Bitcoin Forum

El Salvador is putting to market a 1 Billion issuance of bonds with the objective of deploying an increased bitcoin infrastructure plus direct investments in bitcoin holdings. At least half to the proceedings from these "volcano bonds" are to be directly invested in purchasing bitcoin.

Bitcoin City is the flagship tokenised project of a tax free city funded by these 6.5% yielding bonds (currently in the CCC bond territory in my view - Trash debt AKA "High Yield").

https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/el-salvador-plans-first-bitcoin-city-backed-by-bitcoin-bonds-2021-11-21/ (https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/el-salvador-plans-first-bitcoin-city-backed-by-bitcoin-bonds-2021-11-21/)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-21/el-salvador-plans-1b-in-tokenized-bitcoin-bonds-bukele-says (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-21/el-salvador-plans-1b-in-tokenized-bitcoin-bonds-bukele-says)

Yeah I don't think 6.5% is high enough for CCC bonds too, I've seen BBB ones at 8% over the past few years.

Also if they're declaring investing some into bitcoin then most of their investors might be trying to go into it charitibly or just not expecting good returns (at which they could just invest in bitcoin).

I personally think that people will buy into the bonds just because of how much money printing are going on right now.

People and institutions will likely see this as one level higher than a junk bond just because of the fact that there is a clear roadmap as to what to do with this money, and El Salvador clearly has a good future going ahead with their BTC plan.

I don't necessarily think that centralizing BTC infrastructure in one country is good though...

I like that being tax free.

It's going to be one reason why the people of El Salvador would be investing into that bond. Aside from getting into bitcoin, their president is serious with all the advancement and potential that they can maximize for bitcoin.

This development is a good initiative and if it becomes a success, other countries that are eyeing for the same thing would probably have their test run for it.

Despite the challenges that bitcoin and cryptocurrency is facing in other parts of the world,  It's really great to see that in a country like El Salvador, they are making advances at integrating bitcoin into domestic life and use. I like the fact that the president is an Innovative pioneer thinker not afraid to start /try out something new. The people of El Salvador will come to appreciate his efforts towards advancing them in the years to come.

I was actually very excited when I read on the news that El Salvador will build a Bitcoin City with no income tax, no capital gains tax, no property tax, and no payroll tax. That is one giant step only a bold leader could make. I wonder how effective that would be in attracting investors. It is worth anticipating. But, either way, I really admire leaders who, for better or for worse, are decisive enough to make radical steps toward development.

By the way, both your sources are only accessible to registered or subscribed readers.

This is a big step forward in the cryptospace that no other country have taken initiative. El Salvador keep on doing something positive with bitcoin. The total population of the country is 6.5 million. To this population it is an easy thing to implement, and the leader too have taken a bold decision. The bold decision will surely attract more investors and business startups. Bitcoin City is a long time discussion, and finally El Salvador have made it come true.

Props to Bukele for everything that's happening in El Salvador. Everything wouldn't have been possible had El Salvador not elected a millennial populist who has optimized all available leverage in pursuing a radical and somehow eccentric vision. It is not a curious case that this kind of initiative is happening only in El Salvador, and in so quick a time and somehow smoothly.

This is more about Bukele really. The perfect mixture of high popularity among the population, moderate authoritarianism among fellow leaders, and radical views in a man of a youthful and cool demeanor paved the way for everything that's happening now in the country.

Bitcoin is available to all the leaders of the world but it is only in El Salvador that it really unfolds to its extreme. The question was, how opposed are you against the established system? How far will you go to disrupt it? Not all leaders could answer these the way Bukele does.

I heard the news last night. Just to point out it is not 100% tax free, it will have a 10% VAT tax. Which is not bad at all.

I hope the city will be a success and more places will want to copy it.

Faced with a model that has both political and economic power that wants to manage things from above, this model, in which the organization is built eminently from below with interpersonal relationships is the dream of the authors of the Austrian school.

I am not surprised that the project was initiated by Bukele and not by Biden and some other politician of the same style.

Making him more popular in the media since he seems to be making noise because of this adoption he initiates. It's the determination of the leader to bring prosperity to thier nation. But I wouldn't say it all for him but he is making a big development in his country which is for all.

There are two ways so far that are being done for the city which is releasing tokens like Miamicoin and this bond backed by Bitcoin of El Salvador. So if any country or city wants to follow, I guess these two are thier models.

It should be appreciated how El Salvador's journey, which began some time ago and carried out further development, signifies their success in managing the people in the country to interact more actively with Bitcoin and now we have seen it used to.

Based on the article that you shared, I found a statement that is quite promising and will certainly be realized in the near future, as Bukele said:
"Invest here and make all the money you want," Just as short as that made me interested without thinking, if I lived there I might be part of those who invest.

Since El Salvador adopted Bitcoin, various developments and improvements in the country have attracted quite a lot of attention. And every thing that Bukele president does will always be associated with Bitcoin which is the newest symbol for certain cities in El Salvador. The first city of Bitcoin, so I'm interested if one day we will visit there and show that it is a real city that we can visit.

Man, the president of El Salvador is young, just judging by his appearance.  In a way, that's great to see because he may not have been jaded by the corrupt world of politics just yet and might also have some fresh ideas (like the one being discussed here). 


That sounds enticing, doesn't it?  I honestly don't know if I would take that statement at face value, because there are always some strings attached when someone says something like that--and in addition, the part about the volcano powering the operation comes off as being a bit crazy-like.


Now that's a hell of a lot of bitcoin he's talking about there.  Makes me wonder where that bitcoin would come from, assuming things are actually paid for with BTC and not fiat.

I like this part of the story:



No income, property, capital gain or payroll taxes!!?   :o

Sounds almost too good to be true. That is one way to attract whales and deep pockets into living in your country and city. To accomplish the polar opposite of capital flight.

Of course, politicians have made promises like this for a long time now. Even greece made big promises about the future of its solar power industry while in the midst of their great debt quandary.

Its easy to say and promise these things. Whether they become a reality is something else entirely.

I thought there's no income tax to pay but if that there's 10% VAT tax isn't bad at all which is the result of a small amount to pay.

I wonder how their economy survives with the tax-free implementation and we know taxes are the source of which the economy has developed.

I'd nothing to say but good luck and I hope we saw a better result of this experiment of the El Salvador government.  So that other countries will follow to them and next to be a Bitcoin city.

I think a place with 0 income tax, 0 capital gains, 0 property tax, 0 payroll tax, and 0 municipal tax will prove to be more vibrant economically than in places where everything is taxed. In such a scenario, I suppose investors will be attracted, businesses will thrive, jobs created, salaries high, goods and services affordable, workers living decent lives, and so on.

But this will all be at the expense of public services unless the government itself is not dependent on taxes, meaning it has other sources of revenue.

El Salvador never really fails to amuse us with its ever courageous initiatives. It's really nice to know that a leader that is bold enough to make a move regarding the development of its country and its advancement to modern technology still exists. I can say that not every leader has the guts to make a step like this because not everyone is as open-minded as Bukele in terms of what bitcoin can do to the country's economy.

Building a bitcoin city with a reasonable tax that is said to be 10% would be very beneficial to their economy. It could garner more investors and businesses to start and at the same time, people would benefit by investing in bonds. This is a wise decision for their country's and citizen's welfare. Delving into the realms of innovation and technology together with blockchain to back it up is a good start to attract more income-generating businesses that could boost their economic growth in no time. This just proves that we just really need to have a strong leader that could take the flow against the current to slowly and surely move forward. Hats off to Bukele and his fellow leaders that has the same mindset. I hope there would be more countries to follow the steps they already left for more prosperous nation. Definitely it would take time, but this one would be worth it most especially given it was done organized and well thought off.

Not too young nor too old as he's 40 year old born on 24 july 1981 and good inspiration to the world leaders who have been in power for so long but still could not manage to take such decisions.


He have many fresh ideas to promote bitcoin growth in the country ranging from using geothermal power(not volcano actually) to mine btc and then use the profits to build 20 schools out of them and now he has came up with bitcoin city plan with only 10% Value added Tax (VAT) which is quite justified if we compare it to some other capital gain tax around the globe.But if we say about corruption then US department recently published a  report (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2021/5/18/five-of-salvadoran-presidents-allies-accused-of-corruption-us) in which 5 allies of El Salvador's president Bukele were deemed to be corrupt as we found in political hierarchy not surprised by this but he seems to revolutionise the country with diminishing dollar dominance and using Bitcoin as legal tender.

Yeah that's lot of Bitcoin as it's approximately 14.28% of the total btc supply of 21 million and it would cost him billion of dollars if he could manage to get such a big portion of supply.He has many plans ahead as he is young compared to world leaders and btc enthusiastic which is good news for the residents and this city is now big move on his part.


He is really determined to make some big moves with btc being the center of attraction.

El Salvador president is a very young person, Nayib Bukele is 40 years old which means that dude is basically closer to our age by a big mile compared to most presidents in the world. Of course Europe is going younger, but look at USA for example. The last elections had two of the oldest presidential candidates ever and Biden is by far the oldest president as far as I know, even if not that old, he is still pretty old. This is why I believe that El Salvador is ahead of the curve right now, they do not have any problems within their nation that makes them stay behind and slowly build stuff, old politicians always react very slowly, and younger ones attack very quickly.

Obviously it is meant to lure in people to start and live in their country but at some point they might start to put up taxes although the tax rate will be significantly lower than most country. This was one of the reason most rich people or business owner start to move to Malta and he is basically copying that idea right now


Yeah right, IMF stands for International Monetary Fund so that means they will use whatever necessary means to get people to stay away from cryptocurrency and that is obvious

that's fine to copy the idea as long as it will be effective from their end and its people are really benefiting from it. in couple of years, we may see the impact of this bold move by El Salvador towards crypto. and if they are successful, am guessing other countries may follow their journey.
on the note about IMF's reaction, definitely they are not up for it. after all, they want countries to rely on fiat as much as possible, as it is centralised. whereas, when a country is going into crypto, they won't get a hold of it.

One of the benefits when dealing up with Bitcoin is that it is really out of centralization thing and for sure President of El salvador do really recognize this benefit which is really out of centralization and its true that whatever things do happen neither positive or negative on this country then it would really vary on how the government of El salvador did really make out steps on dealing with their current new system
which is totally focusing out with Bitcoin.If there would be some sort of improvements then other countries might really consider on taking such the same step too.

Anyone else feel like this is the El Salvadorian government attempting to do a cash grab?

Use the hype that bitcoin adoption has generated, then go to the actual end goal which is to raise funds for their sovereign debt which were always risky but people now view as somehow safer than a lot of better debtor countries.

Just my thoughts.

I sincerely hope you are wrong. At this point, quite frankly, it could go either way. It is, therefore, completely understandable and even not unexpected that there are skepticism developed within some people not just of the ability of the El Salvador government and its leadership to deliver but also of the real motives behind all this.

Personally, I better give El Salvador as well as Bukele the benefit of the doubt. I, of course, wish them success. The success of this undertaking is not just the success of El Salvador and those who made everything possible but also of Bitcoin itself and especially of the businesses and the people who will no longer pay income tax, capital gains, property tax, payroll tax, and municipal tax.

Lots of Negative Nancy replies to this innovation in here, but they are missing the bigger picture. El Salvador introduced this, because they want the mostly poor citizens to pay less remittance fees for international money transfers and they want them to pay less Banking fees.

They also want to create a city with less taxes and also an opportunity for international Crypto mining operations to relocate to, with renewable "clean" energy. They also want to create a tourism magnet for all Bitcoiners around the world... where you can pay with your favorite alternative currency.  ;)

Tax free is it really possible? Then how the government will spend money for the development of the country because tax is the main source of revenue for every government and from that only they allocate budget for everything that is going to happen in that country so its just nothing but a strategy to say that they are on the right track so can lure more investment into their country.

How does it work though? Maybe we have been told differently and maybe we can't see it but I have to say something doesn't add up. If we have no taxes at all then who pays for the stuff a government needs to provide? What about the police? What about the firefighters? I mean you could make education and healthcare private and charge people with it but libraries? Hell there are so many other things that you need to consider as well.

It just doesn't make sense to me to pay zero taxes because it would be hard to live in a society where there is ZERO taxes available. There needs to be at least a little and that would be a lot better than paying 50% taxes like in my nation, but I want the taxes to drop, not be gone.

Its as obvious as it can get. Every country that provide safe haven in form of taxes, security and other stuff are meant to grab cash from people that might want to visit or stay in their country. The offer needs to be as lucrative as it can get so people wont hesitate to move in but whatever it is, bitcoin gets a free worldwide hype thanks to that so yeah it works out good for both

There will always be a lot of negative reviews whenever someone does something good for crypto. I hate Elon Musk with a burning fire but the things he did for crypto is marvelous, and I support him only on those crypto views because everything else I hate him.

It means even if you dislike El Salvador, even if you dislike their president, even if you dislike the idea itself and how the money could be used differently, even if you believe this is a great idea but won't be done and used for president to steal money from public, whatever the reason you are not supporting it, it is clear that it will be a help towards crypto world and we should be very happy about it. Even the "news" of it helps crypto and that means as long as there are good news on crypto then we should be supporting it and I am 100% behind this new idea since it will help me grow my portfolio.

It sounds good, too good to be true if I am honest, obviously this is the kind of thing the members of the forum have always wanted, however we must remember the aim of this market is financial independence from third parties through decentralization, so while at some point someone has to start a project like this and become the first city of its kind, it will be kind of dangerous at the beginning as there is only one of those cities meaning there will be a lot of bitcoin holders just in one city reducing the decentralization we have as right now bitcoin holders are all over the world.

To be fair, I don't think this is the kind of tax haven that is being offered in countries like Panama, Switzerland, Virgin Islands, Luxembourg, and others. So if you are referring to these places, I don't agree with you. I haven't seen the details of this Bitcoin City but I suppose it is not built for the rich foreigners from other countries to shirk tax responsibilities in their home countries. This is Bitcoin City so I assume that this does not offer all those kinds of offshore banking services and products which tax haven countries are famous for.



On the contrary, it is my impression that there is indeed financial independence in a Bitcoin City or a Bitcoin country. Right now, solid Bitcoin advocates and supporters are flocking to El Salvador because of what they could offer. But I don't think decentralization is reduced in the process. It is always understandable that Bitcoin supporters would be attracted by Bitcoin-friendly places.