El Salvador’s Bitcoin Bond Issuance Apparently Delayed

El Salvador’s $1 billion in so-called "volcano bonds" have yet to hit the market, with volatile international conditions likely a key culprit in the delay.

Last week, El Salvador Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya - who previously said the bond sale could come between March 15 and March 20 - noted the war between Ukraine and Russia could slow the process. “We have the tools almost finished, but the international context will tell us,” he told a local TV station.
Indeed, while legislators in El Salvador still had work to do regarding the bonds, lawmakers over the past week or two have instead been preoccupied with the repercussions - supply chain shocks among them - of the Ukraine war. As of March 15, the laws necessary for the bonds had not been sent to Congress, according to a report from local newspaper La Prensa Gráfica.
In November 2021, President Nayib Bukele announced plans to build a “Bitcoin City” funded by the sale of the bonds, which have an annual coupon of 6.5%. Half of the funds will be used to accumulate bitcoin (BTC), with the rest earmarked for infrastructure and bitcoin mining powered by geothermal energy.
As of press time, no representative of the Salvadoran government had made an announcement regarding the bitcoin bond, and President Bukele's office did not respond to CoinDesk's inquiries about a new estimated date.
A report in the Financial Times adds a bit more intrigue, saying the bonds will not be issued by the government of El Salvador, but instead by state-owned thermal energy company La Geo. Further, Americans will not be eligible to buy the paper, as it will trade on Bitfinex, which isn’t available in the U.S.

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Andrés Engler

Andrés Engler was a CoinDesk editor based in Argentina, where he covers the Latin American crypto ecosystem. He holds BTC and ETH.

Follow @andresengler on Twitter

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