This article is part of a four -piece series at El Salvador. You can find the previous dispatch, a story about Bitcoin Berlín, here.

Bitcoin City sounds like a modern El Dorado – a dreamlike enclave in the jungle, a 21st century utopia.

The metropolis was announced by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele in 2021 and will reportedly be raised at the bottom of the Conchagua volcano. Reproductions of the project from May 2022 show a circular form, such as the Bitcoin logo, and a structure painted in gold.

After visiting El Salvador this month, I was curious to see Bitcoin City for myself or at least try to spot construction signs.

It’s a four and a half hours drive from San Salvador to Conchagua. The volcano sits on the easternmost side of the country, on the coast, at the Bay of Fonseca. You can see Nicaragua and Honduras from the top of it, as well as small islands such as Tiger Island, Conchagüita and Pokeuera Island. It is a beautiful place, but terribly moist and warm. It was 35 degrees Celsius (95 ° F) when I arrived at dinner at the end of January.

Bitcoin City is facing southeast after plans shared by Bukele, which means it should look towards the water. But Google Maps shows no ways on that side of the volcano, only the Conchagua forest and Virgin beaches like Playa or Flor (Flower Beach). So I drove to the small village of Conchagua on the northern side.

What i found in conchagua

Conchagua is a small village and it’s cute. My immediate impression was that I might have fallen back in time, like Portugal in the 1950s, maybe. Baked by schoolchildren in white uniforms rushed through the streets, which went back home for lunch after being dropped by colorful buses.

As in most Latin American cities, Central Square Distributed the city’s name in bright blockers: Conchagua. There is a white fountain behind and Christmas decorations were still up despite the festivities long over.

Contrary to the square stands a beautiful, white colonial church. Its patron saint is Santiago Apóstol; Villagers also refer to the parish with that name. It is difficult to see when the construction began, but it ended in 1693, making it the oldest church in El Salvador and a valued tourist attraction.

It was as it had to, it didn’t seem to be other foreigners when I arrived and my presence pulled a few staring. It’s a quiet city; Outdoors stand out. It’s hard to say how many people live there – the mayor’s office did not have access to the census taken by 2023 by Salvadoran Central Bank – but I would be surprised if it was more than a few thousand.

Wikipedia says 37,400, based on a 2007 study, but still this figure for the entire municipality of Conchagua, which takes half a dozen other villages around the volcano, and even then it feels like an overestimation.

In the mayor’s office, I was politely greeted by Margarito García, who has worked in the office for 15 years. When I asked about Bukele’s plans to build Bitcoin City on the volcano, García shook his head.

“These are only words,” he said.

There have been no signs of construction nearby, he added, nor have government officials been seen. I wasn’t the first person who asked. Tourists – French and Slovakian, he remembered – had come looking for Bitcoin City for the past few months. But he saw the attention that was brought to Conchagua as a positive for the local economy.

García mentioned that an airport was developed close to Loma Larga, approx. 30 minutes southwest of Conchagua. He referred to “Pacific Airport”, an initiative proposed by Bukele as far back as 2019 to increase tourism in El Salvador’s eastern region and relieve the country’s existing international airport of some of its overload.

The legislative assembly approved the airport’s construction by 2022. The project costs $ 328 million and originally earns between 300,000 and 500,000 passengers a year. Construction is expected to begin in 2025.

Plans for Bitcoin City

The project is noteworthy because Bukele’s plans for Bitcoin City include an airport as well as a port, rail services, commercial and residential zones, restaurants and entertainment sites. Could Pacific Airport be a first step to building the metropolis?

Possibly.

“In Bitcoin City we want mining, agriculture, culture and sports. When we’re away, this will last and everyone will be able to see the city, ”BUKELE said back in 2021 when he announced the project.

“We have no income tax forever. No profit tax, no property tax, no employment tax, zero municipal taxes and zero CO2 emissions. The only taxes you want in Bitcoin City are VAT, half of which will be used to pay the municipality’s bonds and the rest for public infrastructure and maintenance of cities, ”he added.

Conchagua Volcano’s geothermal energy was imagined as Bitcoin City’s primary power source, a nice environment Touch considering the environmental reputation of the Bitcoin mining sector.

Bukele said Bitcoin City’s construction will be financed via a Bitcoin-supported tokenized bond of $ 1 billion, called the Volcano bond, originally planned for issuance in 2022. According to El Salvador’s Bitcoin office. But the Salvadoran government has been silent on the matter ever since.

“I don’t know when we get any news about it,” Stacy Herbert, director of the Bitcoin office (which acts as the government’s marketing arm for all things, told all things crypto-related) back in December when I asked her for updates about Bitcoin City and Volcano bond. “But the fund is laid for everything.”

Driving to the volcano

I was quite determined to go up on the volcano and put my eyes on the Fonseca Bay. I wanted a sense of the view that residents of Bitcoin City can enjoy in the future.

The villagers didn’t think my rental car would handle it. It was all dirt tracks; I would need a four -wheel drive, they said, or I should take a shuttle up there.

I tried it anyway. Slowly I drove on a bumpy road, I drove east and bypass the volcano towards another village called Amapalita. On both sides of the track were fields and forests. Every once in a while I would see the northern side of the volcano breaking through the foliage.

It didn’t take long for the road to get too steep for comfort. I turned around and went back to the village. I could have tried another road that runs along Volcano’s western side, but the day was moving on and I would reach El Zonte, four hours away, before the evening.

Assuming that Pacific Airport is starting to be built in 2025 (which looks likely), it will have been six years since the moment the Buyle first mentioned the airport and the moment the construction started.

Bitcoin City, a much larger business, could take much longer than that. There is no guarantee that the initiative will ever perform at all. Other such planned cities – like Neom in Saudi -Arabia – have been subjected to even greater delays.

Who knows that? El Salvador has surprised the world more than once under Bukele. I wouldn’t bet against it.