Topic: Everything you wanted to know about ES Volcano Bond and were afraid to ask! - page 3. (Read 1576 times)

I know, I just have an "it's Friday feeling" (although it's obviously Thursday) and I feel like joking and teasing a bit, doing things more relaxed, not just numbers and numbers and numbers...
30 degrees, all sunny, all green, planning on opening a beer after ... we do some numbers!  


Because it's a f lie! That's why!
Just as his 95 MW well, there is no such thing in the world! No single well has this capacity, no single well can be mined and operational in months!

Now, let's go for all this geothermal energy, directly from the source:
https://www.cne.gob.sv/tema/energias-renovables-2/energia-geotermica/
oops...got deleted! nice!!
But from google cache:


Salvador has 791 MW geothermal capacity only 200 currently in use, a total of  1 506 MW all renewable, 757 not renewable, and 25% of all electricity imports mainly from Guatemala. There is no extra geothermal energy, there won't be, it's simply not possible unless we have a new tectonic plate movement, which probably will mean no Salvador after.

That's why they burn gas, that's why they burn oil, that's why they import energy, but those things are not to be told! I don't think bitcoiners would want to invest billions in a city with this view when you look at the sunrise on the ocean:



Think of it just like that green open farm premium meat with a happy pig on it for which you've for 20 euros extra and only when you arrive home do you see those tiny letters letting you know it's 70% water, 20% MDM meat, and 10% natural recycled bee wax that makes it label worthy

It is. I hope it is a positive feature of this thread.


It looks like You know more than me. The energy for the mining ops and the Bitcoin city should be geothermal. One of the energy features is that it might be challenging to move the point from the production site to where it might be needed. Of course, this problem doesn’t exist for the Bitcoin mining operations, which can absorb energy wherever it is produced (provided internet connectivity).

But the point is interesting: why are they setting up an LNG regasification if geothermal energy is so abundant in the ES’territory?

And of course I do share your worries about Bukele.

Since is a topic where you can ask stuff without being afraid, did he mention where is he going to get that green energy from, and maybe maybe, address the issue of why if they do have so much green energy they've finally started their  378 MW gas (LNG) power plant in order to reduce imports from Guatemala?

Just saying, if you have spare green energy for a whole future city, the above plant would make no sense, right?
Probably my personal dislike for Bukele but something is really fishy and stinky there!

For sure, government officials are not necessarily going to specify all of the reasons (and maybe not even their most motivating reasons) for decisions that they make, even though for credibility reasons they do tend to want to provide some kind of reason that is sufficiently plausible.

Many of us who have been watching the variety of El Salvador's bitcoin related projects that have come about since their June 2021 announcement (and subsequent legislation) have remained glued towards wanting to see how the various seemingly ambitious implementations are playing out.. and surely any ambitious outline can start to end up in a kind of territory in which some of us might start to consider whether they may have been overpromising and under-delivering - and of course, underpromising and over-delivering remains the gold standard - yet I am not even really opposed towards the potential utility for aspirational type overpromising statements .... because even some of the background preparations can allow for various kinds of learnings about whether their current formulations need to be tweaked or maybe other jurisdictions might want to consider some kind of similar proposal, but they might make it a wee bit less pie in the sky - for example, there can surely be trade-offs regarding whether a whole new city needs to be considered or to possibly take some already existing location/infrastructure that might cause the aspirations to have more plausibly in terms of how they are described.

Actually, whether you are correct or not fillippone, in regard to possible unstated issuance obstacles, many of us have likely noticed that Bukele seems to have been taking quite a bit of a lower profile and seemingly fewer public tweet confrontations, and I have my doubts regarding that lower profile being merely due to lower BTC price performance in recent times, even though of course, it makes sense that bitcoin-related arrogance (or smugness) is much more difficult to pull off during times that bitcoin is consolidating for seemingly extended periods or even when the BTC price seeming to go against expectations for decently long periods of time.   .. and don't get me wrong, I am not even proclaiming that there likely are quite a few behind-the-scenes pressures being put on Bukele that individuals (or even non-governmental institutional actors) would not necessarily receive by various status quo powers that be financial institutions/governments/otherwise rich peeps.

It kind of reminds me of my own time in this forum in 2016 or so, and some members were telling me that they liked me much better during 2014 and 2015 when my BTC portfolio holdings were considerably in the red and saying that I was much more humble and nicer during those times, but then when my BTC portfolio holdings went into positive territory, my posts on the topic were filled with a lot more "I told you so" smugness, and even if I was being trolled a bit, for sure, we likely realize and understand that our options and power is greatly increased when our portfolio/holdings are in positive rather than negative price territories - and surely whether we are individuals, institutions or even governments, there is going to be a certain level of stress (and restraint) when we are in a place that our holdings are not really profitable.. and bitcoin history has shown us** that so long as we do not fuck up in terms of not selling too much BTC too soon, we can get into extreme levels of optionality merely from the level of profits of our BTC portfolio  going from many multitudes or even magnitudes of profitability (I was told that the use of the term "magnitude" is meant to indicate using 10x multiples rather than 1x).

**For sure, past performance does not guarantee future results, even though it is becoming more and more widely appreciated that bitcoin remains one of the best of asymmetric upside bets - including that it remains way more accessible for anyone around the world - which may well have not been the case for a lot of historical assets.. and surely bitcoin's digital form factor remains part of the innovative amazingness that is still way under appreciated to cause it to be really distinguishable from previous historical potential investment "opportunities."

Bitcoin Bonds are missing in action still, but they are coming, Treasury Minister says:

El Salvador's Bitcoin Volcano Bonds Launch Still on Hold, According to Treasury Minister



Still, I think regulation is the main hurdle in launching these bonds, not the prevailing market conditions.

I am really humbled by this outstanding analysis. I have learnt a lot from this comments and it has help me to change my perception about so many things concerning bitcoin and the ES Volcano Bond. It's a great privilege to learn from mentors like fillippone and JayJuanGee.

Surely, you seem to be exaggerating.. El Savador is Bitcoin's ambassador?  I can understand that there is some symbolic aspects in regards to El Salvador taking on some pretty heavy mantle in some of its bitcoin related projects including but not limited to the actually successfully implementing Bitcoin as legal tender and then aspects of the Volcano bond that they have not yet issued, but considering ways that they would use the  funds raised through the Volcano bond money.


Again, you seem to be exaggerating.  it seems that El Salvador has delayed its volcano bond issuance for possibly more reasons than mere lack of legislation.. even though the lack of legislation could be a kind of part of the way of explaining why they are delaying in their issuance.  

Also, I doubt that there is any "do or die" here, whether we are referring to if the Volcano bond actually ends up issuing as it had been originally proposed or if other aspects of El Salvador's legal tender implementation starts to fall apart in various ways.  In some ways, we likely can already consider El Salvador to have some levels of success in terms of what has been accomplished so far in terms of showing some possible paths forward with bitcoin and also attracting quite a bit of attention to the bitcoin matter... so still a work in progress to watch how some of the details (including ups and downs) are continuing to unravel.


You believe that is how the world works?  Sounds a little crazy to me that you seem to be hinging on some kind of projection that El Salvador has to achieve some level of perfection, otherwise nations are going to be scared to get involved in bitcoin.  Surely, every single year in bitcoin, we have greater and greater levels of knowledge regarding bitcoin spreading to all kinds of people in the world, whether politicians or other folks in society - and even ongoing growth of bitcoin's financialization, and so in that regard, there are likely going to continue be folks considering ways that bitcoin might be adopted or ways that spheres of their influence (whether on a company level, personal level, or even governmental level) might start to employ aspects of bitcoin within their balance sheet or how they operate.

You presumption of do or die is coming off as weak, and sure some countries are going to be scared and/or hesitant regarding whether to implement bitcoin and in what ways to attempt to do it, too.


First, you are employing the royal we?  or you are trying to project some kind of authority in this matter?

Second, I doubt that there is any kind of order that things need to be done, even if you might be correct that some approaches might have potential to be more effective than others.


Of course, there is nothing wrong with those points, and for sure, if El Salvador gets to actual issuance of the bond, and is able to raise the $1 billion as projected within the bond, then surely more innovations (and possible experimentations) could result from that.. and just the possible issuance of the bond has a lot of innovations within itself - even if the other innovative subsequent approaches do not end up getting employed.


Surely whether such bitcoin city is reasonable/feasible is going to be something that we will find out, in the event that matters continue to progress - and of course, there is likely some kind of a need to outline a potentially reasonable/feasible vision in order to inspire investors.


Oh gawd.. Brock Pierce as our supposed El Salvador expert?  Even Brock (that dweeb) is humble enough to admit that he does not know much about El Salvador (he does it in that interview that you wrongly cited below.. here is the proper cite)


Now you are a bond issuing expert?  What makes you believe that El Salvador would necessarily be limited to ONLY issuing one bond (that is if they are able to get the first one issued)?  Education is priority one in El Salvador.. Ok..


I am sure that there are a variety of ways that progress towards "education" can be made... but no, you want to tell us that you have the answers about how to accomplish the matter?


Of course, there is some truth in terms of bitcoin being more neutral than politicians, and of course, politicians are people, so some people have more integrity than others, and of course, we already know that bitcoin does have a lot more objectivity in it.. at least in terms of being very difficult to change (perhaps not impossible, but surely difficult as we have also witnessed several times and the 2017 forkening matter is often used as an example where very powerful businesses had failed to change bitcoin in certain kinds of ways including governance and software related to block size limits).


I agree with your overall point, fillippone, but I think that it is worth reiterating (of course, you said it earlier) that bitcoin is likely to succeed whether or not El Salvador succeeds with bitcoin as part of its package of offerings.

Of course, there is some truth in the matter that there is going to be spinning going on from politicians, financial institutions, status quo rich, and both anti-bitcoin and pro-bitcoin too.  And bitcoin's adoption does have a kind of ongoing battle that is going on simultaneously in a lot of geographical places.. not just in and around El Salvador's way of adopting it, so far.   

Some of the ongoing battles are going to be out in the open and other battles seem to be happening behind the scenes.. and with any battles, they have informational and physical components... Some of the informational components can end up scaring the shit out of newbie normies (and they get confused as fuck in terms of not even knowing what is bitcoin, or what is the difference between bitcoin and shitcoins or whatever other ways that the bitcoin topic is obfuscated), and surely physical components (such as bitcoin's ongoing adoption) are not going to NOT be affected by some of the ongoing informational battle angles (pro-bitcoin information and anti-bitcoin information).  

For sure, each of us has to choose our own level of involvement in bitcoin whether we are buying it, accumulating it or HODLing it, and how much of our value that we feel psychologically and financially comfortable to allocate into bitcoin (time as well as money too) or whether we might consider it to be prudent to reallocate or to otherwise change our approach towards bitcoin investing of time, psychology and based on changed circumstances or changes in our perceptions of the circumstances.

This is correct: as Samson Mow once said in one of his interviews: "the world is watching us, we cannot fail this experiment!". This means every anti bitcoin politician around the world will take every glitch in the El Salvador implementation of the Bitcoin Law as a failure of Bitcoin itself.

Thank you for the correction. But the point I was portraying was that since El Salvador is the first country to make Bitcoin a legal tender all eyes are on them. Anti Bitcoin politicians and economists would always use El Salvador as a reference point. If Bitcoin policies are not well formulated and implemented and it affects the economy negatively, these enemies of Bitcoin would always point at the woes of El Salvador to discourage thier country from adoption.

Like you rightly pointed out: Bitcoin is above any nation and it's here to help.

Thank you.

I cnnot agree with this one.
El Salvador embraced Bitcoin, but you cannot infer the quality of Bitcoin from El Salvador success. The other way round might work: you can guess El Salvador will benefit from Bitcoin success.

Ultimately Bitcoin doesn't need El Salvador, while El Salvador needs Bitcoin!

The bitcoin community should be concerned about El Salvador because this nation is Bitcoin's ambassador. Issues like crime emergencies and global economic challenges might be unforseen, but not backing a policy with the necessary parliamentary legislation before announcement is a great blunder.  El Salvador should be careful about it's pronouncements on Bitcoin policies and projects. This is because delays or failures of these projects would deter other nations from adoption. We commend President Bekele for all his efforts but proposed policies must be consistent with legislation before announcement.

Samson Mow's clarification that the bond would be issued by El Salvador  would increase the degree of confidence of bond holders. Mow also stated that the government can improve the acceptance of bitcoin by paying salaries with it.

For me  the Bitcoin city doesn't thrill me, except this project has more economic benefit to El Salvador. I have not been to El Salvador but Pierce indicated that it is underdeveloped and has high rate of illiteracy. Instead of spending this money on a flamboyant bitcoin city, it could be channelled to education. This is because education is a veritable tool for the spread of the gospel of bitcoin.

Brock Pierce retreated that politicians cannot be trusted. But bitcoin is above politics because it has the capacity to free the world from the manipulations of politician.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP0jAbIYmV0

Fillippone please don't stop posting these interviews.

The city plan and it features. Yes he might not have the money to carry out the project because the bond can provide only 7% of the total cost but from what he has done by sketching out the model of the Bitcoin City to that magnitude, it is good enough to be praised. That means if the money finally enter his hands, he will start the project by building the city as it is planned.
How many president has such plan or model in their Countries? Accourding to a saying, " out of the abundance, the mouth speaketh". Nayib Bukele  has the real plan of the Country's development that is why he spoke out.


Yes, that is why I said the plan Nayib Bukele about the city is nice because everything is done or come out accourding to a plan work. I know that the city is an imaginative mindset but it has planted in his heart to do it one day.

The first plan and the second plan have different connotations. The first quoted plan is the model of the city while the second quoted plan is the activities.

Egalitarian society, lol!
This is just some bullshit leftist propaganda, bitcoin has nothing to do with your dystopian commie future, bitcoin is actually the essence of capitalism, the ones with the capital are the ones affording to buy coins, the ones that want to take other person's wealth and redistribute it can't do it because my keys my coins my decision.


What plan?
Have you ever seen something beyond some colored squares on a map?
He doesn't have the money to build that city, the bonds will cover only 7% of the cost of the plane which of course will be double as this happens every single time, this is just a way to finance his growing debt and buy time, nothing else.
Go to skyscrapercity and see what people there have to say about such "plans".


Everything is according to plan.
They are just finishing the numbers to see how many years in prison they will get for this and if it's worth it, they will go ahead.

In the Bitcoin City and Bond President Nayib Bukele really plan everything easy and simple for his citizens. He does not want hardship in the city. It is an egalitarian society where everyone has equal distribution of wealth. Everything is well planned. All the social amenities are provided, such as:  Restaurant, Hospital, Education, Electricity, Infrastructure, And Housing. All these are provided by the government for the citizens to use and pay only tax with Bitcoin. What a wonderful city plan. The MODEL of the City is the most number one developed city in the world. If I wish this come to the reality. The volcano is making the city more attractive and beautiful.

El Salvador adoption of bitcoin is encouraging. But the delay of the bond is worrisome.

Bitcoin Italia podcast made a nice interview with Samson Mow.

They discussed a lot of the Bitcoin Bonds.

• They were delayed primarily by the lack of legislation. Legislation was delayed because of ES need a new pension law first, then the crime emergency led to other delays
• They are going to be issued  by El Salvador, not by “La Geo”. This is a new announcements.
• The situation is quite fluid.

This week a lot of announcements, or announcements of announcement, about the Volcano Bond.

The BTC Times reorganized many of those for your convenience:
 
El Salvador's Big Week: Influential Bitcoiners Talk Bonds and Volcanos

I have a bad feeling about this.
As I said I think all these are “excuses” for something more substantial. Lack of legislation could be a massive hurdle to fix, even for a “vast support majority” like El Salvador.
Time will tell.

Yeah the earlier date was around 20^thMarch but now they have postponed the issue date giving no clarity on it when they are going to release them.This was much anticipated thing around the globe because $1 billion for building bitcoin city would be great but there might not be proper set-up for this at the moment.


They have also said the war has also impacted the bond issuance date and volatility could be another blow to it at the time but they have confirmed that it will be go on through Bitfinex as per reports:



Blockstream is going to provide bonds issuance on bitcoin layer 2 but the problem is also that they are in no direct contact with El Salvador government on this matter where the lag could be possible which has hinder the smooth functioning of this.But as we see there are possibilities but at the time it's postponed.

Source

It is now official, as reported by Reuters:

El Salvador postpones bitcoin bond issue, expects better conditions


Market Volatility, but more importantly, an incomplete legal framework would have made the bond launch impossible.
Bear in mind this issue is something the whole world was going to look at, so that the process would have meant to be smoothless.

So, at last Volcano bond got delayed, according to Coindesk:


El Salvador’s Bitcoin Bond Issuance Apparently Delayed

They give a few possible reasons, in the article, but I think the main one is the fact that ES congress still has some work to do to implement the legislative framework.

Also the turmoil in the financial markets it’s not helping the cause, even if it think in this particular bond it is not playing a huge effect given the fact is will be mainly addressing the retail market, which is less sensitive to this events.

A little bit worrying is that the issue won’t be from the Government, but from the State Own Energy company “La Gèo”. This is adding an even higher degree of credit worry to the bond holder. Without a premium in term of yield, apparently.