El Salvador’s forgotten crypto city

A year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment is yet to kick off

It’s been a year since El Salvador made Bitcoin a legal tender, but there still isn’t any progress on their promised crypto city.

The planned spot where the world’s first crypto city was meant to be built, it’s still surrounded by jungle.

The nation’s President, Nayib Bukele, is promising a “Bitcoin City” that will be a tax haven for hungry crypto investors. But some locals say it’s a tough slog as the nation recovers from the height of the pandemic.

In front of hundreds of Bitcoin enthusiast in 2021, the president dressed in all white and a backwards baseball cap said “invest here and make all the money you want.”

The city was promised to have its own airport, a residential area, and a mall that’s meant to look like the Bitcoin symbol from the sky.

Of course, when the country adopted Bitcoin, the price was hovering around #47,000, but it’s now fallen below the $20,000 mark.

The government hasn’t made any comments on the developments, but one expert says it was always going to be a risky move.

Director of the Institute of Science, Technology, and Innovation at Francisco Gavidia University, Oscar Picardo, says “this experiment has been very risky, too risky, for a poor country.”

“It has been seen that (bitcoin) is a very speculative, highly variable financial asset,” he continued.

It comes as President Bukele has heavily promoted the adoption of crypto, recently using he address at the key Alliance for Financial Inclusion meeting to speak on the matter.