El Salvador Announces $1.6 Billion Investment That Will Kickstart ‘Bitcoin City’

El Salvador is getting a massive infrastructure investment that’s expected to support the buildout of its visionary “Bitcoin City.”

The government said Sunday that Yilport, a Turkish holding company, will invest $1.62 billion in two of El Salvador’s seaports, marking the largest private investment in the country's history.

“This will be a mixed-ownership company between the Yilport company and [El Salvador], which will operate both seaports for the next 50 years,” said the government in a video statement shared by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele on Monday. The agreement is a product of Bukele’s visit to Turkey in 2022.

One of the ports involved is the Acajutla Seaport, which handles most of the nation’s exports of coffee, sugar, and balsamic salts from Peru. The other is the La Union Seaport, an inactive and neglected seaport located where Bitcoin City is planned for construction.

Stacy Herbert, head of El Salvador’s National Bitcoin Office, retweeted a statement that the project will create “thousands of direct and indirect jobs” and “more investment in underlying local infrastructure.”

Max Keiser, Herbert’s husband and also a member of the Bitcoin office, characterized the deal as a Bitcoin City infrastructure investment. “Bukele's Turkey trip paid off BIGLY!” he wrote to Twitter. “Qatar on deck.”

Bitcoin City was first pitched in November 2021 as a tax-free city that would fund itself through Bitcoin mining powered by its regional volcanoes rather than from its civillian power grid. The President shared a potential architectural model of the city in May 2022, though little has been said of the project since that time.

The city was supposed to be funded through El Salvador’s long-anticipated “Bitcoin bonds,” but the fundraising effort has been postponed numerous times. The country has found alternative sources of capital, however, including a renewable Bitcoin mining partnership with Tether, and a “Freedom Visa” program offered to generous, wealthy Bitcoiners.

According to the Bitcoin Office website, El Salvador currently holds 5840.76 BTC, currently worth around $345 million. It continues to add 1 BTC to its holdings every day.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.