Listen to the interview with RR Hauxley, the man who traveled the world with 1 Bitcoin, on the 8 October 2018 edition of the BitcoinNews.com Daily Podcast
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BitcoinNews.com did an exclusive interview with RR Hauxley on 7 October 2018, the man who traveled around the world with just 1 Bitcoin. He voyaged the world with planes, trains, bicycles (his preferred method), buses, taxis, and boats powered by just 1 Bitcoin. He is creating a movie about how crypto can set people free with the 178 hours of footage and 28 interviews he recorded, and is asking people to pay it forward so he can edit and distribute the movie. Donation links can be found at the end of this article.
On 30 August 2017, Hauxley purchased 1 Bitcoin for USD 4,724, and the big rally to USD 20,000 soon began. Hauxley says he “was tempted to cash out the rest of the 1 Bitcoin and keep traveling” as the rally got hot, but he talked to a crypto old timer in Hong Kong who convinced him that the documentary would be much better if Hauxley held onto the Bitcoin, since there would be more stress and adrenaline from market swings, and more adventure. Ultimately, Bitcoin declined massively, and Hauxley had to do travel hacking like couch surfing and contacting people from Bitcoin meetup groups for help, which drastically increased what he learned during the journey.
A global Bitcoin community
Hauxley began the journey the day after buying the Bitcoin in Beijing, China, and visited more cities in China including Shiyang and Chongqing, a city of 30 million people, as well as Hong Kong and Shenzhen. He visited many countries including Taiwan, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines, India, Ethiopia, Egypt, and then numerous nations in Western Europe, eventually ending the journey in Denmark after a year.
Hauxley says, “The mission at the beginning was to travel around the world for 12 months on 1 Bitcoin… but then it changed to focus on the crypto community as a whole. I noticed that the crypto community around the world is incredible, people helping each other, people trying to come up with ways to give us financial freedom, to give us more control of our finances or our data. Whatever it is that we’re doing, it is quite the movement, and that’s what I’m focused on going forward”.
In the Philippines, Hauxley met a fisherman who sold fish for crypto. In India, people were selling art for crypto. In Singapore, Filipino workers sent money back home to their families with crypto. Cambodians were using Bitcoin to fund housing development, locals in Myanmar chose crypto over banks and the local fiat due to perceived government intervention in the financial system, while in Switzerland, a struggling man started a crypto mining farm and became very successful.
Hauxley’s one rule was that his finances for the year had to come from the 1 Bitcoin, and he paid with Bitcoin when he could, such as at a brew pub in China that accepted crypto, where he treated himself to beers and a burger during the rally. However, he was willing to trade for fiat when he needed to, and used peer-to-peer crypto trading sites like Localbitcoins. He says this was ideal, because most places he visited didn’t accept US dollar and wanted their local fiat currency, so he converted his Bitcoin to the local fiat currency as he traveled. Sometimes he marked up his Bitcoin over the exchange rate, like a true Bitcoin dealer.
Rubbing shoulders with the crypto community
In Europe, Hauxley attended a crypto cruise through the Mediterranean and met John McAfee as well as Vitalik Buterin, as well as many other notable crypto personalities who will be in the finished documentary. There were many environmental questions regarding crypto mining, and McAfee said, “It provides a damn good useful service, it secures the blockchain, and I’ll tell you what, we will keep mining Bitcoin until the last polar bear drowns”. Hauxley says, “Vitalik Buterin is the closest I have ever come to an alien encounter… just a hyper-intelligent individual”.
Hauxley says crypto sets people free by giving them control of their finances, which gives them freedom to travel, freedom to move from country to country, freedom to send money, and freedom to save money without the government stopping them. Further, Hauxley says crypto sets people free in regards to jobs and business by opening people up to the crypto sphere, which has similar potential for growth as the early internet.
The documentary ‘Bitcoin Around the World’ will focus on the drama of traveling around the world with just 1 Bitcoin, and the various interviews, as well as the people Hauxley met who are being set free by crypto. Hauxley will additionally focus on how the super wealthy are spreading lies about crypto, and contrast it with the footage and information from the movie which shows that those people are wrong, and crypto is a good thing for the world.
Hauxley hopes the documentary will be released by the end of 2018 or the beginning of 2019, and is accepting donations to “pay it forward”, in Bitcoin, Ether and Dash.
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