Baisakhi MishraBitcoin enthusiasts travel to Puerto Rico to gain tax breaks and enjoy a laid-back atmosphere. As the community grows, more American residents, as well as curious locals, are attracted. Not everyone, however, is delighted with the influx.
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Bitcoin enthusiasts travel to Puerto Rico to gain tax breaks
In March 2021, crypto entrepreneur and investor David Johnston moved his parents, wife, three daughters, and company to Puerto Rico. The 36-year-old, who has worked in the crypto industry since 2012, believes the move from Austin was a no-brainer.
Apart from having a tropical climate all year and beautiful beaches, Puerto Rico offers crypto-friendly policies, such as large tax benefits for everyone who stays on the island for at least 183 days per year.
Residents can keep their American passports and avoid paying capital gains taxes. It most likely helped Johnston close the deal, but his dread of missing out was a larger motivator.
The narrator says, “That’s where all my buddies are.” “I don’t have a single friend left in New York,” he claimed, adding that many of his California friends had followed suit.
According to CNBC, after seeing his friends and coworkers go, Johnston went to investigate himself in early 2021.
“I reacted, ‘Wow, yeah, I get it,” the author adds. Johnston described his first views of the little island region, which can be explored in half a day by car. “The island has a population of three million people… This space is suitable for a technological center.”
According to Johnston, Puerto Rico reminds him a lot of Austin in 2012. Before Tesla, Samsung, and Apple helped transform it into one of the country’s hottest innovation centers, he feels the city felt small. Austin, like Puerto Rico now, had a lot of energy and a lot of passionate people moving in, and this accelerated over time.
“That’s where my neighborhood is.” That’s where my friends and family are going, and they’re going to construct something wonderful. That’s what I like about open source: it’s something that helps regular people. That’s one of the things I like about blockchain. “Everyone is welcome,” he stated.
Puerto Rico has quickly established itself as a new hotspot for the crypto community.
Last year, Frances Haugen, a Facebook whistleblower who told the New York Times that she bought cryptocurrency “at the perfect time,” relocated from San Francisco to Puerto Rico, partially to visit her “crypto pals” on the island. Logan Paul, a controversial YouTube personality and NFT investor, opened up shop there, as did crypto billionaire Brock Pierce, a child actor (of “Mighty Ducks” fame) turned 2020 indie presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, Johnston believes that start-ups and crypto businesses have taken over his entire office complex.
“Pantera Capital (a crypto fund) is located on the fifth floor, and a co-working space is located on the sixth floor. DLTx, my company, was on the eighth floor, and NFT.com was on the twelfth.” All of this occurred during the last few days.
A business and tax attorney, Giovanni Mendez, has been assisting in the onboarding of new Puerto Ricans. Over half of his clients are now crypto businesses or investors, he tells CNBC, a ratio that has climbed substantially over the last six years.
Mendez, who grew up two hours west of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, claims that in March 2020, he began talking to clients about migrating to Florida (a tax-free state) or Puerto Rico, just as the Covid outbreak began to shut down governments around the world. Many folks ultimately selected Puerto Rico.
Yoshino, the president of the Puerto Rico Blockchain Trade Association, is instrumental in the planning and execution of Crypto Curious events. Dispelling stereotypes, on the other hand, is a huge task.
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