to be an easy and sovereign tool for bitcoin users in El Salvador.

People should not be worried about Bukele, he is not going anywhere, he will have an important role of being the city manager of the new Bitcoin City. Bright future he will have. Now he’s more concentrated into bringing Blockstream Mining Division, to build the Volcano Mining Inc. and start mining BTC with the abundant geothermal energy.

El Salvador success is primordial for the entire world, it will be the example that humanity awaited for centuries, to see how a free society could work, just by separating the money from the state and even eliminating entirely the whole government. That’s why right now the most brilliant minds of the world are gathering there and strategise each move for the next 10-20 years. But this is the subject for another story article.

The Escape

How did all happen (?), you may ask. This could be a very good subject of a Hollywood movie, in Fiatjaf role could play Silverster Stallone (the guy that always save us all and kill all the enemies).

In a rainy night of May 2023, Fiatjaf is driving a clunky old car, inherited from his old father, so he could not be identified or bring attention to much in his journey to the small airport located near to the Amazonian jungle. There, is waiting for him another friend, with a prepared Cesna plane, ready to fly over the jungle straight to El Salvador.

*Fiatjaf’s father rusty old car ready to escape, but with new wheels*

The journey to the plane is large, like 666km away from where he lives. He’s tired, after coding all night for the last pieces of a new feature for NOSTR and playing a 5h session of Starcraft with some frineds. But his determination to escape from this evil communist regime is pumping more adrenaline into his dilated veins. He MUST arrive to the plane!

As a decoy, he took a friend of him, that she’s 8 months pregnant and he will use her as excuse to escape from possible police filters in the way. Yes, Fiatjaf is an unscrupulous man, harsh but strong and determined to do whatever it takes to escape. And they were stopped! Almost near to the hidden airfield location a police raid, looking for some local gang members, they stopped Fiatjaf car, looking inside for possible suspicious guys. Fiatjaf start to explain them that she’s in pains and need to go faster to a near doctor. Finally they let them go, but not after a serious delicate moment when one policeman was looking closer to Fiatjaf trying to recognize him.

Luckily they let them go and Fiatjaf speed up the car, to a maximum 80km/h that the car could run. A nightmare, the sun was about to sunrise, right on time arriving at the airfield and a bright wonderful rainbow appeared on the sky, indicating exactly the airfield location! It was a sign for Fiatjaf, he knew in that moment that a new era will come for him and for the whole world.

*Fiatjaf, checking the Cesna plane before onboarding*

He jumped into the Cesna plane and starting the engines, told to his girlfriend with a cold but smiling tone: “We will meet again”. But then the girl, crying asked: “why do you leave me now? Take me with you, do you really want your baby to be a communist?” And then Fiatjaf realized that will have to dump his BTC ASIC miners from the plane to make more space for his girlfriend and not yet born son. Hard decision to make. But in the end with trembling hands, throw out the ASICS and gave them to the guy that prepared the plane for him, as a payment. His girlfriend onboarded on the plane and waited in tears to fly from that nightmare.

Finally they are in the air! The flight over Amazonian jungle was calm with no important events. Only that right before leaving the Colombian airspace, over Pacific Ocean, a crazy drunk narco, shoot a bazooka to Fiatjaf plane, and hit it slightly on top of the windows, not too many damages but enough to create a fire inside the plane.

The girlfriend tried to stop the fire, but many inflammable crap things were in the back of the plane and the fire kept going, until they start seeing the shores of El Salvador.

With incredible piloting skills, Fiatjaf, in the end could find a place where to land the plane on the shores of El Salvador. There were very dangerous moments for them into that plane in fire, trying to land.