Step Aside Bitcoin Beach – BTC Has a New Best Friend: The Salvadoran City of Berlín

There were strong economic reasons for El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as a national currency. But a large part of that – or at least, how it has evolved – is a strong push for tourism.

El Salvador rose to international fame for adopting Bitcoin as legal tender, with mixed results for the broader economy, but a handful of locations are thriving.

One of these is a 20,000-strong city called Berlín, a few hours from the capital.

While Bitcoin Beach (also known as El Zonte) is primarily a tourist attraction, bringing in crypto lovers to bathe and surf within a town that supports Bitcoin spending, Berlín is different.

Tourism is practically non-existent in Berlín. Instead, the community has banded together to leverage Bitcoin’s unique advantages in one of the few cases where an entire city has leveraged decentralisation’s power to try and solve financial inequality.

The city’s hub, called the Berlín Bitcoin Community Centre, acts as a community-building location that includes a fully-decked-out cafe, recording studio, a cafe and a Bitcoin ATM.

Around 150 establishments throughout Berlín accept Bitcoin as payment, representing about 25% of merchants in the city.

New people come to the Centre everyday to learn about Bitcoin and how they can benefit from using it within El Salvador.

The city didn’t magically become a Bitcoin haven overnight. It took a project team of three locals (and one Irishman) to go door-to-door and help build the circular economy over a year or two.

As the ears of people inside and outside of El Salvador pricked up, more and more people opened up to the idea of using Bitcoin as a currency.

The town of Berlín is an unfortunate exception to the rule. Despite the logical solutions that Bitcoin provided (given hyperinflation and mass unbankings), most El Salvadorians never messed with the stuff.

According to the Human Rights Watch, El Salvador has a strained political system, with civil unrest throughout the nation due to a move toward autocracy. The not-for-profit also claims that, under Bukele, El Salvador is subject to “widespread abuses, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment of detainees.”

The distrust throughout much of the nation has made Bitcoin, a Bukele initiative, less popular than it perhaps otherwise would be across El Salvador.

That said, Berlín has demonstrated that BTC can have a home in El Salvador – and that it can thrive.