Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador
Biography
Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez was born on July 24, 1981, in San Salvador, El Salvador. His father, Armando Bukele Kattan, was a businessman of Palestinian descent and a prominent figure in El Salvador’s Muslim community, while his mother, Olga Ortez de Bukele, came from a Roman Catholic background in eastern El Salvador. Bukele studied law at the Central American University in Managua, Nicaragua, but dropped out at 18 to pursue business ventures in his family’s conglomerate, which included the Yamaha Motors franchise for El Salvador and an advertising company.
Bukele entered politics in 2012 as a member of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), winning the mayoral race in Nuevo Cuscatlan, a small municipality near San Salvador. In 2015, he was elected mayor of San Salvador, where he gained a reputation for modernizing public services and leveraging social media to communicate directly with citizens. After being expelled from the FMLN in 2017, he founded the Nuevas Ideas party and won the 2019 presidential election with nearly 53 percent of the vote, becoming one of the youngest elected presidents in Latin American history at age 37.
Bukele won a second term in February 2024 in a landslide victory. His presidency has been defined by a controversial but popular crackdown on gang violence that dramatically reduced El Salvador’s homicide rate, making it one of the safest countries in the Western Hemisphere. His personal net worth is estimated at roughly $2 million, derived primarily from family business interests. But his global impact on Bitcoin far exceeds any personal fortune.
Orange Pill Story
Nayib Bukele’s orange pill moment was not a quiet conversion — it was a geopolitical earthquake. On June 5, 2021, Bukele appeared via a pre-recorded video at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, introduced by Strike CEO Jack Mallers, and declared: “Next week I will send to Congress a bill that will make Bitcoin a legal tender in El Salvador.” The announcement electrified the conference and sent shockwaves through global financial markets.
Four days later, on June 9, 2021, El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly voted 62-22 to pass the Bitcoin Law, making El Salvador the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. The law took effect on September 7, 2021, alongside the launch of the government-backed Chivo digital wallet, which gave every Salvadoran citizen $30 in Bitcoin to start.
Bukele’s rationale was rooted in practical economics: roughly 70 percent of Salvadorans lacked access to traditional banking, and remittances from abroad — primarily the United States — accounted for over 22 percent of the country’s GDP. Bitcoin, he argued, could slash remittance fees and bring millions of unbanked citizens into the financial system. But his vision went beyond pragmatism. Bukele framed Bitcoin as a tool of national sovereignty, a way for a small developing nation to opt out of a financial system that had never served it well.
Bitcoin Philosophy & Quotes
“Next week I will send to Congress a bill that will make Bitcoin a legal tender in El Salvador.” — Nayib Bukele, Bitcoin 2021 Conference, Miami, June 2021 (NPR)
“#Bitcoin has a market cap of $680 billion dollars. If 1% of it is invested in El Salvador, that would increase our GDP by 25%.” — Nayib Bukele, X/Twitter, June 2021
“The US Government DOES NOT stand for freedom and that is a proven fact. So we will stand for freedom. Game on! #Bitcoin is FU money!” — Nayib Bukele, X/Twitter, March 2022
“We are buying one #Bitcoin every day.” — Nayib Bukele, X/Twitter, November 2022
“El Salvador’s #Bitcoin investments are in the black! After literally thousands of articles and hit pieces that ridiculed our supposed losses…” — Nayib Bukele, X/Twitter, November 2023
“We’ve decided to transfer a big chunk of our #Bitcoin to a cold wallet, and store that cold wallet in a physical vault within our national territory. You can call it our first #Bitcoin piggy bank.” — Nayib Bukele, X/Twitter, March 2024
“Bitcoin hasn’t had the widespread adoption we hoped for… I feel that it could have worked better, and there is still time to make some improvements, but it hasn’t resulted in anything negative.” — Nayib Bukele, TIME Magazine Interview, August 2024
“This all stops in April. This all stops in June. This all stops in December. No, it’s not stopping. If it didn’t stop when the world ostracized us and most ‘bitcoiners’ abandoned us, it won’t stop now, and it won’t stop in the future. Proof of work > proof of whining.” — Nayib Bukele, X/Twitter, March 2025
“In the short term this will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside the formal economy.” — Nayib Bukele, Bitcoin 2021 Conference, via CoinDesk
Involvement with Bitcoin
Nayib Bukele’s Bitcoin involvement is unprecedented in the history of any head of state. Under his direction, El Salvador became the first nation to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender on September 7, 2021. The government launched the Chivo wallet, giving every citizen $30 in Bitcoin and installing over 200 Chivo ATMs nationwide. El Salvador has accumulated over 6,100 BTC in its national treasury through a combination of direct market purchases, a daily buying program, and a Bitcoin citizenship investment program.
Bukele pioneered the use of geothermal energy from El Salvador’s volcanoes for Bitcoin mining, directing the state-owned energy company LaGeo to dedicate 1.5 megawatts of power from the Tecapa volcano to mining operations. The program has produced 474 BTC and generated roughly $29 million in revenue. In late 2024, Bukele proposed expanding this into a “rent your own volcano” program, leveraging the country’s 170 volcanoes as potential mining sites for international operators.
He also unveiled plans for Bitcoin City, a proposed smart city near the Conchagua volcano that would be funded by $1 billion in “Volcano Bonds” (Bitcoin-backed bonds), feature zero income or capital gains taxes, and run entirely on geothermal energy. While the bond offering has been delayed, the project attracted $1.6 billion in private investment from Turkish holding company Yilport in August 2024. El Salvador’s national Bitcoin holdings have moved into a physical cold storage vault within the country’s territory, representing the world’s first sovereign Bitcoin reserve.
Media Appearances & Coverage
Bukele’s Bitcoin 2021 conference appearance in Miami — introduced by Jack Mallers — remains one of the most iconic moments in Bitcoin’s history. He has given extensive interviews to Tucker Carlson (November 2022), where he credited Bitcoin for rebranding El Salvador’s global image and claimed tourism increased 95% since adoption. His August 2024 interview with TIME magazine provided his most candid assessment of Bitcoin adoption’s mixed results. Bukele’s prolific X/Twitter presence, where he frequently posts Bitcoin purchase announcements and engages directly with the crypto community, has made him one of the most-followed political figures in the Bitcoin space. His policies have been covered extensively by NPR, CNN, NBC News, Al Jazeera, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Bloomberg, and the Washington Times.
Notable Bitcoin Tweets
Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, made history by making his country the first nation to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021. His bold and often playful tweets about buying Bitcoin dips and building Bitcoin City have made him the most prominent head of state in the Bitcoin movement.
“Welcome to the future. #Bitcoin”
— @naboron, June 5, 2021
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“The US Government DOES NOT stand for freedom and that is a proven fact. So we will stand for freedom. Game on! #Bitcoin is FU money!”
— @nayibbukele, March 23, 2022
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“El Salvador bought today 80 #BTC at $19,000 each! #Bitcoin is the future! Thank you for selling cheap.”
— @nayibbukele, July 1, 2022
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