With the rise of Bitcoin, El Salvador, the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, has recently launched various construction projects. Bitfinex has announced the official launch of tokenized securities issuance, aiming to raise $6.25 million for the development of a hotel and mall complex at the international airport in El Salvador.
Bitfinex Securities El Salvador SA de CV, a subsidiary of Bitfinex, obtained the first digital asset service provider license issued by El Salvador in April last year. According to El Salvador’s digital asset issuance law, Bitfinex will tokenize innovative real-world assets such as stocks and bonds and conduct issuance and secondary market trading.
The construction project plans to develop a five-story facility covering an area of 4,484 square meters, with 80 guest rooms, five commercial spaces, and other hotel facilities including a swimming pool, restaurant, gym, garden, and multifunctional hall. It is expected to create approximately 1,000 job opportunities during the construction phase and up to 5,000 direct and indirect job opportunities during operation. The financing will begin on May 13, 2024, and is expected to last for one month.
The tokenized debt will be issued by Inversiones Laguardia SA de CV (HILSV), a company active in El Salvador since 2017. The issuance aims to raise $6.25 million with a maturity period of 5 years and a coupon rate of 10%. The minimum investment amount is only $1,000, and hotel operators will provide investment incentives in the form of free hotel accommodation based on the investment scale.
The token will be issued under the code HILSV and will be traded with the US dollar and Tether tokens. The HILSV token will be issued on the Bitcoin sidechain Liquid Network using Blockstream AMP.
Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, declared in October last year that the Tether Real World Ecosystem (RWE) is coming. Bitfinex Securities, a subsidiary of Tether, announced in October last year that it would launch its first tokenized bond Alternative (ALT2611) and use USDT as a fundraising medium. It mainly assumes risks related to debt and equity of microfinance companies, small financial institutions, leasing companies, banks, or credit cooperatives in Italy, Romania, Moldova, and emerging countries along the Silk Road, providing financing services to these micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs.
According to the press release, Alternative recently successfully raised $5.2 million in tokenized bonds from Bitfinex Securities AIFC in Kazakhstan. Bitfinex expects a large number of tokenized assets to enter the market in the first half of this year.