Cryptocurrency: El Salvador To Build Bitcoin City By The Sea Powered By Volcanoes

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Nov 21 15:47:52 PST 2021


El Salvador to Build Cryptocurrency-Fueled 'Bitcoin City'

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele (AP)

In a rock concert-like atmosphere, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele
announced that his government will build an oceanside “Bitcoin City”
at the base of a volcano.

Bukele used a gathering of Bitcoin enthusiasts Saturday night to
launch his latest idea, much as he used a an earlier Bitcoin
conference in Miami to announce in a video message that El Salvador
would be the first country to make the cryptocurrency legal tender,

A bond offering would happen in 2022 entirely in Bitcoin, Bukele said,
wearing his signature backwards baseball cap. And 60 days after
financing was ready, construction would begin.

The city will be built near the Conchagua volcano to take advantage of
geothermal energy to power both the city and Bitcoin mining — the
energy-intensive solving of complex mathematical calculations day and
night to verify currency transactions.

The government is already running a pilot Bitcoin mining venture at
another geothermal power plant beside the Tecapa volcano.

The oceanside Conchagua volcano sits in southeastern El Salvador on
the Gulf of Fonseca.

The government will provide land and infrastructure and work to
attract investors.

The only tax collected there will be the value-added tax, half of
which will be used to pay the municipal bonds and the rest for
municipal infrastructure and maintenance. Bukele said there would be
no property, income or municipal taxes and the city would have zero
carbon dioxide emissions.

The city would be built with attracting foreign investment in mind.
There would be residential areas, malls, restaurants and a port,
Bukele said. The president talked of digital education, technology and
sustainable public transportation.

“Invest here and earn all the money you want,” Bukele told the
cheering crowd in English at the closing of the Latin American Bitcoin
and Blockchain Conference being held in El Salvador.

Bitcoin has been legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar since Sept. 7.

The government is backing Bitcoin with a $150 million fund. To
incentivize Salvadorans to use it, the government offered $30 worth of
credit to those who use its digital wallet.

Critics have warned that the currency’s lack of transparency could
attract increased criminal activity to the country and that the
digital currency’s wild swings in value would pose a risk to those
holding it.

Bitcoin was originally created to operate outside government
controlled financial systems and Bukele says it will help attract
foreign investment to El Salvador and make it cheaper for Salvadorans
living abroad to send money home to their families.

Concern among the Salvadoran opposition and outside observers has
grown this year as Bukele has moved to consolidate power.

Voters gave the highly popular president’s party control of the
congress earlier this year. The new lawmakers immediately replaced the
members of the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court and the
attorney general, leaving Bukele’s party firmly in control of the
other branches of government.

The U.S. government in response said it would shift its aid away from
government agencies to civil society organizations. This month, Bukele
sent a proposal to congress that would require organizations receiving
foreign funding to register as foreign agents.


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