Yura Yokoyama

In El Zonte, El Salvador, there is a growing number of local youth who think about pursuing bitcoin-related careers and opening crypto-related business for the emerging local bitcoin economy that attracts foreign tourists and bitcoiners. My project examines how stayhood, a new economic subjectivity to stay and thrive in the country rather than migrating and sending remittances back home, emerges with the advent of the national crypto-industry and bitcoin economy in El Salvador during a time of a rapid national transformation of El Salvador from the former most homicidal country to a safe, tech-innovation center in Central America. I weave together participant observation in local evangelical bitcoin NGOs in El Zonte, interviews with bitcoin-related and non bitcoin-related actors including state officials and Salvadoran migrants in the U.S., and digital ethnography of tracking human relations and using bitcoin by myself. Mobilizing these methods, my research depicts how “stayhood” is encouraged, alongside entrepreneurial mindset, desire for digital lifestyle, evangelical ideas of individual material benefits, and nationalism under the populist Bukele administration, among poor local youth with little work options in El Zonte and neighboring areas.