Ending Poverty and Violence with Bitcoin: Aaron Murphy's MURPHSLIFE Dream
- DJ Valerie B LOVE 🩷
- 2 days ago
- 11 min read
How MURPHSLIFE uses Bitcoin to build circular economies that end poverty and violence in El Salvador
What if the best way to HODL Bitcoin is actually to spend it on building a better world? In this episode, I sit down with Aaron Murphy (MurphsLife Foundation), who traded a life of partying for a mission of ending poverty. From saving victims of violence to building self-sustaining circular economies in El Salvador, Aaron’s story is the ultimate proof of work.
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✨ Key Takeaways
1. Rock bottom is where transformation begins
"Once you hit rock bottom, you know, there's nowhere else to go. Sometimes you just have to laugh and be like, you know, they can't get any worse than this." - Aaron Murphy
2. One person's vision + community donations = millions in impact
Aaron didn't need investors; he needed authenticity and people believing in his mission. Six million TikTok followers + genuine cause = $100K in Venmo in one month.
3. Identity death precedes rebirth
Aaron shares his raw journey from "spiritual bankruptcy" as a party promoter to finding purpose in service. He explains that you often have to hit rock bottom and let your old self die before your true humanitarian self can be born.
4. The "Default Mode Network" is real
Simply giving someone a house isn't enough. Trauma survivors naturally return to chaos because it feels familiar. True transformation requires healing the heart through community, love, and on-site support — not just relocation.
5. Medium of exchange matters as much as store of value
Bitcoin's original purpose was peer-to-peer exchange, not just wealth hoarding. Spending your Bitcoin for good creates the adoption and circular economies the world needs.
6. Spending 10% creates more impact than holding 100%
If millions of Bitcoiners spent just 10% on sustainable farms and community projects, it would create massive adoption and solve global poverty.
7. Bitcoin Mountain can be duplicated globally
Aaron's model (circular economy, sustainable farms, women's shelters, jobs, Bitcoin education) can be copied in any country to lift families out of poverty and violence.
Episode Overview
In this heart-opening episode, I sit down with Aaron Murphy—founder of MurphsLife, humanitarian, and radical changemaker—to explore the intersection of Bitcoin, spiritual transformation, and service. Aaron shares how hitting rock bottom reshaped his life, taking him from a "party boy" identity and spiritual bankruptcy to finding profound purpose during the lockdowns in South America. We trace his path from personal chaos to global impact, exploring how he built a movement on authenticity and community belief rather than traditional investment.
We dive into the operations of MurphsLife and the creation of "Casa Conejo" in El Salvador—a circular micro-economy of hotels, restaurants, and sustainable farms that funds women's shelters and restores dignity through work. Aaron unpacks the hard truths of charity: why simply "saving" people often fails if you don't heal the heart and change the environment. He also offers a fiery defense of spending Bitcoin to build parallel institutions today—arguing that we must circulate wealth now to create adoption and solve poverty, rather than waiting for a hyper-bitcoinized future that might come too late.
About Aaron Murphy
Aaron Murphy is the founder of MurphsLife, a humanitarian organization dedicated to ending poverty and violence in Latin America. After a personal transformation in 2020, Aaron began using social media to crowdfund life-changing gifts for families in need. Today, his mission has evolved into building sustainable ecosystems, including farms, women's shelters, and Bitcoin-powered communities in El Salvador and Ecuador.
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⏱️ Episode Timestamps
(00:00:04) Welcoming Aaron Murphy and the mission of MurphsLife
(00:01:34) From Canadian trailer parks to South American missions
(00:02:40) Women's shelters, skills training, and Casa Conejo
(00:05:41) The transition from party promoter to spiritual awakening
(00:08:12) Lockdown in a refugee camp and the viral Venmo explosion
(00:11:16) Shedding the old self to find true purpose
(00:17:50) The "Default Mode Network": Why simply giving houses often fails
(00:23:09) Authenticity over trends with 6 million followers
(00:26:35) Bitcoin as a shield for women against patriarchal systems
(00:33:49) The challenge of relocation vs. healing within the existing community
(00:43:24) Visual tour: The reality of shacks and the vision for affordable housing
(00:47:08) Bitcoin Mountain: Building a circular economy and sustainable food systems
(00:49:48) Why spending Bitcoin creates more adoption than HODLing
(00:54:13) Building sovereignty through community collaboration
(01:01:22) The Parable of John: Dying with keys vs. leaving a living legacy
(01:06:01) A final reflection on wealth and mortality
(01:10:04) Future goals: More farms, more impact, and how to support MurphsLife
🙋♀️ Common Questions About MurphsLife: Bitcoin Philanthropy & Social Impact
What is MurphsLife and who is Aaron Murphy?
MurphsLife is a humanitarian foundation founded by Aaron Murphy. It started by sharing stories of families in need on social media (gaining over 6 million followers) and evolved into building sustainable ecosystems—farms, homes, and women's shelters—in Latin America to end cycles of poverty and violence.
How is MurphsLife using Bitcoin to end poverty in El Salvador?
Unlike traditional charities that just give money, MurphsLife uses Bitcoin to build circular economies. They pay workers in Bitcoin, accept donations in Bitcoin, and build infrastructure (like the "Casa Conejo" community) where money circulates locally, empowering unbanked locals with financial sovereignty.
Why does Aaron Murphy argue for spending Bitcoin instead of HODLing?
In this episode, Aaron argues that Bitcoin must be a Medium of Exchange, not just a Store of Value. He believes that spending Bitcoin now to build physical assets (farms, businesses, homes) creates real-world adoption and saves lives today, rather than hoarding wealth for an uncertain future.
What is the "Default Mode Network" regarding poverty?
Aaron explains that simply giving a homeless person a house often fails because of the "Default Mode Network"—the brain's tendency to return to familiar habits, even if they are traumatic. True rehabilitation requires healing the heart and providing a supportive community, not just changing the physical location.
Where are the MurphsLife communities located?
The primary operations discussed in this episode are in El Salvador (often referred to as "Bitcoin Mountain" or Casa Conejo) and Ecuador, where they operate sustainable food farms and women's shelters.
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DJ Valerie B LOVE 🩷
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📚 Resources & Links Mentioned
Document: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System by Satoshi Nakamoto
Concept: The "Default Mode Network" (Why trauma survivors naturally return to familiar chaos)
Organization: BTC DADA (Women’s Bitcoin education in Africa)
📜 Full Episode Transcript
DJ Valerie B LOVE: Aloha, love tribe. Happy Friday. Happy birthday to me! It's my birthday and I chose to do an extra podcast this week with somebody who I had the privilege and pleasure of talking to yesterday about how he is helping people out of violence, out of oppression, and out of hopelessness. This is Aaron Murphy, the founder of Murph's Life. Thanks, Aaron, for taking time to talk to me today.
Aaron Murphy: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me and happy birthday.
DJ Valerie B LOVE: Thank you. Really cool. Like you think about birthday presents, right? In the old days, you're like, "Oh my gosh, I hope I get this little thing." But for me now as an elder, my thing is I want to help other people get their things. I feel like that's something that you're aligned with. Can you help everybody understand who you are and how you got here? Obviously, as a Bitcoiner, we have a lot in common, but you have such a huge backstory of how you created Murph's Life and this beautiful dream in El Salvador to help other people get out of poverty and violence.
Aaron Murphy: Basically, my name is Aaron Murphy and I'm just a regular dude. I feel like I've already lived 10 lives. I grew up in Canada, moved all over, lived in my grandma's basement, lived in a little trailer park on the outskirts of an indigenous community in northern Alberta called Horse Lake. Then we went to the States—Utah, California, Texas.
Now, I've lived in about 12 Latin American countries. Right now, I'm mostly between El Salvador and Ecuador where we have three food farms. We're building a pretty large community here in El Salvador and we have six safe homes—women's shelters—in South America where we work with the police. Women come usually after attempted murder or incest within indigenous communities deep in the Amazon where there are alcohol problems.
These women and children come with a lot of emotional damage and trauma. We put them into our six-month program. We have local therapists, psychiatrists, and we teach them self-love. That is the big thing. We teach them how to work at the same time—how to cook, sew, make wedding cakes. After the six-month program, we move them into a home, help them get new beds, a stove, a little business going. So far, it's 10 out of 10.
It's expensive, so that's why we're now building the engine to this airplane. We're building Casa Conejo, our large community in El Salvador. We're building a whole micro-economy around tourism: hotels, restaurants, a store, a coffee shop, a bar. It's a place where people can come for tourism, knowing two things: one, there is profit share for all the workers so they have an amazing salary; and two, the money goes back into the ecosystem for us to continue our work with our shelters and food farms around the world.
DJ Valerie B LOVE: Let's take a step back. Your backstory was that you were struggling with partying and drinking, and then COVID happened, and suddenly you had $200 to your name and you gave it away. How did you have this "come to Jesus" moment? Most people just try to get more for themselves. You chose to go do service.
Aaron Murphy: Once you hit rock bottom, you know, there's nowhere else to go. Sometimes you just have to laugh and say, "It can't get any worse than this." That happened around 2016 or 2017. I used to throw concerts, parties, and music festivals—the "Rooftop Series" in downtown Salt Lake. Every day was a house party.
My body just kind of gave out. I started getting bad anxiety. I was coming up to my 30s and had friends overdosing and dying. I thought, "Am I going to be in my 30s, 40s, 50s doing this shit?" My body hit a point where I couldn't party anymore. I think it was my soul telling me that this isn't my purpose.
I went sober for a year and decided to go backpacking. I was going to go for a month, but it turned into three months. Then COVID broke out. I was stuck in a small community. There were no planes, no taxis. I was staying in a Venezuelan refugee camp—a pretty shitty apartment sharing one toilet with no seat—but I felt really good. I felt peace. I felt joy just hanging out with my new friends every night.
One night, around 2 or 3 in the morning, I just had this ecstasy come into my body—this really powerful emotion, this spirit coming over me. That's when I knew everything would change. From there, the next month there was like $100,000 in our Venmo account. All the videos were going viral.
DJ Valerie B LOVE: You have six million followers on TikTok. If Martin Luther King or Gandhi had six million people, imagine the impact. What would you tell people listening who want to make the world a better place? How do you get those numbers?
Aaron Murphy: Anyone can get big numbers on the internet now. But one, it has to be authentic. Two, don't just follow trends. Figure out what you're truly passionate about and make content around that.
But honestly, none of the views matter. What matters is raising money so I can buy more farms and plant more trees. I love getting millions of views, but ultimately, we are all just human. One day we're going to die and everyone's going to forget about us. What a beautiful thing that we just return back to our spirit.
DJ Valerie B LOVE: I want to ask you about step three. You get people out of abuse (step one), you stabilize them (step two), but what happens when they leave? Do you just put them out on the street?
Aaron Murphy: It's a complicated subject. I've brought about seven or eight families in, and none of them stayed. They always go back to what they knew. They go back to their environment. It's called the Default Mode Network (DMN).
It doesn't matter if you are in El Salvador or the United States; people will go to their Default Mode Network because it feels familiar. When you relocate someone to a totally different place, you remove their support system. Even women in abusive situations still have uncles, grandmas, or friends. We haven't had one success story yet by bringing people to our farm; they always end up leaving because they miss their family.
So, we focus on healing the heart where the love was missing. If you can plant that seed of self-esteem inside their heart and create a support system where they are—teach them about finances, teach them how to sew, buy them a sewing machine—that is the best way to do it.
DJ Valerie B LOVE: The experience of the human to feel familiar with something is underestimated. People feel freaked out when they're in new situations. Spending money without being sensitive to the environment where people flourish is just pissing money out of a bucket.
Aaron Murphy: Exactly. That's why for Сasa Conejo, we are building a model. We have a piece of land, about 10 acres. We want to build duplexes or affordable housing where people can be part of a community foundation. They follow rules like using bio-digesters so we aren't destroying the earth.
This is the idea of Bitcoin Mountain. It’s a model that can break through the conscious barrier so thousands of people can duplicate it. We’re building a circular economy with a grocery store, restaurant, greenhouse, and hiring 100 families. We want to build a Bitcoin educational center where everyone gets paid in sats.
Aaron Murphy: This is where I clash with a lot of people. Everyone is just like, "Hold, hold, hold forever." Who gives a fuck? What if an asteroid comes?
DJ Valerie B LOVE: Medium of exchange versus store of value—you need to have both. There are people saying "never sell," and I think that's ridiculous. They've never read the white paper. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer medium of exchange. If you aren't understanding that, you're playing "crypto," not Bitcoin.
Aaron Murphy: Exactly. I have a bit of Bitcoin that I won't sell for 20 years for my daughter. But I'm spending the majority of my Bitcoin to build the dream here. My main thing is teaching women how to feed their kids.
If everyone spent just 10% of their Bitcoin and we created millions of acres of sustainable food farms, wouldn't that create massive adoption? That's what I am aiming for. I'm not selling 100%, but we're selling a large amount to build infrastructure. We’re training neighbors on permaculture, on how not to use Monsanto.
All these Bitcoiners are bitching about how the food is unhealthy, but then they live like cheap asses because they want to hoard coins. I don't want to live like that. What's more important to me than all the Bitcoin in my wallet is being able to say: when shit hits the fan, when the dollar crashes, I have a place where my daughter can eat healthy food, has clean water, and we know how to take care of the earth.
DJ Valerie B LOVE: Spending replaces. Every time you use the Swift network, you're voting for violence. Every time you use Lightning or Bitcoin, you're voting for decentralization and peace.
Aaron Murphy: My friend Johnny D died a few weeks ago. He was the "richest" of us in terms of holding, but he never spent it. He didn't do anything with it for humanity. We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. That is the importance of not storing up so much earthly wealth but storing up treasures in heaven—which is inside.
DJ Valerie B LOVE: That is powerful. Aaron, thank you for the work you are doing. Everyone, you can find him at murphslifefoundation.com. What is the number one thing you need right now?
Aaron Murphy: Just donations to keep building. More farms.
DJ Valerie B LOVE: You heard it here. Peace, love, and warm aloha. Thanks again, Aaron.
Aaron Murphy: Thank you. Aloha.
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