Building Hype: Libertarian Cities, Fictitious Development, and Speculative Dispossession in El Salvador's “Bitcoin City”

Libertarian city projects are emerging as a new trend in capitalist urbanisation. One aspect about this trend is their location in rural Global South regions. The former raises questions about the role of these projects in the global land grab. This paper analyses the connection of libertarian city projects and land dispossession through the case of Bitcoin City in El Salvador. Data from news reports, surveys, and cadastral records show that the land dispossession associated with Bitcoin City is connected to a speculative dynamic generated by the project's intensive publicity. The media spectacle created by this publicity is intensifying pre-existing land grabbing patterns oriented toward the construction of real estate projects. I argue that this phenomenon is a result of the ruling elite's attempt to construct a strategy of economic growth around a logic of financial accumulation. To explain the rationality behind this effort and its material impacts, I introduce the concept of fictitious development.