El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele stated yesterday that he will issue a $1 billion “Bitcoin Bond” to fund the construction of the world’s first Bitcoin City. The city would have no taxes other than VAT and would be carbon neutral, with the majority of its energy coming from geothermal sources. El Salvador will team up with Blockstream to issue the bond, and will use Blockstream’s liquid network to do it, according to Bukele.
Bukele claimed the city planned in the eastern district of La Union would obtain geothermal electricity from a volcano and would not impose any taxes except the value added tax during an event that wrapped up a week-long promotion of bitcoin in El Salvador (VAT).
“Invest here and make all the money you want,” Bukele said in English, dressed all in white and wearing a reversed baseball cap, in the beach resort of Mizata. “This is a fully ecological city that works and is energized by a volcano.”
Bukele estimated that the public infrastructure would cost roughly 300,000 bitcoins and that half of the VAT charged would be used to fund the bonds issued to develop the city, while the other half would be used to pay for services such as garbage collection.
“This is going to make El Salvador the financial center of the world,” Bukele said.
