Why Has El Zonte, El Salvador, Been Dubbed Bitcoin Beach?

“This Hidden Central American Surf Town Is Known as ‘Bitcoin Beach’—Here’s How to Visit,”  reads a fresh Travel + Leisure headline, which might leave a strapped but itinerant surfer with Central American habits or aspirations feeling just a little more squeezed in these increasingly precious times.

El Salvador’s El Zonte is no secret on the international surfing circuit, but to see it featured in T+L’s margins suggests something else altogether. Sure, the world isn’t getting any smaller, and naturally, the good folks at T+L are forever pressed for pockets of this fair, blue sphere upon which to shine their wavering torches. We can forgive them for directing their evermore jaded readership toward yet another formerly affordable surfer’s shangri-la, but what gives with the “Bitcoin Beach” bit?

El Salvador has been something of a last bastion of cheap, somewhat off-the-beaten path Central American outposts for the intrepid surf traveler on a shoestring budget, thanks (and no thanks) to its being one of the poorest economies in Latin America.

The strife that took place in El Salvador in the 1980s, ‘90s, and has in some respect lingered ever since is precisely what’s kept it relatively quiet—and cheap. And any surfer who’s been around long enough also knows that the little Pacific shoreline produces a procession of some of Central America’s best right-handers, including Punta Roca and El Sunzal/El Tunco, which have been hosting WSL and ISA surf events in recent years.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that as digital nomads dispersed into Central America in the late teens and early 2020s, they found the once-sleepy surf village and brought their cryptocurrency with them.

As T+L tells it, “An anonymous cryptocurrency donation in 2019 prompted the surf town to begin accepting Bitcoin for everything, from street-cart snow cones to hotel rooms. Soon, crypto traders and other digital nomads flooded El Zonte, lending it the nickname Bitcoin Beach.”

And so it goes.

Related: "La Chupacabra": Kai Lenny & Natxo Gonzalez Discover Hidden Perfection in El Salvador

Today, you can still manage moderately affordable accommodations should you like, but the modern villas and infinity pools are on the up and up, and so are the prices. Gone are the days of a hammock under a modest palapa on the beach for single-digit John Wayne dollars. It’s good to see a little economic solvency in a place that’s struggled—for so many reasons—for so long on that front, but what’s a poor, peripatetic surfer left to do? Perhaps the answer lies in doing the same thing we always do: Look onward and upward.