This article is part of a series of four pieces on El Salvador. You can find the previous dispatch, a story on Bitcoin Berlín, here.
Bitcoin City sounds like a modern el Dorado – a dreamlike enclave in the jungle, a 21st century utopia.
Announced by the president of El Salvador Nayib Bukele in 2021, the metropolis will be supposed to be raised at the base of the Conchagua volcano. The rendering of the project from May 2022 show a circular shape, such as the Bitcoin logo, and a structure painted in gold.
By visiting El Salvador this month, I was curious to see Bitcoin City for myself, or at least try to spot signs of construction.
This is a four -hour and a half journey from San Salvador to Conchagua. The volcano is on the eastern side of the country, on the coast, by the Gulf of Fonseca. You can see Nicaragua and Honduras du Haut, as well as small islands such as Tiger Island, Conchagüita and Meanguera Island. It’s a beautiful place, but terribly humid and warm. It was 35 degrees Celsius (95 ° F) when I arrived at noon at the end of January.
Bitcoin City faces southeast according to the plans shared by Bukele, which means that it should look towards the water. But Google Maps does not show any road on this side of the volcano, only the Conchagua forest and the virgin beaches like Playa El Flor (Flower Beach). So I led to the small village of Conchagua, on the north side.
What I found in CONCHAGUA
Conchagua is a small village, and it’s adorable. My immediate impression was that I turned back in time, as in Portugal in the 1950s, perhaps. Mass of schoolchildren in white uniforms rushed into the streets, returning home for lunch after being deposited by colored buses.
As in most Latin American cities, the central place displayed the name of the city in blocks of shiny blocks: CONCHAGUA. There is a white fountain behind, and the Christmas decorations were still up despite the festivities for a long time.
In front of the square is a magnificent white colonial church. His patron saint is Santiago Apóstol; The villagers also refer to the parish by this name. It is difficult to say when the construction started, but it finished in 1693, which makes it the oldest church of El Salvador and a popular tourist attraction.
Anyway, there did not seem to be other foreigners on my arrival, and my presence attracted some looks. It is a quiet city; Foreigners stand out. It is difficult to say how many people live there – the mayor’s office did not have access to the census carried out in 2023 by the Salvadoral central bank – but I would be surprised if it was more than a few thousand.
Wikipedia dit 37,400, based on a survey in 2007, but this figure concerns the entire municipality of Conchagua, which takes half a dozen other villages around the volcano, and even then, it looks like a overestimation.
At the mayor’s office, I was politely welcomed by Margarito García, who worked for the office for 15 years. When I asked Bukele’s plans to build Bitcoin City on the volcano, García shook his head.
“These are just words,” he said.
There was no sign of nearby construction, he added, and government representatives were not seen. I was not the first person to ask. Tourists – French and Slovakians, he remembered – had come in search of Bitcoin City in recent months. But he saw the attention paid to Condchagua as a positive for the local economy.
García mentioned that an airport was being developed near Loma Larga, about 30 minutes southwest of Conchagua. He referred to “Pacific airport”, an initiative proposed by Bukele in 2019 to stimulate tourism in the Eastern region of El Salvador and relieve the existing international airport in the country of some of its congestion.
The Legislative Assembly approved the construction of the airport in 2022. The project will cost $ 328 million and initially intended between 300,000 and 500,000 passengers per year. Construction should start in 2025.
Bitcoin city plans
The project is notable because Bukele’s Bitcoin City plans include an airport, as well as a port, rail services, commercial and residential areas, restaurants and entertainment places. Could Pacific Airport be a first step to build the metropolis?
Maybe.
“In Bitcoin City, we will have mining, agriculture, culture and sports. When we left, it will continue and everyone will be able to see the city, “said Bukele in 2021, when he announced the project.
“We will not have income tax, forever. No tax on profits, no property tax, no job tax, zero municipal taxes and zero CO2 emissions. The only taxes you will have at Bitcoin City is VAT, half of which will be used to pay for the obligations of the municipality and the rest for public infrastructure and the maintenance of the city, “he added.
The geothermal energy of the Conchagua volcano has been envisaged as the main source of food from Bitcoin City, a nice environmental touch given the environmental reputation of the Bitcoin operating industry.
Bukele said that the construction of Bitcoin City will be financed via a tokenized obligation supported by a bitcoin of $ 1 billion, called the volcano obligation, initially provided for the issue in 2022. In December 2023 and was to be launched in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Bitcoin office of El Salvador. But the Salvadoran government has remained silent on the issue since.
“I don’t know when we will have news about it,” said Stacy Herbert, director of Bitcoin Office (who acts like the government’s marketing arm for everything that updated on Bitcoin City and the Bond of the Volcano .
Driver
I was completely determined to set up the volcano and put my eyes on the Gulf of Fonseca. I wanted to have an idea of the view that Bitcoin City residents could appreciate in the future.
The villagers did not seem to think that my rental car would do it. They were all ground tracks; I would need a four-wheel drive, they said, or I should take a shuttle up there.
I still tried it. Slowly making my way on a bumpy road, I was driving east, bypassing the volcano, towards another village called Amalita. On both sides of the track were fields and forests. From time to time, I would see the north side of the volcano cross the foliage.
It was not long before the road was too stiff for comfort. I turned around and returned to the village. I could have tried another route, which runs along the west side of the volcano, but the day was going, and I wanted to reach El Zonte, four o’clock in the nightfall.
Assuming that Pacific airport is starting to build in 2025 (which seems likely), it has been six years since the time Bukele mentioned the airport for the first time and the moment when construction began.
Bitcoin City, being a much larger business, could take much longer than that. There is no guarantee that the initiative will never materialize at all. Other planned cities – such as the Neom in Saudi Arabia – faced even greater delays.
Who knows? El Salvador surprised the world more than once under Bukele. I wouldn’t bet against that.
