El Zonte El Zonte | |
|---|---|
Municipality | |
 | |
| Country |  El Salvador |
| Department | La Libertad |
| • Mayor | (ARENA) |
| Population | |
| • Urban | 3,000 |
El Zonte is a town in La Libertad Department in El Salvador. A popular tourist destination, El Zonte has been described as a "world surfing mecca". [1] Playa El Zonte (English: El Zonte Beach; nicknamed Bitcoin Beach) became one of the first locales in the country to accept Bitcoin as a payment method, and inspired the country's adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender.
El Zonte is a town with a population of 3,000. According to Reuters in 2021, "El Zonte is visibly poor, with dirt roads and a faulty drainage system." [2] . El Zonte is located 26 mi (42 km) from San Salvador, the national capital. [3] In Summer 2023, the roads in El Zonte were updated from dirt to brick, as well as an improved drainage system.
The local economy is heavily dependent on tourism, particularly surfing. According to France 24 , El Zonte attracts tourists from United States, Canada, Europe, and Brazil looking to surf, with surfing classes costing between $10 and $50 an hour.
In El Zonte, a foreign volunteer-run program called the "Medusas" provide English and art education as well as low-cost surfing instruction. [4] Skateboarding is a popular activity among young residents of El Zonte, and a local community skatepark was established in the town. [5] [6]
When an anonymous American began sending Bitcoin to nonprofits there, nonprofit workers began an initiative to start a local Bitcoin ecosystem. [7] [8] The beach became one of the first places in El Salvador to accept Bitcoin as a method of payment: President Nayib Bukele cited the town as an inspiration for the law recognizing the cryptocurrency as one of El Salvador's two official currencies, alongside the U.S. Dollar. [9]
In 2022, the American network HBO premiered an episode of Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel that reported on the development of Bitcoin as a legal tender in El Zonte and how it has impacted the community. [10]
El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is San Salvador. The country's population in 2023 was estimated to be 6.5 million.
The economy of El Salvador has experienced relatively low rates of GDP growth, in comparison to other developing countries. Rates have not risen above the low single digits in nearly two decades – part of a broader environment of macroeconomic instability which the integration of the United States dollar has done little to improve. One problem that the Salvadoran economy faces is the inequality in the distribution of income. In 2011, El Salvador had a Gini Coefficient of .485, which although similar to that of the United States, leaves 37.8% of the population below the poverty line, due to lower aggregate income. The richest 10% of the population receives approximately 15 times the income of the poorest 40%.
The history of El Salvador begins with several distinct groups of Mesoamerican people, especially the Pipil, the Lenca and the Maya. In the early 16th century, the Spanish Empire conquered the territory, incorporating it into the Viceroyalty of New Spain ruled from Mexico City. In 1821, El Salvador achieved independence from Spain as part of the First Mexican Empire, only to further secede as part of the Federal Republic of Central America two years later. Upon the republic's independence in 1841, El Salvador became a sovereign state until forming a short-lived union with Honduras and Nicaragua called the Greater Republic of Central America, which lasted from 1895 to 1898.
La Unión is a municipality in La Unión Department of El Salvador.
Conchagua is a stratovolcano in southeastern El Salvador, overlooking the Gulf of Fonseca. Cerro del Ocote and Cerro de la Bandera are the two main summits, with Bandera appearing younger and more conical. There are active fumarolic areas on both peaks, but no confirmed historical eruptions. It is surrounded by forest called Bosque Conchagua. Conchagua, in Native American indigenous Salvadoran Lenca language, means. According to historians, the volcano was settled by the Lenca civilization, who worshipped the goddess Comizahual, an indigenous Jaguar Princess. Lenca legends say that Conchagua was Comizahual's favorite volcano, and upon her death she was taken on top on Conchagua where her body turned into many golden Chiltota birds that took off from Conchagua volcano.
Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight. Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that requires increasing quantities of electricity and guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain.
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
The legal status of cryptocurrencies varies substantially from one jurisdiction to another, and is still undefined or changing in many of them. Whereas, in the majority of countries the usage of cryptocurrency isn't in itself illegal, its status and usability as a means of payment varies, with differing regulatory implications.
Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez is a Salvadoran politician and businessman who is the 43rd president of El Salvador, serving since 1 June 2019. He is the first Salvadoran president since 1984 who was not elected as a candidate of one of the country's two major political parties: the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), of which Bukele was formerly a member.
Bitcoin Magazine is one of the original news and print magazine publishers covering Bitcoin and digital currencies. Bitcoin Magazine began publishing in 2012. It was co-founded by Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Matthew N. Wright, Vladimir Marchenko, and Vicente S. It is currently owned and operated by BTC Inc in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Lightning Network (LN) is a "layer 2" payment protocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain and those of other cryptocurrencies. It is intended to enable fast transactions among participating nodes and has been proposed as a solution to the bitcoin scalability problem. It is a peer-to-peer system for making micropayments of cryptocurrency through a network of bidirectional payment channels, without delegating custody of funds.
Cryptoeconomics is an evolving economic paradigm for a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of digital economies and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Cryptoeconomics integrates concepts and principles from traditional economics, cryptography, computer science, and game theory disciplines. Just as traditional economics provides a theoretical foundation for traditional financial services, cryptoeconomics provides a theoretical foundation for DeFi services bought and sold via fiat cryptocurrencies, and executed by smart contracts.
Bitso began as a global cryptocurrency exchange founded in Mexico. It was founded in 2014 by Ben Peters, Pablo Gonzalez and Daniel Vogel. Daniel Vogel is the current chief executive officer. Bitso was the first Latin American company and one of the few cryptocurrency platforms to be regulated by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission under its Distributed Ledger Technology Framework.
Events in the year 2021 in El Salvador.
The Bitcoin Law was passed by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador on 8 June 2021, giving the cryptocurrency bitcoin the status of legal tender within El Salvador after 7 September 2021. It was proposed by President Nayib Bukele. The text of the law states that "the purpose of this law is to regulate bitcoin as unrestricted legal tender with liberating power, unlimited in any transaction, and to any title that public or private natural or legal persons require carrying out".
El Salvador became the first country in the world to use bitcoin as legal tender, after having been adopted as such by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador in 2021. It has been promoted by Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who claimed that it would improve the economy by making banking easier for Salvadorans, and that it would encourage foreign investment. The adoption has been criticized both internationally and within El Salvador, due to the volatility of Bitcoin, its environmental impact, and lack of transparency regarding the government's fiscal policy.
Bitcoin City is a planned smart city project in La Unión, El Salvador. The planned city is intended to be a tax haven, and to use geothermal energy to power Bitcoin mining. The feasibility of its reliance on both geothermal energy and Bitcoin have been the subject of criticism, alongside concerns regarding delays in the project's financing and construction.
The Airport of the Pacific, also known as the Bitcoin City Airport, is a planned joint-use civilian international airport and military base which will be located in Conchagua, El Salvador, and will serve the city of La Unión and the planned Bitcoin City. The airport was proposed by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele during his 2019 presidential campaign as a part of his "Plan Cuscatlán" and construction was approved by the Legislative Assembly on 26 April 2022. Terraforming began in March 2023.
Karim Alberto Bukele Ortez is a Salvadoran businessman and politician. He is a younger brother of and was a presidential advisor to Nayib Bukele, the current president of El Salvador. Bukele has previously worked as Nayib's campaign manager during his 2015 and 2019 electoral campaigns as well as the campaign manager for the Nuevas Ideas political party in 2021. In late-2023, Bukele was considered a likely candidate to succeed Nayib as acting president in the event that he resigned ahead of the 2024 general election, however, Bukele denied that he would succeed Nayib.
Yusef Alí Bukele Ortez is a Salvadoran businessman, politician, and economist. He is a younger brother of and advisor to Nayib Bukele, the current president of El Salvador. Bukele has served as one of Nayib's economic advisors and played a role in the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador.
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