Sean McDonnell was sitting in an Airbnb in El Salvador when Bukele's brother walked through the door. It was August 2021, four weeks before Bitcoin would become legal tender, and Sean had flown in on a day's notice to help the Athena Bitcoin team prepare for the national rollout. He didn't have a job title. He didn't really have a role. But twelve guys were crammed into this rental trying to figure out how to get Walmart and McDonald's accepting Bitcoin before the deadline, and Sean was one of them.

Two years later, he'd channel that same energy into launching an electrolyte company from a surf town in Indonesia.

Who Is Sean McDonnell?

Sean McDonnell is the founder of Salt of the Earth, a premium electrolyte brand based in Miami Beach. He grew up in Barrington, Illinois, played lacrosse at DePaul University, and spent a decade as a test subject at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, which happened to be right across the street from his high school.

What followed college was a run of ventures that don't make sense on a resume but make perfect sense if you know Sean. Sales at Groupon, where he talked his way into getting paid to ski for a week at Squaw Valley. A pirate snowboard instruction operation at Beaver Creek that started with a Craigslist ad offering free lessons and ended with NFL tight end Jeremy Shockey hiring him as a personal instructor. That turned into a job at a family office in South Beach, which turned into a coding bootcamp in 2017, where Sean built Cabbage Patch, a Bitcoin dollar-cost-averaging app that rounded up your purchases and bought BTC with the spare change. He won the bootcamp's final competition.

How Did Salt of the Earth Start?

Salt of the Earth was founded in Bali in 2023, during a surf sabbatical that wasn't supposed to become a business.

Sean was surfing three to four hours every morning, training at a local fitness center, doing sauna and ice baths, and completely crashing by midday. He was sweating through four or five liters a day in the tropical heat. Water wasn't cutting it. Caffeine wasn't either.

Then he tried something simple: pink Himalayan salt in his water. "It changed everything," he said on TFTC. "I was totally a different person. I was able to push through and recover and get up and just keep going."

That wasn't a random guess. Sean had been getting his sweat analyzed at the Gatorade lab since high school. He knew sports hydration science firsthand. He just hadn't built a product with it yet.

In Bali, he started visiting suppliers, tweaking formulas, working on packaging with designers in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, and taking pre-orders before the product was even finished. He studied LMNT and Liquid IV, figured out what each did well and where they fell short, and built something he believed was better.

What Makes Salt of the Earth Different?

Salt of the Earth is a premium electrolyte stick pack with 3,300mg of electrolytes per serving. Zero sugar, sweetened with allulose. Each stick mixes into 12-16oz of water.

The formula starts with sodium from Pink Himalayan Salt. Sean is 100% Irish and originally wanted to use Celtic salt to represent his heritage, but the research showed Pink Himalayan carried more trace minerals and fewer contaminants. So he went with the science over the sentiment.

From there, it's potassium chloride, a dual magnesium blend (glycinate, which is the most bioavailable form and helps with muscle recovery, and L-threonate, which supports brain health), and calcium lactate. Sean added the calcium after researching how the body pulls calcium from bones during heavy sweating if you're not replacing it.

Seven flavors: Grapefruit, Orange, Pink Lemonade, Strawberry Kiwi, Watermelon, Chocolate, and Unflavored. The unflavored version has zero additives, making it a clean option for fasting.

The competitor comparison comes down to specifics. LMNT uses regular sodium chloride (table salt) instead of Pink Himalayan. Liquid IV spent two years and significant R&D money landing on allulose as a sugar-free sweetener. Sean saw that news break while he was developing his own formula and took the cue. And Prime Hydration, the Logan Paul brand, has 800mg of electrolytes but nearly all of it is potassium. "That's not hydrating you," Sean said. "You don't sweat potassium. You sweat salt. That's what Salt of the Earth does. Gets you the salt."

Sean also points to something bigger behind the mainstream options. Gatorade's original mission was simple: put back in what you're sweating out. But once PepsiCo acquired them, the incentives shifted. More sugar, more additives, more ways to hook you. They still make products with electrolytes, but the original purpose got diluted by corporate interests. Salt of the Earth is trying to get back to what that mission was supposed to be.

Olympic gold medalist Caroline Marks uses Salt of the Earth. Pink Lemonade and Strawberry Kiwi have each accumulated nearly 1,000 customer reviews on drinksote.com.

Why Does Salt of the Earth Accept Bitcoin?

Because Sean was a Bitcoiner long before he was an electrolyte guy.

He fell down the rabbit hole in college, started building in the space in 2017 with Cabbage Patch, and traveled to El Salvador on his own just to surf and buy pupusas with Lightning payments at Bitcoin Beach. Not for a job. Not for a project. Just because he wanted to see it working in the real world. When the Athena team needed help with the national rollout a few months later, he was on a flight the next day.

He cold-DM'd Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on Instagram to hand-deliver a Bitcoin Beach t-shirt to City Hall. Suarez said come by tomorrow. Sean showed up.

The electrolyte company came from a Bitcoiner, not the other way around. Sean doesn't talk about Bitcoin as a payment strategy or a marketing angle. He keeps a healthy distance from the noise on Bitcoin Twitter but he's always paying attention, always building with it in mind. Accepting Bitcoin at checkout via Lightning, giving sats back on every order through Oshi — that's just how he runs his business. It's not a feature. It's the default.

How Do You Earn Bitcoin at Salt of the Earth?

You earn Bitcoin at Salt of the Earth through the Bitcoin Rewards platform on every purchase. Here's how it works:

1. Shop at drinksote.com and pick your electrolytes.
2. Claim your Bitcoin rewards. Opt into marketing during checkout to receive your rewards by email, or look for the claim link on the order confirmation page.
3. Refer friends for a bonus. Share your referral link and you both earn on each purchase.

You don't need to pay with Bitcoin to earn rewards. Any payment method works. Salt of the Earth is one of many brands on the Bitcoin Rewards marketplace where you can earn bitcoin shopping at small businesses just by spending normally.

Stay humble. Stay hydrated.

See also: Earn Bitcoin at Tropical Oasis →

Podcast Appearances

• TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast — What It Was Like Launching Bitcoin In El Salvador with Sean McDonnell