Bitcoin Forum

During the last event of “Bitcoin Week'', "Feel the Bit", in El Salvador last November 20th, President Nayib Bukele announced a project for the first El Salvador bitcoin bond issue, nicknamed ESBB1.

The project is quite convoluted, having financial, technological, and practical implications. We will cover all of these, but I will try to focus more on the economic and technical aspects of this, leaving the discussion of the details of the Bitcoin City part of the citizenship project to other threads.



1. The Masterplan

El Salvador, the only country in which bitcoin is a legal tender, announced a debt issuance to raise capital in order to "accelerate hyperbitcoinization and bring about a new financial system on top of Bitcoin," according to a blog post by Blockstream. Half of the Proceeds of the bonds will be used to build a new city, nicknamed “Bitcoin City”, in the Gulf of Fonseca, in the immediate vicinity of an active volcano, whose geothermal energy will be used not only to power the city itself but also to mine bitcoins. The city would have no income, property, capital gain or labour taxes but would be financed only by a 10% sales tax.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FEsDJ3rXEAU1xWB.jpg

As only half of the capital will be used to build this “bitcoin infrastructure”, the other half of the bond sale proceeds will be used to pay a special “bitcoin dividend” to the bondholders, which would significantly raise the final bond yield. The plan is to use such capital to buy bitcoins on the market, hodl them for five years, and then subsequently return part of the appreciation of those to the investor across the last five years of the bonds in the form of an annual coupon payment financed by the sell of a corresponding amount of those bitcoins.
Thirdly, the investor who buys more than 100,000 USD of the bond would have the possibility to apply for El Salvador citizenship.
The bond is meant to be fully tokenised in a wholly digital form developed with Blockstream. This would allow the decentralised exchange of the bond using the Liquid sidechain. The bond purchase will be possible in USD, BTC, and USDT, and, given the unique digital feature, the minimum purchase amount would be 100 USD only. This feature will help “democratise access to the bond”.

If you want to discuss the masterplan of El Salvador and the construction of the Bitcoin City, I suggest you this thread:

First Bitcoin City (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5372455)

 

---

2. The Bond details

Few details have emerged so far. The only details are those revealed at such a conference and a few later interviews with Bitcoin entrepreneur Samson Mow, as President Nayib Bukele didn’t attend a press conference meant to give out more details.

 
The termsheet of the bond was published on a presentation slide and reads as follows:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob5226dfd1a29750c0.png

According to the Termsheet

• The bond will be issued in January 2022. It will be US dollar-denominated (USD is legal tender in El Salvador) and with a potential size of 1 billion.
  
• The bond will mature in 10 years, or January 2032 and will pay an annual coupon of 6.5%.
• After the first five years, the bond will start selling an equal amount of bitcoin each quarter. The sale has been spread over multiple quarters to minimise market impact.
  
• After the initial bitcoin purchase has been covered, the bond will start paying an additional “bitcoin dividend”. The bond will pay an additional coupon determined as the 50% of the potential bitcoin gain from selling the 20% of the bitcoin held by the bond. If the proceeds of such a sale produce a profit, this will be shared in equal parts with the investor.
• Remember that the bond will use only 50% of the funds to buy bitcoin. So the “bitcoin dividend” will pay to the investor 50% of the gain on that 50% investment.

In the following example, you can see all the cash flow of the bond, according to the bitcoin price in the second row:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob47dcb8025f8654ff.png (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u_tG-Wstx7yxSPJuNLRe8REIThwx1zHZADHUmI7w9AI/edit?usp=sharing)
 Spreadsheet  (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u_tG-Wstx7yxSPJuNLRe8REIThwx1zHZADHUmI7w9AI/edit?usp=sharing)

Blockstream, a Canadian blockchain solutions company, helped El Salvador to structure the bond, working in close connection over the last few months. In addition, the government is going to issue a few particular laws for Bitfinex actually to sell the bond:

This will probably take some time; providing the issuer and the operation arrangements with a legal framework within which to operate is an incredibly demanding task. But, above all, this one is the first experiment with so many aspects to consider.

To my knowledge, this bond will be the first fully-fledged digital bond in the world. The bond will be traded on Blockstream AMP, a platform used to issue, trade, and manage digital assets issued on the Liquid Network. The trading activity would be entirely digital, 24/7 (weekends and bank holidays included then) over a blockchain (albeit a permissioned one) on a fully digital form: not only the bond part of the trade will be digital, but also the “purchase “ part will be fully digital, through either fiat, BTC or stablecoins. This would drive costs down for both the issuer and the investors.
The actual trading would be done with the interface of Bitfinex, which will provide onboarding, a matching engine, and order processing of the orders and trades.

In this spreadsheet  (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u_tG-Wstx7yxSPJuNLRe8REIThwx1zHZADHUmI7w9AI/edit?usp=sharing), you can find a copy of the termsheet.

---

3. El Salvador as an issuer in traditional finance

El Salvador has a poor financial situation. The country has a CCC+ rating. Essentially, their financial stability is rated as “junk”.
This condition precluded the country from accessing traditional financial markets, as many money managers cannot buy Junk Bonds and those who can require high premiums to do so.
El Salvador has a few outstanding bonds:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob0b440196e37bfedb.png (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u_tG-Wstx7yxSPJuNLRe8REIThwx1zHZADHUmI7w9AI/edit#gid=730459554&range=A1)

As you can see, there are only 12 bonds maturing from 2023 up to 2052. Remember that the US has over a few hundred available bonds to construct the same bond curve.

The yield curve is as follows:

	https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob2a8a68c709db8860.png (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u_tG-Wstx7yxSPJuNLRe8REIThwx1zHZADHUmI7w9AI/edit#gid=730459554&range=Y1)
	El Salvador Yield Curve: it's inverted; shorter maturities require higher yield.

This graph plots the maturity date of each El Salvador bond, coupling each maturity with the associated yield: the resulting line is called the "Yield Curve" and plots the line we would like to use to exchange capital in time. Usually, those slopes are tilted upwards. Whatever the issuer, if I lend the money, I want to receive a higher premium for letting someone use such for a long time because of the credit risk. Credit risk, which represents the risk of the borrower not returning the funds, ideally increases with time.

Shorter maturities require higher yields; this is quite common across distressed issuers. Basically, the idea is the following: if you manage to navigate through the immediate difficulties, later things will probably be much better, so a lower premium will be required. This produces these weird "inverse" yield curves you don't usually see amongst more credit-worthy issuers.

Since the introduction of the Bitcoin Law and the subsequent friction with the IMF, El Salvador bonds have been losing premium constantly, with yields going north (remember that if the price of a bond falls, the implied yields grow, an inverse relation).
 

	https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob826ae432abff7893.png	https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob6b3a8f7e57b68f16.png
	El Salvador Sovereign Yield Curve compared to what it was three months ago. A big shift upwards. The current curve should be comparable with the above one in Google Sheets.	El Salvador 10Y yield during last months: up from 12.50% to 16.00%.

ESBB1 would be somewhat depressed in terms of yield, considering the bonds in the curve. However, just remember that this would include the lower amount of bitcoin; in case of a good underlying bitcoin appreciation, the final yield would be better.

---

4. How this bond compares to traditional investment

Since the conference, the Bitcoin community cheered at the bond announcement, as it is seen as a way to help the hyperbitcoinisation in El Salvador. Of course, Bitcoin City symbolised this, but the bond carries another light financially.

To cut a long story short: this bond is a financial disaster.

An excellent analysis of this concept from a Bloomberg article (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-22/be-careful-with-volcano-bonds). Basically, buying an El Salvador Bond and using the residual amount to buy bitcoin currently produces a superior result. And this holds true in pretty much every possible future scenario. Even in a very unpredictable scenario of bitcoin going to zero, the payoff would be better for the traditional finance bond. In an environment where bitcoin would go to zero, we are left wondering why we should buy a Volcano Bond in the first place.

I ran a few computations in the spreadsheet. Even in the ultra-bullish case illustrated by Samson Mow, the Volcano Bond is inferior to the strategy of buying a traditional bond and investing the change left after the bond purchase in bitcoin.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob1a6ff4ab26627a21.jpeg (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u_tG-Wstx7yxSPJuNLRe8REIThwx1zHZADHUmI7w9AI/edit#gid=0&range=A1)

Summarising what is written in the article, instead of buying the bitcoin bond, a superior strategy would be to buy a regular bond instead, for example, the EL SAVL 2032 with an annual 8.5% coupon, trading at 65 cents. This would imply a cash flow of 65,000 USD. This would leave the possibility to invest the residual 35,000 USD into bitcoin. The combined investments would be superior to the bitcoin bond in any state of the world.
 
So why on Earth should anyone buy a Vulcano bond if we just demonstrated that it is an inferior choice?


Well, the reason is always the same: not every investor has access to physical bitcoins.
This is the very reason why there is a market for vehicles like GBTC, future-based ETF, or even Microstrategy, or vaguely Bitcoin-related companies that get purchased by investors in the desperate willingness to gain bitcoin exposure.
Many money managers have constraints on what they can buy as investments. And many of those can not simply buy physical bitcoins, or even if they could theoretically buy the thing; then they would have compliance, custodial, fiscal, or accounting problems.
So yes, many suboptimal investment vehicles exist for this very right reason.
The problem with this particular bond is that I find it very difficult for an investment manager who cannot buy bitcoin to buy a Junk Bond not traded on a traditional financial market. Many managers have a threshold for the creditworthiness of the debt issuers, and for sure, the rating of El Salvador is well below this threshold, sitting at CCC+.
Also, a problem is the nature of the digital bond, where there is no centralised venue for trading, which could spell issues for many investors.


 

---

5. How this bond is innovating the financial system
 
There is a fascinating detail about the bond. This is the first fully digital bond in the world. Many experiments have been done, but this is the first time a sovereign entity has issued a digital bond that can also be transacted with digital assets, namely BTC and USDT. Blockstream, which by the way, is an unlisted Canadian firm, issued a similar bond, but I guess the scale is so different.
There is an exciting part about this in the Stephan Livera podcast:


So here we have a fully digital, decentralised OTC trading environment. This is the future of traditional markets. But I guess a few institutional players are already ready for that.
This is true not only from a technological point of view, as implementing this should be trivial, but above all, from a compliance and regulation point of view.



Just remember that even if these bonds can be traded in a decentralised way, they are not decentralised at all. There is a central registrar anyway.
Again on the SLP:


This is crucial.
The failure to understand that centralisation of the asset control and the centralisation of the exchange are two separate concepts is a classic error many legacy financial institutions make daily while speaking of "blockchain" and "decentralised assets".

In addition to that, another crucial aspect is the technology behind it. All your favourite digital assets, NFT, tokens or whatever thing you are interested in is based on some shitty blockchain, namely ETH. Not this one. The technology here is 100% Bitcoin. Liquid is a Bitcoin Sidechain. All this is being made with "traditional, slow, polluting" Bitcoin technology.
Also, this is a significant selling point for the bond and, for sure, an actual use case test for Liquid to become the backbone of the new financial market.

---

6. further resources

• El Salvador to Issue $1B in Tokenized Bonds on the Liquid Network (https://blog.blockstream.com/el-salvador-to-issue-1b-in-tokenized-bonds-on-the-liquid-network/)
• Blockstream Proposes Digital Blockchain Bond for El Salvador (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-02/blockstream-proposes-digital-blockchain-bond-for-el-salvador)
• El Salvador’s ‘Bitcoin Week’ Draws Crypto Faithful to Party, Preach (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-19/el-salvador-s-bitcoin-week-draws-crypto-faithful-to-party-preach-btc)
• Explained: All about El Salvador's volcano-powered Bitcoin Bond (https://m.economictimes.com/markets/cryptocurrency/explained-all-about-el-salvadors-volcano-powered-bitcoin-bond/articleshow/87865235.cms)
• Junk-Rated El Salvador’s ‘Bitcoin Bonds’ Look Explosive (Think Volcano) (https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/11/22/junk-rated-el-salvadors-bitcoin-bonds-look-explosive-think-volcano/)
• Be Careful With Volcano Bonds (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-22/be-careful-with-volcano-bonds)
• BTC054: A Sovereign Bitcoin Bond In El Salvador w/ Adam Back & Samson Mow (https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Gn4AxAg1UiQPMQJQu5tZb?si=f11e019e21684a32)
• SLP329 Samson Mow – Bitcoin Bonds For Bitcoin City Breakdown & Liquid, AMP (https://stephanlivera.com/episode/329/)

---

Fillippone "everything you wanted to know about.." threads:

• Everything you wanted to know about BTC options but were afraid to ask! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5214418)
• Everything you wanted to know about BTC futures but were afraid to ask! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5188060)
• Everything you wanted to know about Grayscale BTC Trust but were afraid to ask! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5256529)
• Everything you wanted to know about a future Based ETF and were afraid to ask! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5374644)

---

---

This post is eligible for my project:



If you think you can help here, just visit the thread!

This was the part I was looking for.
I understand that certain entities prefer to invest into bitcoin related products instead of bitcoin itself because it may be easier from legal, accountancy and maybe also from tech/safety point of view.

Still, for us, individuals who already got to this forum, and can read the few words about buying bitcoin and keeping it safe, buying bitcoin related products instead of actual bitcoin makes no sense.
And yes, there's always the risk that some of such bitcoin related products, like these volcano bonds, are a "financial disaster". And in most cases those details are pretty well hidden.

This.
There is no "diversification" thing.
You are just adding layers of potential problems to something that is meant to be trustless.

The reasoning is partially different for financial institutions but apart from liquidity concerns, sticking to physically-backed ETP is the best option.
I personally Blame AM going long MSRT...

Thanks for the forum thread.It was a long and interesting text to read.
Governments can turn any idea or project into thrash.It doesn't matter how good the idea/project actually is.
Just get some government clerks to run the project and they will destroy it and steal the money in no time.
The level of corruption and bureaucracy is multiplied by 10,if we are talking about underdeveloped Latin American countries like El Salvador.
The best solution for this "Bitcoin city" was to allow foreign investors to build the city and give them tax benefits.If there's no interest among foreign investors to build such "Bitcoin city" then such project shouldn't be realized,because it is pointless from an economical point of view.

I think this point was well addressed in SLP I linked in the OP:

Hey fillippone, we're on a forum, it's not about writing books here, lol.

I see this as quite positive, and even if from an objective analysis it is supposedly a disaster, I am sure it will sell, just like GBTC or MSTR shares are sold which are objectively worse investment options than investing in Bitcoin directly. Even Bitcoin is sold by Paypal and systems that come to be more of a derivative product than Bitcoin itself that you can withdraw.

What has come to my mind is what would happen in 4 years if Bukele loses the elections. We will have to see how this evolves and I guess it will be crucial that the price of Bitcoin is significantly higher then for him to renew in power.

Coindesk released a "CoinDesk Inside" about the bond.
A lot of things were already known and written above, but few details emerge:


Behind the Scenes of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Bond With the Man Who Designed It (https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2021/12/16/behind-the-scenes-of-el-salvadors-bitcoin-bond-with-the-man-who-designed-it/)

Amongst the new things we discovered it is Samson Mow though toward IMF hostility:


Regarding your guess:

In the article we read

So yes, it will sell.

Just lol... :D

So if it's a disaster for the average Joe and the only ones who would be interested in these would-be investors who can't touch bitcoin directly, I really wonder what investors would like to go through these so-called bonds issued by a foreign country rather than going to at this point already established alternatives available in the US and other countries.


Yeah lol, I know this story, the evil IMF...
So first Bukele goes down on all his four, and begs for money US$389 million (https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/04/14/pr20155-el-salvador-imf-executive-board-approves-a-us-389-million-disbursement-to-address-covid-19) from the IMF and then he starts crying how bad those poeple are because they might want their money back.

They receive 200 million a year in help via USAID (https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-el-salvador/) but when the US cut millions in their help against the gang war (which Bukele said was over) he suddenly started crying the US is funding the opposition.

Since neuroticfish is also here, he might give his opinion if this is not like Ceausescu did, first digging his pit by borrowing more money than he could ever payback and then accusing others they are sabotaging his country.

Oh, and one more thing


Cross quoting DdmrDdmr here:


https://www-businessinsider-es.translate.goog/bitcoin-city-primera-ciudad-financiada-criptomoneda-968367?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=nui

I think it's a 25/75 chance of this project to actually take shape, but something like 99% that at least on the "masterminds" behind it will end up in jail after this  ;D

Notifications rule! :D
Actually, afaik Ceausescu has paid most of the debt by keeping the country hungry.
The socialists (to say it in an overly nice manner) that took the country over were doing what you said: got (and wasted) a lot of money from IMF and when IMF started imposing rules (for cutting costs) started crying about how evil IMF and the westerners are.

(And they still have a mildly anti-west propaganda, and still receive money, and still waste it.)

You guys still don't know that whatever politicians say it's 100% worthless?!

Thank you for letting me know about that thread.
I think we can take this one to discuss the more technical aspects of the bond, and leave the other part of the discussion on that thread.


First Bitcoin City (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5372455)

Adding reference in OP.

Seriously man appreciate your efforts for this detailed thread about this information which can enlighten all of us about this El Salvador new Bitcoin city as many members would not be able to collect so much information about it easily but you have made it simple through this huge informative wall of text which are more of facts by the way.I have bookmarked the same and will share it with other also.Keep up the work man.

Exactly if you want to invest in something you should directly do the same instead of buying something related to it.They makes no sense to me as well because suppose you are having $2000 worth of bitcoin with you safely stored  in your hardware wallet the returns would be immense in short period of time if you have patience to hold over all those years but on the other side you buy these volcano bonds which are something familiar to the Gold bonds and they are centrally backup which can make them do the changes anytime like the Gold confiscation of 1933 so why people go this way instead of doing it directly?The road that leads straight is sometimes better than covering extra miles to reach the same destination.

He is old renowned author in publishing this books on the forum and the he publish his everything you were afraid to ask editions for members of forum and they are well liked ;D



I think the next elections in El Salvador are going to be conducted in 2024 and the only in the last few months the supreme court made an official order which makes him eligible running for re-elections and the decision was opposed by US government, right group and opposite parties.Considering his past elections :


But after the Bitcoin adoption there were many revolts against him as the small merchants and some groups were not happy with his decision at all so we can foresee he losing some support among them but still there are chances he winning the elections and they are regularly investing in Bitcoin and i think they have accumulated 1220 bitcoins at this time but will see what will happen in next elections as the prices are definitely going to be high in 2024.

Indeed this thread is quite different from my previous thread, which was aimed at breaking the news of the first bitcoin city, this thread is rich with wider information on the El Salvador Bitcoin city. Am glad to see the details I have been searching for on this thread.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5372455.msg58492824#msg58492824

Yeah, and no doubt that's why their credit rating is so deep in the crapper that their bonds are considered junk.  Still, if nothing else I applaud El Salvador for doing something so bold with bitcoin.  I'll stop the applause immediately if and when any evidence of corruption or broken promises starts to appear--and something tells me that said evidence will pop up eventually. 

Maybe, but I'm wondering what those foreign investors would turn the city into.  It might be worse than whatever it turns out to be with El Salvador running it, though that's yet to be seen.  And I am very curious to see what this "bitcoin city" looks like when it's fully up and running.  I guess if nothing else it'll be a neat social experiment, though the cynical side of me is betting that it won't work nearly as well as planned.

Of course, and I also think those two will diverge a lot although they are supposed to be correlated. My opinion is clear, that city will not be built with that little amount of money and it will not serve as a cash cow on its own, it's going to lose money for decades.

The bonds, well these are way trickier.

Of course, no matter how they sugarcoated the plan behind it's simple and obvious, you use investors money to grab more bitcoins and at the same time, you pump the price for your own assets (both Salvador and Blockstream and other involved) and then simply wait for 10 years if Bitcoin does an x10 everyone is happy if not, that's all folks. I'm not sure about the investors looking for these, yeah, some still can't get access to physical bitcoins, some don't want physical bitcoins, but these bonds are at this point the most roundabout way to get something that is bitcoin related than everything else, and we're looking at 10 years, much of the legal framework can change in a year, why would you run head-on into this, no idea. But that's the part of getting the money, who knows, maybe they will get it all in one hour, and then, we wait!

Everyone that will put his money into these will look more at the bitcoin price than what's really happening in Salvador, you're not betting on the Salvador economy with it you're betting on Bitcoin, even if Salvador defaults if BTC rises to xxxx you're in the green.

I have a strong feeling that this project will fail because the costs will prove to be higher than anticipated, there will be lots of small problems that would together slow things down significantly, and there will also be political factors, both from inside and outside of the country. Not the first "dream city", not the last.

Why not take an existing city and make it a special economic zone, why should it be a brand new city? Just because of the volcano mining hype?

Amazing topic fillippone!
You know what currency will be used as soon as you see that Bitfinex exchange and Liquid network is involved in this, saying that USD, USDT and BTC will be used for funding.
Maybe we can expect to see sudden and huge inflow of USDT coming soon for funding, after being freshly printed by Bitfinex printing machine  :D

Awesome thread !!!

How do we get involved in this and how we can buy ?

Also how citizenship by investment works?

is there roadmap for completion of the actual city?

Thank you!!!

My Guess is that the vast majority of bond-buyers will be in BTC.
I think they won't have any problems having a Bid to Cover Ratio (total demand of the bond over the total issued amount) around 2 or 3.

There is just too much support from whales and the overall community.

The true challenge will be the onboarding of the more traditional finance, who will have huge difficulties onboarding Bitfinex, not exactly the most traditional institution friendly exchange.

An article on the Volcano Bond appeared on Yahoo news today:

Yahoo Finance
Why Bitcoin bulls still think $100K is in the cards despite ugly end to 2021 (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-bitcoin-bulls-still-think-100-k-is-in-the-cards-despite-ugly-end-to-last-year-000013149.html?ncid=twitter_yfsocialtw_l1gbd0noiom)

Avoiding commenting the clickbait title, we have a few interesting lines on the bond, something we know, something we didn't.
Something we knew:


Something we didn't know:


I guess this is exactly the true challenge of this bond.
While having the first issuances of this bond being fully covered by the "bitcoin investors" (whatever this means) will be pretty trivial, the true challenge will be about opening the market toward true "institutional investors", the ones that are relly capable of moving new inflows into the market.

So you are thinking that this will be another bubble like dot com that we have seen earlier in this century. It is true many countries have legal issues with BTC so people want to invest in products related to BTC. But as long as it has a working product behind it and it contains value there should not be a problem. Still, It is not the same as buying BTC and won't serve the purpose of BTC.

No. I didn't say anything about any bubble. All I said was that buying the real deal is the way to go, not derivative things that you don't know what they are and may get you fooled because of too many hidden details.
As simple as that.

It's not nice to put as other's saying things they didn't. And this bitcoin vs .com crap is so old one could have been reading more since it was "launched".

What I am saying is that I struggle to see a rationale, besides cheering for El Salvador, for buying this bond.

From an economic standpoint of view, it makes no sense.

I even tried to express my concerns to Samson Mow:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob061b116e7d30337f.jpeg (https://twitter.com/fillippone1/status/1478267016276553732?s=20)

I think the answer is quite elusive.
I really cannot see anyone wrapping a digital bond in a traditional fund. Why anyone would do that?

Of course, this doesn't mean it's a bubble. But as you say, Bitcoin doesn't need that to succeed.

Actually the case is bitcoin don't need them they need profits.They have seen so much profits simply by investing the people's funds into bitcoin and the example is they buying each dip and publicly giving statement about the same like they holds around 1120 bitcoins or more at this time so they planning something big to generate more profits for the state or say for themselves at rational viewpoint.

El Salvador is adapting their legal system to ease the issue, circulation, and management of the Volcano Bond, according to Reuters:

El Salvador plans raft of legislation to cover bitcoin bond issue (https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/el-salvador-plans-raft-legislation-cover-bitcoin-bond-issue-2022-01-04/)


Of course, they are dotting the i's and crossing the t's to make sure they don't shoot on their own foot with this issue, which will be closely monitored from abroad, potentially setting up a new paradigm for other sovereigns.

@fillippone is one of the reasons I fell out of love with travelling.
You can be in your home country and be more informed than the citizens of another country with this kind of detailed research and information.
The Bitcoin legal tender decision and the Bitcoin related bonds project if well managed will surely I no distance time raise the financial situation of El Salvador. They have taken the early spot on the queue, I am so much convinced that many giant countries will join pending the success of what I will  can El Salvador bitcoin experiment. The world is watching.

Our presence and knowledge in this forum should not make us think that bitcoin is an easy investment. Starting from buying, securing to investment aspects of bitcoin is quite complicated. There are so many laymen in the society who wish to invest in bitcoin, but due to the lack of knowledge of it, they are restrained. It is not advisable to invest in what you do not understand.
This is the reason they can be comfortable to buy something related to it.

Take for instance;
I want to invest in Bitcoin but I am unsure how to go about it. Knowing too well the research prowess of @fillippone, I saw him open a bitcoin related bond or investment. I will simply trust him because of his deep knowledge in the project.
That is how the citizens trusts her government. There's a level of comfort when the government decisions fail than when an individual decision fails.
My major worry is that with the level of interference by the US, if president Nayib Bukele exists, will there be continuity of the bitcoin projects? Time will tell!

My guess is most of the majority of bond buyers will be in bitcoin

I guess that this "bitcoin city" thing has been tried so many times but usually since we are a global bunch and not something that is we do in just one place, that doesn't work. I mean usually there isn't enough population in just one city to build something like that, even when you consider a nation like USA, if you build a city somewhere, then you are expecting everyone around the USA to relocate there and why would they? Coinbase is fine in California, why would they leave? Gemini is fine in New York, they won't budge. So all in all when we are talking about even a much smaller nation then it becomes even harder to build something like this only because of lack of population.

A few more information on the venue where the bond should be traded:

Bitfinex launches new exchange for trading tokenized equities and bonds (https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/116728/bitfinex-securities-new-exchange-tokenized-equities-bonds)

Bitfinex opened a new exchange dedicated to tokenised assets, both equity and bonds, named Bitfinex securities:


In the article it is well explained the unique feature of this platform is the possibility to issue new token, not only trade existing ones. This allows customers handle trough BS the whole life cycle of their digital tokens: issuance, trading, settlements, payments, redemptions.

One very important point of this is the fact that BS will be based in Kazakistan, and regulated by the local financial authority:



According to Paolo Ardoino’s statements, Bitfinex believe this is a positive choice:


I have some doubt about this statement. I think they had to apply to Astana because it the “best of the available countries” where to register.

The problem is many potential clients will have problems using that exchange:


A lot of customers simply won’t be able to directly access that exchange. They will have to operate trough subsidiaries, risking sanctions from the regulators, or trough introducing broker-dealers, or even using wrapped bonds.

Then a couple of observations immediately raise to my mind:

• why on Earth a financial investor should embark on such a difficult task of buying that bond, instead of buying directly bitcoin and an USD bond?
  
• is the current turmoil in which Kazakistan has fallen recently hindering the plan for the issuance?

The logic says this could even get worst if bitcoin mining load goes to EL Salvador and all the other countries revoke from the mining operations or lets say they completely ban the use of bitcoin. There would be only one country left to mine the coins and use them and thats El Salvador. The thing is, they are using it as the legal tender which means whole thing is official and by few years they will have almost all of the population of their country using it.

Imagine for a sec if other countries started to pull of from the crypto space for X reasons then the whole money that is invested into crypto will be sold off and El Salvador would be buying it as there would be no other buyer of the same.

What will happen to their bonds by then? The value will decrease dramatically causing huge inflation in the country.

Seems terrific idea to go to the sink.

The logic applied above is explaining bitcoin monopoly, which in actual sense is not practicable. All other countries cannot revoke from mining nor ban completely the use of bitcoin because of the nature of bitcoin. What majority of the country can do is to enforce extreme measures to regulate bitcoin, which will indirectly hinder bitcoin growth.

However, my major concern is about the Bitcoin City. This project might indirectly be promoting centralization of bitcoin or bitcoin users, miners etc.
The logic could be that whenever there is an attack on bitcoin, it will be easy to locate the city of bitcoin and unleash mayhem. The enemies of bitcoin will then intensify their efforts to hunt down the bitcoin city.
Remember, bitcoin is safe on blockchain but bitcoin users and hardwares are not secured by blockchain. They are prone to damages.

A couple of days ago, I tweeted my concerns to Excellion and Paolo Ardoino.
The answer I got was quite reassuring:


https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob6da3cd6e760f561f.jpeg (https://twitter.com/fillippone1/status/1480121830568611845?s=20)

I waited a little bit before reporting the tweet as I saw a like by Paolo Ardoino snd I hoped for another reply, which sadly never came....

So basically, no delays due to the disruption in Kazakhstan. I think it is good news for everyone!

In the past days Moody's has been quite vocal on El Salvador:

Bitcoin Trades Add to El Salvador’s Sovereign Risk, Moody’s Says (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-13/bitcoin-trades-add-to-el-salvador-sovereign-risk-moody-s-says)



Tonight Moody's downgraded El Salvador Sovereign Bonds:
(actually looking for a direct headline of this)

Najyb Bukele wasn't impressed:
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blobdf19fa3846bf1173.png (https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1483194959989719059)

This is actually going to hurt the volcano bond, sending them even more on the "dear" side of the market. The market is currently closed, but I expect the USD bonds to fall significantly, thus making the combination Legacy USD bonds + Bitcoin purchase, even more compelling versus the simple bond holding.

The middle finger to the IMF crooks nocoiners is going to be a little bit more costly, to our fellow bitcoiner.

Apparently the EL Salvador Bitcoin Bond 1 will be launched in February:

https://i.ibb.co/vVHGhmC/59048364.jpg (https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1484622454043594754?s=20)


Al this source from this interview:

 ON THE GROUND IN EL SALVADOR WITH SAMSON MOW AND THE VOLCANO BITCOIN BOND (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/el-salvador-president-nayib-bukele-samson-mow-volcano-bitcoin-bond)

Samson Mow Stated:


As I already said, it's a sure hit from the "Bitcoin Community", but my doubt about institutional investors persist.

According to Bloomberg the Launch of the Volcano Bond is nearing and being ready in March:


This is a little later than initially prospected by Samson Mow, but I think it’s a fair timeline, given all the technical, legal and “external pressures” connected to this bond issue.

Breaking news:

El Salvador Bitcoin Bond Issuance Coming as Soon as March 15: Finance Minister (https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/02/09/el-salvador-bitcoin-bond-issuance-coming-as-soon-as-march-15-finance-minister/)


This is pretty much in line with the expected launch date previously disclosed.
I wouldn’t lean too much on the 6.5% commitment.

With an expected move, Fitch Lowered El Salvador sovereign rating.

Fitch lowers El Salvador’s rating due to Bitcoin adoption (http://Fitch lowers El Salvador’s rating due to Bitcoin adoption)


As I said, the news was expected, so in a “buy the rumours sell the news” fashion, the price of USD denominated El Salvadorean Bonds actually junped.

	https://i.ibb.co/mB89zk9/59209178.jpg
	If you squint your eyes, you can see the pop in bond prices!

Please note that means that a bond maturing on the same date of the Vulcano Bond with a price of 62 now yields 15.90%.

A few days ago Market Insider reported an update on the “verbal commitment” of the vulcano bond.
I missed that, nobody reported it, so I am adding it to the thread, as it is still relevant.

El Salvador already has $500 million in verbal commitments for its billion-dollar 'meme' bitcoin bond — and $5 billion in more bonds could follow (http://El Salvador already has $500 million in verbal commitments for its billion-dollar 'meme' bitcoin bond — and $5 billion in more bonds could follow)


So it appears the informal order book has just been upgraded to 500 millions and this bodes well for future issuances.
I bet this optimism has to be judged trough the lens of the person expressing it, but I think we can be sure more issues will follow, as I stated  before, and the “ optimism”lever it will be really important to determine the coupon issue, that I bet should quickly converge toward USD denominated Debt.

Is this Reuters? The main news agency in the World describing the Volcano Bond in such elementary terms?

El Salvador's bitcoin bond faces more doubts as volatility spikes (https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/el-salvadors-bitcoin-bond-faces-more-doubts-as-volatility-spikes/ar-AAUvWuK)

I would say this is a misrepresentation of reality.
And factually wrong when they state investment is less appealing with a lower BTC.
On the contrary, lower Bitcoin levels mean a more attractive investment with lower entry point in the BTc market.

But of course, I am biased.

This attitude reminds me of how a regular retail investor behaves when the price of BTC is in some kind of stagnation or bear market - then there is mostly some disappointment and pessimism and no one realizes that then is the right time to invest. But I'm not surprised that a news agency like this writes this way, because journalists have long since stopped being professionals, and more and more ordinary mercenaries who write articles the way someone tells them to.

Given that El Salvador and some other countries have refrained from condemning Russia's aggression against Ukraine and have practically sided with those who tacitly support it - does that perhaps mean that this project may not have the support it expected?

Putting political considerations about Bukele aside, I guess the bond will be affected by this events as acutely as every other financial instrument in the world: liquidity drain, increased volatility, increased inflation concerns, increased credit risk and scrutiny over crypto might affect negatively this bond sale, as much as every other happen isn’t at the same time.

Everything you say is undoubtedly true, but it seems to me that the damage will be even greater due to the political decision not to condemn the aggression that will undoubtedly gain weight when war crimes charges are filed, because there are clear elements of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. I personally would not do business with anyone who supports such a policy, and I was surprised that Bukele is much closer to various dictatorial regimes than to some Western democracy, no matter how imperfect it may be.

However, I have no doubt that there will always be those who only care about profit and do not care about the political background. The guys from Wall Street have found an opportunity even where for many it seems that the risk is simply too great.

Distressed bond buying it is something that has ever existed. The bank buys low values bonds in the case the political situation evolves for the good.
Just remember that they are not buying those assets from the issuer, but probs lo from pensions funds, asset managers or other subjects that are not allowed to hold junk bonds.
In a sene, they are not benefiting Russian finance in any way.

The fact that they are going to profit from these situation is far from clear, given the unprecedented thoughtness of imposed sanctions.

Exploring the involvement of the guys from Tether in the Lugano project (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5388210.0), I came across an interesting article that reveals a lot of interesting details about how the idea of Volcano Bonds came about and who are the people who have their fingers in it. Despite the many details found in the OP, it seems to me that this article is full of very interesting things that are supported by links to original sources.

El Salvador Bitcoin: Tether buys itself a country; and why Chivo sucks (https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/02/26/el-salvador-bitcoin-tether-buys-itself-a-country-and-why-chivo-sucks/)

As expected, we have confirmations on bond launch:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob050f81bd332f00e0.jpeg (https://twitter.com/btc_archive/status/1502313543428890626?s=21)

Bullish.
Markets are in turmoil right now, so bit the bet moment for a bond launch. I guess they know something we don’t.

Since many of us who participate in this forum are bullish about long-term bitcoin fundamentals - or at least many of the regulars here.. cannot presume everyone is bullish about long term bitcoin fundamentals...   I doubt that anyone really knows anything more than a lot of us regulars here - except for sure they may be grappling with a lot of great advisors.. but that still would not necessarily mean that they are going to act on whatever information in front of them in ways that end up being correct.

Whether Bukeile has surrounded himself with bitcoin geniuses or not, even for a relative bitcoin newbie he has seemed to have locked into a decent number of the people who many of us trust within bitcoin maximalism circles (hate to label the bitcoin insiders in such a way because we have our own minds and even disagreements within bitcoin maximalism)..

I guess my main point is just to argue that no own really knows what is going to happen with bitcoin price dynamics, even though many of us bitcoin maxis do likely continue to believe that it does not necessarily hurt matters to be able to double down on investing when BTC prices are down - even though it is also likely that some folks who were going to be investors into such bond might be more timid during these kinds of times to be investing in such a thing.

No guarantees.. but seeming to be a 45%-ish discount compared to where BTC prices were in November.. and like Michael Saylor had said after the May 2021 correction down from $64,895 to $28,600-ish..  (maybe Saylor said it a bit hyperbolically?)  "we were going to buy anyhow, so we were glad to get some bitcoin in the mid-$30ks when they had been upper $50ks a month or so earlier -  either way we were buying, so it was nice to get them cheaper."

Do you guys remember how Bitcoin was breaking down a couple weeks prior to the Elon musk Tesla Bitcoin buy announcement? Even though they bought over $1B worth the price still kept going down. It only rallied afterwards because it was announced.

So since we are in a down trend, even if they buy $500M on the open market the price will still most likely trade sideways or go down if there is enough sell pressure. These days 1/2 a $1B isn’t as impossible as it seemed a few years ago, Bitcoin is very liquid now.

So, at last Volcano bond got delayed, according to Coindesk:


El Salvador’s Bitcoin Bond Issuance Apparently Delayed (https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/18/el-salvadors-bitcoin-bond-issuance-apparently-delayed/)

They give a few possible reasons, in the article, but I think the main one is the fact that ES congress still has some work to do to implement the legislative framework.

Also the turmoil in the financial markets it’s not helping the cause, even if it think in this particular bond it is not playing a huge effect given the fact is will be mainly addressing the retail market, which is less sensitive to this events.

A little bit worrying is that the issue won’t be from the Government, but from the State Own Energy company “La Gèo”. This is adding an even higher degree of credit worry to the bond holder. Without a premium in term of yield, apparently.

It is now official, as reported by Reuters:

El Salvador postpones bitcoin bond issue, expects better conditions (https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL6N2VP07Q)


Market Volatility, but more importantly, an incomplete legal framework would have made the bond launch impossible.
Bear in mind this issue is something the whole world was going to look at, so that the process would have meant to be smoothless.

Yeah the earlier date was around 20^thMarch but now they have postponed the issue date giving no clarity on it when they are going to release them.This was much anticipated thing around the globe because $1 billion for building bitcoin city would be great but there might not be proper set-up for this at the moment.


They have also said the war has also impacted the bond issuance date and volatility could be another blow to it at the time but they have confirmed that it will be go on through Bitfinex as per reports:

https://i.ibb.co/7zRRR0W/Screenshot-20220324-135451-01.jpg (https://ibb.co/n0nnnKc)

Blockstream is going to provide bonds issuance on bitcoin layer 2 but the problem is also that they are in no direct contact with El Salvador government on this matter where the lag could be possible which has hinder the smooth functioning of this.But as we see there are possibilities but at the time it's postponed.

Source  (https://blockworks.co/el-salvador-pushes-volcano-bond-issue-unveils-state-owned-company-backing/#:~:text=El%20Salvador%20has%20postponed%20the,backed%20bonds%20in%20November%202021)

I have a bad feeling about this.
As I said I think all these are “excuses” for something more substantial. Lack of legislation could be a massive hurdle to fix, even for a “vast support majority” like El Salvador.
Time will tell.

This week a lot of announcements, or announcements of announcement, about the Volcano Bond.

The BTC Times reorganized many of those for your convenience:
 
El Salvador's Big Week: Influential Bitcoiners Talk Bonds and Volcanos (http://El Salvador's Big Week: Influential Bitcoiners Talk Bonds and Volcanos)

Bitcoin Italia podcast made a nice interview with Samson Mow (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5392417.msg59870540#msg59870540).

They discussed a lot of the Bitcoin Bonds.

• They were delayed primarily by the lack of legislation. Legislation was delayed because of ES need a new pension law first, then the crime emergency led to other delays
• They are going to be issued  by El Salvador, not by “La Geo”. This is a new announcements.
• The situation is quite fluid.

https://i.imgur.com/ZOIsgFI.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/LGqm1Ba.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/pHjbfZW.jpeg

In the Bitcoin City and Bond President Nayib Bukele really plan everything easy and simple for his citizens. He does not want hardship in the city. It is an egalitarian society where everyone has equal distribution of wealth. Everything is well planned. All the social amenities are provided, such as:  Restaurant, Hospital, Education, Electricity, Infrastructure, And Housing. All these are provided by the government for the citizens to use and pay only tax with Bitcoin. What a wonderful city plan. The MODEL of the City is the most number one developed city in the world. If I wish this come to the reality. The volcano is making the city more attractive and beautiful.

El Salvador adoption of bitcoin is encouraging. But the delay of the bond is worrisome.

Egalitarian society, lol!
This is just some bullshit leftist propaganda, bitcoin has nothing to do with your dystopian commie future, bitcoin is actually the essence of capitalism, the ones with the capital are the ones affording to buy coins, the ones that want to take other person's wealth and redistribute it can't do it because my keys my coins my decision.


What plan?
Have you ever seen something beyond some colored squares on a map?
He doesn't have the money to build that city, the bonds will cover only 7% of the cost of the plane which of course will be double as this happens every single time, this is just a way to finance his growing debt and buy time, nothing else.
Go to skyscrapercity and see what people there have to say about such "plans".


Everything is according to plan. ;)
They are just finishing the numbers to see how many years in prison they will get for this and if it's worth it, they will go ahead.

https://i.imgur.com/1KhtKoj.jpeg

The city plan and it features. Yes he might not have the money to carry out the project because the bond can provide only 7% of the total cost but from what he has done by sketching out the model of the Bitcoin City to that magnitude, it is good enough to be praised. That means if the money finally enter his hands, he will start the project by building the city as it is planned.
How many president has such plan or model in their Countries? Accourding to a saying, " out of the abundance, the mouth speaketh". Nayib Bukele  has the real plan of the Country's development that is why he spoke out.


Yes, that is why I said the plan Nayib Bukele about the city is nice because everything is done or come out accourding to a plan work. I know that the city is an imaginative mindset but it has planted in his heart to do it one day.

The first plan and the second plan have different connotations. The first quoted plan is the model of the city while the second quoted plan is the activities.

The bitcoin community should be concerned about El Salvador because this nation is Bitcoin's ambassador. Issues like crime emergencies and global economic challenges might be unforseen, but not backing a policy with the necessary parliamentary legislation before announcement is a great blunder.  El Salvador should be careful about it's pronouncements on Bitcoin policies and projects. This is because delays or failures of these projects would deter other nations from adoption. We commend President Bekele for all his efforts but proposed policies must be consistent with legislation before announcement.

Samson Mow's clarification that the bond would be issued by El Salvador  would increase the degree of confidence of bond holders. Mow also stated that the government can improve the acceptance of bitcoin by paying salaries with it.

For me  the Bitcoin city doesn't thrill me, except this project has more economic benefit to El Salvador. I have not been to El Salvador but Pierce indicated that it is underdeveloped and has high rate of illiteracy. Instead of spending this money on a flamboyant bitcoin city, it could be channelled to education. This is because education is a veritable tool for the spread of the gospel of bitcoin.

Brock Pierce retreated that politicians cannot be trusted. But bitcoin is above politics because it has the capacity to free the world from the manipulations of politician.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP0jAbIYmV0

Fillippone please don't stop posting these interviews.

I cnnot agree with this one.
El Salvador embraced Bitcoin, but you cannot infer the quality of Bitcoin from El Salvador success. The other way round might work: you can guess El Salvador will benefit from Bitcoin success.

Ultimately Bitcoin doesn't need El Salvador, while El Salvador needs Bitcoin!

Thank you for the correction. But the point I was portraying was that since El Salvador is the first country to make Bitcoin a legal tender all eyes are on them. Anti Bitcoin politicians and economists would always use El Salvador as a reference point. If Bitcoin policies are not well formulated and implemented and it affects the economy negatively, these enemies of Bitcoin would always point at the woes of El Salvador to discourage thier country from adoption.

Like you rightly pointed out: Bitcoin is above any nation and it's here to help.

Thank you.

This is correct: as Samson Mow once said in one of his interviews: "the world is watching us, we cannot fail this experiment!". This means every anti bitcoin politician around the world will take every glitch in the El Salvador implementation of the Bitcoin Law as a failure of Bitcoin itself.

Surely, you seem to be exaggerating.. El Savador is Bitcoin's ambassador?  I can understand that there is some symbolic aspects in regards to El Salvador taking on some pretty heavy mantle in some of its bitcoin related projects including but not limited to the actually successfully implementing Bitcoin as legal tender and then aspects of the Volcano bond that they have not yet issued, but considering ways that they would use the  funds raised through the Volcano bond money.


Again, you seem to be exaggerating.  it seems that El Salvador has delayed its volcano bond issuance for possibly more reasons than mere lack of legislation.. even though the lack of legislation could be a kind of part of the way of explaining why they are delaying in their issuance.  

Also, I doubt that there is any "do or die" here, whether we are referring to if the Volcano bond actually ends up issuing as it had been originally proposed or if other aspects of El Salvador's legal tender implementation starts to fall apart in various ways.  In some ways, we likely can already consider El Salvador to have some levels of success in terms of what has been accomplished so far in terms of showing some possible paths forward with bitcoin and also attracting quite a bit of attention to the bitcoin matter... so still a work in progress to watch how some of the details (including ups and downs) are continuing to unravel.


You believe that is how the world works?  Sounds a little crazy to me that you seem to be hinging on some kind of projection that El Salvador has to achieve some level of perfection, otherwise nations are going to be scared to get involved in bitcoin.  Surely, every single year in bitcoin, we have greater and greater levels of knowledge regarding bitcoin spreading to all kinds of people in the world, whether politicians or other folks in society - and even ongoing growth of bitcoin's financialization, and so in that regard, there are likely going to continue be folks considering ways that bitcoin might be adopted or ways that spheres of their influence (whether on a company level, personal level, or even governmental level) might start to employ aspects of bitcoin within their balance sheet or how they operate.

You presumption of do or die is coming off as weak, and sure some countries are going to be scared and/or hesitant regarding whether to implement bitcoin and in what ways to attempt to do it, too.


First, you are employing the royal we?  or you are trying to project some kind of authority in this matter?

Second, I doubt that there is any kind of order that things need to be done, even if you might be correct that some approaches might have potential to be more effective than others.


Of course, there is nothing wrong with those points, and for sure, if El Salvador gets to actual issuance of the bond, and is able to raise the $1 billion as projected within the bond, then surely more innovations (and possible experimentations) could result from that.. and just the possible issuance of the bond has a lot of innovations within itself - even if the other innovative subsequent approaches do not end up getting employed.


Surely whether such bitcoin city is reasonable/feasible is going to be something that we will find out, in the event that matters continue to progress - and of course, there is likely some kind of a need to outline a potentially reasonable/feasible vision in order to inspire investors.


Oh gawd.. Brock Pierce as our supposed El Salvador expert?  Even Brock (that dweeb) is humble enough to admit that he does not know much about El Salvador (he does it in that interview that you wrongly cited below.. here is the proper cite (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5392417.msg59938213#msg59938213))


Now you are a bond issuing expert?  What makes you believe that El Salvador would necessarily be limited to ONLY issuing one bond (that is if they are able to get the first one issued)?  Education is priority one in El Salvador.. Ok..


I am sure that there are a variety of ways that progress towards "education" can be made... but no, you want to tell us that you have the answers about how to accomplish the matter?


Of course, there is some truth in terms of bitcoin being more neutral than politicians, and of course, politicians are people, so some people have more integrity than others, and of course, we already know that bitcoin does have a lot more objectivity in it.. at least in terms of being very difficult to change (perhaps not impossible, but surely difficult as we have also witnessed several times and the 2017 forkening matter is often used as an example where very powerful businesses had failed to change bitcoin in certain kinds of ways including governance and software related to block size limits).


I agree with your overall point, fillippone, but I think that it is worth reiterating (of course, you said it earlier) that bitcoin is likely to succeed whether or not El Salvador succeeds with bitcoin as part of its package of offerings.

Of course, there is some truth in the matter that there is going to be spinning going on from politicians, financial institutions, status quo rich, and both anti-bitcoin and pro-bitcoin too.  And bitcoin's adoption does have a kind of ongoing battle that is going on simultaneously in a lot of geographical places.. not just in and around El Salvador's way of adopting it, so far.   

Some of the ongoing battles are going to be out in the open and other battles seem to be happening behind the scenes.. and with any battles, they have informational and physical components... Some of the informational components can end up scaring the shit out of newbie normies (and they get confused as fuck in terms of not even knowing what is bitcoin, or what is the difference between bitcoin and shitcoins or whatever other ways that the bitcoin topic is obfuscated), and surely physical components (such as bitcoin's ongoing adoption) are not going to NOT be affected by some of the ongoing informational battle angles (pro-bitcoin information and anti-bitcoin information).  

For sure, each of us has to choose our own level of involvement in bitcoin whether we are buying it, accumulating it or HODLing it, and how much of our value that we feel psychologically and financially comfortable to allocate into bitcoin (time as well as money too) or whether we might consider it to be prudent to reallocate or to otherwise change our approach towards bitcoin investing of time, psychology and based on changed circumstances or changes in our perceptions of the circumstances.

I am really humbled by this outstanding analysis. I have learnt a lot from this comments and it has help me to change my perception about so many things concerning bitcoin and the ES Volcano Bond. It's a great privilege to learn from mentors like fillippone and JayJuanGee.

Bitcoin Bonds are missing in action still, but they are coming, Treasury Minister says:

El Salvador's Bitcoin Volcano Bonds Launch Still on Hold, According to Treasury Minister (https://news.bitcoin.com/el-salvadors-bitcoin-volcano-bonds-launch-still-on-hold-according-to-treasury-minister/)



Still, I think regulation is the main hurdle in launching these bonds, not the prevailing market conditions.

For sure, government officials are not necessarily going to specify all of the reasons (and maybe not even their most motivating reasons) for decisions that they make, even though for credibility reasons they do tend to want to provide some kind of reason that is sufficiently plausible.

Many of us who have been watching the variety of El Salvador's bitcoin related projects that have come about since their June 2021 announcement (and subsequent legislation) have remained glued towards wanting to see how the various seemingly ambitious implementations are playing out.. and surely any ambitious outline can start to end up in a kind of territory in which some of us might start to consider whether they may have been overpromising and under-delivering - and of course, underpromising and over-delivering remains the gold standard - yet I am not even really opposed towards the potential utility for aspirational type overpromising statements .... because even some of the background preparations can allow for various kinds of learnings about whether their current formulations need to be tweaked or maybe other jurisdictions might want to consider some kind of similar proposal, but they might make it a wee bit less pie in the sky - for example, there can surely be trade-offs regarding whether a whole new city needs to be considered or to possibly take some already existing location/infrastructure that might cause the aspirations to have more plausibly in terms of how they are described.

Actually, whether you are correct or not fillippone, in regard to possible unstated issuance obstacles, many of us have likely noticed that Bukele seems to have been taking quite a bit of a lower profile and seemingly fewer public tweet confrontations, and I have my doubts regarding that lower profile being merely due to lower BTC price performance in recent times, even though of course, it makes sense that bitcoin-related arrogance (or smugness) is much more difficult to pull off during times that bitcoin is consolidating for seemingly extended periods or even when the BTC price seeming to go against expectations for decently long periods of time.   .. and don't get me wrong, I am not even proclaiming that there likely are quite a few behind-the-scenes pressures being put on Bukele that individuals (or even non-governmental institutional actors) would not necessarily receive by various status quo powers that be financial institutions/governments/otherwise rich peeps.

It kind of reminds me of my own time in this forum in 2016 or so, and some members were telling me that they liked me much better during 2014 and 2015 when my BTC portfolio holdings were considerably in the red and saying that I was much more humble and nicer during those times, but then when my BTC portfolio holdings went into positive territory, my posts on the topic were filled with a lot more "I told you so" smugness, and even if I was being trolled a bit, for sure, we likely realize and understand that our options and power is greatly increased when our portfolio/holdings are in positive rather than negative price territories - and surely whether we are individuals, institutions or even governments, there is going to be a certain level of stress (and restraint) when we are in a place that our holdings are not really profitable.. and bitcoin history has shown us** that so long as we do not fuck up in terms of not selling too much BTC too soon, we can get into extreme levels of optionality merely from the level of profits of our BTC portfolio  going from many multitudes or even magnitudes of profitability (I was told that the use of the term "magnitude" is meant to indicate using 10x multiples rather than 1x).

**For sure, past performance does not guarantee future results, even though it is becoming more and more widely appreciated that bitcoin remains one of the best of asymmetric upside bets - including that it remains way more accessible for anyone around the world - which may well have not been the case for a lot of historical assets.. and surely bitcoin's digital form factor remains part of the innovative amazingness that is still way under appreciated to cause it to be really distinguishable from previous historical potential investment "opportunities."

Since is a topic where you can ask stuff without being afraid, did he mention where is he going to get that green energy from, and maybe maybe, address the issue of why if they do have so much green energy they've finally started their  378 MW gas (LNG) (https://www.powermag.com/long-awaited-fsru-project-nears-operation-in-el-salvador/) power plant in order to reduce imports from Guatemala?

Just saying, if you have spare green energy for a whole future city, the above plant would make no sense, right? ;)
Probably my personal dislike for Bukele but something is really fishy and stinky there!

It is. I hope it is a positive feature of this thread.


It looks like You know more than me. The energy for the mining ops and the Bitcoin city should be geothermal. One of the energy features is that it might be challenging to move the point from the production site to where it might be needed. Of course, this problem doesn’t exist for the Bitcoin mining operations, which can absorb energy wherever it is produced (provided internet connectivity).

But the point is interesting: why are they setting up an LNG regasification if geothermal energy is so abundant in the ES’territory?

And of course I do share your worries about Bukele.

I know, I just have an "it's Friday feeling" (although it's obviously Thursday) and I feel like joking and teasing a bit, doing things more relaxed, not just numbers and numbers and numbers... :D
30 degrees, all sunny, all green, planning on opening a beer after ... we do some numbers!  :o


Because it's a f lie! That's why!
Just as his 95 MW well, there is no such thing in the world! No single well has this capacity, no single well can be mined and operational in months!

Now, let's go for all this geothermal energy, directly from the source:
https://www.cne.gob.sv/tema/energias-renovables-2/energia-geotermica/
oops...got deleted! nice!!
But from google cache:


Salvador has 791 MW geothermal capacity only 200 currently in use, a total of  1 506 MW all renewable, 757 not renewable, and 25% of all electricity imports mainly from Guatemala. There is no extra geothermal energy, there won't be, it's simply not possible unless we have a new tectonic plate movement, which probably will mean no Salvador after.

That's why they burn gas, that's why they burn oil, that's why they import energy, but those things are not to be told! I don't think bitcoiners would want to invest billions in a city with this view when you look at the sunrise on the ocean:

https://www.energiadelpacifico.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/project-img2@2x.jpg

Think of it just like that green open farm premium meat with a happy pig on it for which you've for 20 euros extra and only when you arrive home do you see those tiny letters letting you know it's 70% water, 20% MDM meat, and 10% natural recycled bee wax that makes it label worthy ;D

Today I got in a Twitter feud about El Salvador Bitcoin Bonds:

https://i.ibb.co/SmhcsYt/60184998.jpg (https://twitter.com/drjackkruse/status/1527276052401508352?s=21&t=LBbIHNZ4_b9CXPlyhSTuVw)

Here you have the Bloomberg Article that started the discussion:
Bitcoin-Bond Sale Flop Deepens Debt Market Rout in El Salvador (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-29/bitcoin-bond-sale-flop-deepens-debt-market-rout-in-el-salvador)


While the article wrongly  links the rout in bond debt of El Salvador to Bitcoin, there is a true correlation on this.

If the yield requested by investors to hold El Salvador Credit Risk denominated in USD, this means Bitcoin Bonds as originally described must also raise greatly. You see from the graph below the yield needed to hold an 8 years bond surged from 7% one year ago, to 20% 3 months ago to 35% today.


You can then guess  that if you think at the exercice I proposed on the OP now you can buy at the moment, the initial exercise of buying a USD denominated Bond

https://i.ibb.co/gj7gCkC/60184998.jpg

The rout has more with Bukele than with bitcoin but from there is just another hop and in the mind of somebody who doesn't like details it's one and the same..

From an investor's point of view, you have a country that is in deep "that", unable to pay its debts, a gambling wannabe dictator that has managed to catch all the 7 dips to date, and the only reason for these bonds to actually work is a rise in price in Bitcoins and a utopia no property tax, no income tax utopia city to be actually profitable excluding the other 12 billion needed for it to be built. So, why even bother with these and not buy other ^%^% that is tied to the price if we assume you can't buy bitcoin directly? Even Micro or Riot stocks seem safer than these despite that ski slope they are drawing in the charts!
Anyhow, it's still possible for the bitcoin bond to be a success while Salvador defaults on its debt, this wouldn't amaze me at all, I've seen enough fucked up things to not even raise an eyebrow.

Oh, btw, :
hihi, now this starts to sound more and more like  "kickstarting a new Bitcoin Standard"  :D

Also, don't get in Twitter feuds, even eating 3 times a day at KFC is healthier than that. ;)
 

The path for the Volcano bonds to succeed is narrower and narrower everyday. And this is only partly related to bitcoin.
Of course, even some Excellion statements must be put under scrutiny: how and why, an oversubscribed bonds get delayed because of adverse market conditions?

Some factors might be unsaid.

For example, if the creators and promoters of the bond feel that they can ONLY release the bond in market conditions in which they have a high confidence that BTC prices will be going up, then in that sense they attempt to time the market without really directly saying that is what they are doing. 

Of course, we also know that sentiment has a tendency to inversely correlate to where the BTC price is going... so when the BTC price is going up and has been going up for a while bullish sentiment gets pretty high.. but that does not necessarily result in the BTC price continuing to go up.  The opposite is true regarding the BTC price going down, and sentiment can stay negative for quite a long time, even when the evidence becomes pretty clear that the "bottom is in." 

Sure, maybe something else more nefarious is going on.. but I really doubt it.

By the way, maybe one of the implications that you are making fillippone is that they were asserting that they were not technically ready to release the bond, but the evidence is showing that technically they could have released the bond, so they had been providing technicalities as an excuse rather than their real concerns.. and also you seem to be implying that they had been overly asserting the level of subscription (sentiment towards buying the bond), and even if you are correct that sentiment was never as strong as they were making it out to be, they still might have had been making the better decision to not have had released the bond and to continue to not release the bond, even if they are not completely describing all of their rationale or accurately describing the underlying facts.

The latest failure/refusal to release the bond may well have not even had been nefarious.. even though some people might ascribe nefariousness in terms of telling the truth no matter what or following through no matter what.. yet from my thinking I have my doubts about ascribing nefariousness.. even if it could be true that they ended up coming to some of the wrong balance.. because maybe in the end it would have been the "right thing to do" to just keep the date no matter what the market conditions.. and even if they had pretty strong feelings that they were going to be releasing the bond into a market with likely negative rather than a positive momentum.... oh and another by the way, most of us also realize that some actions take place on the margins, and sometimes what the actors end up doing does end up having a tipping effect in terms of contributing to what direction the market ended up going... but it seems really difficult to have confidence (even after the fact) in knowing those kinds of tipping effect consequential things that might have come from whether the behaviors would have been to do x or to do y or to do z.. even with BIG and influential actors.

Bitcoin Bond has disappeared.
No law was approved
No news From Bukele
No word from the Bitcoin Bond "architect".

Nothing.

Probably, the global outlook for the Bond market is not the best.
In addition, Bitcoin markets are not really bullish at the moment.
Third, El Salvador is on the brink of a default on its debt.

https://i.ibb.co/CHJMmDk/60600243.jpg

Of course, the economic impact on the nation's finance of the bitcoin purchase is quite irrelevant, so be warned that the story that the bitcoin law led El Salvador to bankruptcy is "bullshit", to say the least.

Oh, who could have thought of that!
The bond was 200% oversubscribed, thousands were ready to invest in this ...scheme! And no word from Bukele?
No word, just like it happened with the 200MW geothermal eco-friendly one in the world bitcoin mining project?
Oh no, after Akon city now there is no Vulcano city?
Man, those surprises one after one, I need a large cup of green tea to keep myself calm, this is overhelming!

Damn, so now we have to go back to square one and use bitcoin for what it was, a payment system that didn't need a third party, and stop using it as a propaganda tool for some wanna-be dictator. Tough choice but I can live with that!

So?

How long are we going to give it?

You are giving up fillippone?

How about we give it until the end of the Calendar year?  That's only 6 months.

We know that bitcoin bear markets can last 5 months to 2 years.. and sometimes we are not even sure if we are out of the bear market, yet.

We surely can have difficulties even knowing how long we had been in a bear market, even though it seems to have had been confirmed around mid-May 2022 when the BTC price dropped below $35k and failed to spring back up in a quick manner..

Maybe if the BTC price were to at least get back above $30k, then some of the El Salvador bitcoin bond investment discussions can resume? 

Really, is nothing being done on all of the various El Salvador bitcoin-related investment fronts, or are there just low key operations taking place in El Salvador (for the time being?)?

Building gets done during bitcoin bear markets?  Hype gets done during bitcoin bull markets?  You are suspecting that El Salvador had overdone the hype portion, and made too many mistakes? 

My post was meant to resonate with what @Stompix said: I couldn't be more bullish on bitcoin, but I cannot be bullish on El Salvador, even if their hipster dictator adopted bitcoin as legal tender or got help from some most notable experts from the BTC world.

This debt crisis revealed the weak spot of the Bitcoin Bond Strategy....it wasn't sensible in bull markets; it is even more stupid now in bear markets.

Some news about Bitcoin Bonds coming from El salvador.
 https://i.ibb.co/Y0yRQMX/61336224.jpg (https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1595245985856475138?s=20&t=bTl1Ye6TsNRyBQthofoYBg)

https://i.ibb.co/41Nx8dS/61336224.jpg (https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1595355364995858432?s=20&t=bTl1Ye6TsNRyBQthofoYBg)

As we highlighter in the thread,the lack of a “bitcoin law”,  a key foundation for  the Volcano bond, was still lacking from El Salvador.
Something is moving according to this sources.

Also heard about the same on twitter and finally after a year they have submitted to securities bill with congress to issue the bitcoin bonds in the country.Altough Nayib has not made official tweet about the same but he has retweeted the Bloomberg report which clearly indicates the sign that they are close to the action.

The bill can be approved before this year Christmas as per some sources so we will see how it goes for the most anticipated fund raising in El Salvador at $1 billion split in half of $500 million.





@fillippone can you find the translated version for it?

If anyone is interested in reading the full 33 page of securities bill then they can find out it here :  Bitcoin bonds  (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/legal/el-salvador-submits-bitcoin-bond-bill)

They are still coming up with this :

Their magical geothermal well that somehow evaporated, the bitcoin mining promoted in videos is dead with no talk about the operation, energy prices are matching those in nearby countries, Salvador is a net importer of energy, and they still claim they are able to invest in mining? Companies involved in mining are facing bankruptcy and the revenue has come down to some measly 5$ for every 75kwh burned but some still think this will be catchy, let's promote mining although we have no serious clue how it will work and there is a 90% chance of being a money pit!

The bright side on this is that it's nice they haven't gone with their plan at 40k/BTC at least they are able to buy the famous dip Bukele keeps hitting it!


You build a city from scratch, you exempt businesses and citizens from taxes, you build the infrastructure for free energy, and somehow magically you will get 6.5% returns!
Is that better than Celsius rates?  ;D

We might be ahead of time, but just looking at the possibility of issuing a bond, the timing doesn’t look great.
Bitcoin is at a historic low, with institutional interest waning and less committed than one year ago.
We all know you want to buy when the market is low, and not when it is high, but often financial need doesn’t work this way.
Also, the yield for the El Salvadorean Bond has dramatically risen since one year ago. At the moment, a 7Y Bond from El Salvador should yield at least 25%:

https://i.ibb.co/tmC8j85/61337811.jpg


This is up 16% one year ago (red line in the graph), albeit down from 34% 3 Months ago (white line in the Graph).

And this is a “simple” bond. Usually, exotic bonds, with some “weird” payoff attached, are requested to yield more.

Bear in mind when you see the new Bitcoin Bond, with a coupon of 20%!

During one of his last podcast, Rikki, one half of the "Bitcoin Explorers" (https://www.youtube.com/@bitcoinexplorers) Stated that the Bitcoin Bond was overly undersubscribed.
This was the exact opposite of what Samson Mow stated.

He is also very pessimistic about the possibility of having a bitcoin bond sooner than later (or never).
I will let you know if I discover more.

I usually prefer to listen to podcasts rather than watch YouTube.. but I will watch Youtube, once in a while if I know which one is being referenced.. and even better yet if the reference tells me which part of the video to watch or tells me the reasons why I should watch / listen to the whole thing.

Your link (fillippone) referenced the BitcoinExplorers channel which has three videos (two of them are 16 minutes and one is 18 minutes).. one of them has an El Salvador title.. Is that the one or do you want me (us, we) to watch all three of those to figure out the reference.. hahahahahaha.. not trying to pick on you... and by the way, if there is an audio podcast of bitcoiners, I don't mind subscribing to it and listening to all the updates.. even though sometimes if I just hear about one, then it can take a while to listen to some of the back issues.. but I had never previously heard of this one.. BitcoinExplorers..... even though their first video says "We're back".. Back from where?  I did not listen to (or watch) it.. hahahaha .. I need direction to be inspired "where to start?" and/or "will it be worth la pena (la tristezza)?"...

Sorry, but the podcast I was referring is in Italian only. So, I thought it was pointless to provide an exact reference to it (I still can do that if you think it is worth, or, without spoiling your OpSec, you tell me that you can find Italian intelligible).

Regarding the "We are back" part, yes, they are back TO El Salvador.
Last year they provided a very nice reportage of 45 days spent in El Salvador documenting how the Bitcoin Ley was implemented, or actually NOT implemented in reality.

They provided a very good coverage, that was for the main part in Italian, and later translated in English.
You can find it here:

https://bitcoinitaliapodcast.it/missione-el-salvador

This year they are going to do the same mission (that's why the "We are back" claim), only broadening their focus on the whole Central America. And I guess they choose to broaden also their audience adopting the English Language.

I fully support The BIP Show: I don't know how, but I am often 100% on their side when there are controversial subjects.

Thanks for the information and those links.  Of course, if we are posting in an English thread, then we might need to point out if our sources might be in another language, and surely it is up to you how much you feel that it is necessary to either back up your sources or to provide the links (even if non-English is the only source that you know for the point that you are making).   

Sure in regards to the point that you were making, then surely sources would be important.. and of course, Samson is already known to be close to Bukele, but at the same time, he has been criticized about his sometimes overstating (marketing) and surely El Salvador has been criticized for similar spin-making.. so then part of the question might be whether your sources might have better information.. or maybe no matter what we might be speculating regarding some of those kinds of quasi-non-public details regarding volcano bond subscribership, the reasons (explanations) for the subscribership levels and also even speculations to be able to raise money for those kinds of causes during our current market environment. 

For sure, being on the ground in El Salvador can bring more credibility in terms of getting closer to primary sources, but then also sometimes being able to verify whether some of the factual representations are lining up with on-the-ground experience.... for example, how easy it might be to buy a sim card with bitcoin or some other example.. of some point that is being made.

I also prefer to listen to podcasts and have listened to the mining council about how they are using energy efficient resources and shifting to green mining which tells me the latest updates to backup my statements in any post and keep updated my knowledge.But also watch YouTube videos if I found some good one's although most of them are busy shilling fake and shit coins so go through other sources.

But yes if the video is long then it's helpful to listen to the specific part which emphasize on the whole matter for what's the video is upto and refrence to that part is really helpful.


It's fine as we will not be able to understand what they are saying as we don't have graphical representation also to link up the audio and understand it but good for pointing it out to us and let us know about them as they will now be in English also so we can have look on them to see their viewpoint on the matter.

I like the way they themselves have the team on the ground foe coverage on the matter providing a realistic approach to see the whole thing to the public and good part in English also.As you see El Salvador bitcoin bonds is the new hot topic of discussion at this point and we need to know how Bukele goverment will proceed further with it as they aim to raise $1billion for bitcoin city.

They are he is a true bitcoiner, and he's interested in giving a prospect of how things stands in reality, without bowing to Bukele and other clowns in the country (Max and Stacey) who are fed dollars from the government to play the State Buffon.

He's always been advocating bitcoin as an instrument of freedom for the masses, hoping from the bottom up adoption from poorer states, not a top- down experiment , like in the civilised world, or even in El Salvador, in a way, where bitcoin has been imposed by a law.

In my opinion El Salvador Bonds is a pretty experimental way to raise money, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The idea behind it was a bet on future government fees, which were paid up front in bitcoin and simple enough that it could find its way into the larger debt markets.

But the question remains whether this work will be a revolution in public finance or just a footnote?

Given the little information available on bitcoin bonding, it's hard to say it's even unclear how much money is raised at the end of the day, but if nothing else, it's an innovative solution for raising capital. Who knows: maybe we're looking at the first bitcoin-denominated sovereign debt offering.

This is out of question for the moment.
Lending your bitcoin to a third party is something very difficult for the moment.
Also from the debtor point of view, debt in Bitcoin could get quite difficult nowadays: think about repaying such a bond in a bull market.

True, Like other types of loans, if the debt has to be repaid in a bull market it is very problematic especially with unstable assets, let alone ensuring the lender is protected during that period to close the deal even in a bear market.

In this regard, I also wonder whether a solution like the DAO might really help countries that are vulnerable to the current economic crisis, especially those who are more speculative with their investment appetite.

The government puppets are everywhere pooping their nose out while bitcoin maximalist keep doing their job and not giving them importance and really appreciate those who present the true and accurate picture of the reality unlike fed up by goverment to speak like machine spreading negative points about bitcoin.BTCis knowledge which must be presented in true manner to everyone so they know about financial freedom of funds.

Sad thing is Bitcoin was created because Satoshi wanted to free the man from the State, and the tyranny of the few. And someone who proclaim herself a bitcoiner does what? Bows to a tyrant only because he imposed a law imposing everyone to accept bitcoin?
This is ridiculous, to say the least, and intellectually embarrassing.

I don't know whether Satoshi created bitcoin in order to free man from the state, but surely there is value in the creation of a money that is likely more sound than any other money that has ever been created in order to potentially inspire various actors (whether governmental or otherwise) to be more responsible and accountable to objective standards of value.. something such as bitcoin seems to have very great potential to incentivize and inspire fairness - even though it probably does not fix all problems and it likely also does not negate various needs for some kind of state or recognition of some resources that are community in nature... .. and so even if fixing the money might not be able to fix all of the difficulties of trying to balance the community assets and individual assets, it does likely return some fairness to monetary systems that have historically been abused in a variety of ways..

I am not claiming to know the answers, but I think that it is problematic to proclaim that the government is something outside of ourselves even though we have seen a lot of ways in which government has historically been abused, currently is being abused and likely to be abused in the future.. and I would not even proclaim to know how the various balances are going to be improved or fixed, even though it seems that bitcoin seems to continue to fix and inspire ongoing fixing of some of the systems that have been corrupted by traditional money systems.. and I doubt that bitcoin's fixing of these monetary and incentive matters is a future aspiration but instead a process in which we seem to be in really early stages in which some fixing has already taken place, are currently taking place and will likely continue to take place too.. . even though there are likely going to continue to be quite a few ups and downs along the way.. including ongoing casualties for folks who either don't appreciate the power of king daddy or fail/refuse to take some of their own adequate balances in regards to recognizing and investing time, money, energies and psychology into king daddy... of course.... balance also means, not to over do it, too... as we some times see casualties from that kind of conduct, too..  hahahahahaha..

.....i.e. be aggressive and assertive in terms of your investment into my lil precious, without becoming too aggressive.. and such lessons are good on the individual level, as well as on institutional and governmental levels.

.

Bukele Predicted a lot of things in 2022 and all seem to be failed. First he Predicted that bitcoin price would climb to $100,000 and that was not realized.

The second, he Predicted that two countries would adopt bitcoin as a legal tender but it was only Central Africa Republic Adopted it, the second was not realized.

Thirdly, he said, bitcoin will have influence in US election in this year. The Prediction of The Volcano Bonds that will be used to create the Bitcoin City is still a futuristic Prediction that can be realized.

This is the fourth one: 👇

The fifth one is still on subscription of the Volcano Bond which which was failed due to the Russia and Ukraine war.

The six one would have been Predicted in the bitcoin conference Hall in Miami but president Bukele didn't appear based on conflict in the country.

 Source (https://theparadise.ng/reviewing-el-salvadors-bukele-predictions-for-2022-what-went-wrong/)

What do you believe that all of these failed bitcoin-related predictions help to accomplish?

What do you get out of the fact that there may well be a lot of failed bitcoin related predictions?

You are pretty damned new to this forum, with only about one week since you had registered here.  Do you own any bitcoin? Do you have any bitcoin investment related plans?  Have you known about bitcoin for longer than the timeline of your forum registration date?

What do you think about bitcoin as an investment?  Are there better investments out there?  Do you believe that there might be more solid ways of viewing the future and/or making predictions?  Of course, it tends to be really easy to describe so many ways in which past predictions have failed to come true, but at any point in time, each of us has to decide for ourselves how we are going to invest our time, energies, psychology and finances, and these do not necessarily need to be all or nothing kinds of investments - even though at the same time there does tend to be a decent amount of value towards having some focus in terms of how any of us might be thinking about how we are investing our own limited resources.  

For sure, governments and institutions have some further considerations because they are likely acting in representative capacities, so likely the best of representatives would be attempting to match their spending of resources in line with the persons/entities that they are representing... but otherwise, they may well be making a lot of similar kinds of trade-offs in terms of balancing whether and how to invest.

Edit: 
By the way, I did just look at your post/merit history and I did notice that you had created a thread about your "first bitcoin" buy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432596.msg61525886#msg61525886), and so even though I have not had a chance to look at that thread yet.. I might be able to go through that thread later down the road... That thread is already getting into 4 pages and it has ONLY been four days.

You can't say we didn't see it happening, can you?
The exact scope of this thread is trying to debunk the myths a leader of a tiny Central American state tried to sell to his own electors.
I am not a fan of Bukele, I am not going to bend my knee in front of him only because he said the word "bitcoin", other did, maybe for a personal profit (insert your favorite toxic maxi's name here) of because of stupidity.

Regarding the above post from @JJG, consider it as a warm welcome to this forum. Where you will bump in one of his wall of text.

If I can freely interpret his thoughts: "introduce yourself to the forum, explain what bring you here and your attitude toward our mutual orange friend before posting something that could be read in opposite ways (is your post against bitcoin or against Bukele? To me, it is the latter, but maybe not everyone could read the same interpretation).

The introduction of self has been done in the Beginners & help BoardHow I found here. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432130.msg61509237#msg61509237). For the Bukele and bitcoin, I am not against the either. But a supporter of the both. I support Bukele because he is a very good example to other countries' governments on bitcoin. I decided to made the comment with the information under your thread because your thread is related to the information. If not I would have created a separate thread for but there was no need when there is an existing thread. I am a pro Bukele for adopting bitcoin and trying to make things easy for his citizens if things work out to the way he wants from bitcoin. I am also a pro bitcoin.

If you follow my fellow Bitcoin Italia Podcast friend in Central America (https://www.youtube.com/@bitcoinexplorers), you will discover that actually the Bitcoin Law did nothing for the poor people, unless giving the 30 USD.
Chivo Wallet is basically not used anymore, and bitcoin usage is basically zero in El Salvador.

Yes.  Probably just caught me from a bad angle, and in the end I am not really bothered so much whether I agree or disagree with someone, and there are some members I disagree with a lot, yet they back up what they say.. rather than just outlining disagreeable conclusions.

Many of the longer term bitcoin focus members had considered that various aspects of El Salvador's approach was correct because they purposefully said that they were not getting into shitcoins and they were staying bitcoin focused - but that did not prevent some issues with the Chivo wallet and various ways that the $30 credit was either gamed or abused.. so surely, it can be problematic when free money is given out - even if that free money largely may have had good intentions to incentivize poor people to get started and to look into bitcoin.

Some aspects of adoption in El Salvador is not going to be easy to measure, and I am not necessarily going to deem some projects as failures merely because they might have had to be rethunk or implemented later or even designed in ways that hardly resemble the original proposals - so in some sense, many of us will end up learning from earlier mistakes and my thinking is that as long as the earlier endeavors had good intentions to build, then value still can be gained from them, even if they might not end up being successful... and surely also sometimes we may have to consider if there might have been bad intentions from the start with some programs, so if a program is implemented, but there is no intention for it to be successful, then some of those kinds of efforts may well end up being bad uses of public monies.

there is no point setting aside $166m, hoping for a 6x in the following year.. to get to $1 billion..
but instead see it shrink to $40m where some people think 'well he should get started on building by selling the coin to start construction, if not then he failed to meet promises'


instead the obvious/smart thing is buy some more coin while cheap.. and to wait for the set aside budget to get to $1b .. and then do the project

---

separate from the bond stuff

---

the chivo project of sept 2021-jan 2022 WAS NOT BITCOIN
it was the crappy flawed subnetwork phishing bitcoins branding.. called lightning
lightning failed el salvador citizens

the guy from strike pretending he was offering chivo a bitcoin solution without the blockchain
bitcoin is on the blockchain, bitcoin never leaves the blockchain
the strike guy was actually highlighting 'lightning this'.. 'lightning that'.. 'lightning is bitcoin'... 'lightning is chivos btc'  meaning he was calling LN bitcoin in september and praising it . but by january they were saying "bitcoin failed"

malicious lot of idiots in the lightning crowd
fast enough to rip off reputation. but even faster in absolving themselves of responsibility, shiftng blame to say bitcoin is broke..

Bitcoin became a legal tender in El Salvador September 2021 leading to the commencement of Bitcoin adoption and since then there had been a continuous agitation on Bitcoin revolution in the country. I see this as a gamble and I hope it will pay off soon if he gain massive support from investors.


This is a rhetorical question and this is left to the country to decided on publicizing the total amount raised at the end of the day.
This is a great innovation that had been leading to the massive adoption of Bitcoin which I strongly support and I hope that if this becomes successful, other countries too could opt in to the use of fossil fuel from volcanoes to generate electricity even though the main purpose is not to mine Bitcoin. I hope to see this project become successful anyway!

I remember how many people have downloaded the wallet and there were claims that millions have used Chivo wallet because it was free money and they want to experience the new things but now the usage have declined due to various factors and have not heard anything new from the leader as well Bukele and only investment was in last dip but they have lost more then $60M with the current dip.

The new bitcoin bonds might be helpful for them and new investor around the globe seek interest in them but will be happy to see what future plans they have from raising the funds and how well this goes because you need proper plans and usage from people to keep it going.

Coming back strictly own topic: apparently something is moving in the right direction regarding the Volcano Bond.

The law has been approved by the parliament and it will be soon enacted.

https://i.ibb.co/nPhLNvg/61580990.png (https://twitter.com/bitcoinofficesv/status/1613274373066051587?s=61&t=jU0aMkA-DN0Xbc01fcpIOA)


So it's like a comprehensive framework to be applied to the digital assets as explained in the detailed thread.

It's nice to see good things in 2023 and even Bitcoin showing some improvements than last year. I hope you had a great move in this year.
What do you say if the Bitcoin price drops this year than last year and what will happen to the Volcano bonds too?

Of course, the bonds are issued long term, so if the BTC price drops prior to the ability to issue then there would be a low subscription rate, and but if they reach their targets in regards to the subscription, then the terms for servicing the bonds are not very onerous, and El Salvador would be able to use the money for the stated purpose.  It seems that a BIGGER problem would be present if the BTC price continues to drop and fails to rally for several years.  The bond terms are not unfavorable to El Salvador, so El Salvador could pay the bonds over time, but it would be better for everyone if BTC prices would at least go up 6% or so per year.. and better yet if they were to go up more than that... accordingly, it seems way better to issue these bonds on a dip in BTC prices rather than prior to a dip, and yeah of course, we do not know if the price will stop dipping, so that is one of the risks that both El Salvador takes and also anyone who buys into such a bond that already has a stated purpose that involves investing in bitcoin and bitcoin-related projects.

El Salvador’s Bitcoin City Wins an International Design Award (https://cryptopotato.com/el-salvadors-bitcoin-city-wins-an-international-design-award-report/) Good things in the world are achieved in a gradual process and not a hurry manner. Bukele, El Salvador president propagates it bitcoin city since 2021 but many criticized. And today the bitcoin city has started receiving international award. This is a good news in the year.
The city will be built at the Southern Part of Latin American and the

The Volcano Bond Energy of the Bitcoin City

The Volcanoes that are around the city will be used to power the city with electricity.  $1 billion bitcoin were estimated to build the city and as for now the authority has gathered $54 million worth of bitcoin.

Just to let you know this thread has been translated into Romanian by my friend Gazetabitcoin:

The idea of the first-ever fully digital bond in the world blew my mind, bro! It's insane how they're going to trade that bad boy on Blockstream AMP. That's a platform used for digital assets on the Liquid Network. This means the whole trading activity will be entirely digital, making it cheap as hell for the issuer and the investors, yo! It's dope that they're letting peeps purchase it with USD, BTC, and USDT, making it more accessible to everyone. But, let's be real, we still don't know what the heck is gonna happen with this project. I'm optimistic, but like, lowkey scared too. Only time will tell if this bond will be a banger or a bust.

Speaking of this whole Bitcoin thing, it's wild that El Salvador is all about it. It's like they're trying to start a whole new ball game in finance. But, building a whole new city just to promote Bitcoin? That's some next level cray. Like, there are so many other things they could use that money for, you feel me? Also, this whole citizenship thing is sus as heck. Like, are they really using citizenship as a commodity now? That's shady AF. Props to El Salvador for taking a risk and doing something different, but they need to make sure they're not screwing over their own people in the process.

I don’t know how, but I missed one news over the last few days:
World’s First Bitcoin Bonds Receive Regulatory Approval in El Salvador (https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/12/12/worlds-first-bitcoin-bonds-receive-regulatory-approval-in-el-salvador/)


I understand that the bond characteristics have not been made available yet. However, I have seen multiple news sources reporting that the bond has a 6.5% coupon and a 10-year time frame. Probably these are the same characteristics of the then advertised Volcano bond. Personally, I find it unlikely that anyone would buy a bond at such a high price. The 10-year yield for a plain vanilla El Salvador debt is currently at 11%, so I believe that a bond with exotic features like this should have a much higher yield