Welcome to The Magic Monkey Hostel
This is the story of how Steemit saved us from closing down during the winter and made all our projects possible
Our hostel is located on a Magic Island in the south hemisphere, Florianopolis - Brazil. We live in a place that feels like a Tomorrowland movie during the summer but almost a complete opposite universe during the winter. This seasonal economy makes almost all hostels in the neighborhood to close down during the winter, AKA low season, to charge batteries and bring the joy (and money) again in the spring.
Two summers ago, our friend Eddie The Chimp, a world-traveled Englishman, opened The Magic Monkey Hostel in the heart of Lagoa da Conceição. A project born from and for travelers, a chill environment, diversed, full of music, close to the beach and made for fun at night. His first asset was to find Sebastian, my friend and business partner from Colombia (right, in the picture above) who set up the running of the Hostel alongside his brother Daniel at the beginning. About a year ago I came into the team, closing the circle of what now has become the show-runners of this dream.
Around march, when we were coming to the end of the summer, we faced the question that every winter we have to solve: "Now what?" - Sebastian asked me. We were preparing the Hostel to shut down, finding new jobs, trying to keep alive all the ideas we were developing over the high season, everything felt like coming to an abrupt end. One of the perks of closing down for the winter is to get all the finances clear, payments, transfers, investments, etc. As you can imagine a hostel full of people from all over the planet, owner and staff from different countries, plus the online business, all of that makes dealing with several currencies and banks just a pain. This is how Bitcoin and the crypto-currencies came in handy, almost like a miracle, at least that's how it was for us.
Even though Eddie is not the type of guy who will spend all day on the beach, he is a summer animal. His life style chase the sun, and as soon the winter comes soon he leaves, to spend the summer somewhere else and bring new ideas to the project. For this reason, he needs to move money all the time, around several countries, pay in different ways, deal with tons of bureaucracy and banks, and of course, paying a lot of fees and taxes for that. Almost since I met him I told him about Bitcoin and how my economy is totally based on crypto-currencies due to economic situation in my home country Venezuela. I offered my advice and guidance to understand this for his personal finances, but it wasn't until I mention it as a tool for the business that he actually started to pay attention.
First Bitcoin, here we go...
The challenge in hand was to make everyone's profit from the season available for international "thinking". When you are preparing yourself for a trip, that does not necessarily has an established route nor end, you have to think to have your money available everywhere, a currency easy to exchange, a platform that does not have many fees and taxes and even more if you can do everything online. By now, probably you already can imagine the answer. So I told everyone to buy Bitcoin. During our first transaction we even made a profit! Due to the rise on the price while we were buying, we made about $400 USD profit! The conclusion was: it works and even better, makes some extra money!
We were in the right place and in the right time. We bought at a very good rate and then saw how our net worth went up up up. The rise on the price of Bitcoins and other crypto-currencies like Steemit, Ethereum and Antshares expand our investments and capital in a blink. The surprising success of our little idea made us rethink everything.
Sebastian made to Eddie an offer he couldn't refuse:
Alberto and I are going to create a crypto-business platform for the Hostel, invest in tools and equipment, open new sources of income and keep it open during the winter. And when the day comes, we even might even sell our shares of the business or the building itself in Bitcoin!
Basically, we run the show and the crypto-currencies are the stars. Like the rush of a dream, everything started to move very quickly, we are now proud to say we are the First Crypto-Hostel in Brazil, if not the continent or, maybe, the World?
Steemit has played a big role in my economy since last year, and now I just diversified my personal finances to a much bigger project, with more people and goals. This blog has support me through personal and professional challenges, but now, Steemit has put my ideas on a relevant platform with real capabilities of something big. Steems and bitcoins has been paying for all these things and I just want to be thankful to all the steemians that have helped with this, specially those that has come to guide me in this process, sobre todo tu @Chitty.
