Two months ago he put the bitcoin as legal tender in The Savior, and has just taken a new step. President Nayib B Watch will build “Bitcoin City“as part of the plan to turn his country into a world financial center.
Bukele started the bitcoin era in September, amid the mistrust and enthusiasm of the international community, when the cryptocurrency was above $ 44,000. Until this Sunday the cryptoactive it had appreciated more than 30% and is around $ 60,000.
During his tenure, 1,120 bitcoins those that, according to said, have registered “sufficient profits” to begin the construction of the first public veterinary hospital and 20 schools.
“Bitcoin has begun to change the world and will change it even more. El Salvador is in a historic moment,” said the president before a crowd of bitcoiners gathered in Mizata, a Pacific beach located 80 km southwest of San Salvador.
The city
In Mizata it was the end of the party for Labitconf, a global forum that has brought together enthusiasts and millionaires of cryptocurrencies. There he announced the launch of “Bitcoin City”.
Still without construction deadline, it will be in the coastal city of Conchagua, where the volcano of the same name is located, which will give it energy through a geothermal plant. It will have an airport, residential and commercial areas and a square with the bitcoin symbol in the center.
With no other tax other than that of the value added (VAT), it will be an ecological city, and will be initially financed with bonds issued in the bitcoin ecosystem, equivalent to about 1,000 million dollars.
“El Salvador will be the financial center of the world. The Singapore of America”, said Samsom Mow, strategic director Blockstream, provider of blockchain technology – in which cryptocurrencies operate – and who supports Bukele in the issuance of the “Bitcoin Bonds“.
Break dollars
At Labitconf, on Thursday, Max Keiser, a bitcoin evangelist, broke dollars in public during his lecture.
“Bitcoin in El Salvador is the declaration of independence for the 21st century (…). On Twitter I say that President Bukele is the new George Washington,” he added.
Attendees bragged about how they could shop with the cryptocurrency from their breakfast at a McDonald’s to the traditional pupusas, thick corn tortillas stuffed with cheese and pork.
Among the lecturers was virtually the American Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX and one of the richest people in cryptocurrencies in the world, according to Forbes, with a fortune equivalent to 26,000 million dollars.
– “Discover the fire” –
“Bitcoin is not an investment, it is a discovery, it is one of the most important discoveries of humanity, it can be equated to the discovery of fire in prehistory,” said Daniel Alos, Argentine collaborator of the Hodl Hodl platform, and podcaster of BTC in Spanish.
More than half of the 6.7 million Salvadorans have downloaded the Chivo application, the digital wallet, on their cell phones, which with a gift equivalent to 30 dollars, made available to the government to stimulate transactions and receive remittances from abroad.
It is mandatory to accept operations with bitcoin, but the end user can opt for dollars in the final transaction, the official currency of the country 20 years ago.
“We bitcoiners have always had problems accessing financial markets, accessing banking and here (in El Salvador) the opposite happens, we are welcome to bring our investments,” Alos commented.
Bitcoin furor
Another of the attendees was the Venezuelan Ramses Meneses “McKlopedia”, 37, a rapper with 623,000 followers in Instagram and dedicated to art in NFT (token no fungible), digital artwork.
“Artists with the subject of NFTs, which is cryptocurrency technology applied to art, can create artistic works that allow us to generate direct income without intermediaries,” he tells AFP. “It is a revolution,” he said.
A digital video by artist Beeple, purchased in 2020, sold in early 2021 for more than $ 6 million.
The former president of the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador, Carlos Acevedo placeholder imageOn the sidelines of the conference, he estimated that despite being a “high risk speculative asset”, investment in bitcoin has become “attractive” because it is going through “one of its best streaks.”
Salvadoran economist Luis Membreno told AFP, “a currency must be stable, allowing people to make financial planning, not exposing the scarce resources that many people have to volatility that can lead them to lose what little they have. have “.
But his Argentine colleague Carlos Maslatón considered that bitcoin has “a long way to go”, which could reach close to $ 400,000 in two years.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx