The UpTake: A seed investment from some of bitcoin’s most respected investors will help this startup engage in some unusual marketing techniques in the tropics of South America.

A midst the deadly poison-dart arrow frogs of Panama and the massive guinea pig-like capybara, are the headquarters of Coinapult, a bitcoin company that today announced a $775,000 seed investment from some of the best known names in cryptocurrency.

But in a country where more than half the population doesn’t have traditional Internet access, in a part of the world where 65 percent are unbanked, Coinapult’s chief executive won’t be spending this investment round on your typical marketing campaign.

“Our team has had a lot of fun over the last couple weeks trying different outreach programs and Meetups in different countries,” said Ira Miller, the company’s CEO in a phone call yesterday. Coinapult was the first company to develop a means to send and receive bitcoins using nothing more than an SMS message, letting those with feature phones, even without the Internet, participate in the bitcoin economy.

Miller says he manages the company like a social media platform, depending on the inherent virality of an economic exchange. By getting his technology into the hands of a few trendsetters, market adoption—and thereby, he hopes, Coinapult adoption—will take care of itself. To incentivize those early transactions when a user is still learning the ins and outs of bitcoin, Miller and his team regularly visit cafes and other public spaces and give away bitcoins.

“You meet someone in a bar or a café and you want to explain bitcoin to them, I’ve tried a hundred different ways of explaining it—going over it from an economics perspective, from a finance perspective, from personal consumptions perspective,” said Miller. “And all of it sounds very wonky to people. But when you just show them and you put it in their hands you get this aha moment.” A portion of the $775,000 round will be earmarked to give away.