El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, announced plans on November 20, 2021, to build a “Bitcoin City” near the Conchagua volcano and to connect the project to a new bitcoin-linked sovereign financing program. The announcement came at the closing event of Bitcoin Week at Mizata, according to the Salvadoran presidency’s dated account.
The development mattered because it moved El Salvador’s bitcoin policy beyond legal-tender adoption and into proposed public infrastructure, energy use and sovereign borrowing. Yet the distinction between an announced plan and a completed financing was central: on November 20, no bond had been issued, no final offering document was presented in the surviving records reviewed, and construction had not begun.
A city organized around bitcoin
The presidency described a planned city with residential and commercial areas, restaurants, entertainment, an airport, a port and a train. Bukele placed it near Conchagua, saying volcanic geothermal resources would supply the city and bitcoin mining. The government said it would provide land and public infrastructure while seeking private investment.
Bukele also presented a special tax model. The presidency’s account said the planned city would not levy income, capital-gains, property, contracting or municipal taxes. Value-added tax would remain: one half was described as supporting bond payments, with the other half assigned to public infrastructure and maintenance.
Those statements were policy promises delivered from a conference stage, not evidence that tax legislation, land acquisition, environmental review or engineering had been completed. The official account said construction would start within 60 days after financing and that bond issuance would begin in 2022. Both were forward-looking claims as of November 20, 2021.
The proposed $1 billion bond
Blockstream, whose executives helped design the financing with the government, published additional terms on November 21, 2021. Its release described a $1 billion, 10-year instrument with a 6.5% coupon, to be issued on the Liquid Network. The proposed allocation was $500 million for purchasing bitcoin and $500 million for energy and bitcoin-mining infrastructure.
Blockstream also said El Salvador intended to create a securities law and grant Bitfinex Securities a license to process and list the issuance. That wording identified unresolved institutional prerequisites. It did not establish that a securities framework or exchange authorization was already in force on November 20.
Reuters’ contemporaneous report from Mizata matched the central outline: a circular city in the eastern La Unión region, geothermal power, the value-added-tax model and a first $1 billion “volcano bond.” Reuters attributed the bond terms to Blockstream chief strategy officer Samson Mow, who spoke at the event.
Why the announcement carried institutional weight
El Salvador had made bitcoin legal tender on September 7, 2021. The November 20 proposal widened that experiment in two directions. First, it treated bitcoin-related activity as an anchor for regional development and energy infrastructure. Second, it proposed placing bitcoin exposure inside a sovereign debt instrument rather than limiting the state’s role to payments and a government wallet.
That structure would have linked public borrowing to several distinct risks: conventional sovereign credit risk, execution risk around new infrastructure, bitcoin price volatility and the operational and legal framework for a tokenized security on Liquid. The announced coupon and use of proceeds described the intended product; they did not resolve those risks.
The surviving contemporaneous record therefore supports a consequential announcement, not a completed “Bitcoin City” or successful bond sale. No bitcoin price reaction is stated here because the announcement occurred late on a Saturday and venue selection, time zone and measurement window would materially affect any calculation. The verifiable event on November 20, 2021, was El Salvador’s decision to publicly frame bitcoin as the basis for a proposed city and a new form of sovereign financing.
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