El Salvador plans raft of legislation to cover bitcoin bond issue

SAN SALVADOR, Jan 4 (Reuters) – El Salvador’s government will send to Congress about twenty bills covering financial markets and investment in securities to provide a legal foundation for issuing bitcoin bonds, Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya said on Tuesday.

Zelaya said the government was drawing up the legislation to create a framework to cover corresponding market regulation and issuance of securities in crypto assets after the Central American country said in November it would issue bitcoin bonds.

“(This is) to provide a legal structure and legal certainty to everyone who buys the bitcoin bond,” Zelaya said in an interview on local television, without saying exactly when the legislation would be submitted to lawmakers.

El Salvador said its inaugural bitcoin bond issue, planned for this year, would be worth $1 billion and carry a coupon of 6.5%. The bond is intended to back President Nayib Bukele’s plan of creating the world’s first “Bitcoin City”.

Half of the funds raised will be used to build infrastructure, and the rest to purchase bitcoin, which El Salvador hopes to make a profit from, the government has said.

El Salvador in September became the world’s first country to make bitcoin legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar.

Reporting by Nelson Renteria, editing by Ed Osmond

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