El Salvador recently announced that Turkey-based holding firm Yilport will invest $1.62 billion — the biggest private investment in the country’s history — to refurbish two seaports, including one home to the utopian “Bitcoin City.”
The announcement shared by President Nayib Bukele revealed that Yilport will be upgrading the ports at La Unión and Acajutla. Acajutla Seaport conducts most of El Salvador’s exports of coffee, sugar, and balsamic salts from Peru, while La Unión is a grossly underutilized seaport located where Bitcoin City is expected to be constructed.
“This will be a mixed-ownership company between the Yilport company and [El Salvador], which will operate both seaports for the next 50 years,” the government’s video statement on Aug. 12 noted.
Stacy Herbert, the director of the Bitcoin Office of El Salvador President, stated that the $1.6 billion investment is a product of Bukele’s visit to Turkey in 2022.
EL SALVADOR: Economic Plan / Phase 3
FOCUS: Logistics
— Stacy Herbert
(@stacyherbert) August 12, 2024
Stacy retweeted a post that claimed the undertaking would create “thousands of direct and indirect jobs” and “more investment in underlying local infrastructure.”
Stacy’s husband and advisor to Bukele, Max Keiser, described the agreement as a Bitcoin City infrastructure investment. “Bukele’s Turkey trip paid off BIGLY!” he posited on X.
El Salvador’s Ambitious Bitcoin City
El Salvador made Bitcoin a legal tender in 2021. In November of that year, President Bukele announced that the country was going to build an entire city based on the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap. The city will be a special economic zone that would offer tax advantages, crypto-friendly regulations, and incentives for Bitcoin businesses for its locals.
Bukele later revealed that the Bitcoin City will be a full-fledged metropolis with residential and commercial areas, restaurants, an airport, and rail service. The city will be designed in a circle, and there will be a plaza with a massive BTC symbol in the city center.
The special economic zone was supposed to be funded through El Salvador’s much-awaited “Bitcoin bonds,” but the offering has been shelved on multiple occasions.
Data from the Bitcoin Office website shows that El Salvador currently holds 5840.76 BTC. At BTC’s current price of just above $58,700, El Salvador’s Bitcoin stack is worth roughly $343 million. Central American countries continue their long-standing policy of purchasing one BTC per day.
El Salvador also introduced a law in December 2023 granting citizenship to Bitcoin investors who donate $1 million in Bitcoin or Tether to the government.
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