Katie The Russian: Demand for El Salvador CBI Based on Shared Values Rather Than Economic Calculations

Last year, after years of teasing the concept, El Salvador finally launched its bitcoin-based Citizenship by Investment Program. The announcement turned anticlimactic when it became clear that the means of qualification would be a million-dollar donation to the country, leading commentators to characterize the initiative as “overpriced.”

The million-dollar price tag, at the time, was an order of magnitude greater than that required among Caribbean CIPs, which offer largely the same benefits as Salvadorean citizenship and roughly equal to the cost of citizenship in Malta, an EU country with a far more valuable nationality than that of El Salvador.

Despite the incongruent market price, Katie Ananina, the founder of Plan B Passport that’s better known by her X moniker “Katie the Russian,” says she has already helped several clients qualify under the program, and that demand exists even at this lofty price.

Speaking to IMI during IMI Connect in Miami earlier this month, Ananina said those applying for El Salvador’s program are typically “big supporters of what Nayib Bukele is doing in the country” and indicates many clients are investing in the program because they share the leadership’s philosophy.

For some, she remarked, investing in the program is a form of philanthropy with the added benefit of gaining a citizenship. “For others, they are basically buying fast processing.”

Compared to most other citizenship programs, she emphasized, El Salvador’s CIP is quick and straightforward, and processing typically concludes in under two months. The due diligence procedure is also relatively simple.

“Another cool thing is that you pay for your investment directly with Bitcoin. So, we’re talking about bitcoiners directly sending from wallet to wallet, so there’s no banking due diligence.”

Questioned as to whether El Salvador might follow the example of Turkey in 2017 by adjusting its CBI price downward upon realizing the initial price was out of step with global CBI market realities, Ananina commented that this was her first question when meeting with the program’s officials. In the end, she said, El Salvador isn’t attempting to become one of many CBI programs. Instead, they are looking for people who share the country’s vision and “are looking for people who want to invest in the new El Salvador […] and help it transform.”

Bitcoin is in the early stages of a bull run, which typically bodes well for Ananina’s business, which exclusively targets the market for crypto-investors interested in CBI. Asked how she expected a sudden and sharp rise in the price of bitcoin to impact her demand for CBI, she says she has used the last few years’ bear market to lay the foundations that will enable her to capitalize during the bull market.

“My goal during the bear market is to make sure I don’t have to lay off anybody on my team, to train new people, and establish our operations to the point where we can scale dramatically in a very short period of time and monetize during the bull market. And we are already feeling that it’s ramping up.”

She also highlighted that because processing times for the Caribbean CBI programs have risen so sharply, she spends time explaining to her clients that some 85% of the money they’ll have to pay will only be sent to the Caribbean countries 12-18 months in the future and that, as a consequence, if they are trying to time the market, “this is the time.”

Watch the full interview with Katie Ananina, where she also discusses the future of El Salvador’s upcoming skills-based citizenship program, under which Bukele has promised to issue “5,000 free passports” to highly skilled “scientists, engineers, doctors, artists, and philosophers from abroad.”

See also our podcast episode with Katie from three years ago: The Boldest Marketer in Investment Migration: Katie the Russian.