One of the co-founders of the Bitcoin Beach Zone in El Salvador, Roman Martinez, said that “a lot of Bitcoiners” are thinking of resettling in the nation in reaction to global legislative crackdowns on cryptocurrencies.
Speaking with Cointelegraph at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on July 27, Martinez said some people who have been excluded from conventional banking systems may be looking at El Salvador due to some of the country’s laws on Bitcoin.
The co-founder of Bitcoin Beach claims that by endorsing legislation allowing Bitcoin as legal cash in 2021, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele may have opened the floodgates to other nations.
“Many families and people are seeing El Salvador as their backup,” Martinez said. “They’re buying properties; there are a lot of Bitcoiners; they’re moving to El Salvador to live there; and they want to raise their kids there.”
Martinez said he had heard of people based in Europe, the United States, and Canada finding El Salvador a more reasonably priced place to raise a family and buy a house “living in a Bitcoin standard.” President Bukele announced in April an effort to provide 5,000 foreign workers with a road to citizenship.
Of the 6.5 million residents of El Salvador, about 95,000 were noncitizens or immigrants; 58% of these were from Nicaragua, Honduras, or Guatemala. That would leave, from other nations, including the US, around 55,000.
Having first taken office in 2019 and been reelected in 2024, Bukele has positioned himself as the “world’s coolest dictator” and helped pro-crypto laws advance in a legislative body run under his political party. Critics have claimed Bukele instituted autocratic policies while serving as president, having the police harass those critical of his government.
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