Samson Mow’s new company JAN3 helping build Bitcoin City in El Salvador

Samson Mow, former chief strategy officer of Blockstream and founder of Pixelmatic, said on Thursday that he has started a new company called JAN3 which will focus on accelerating Bitcoin adoption. 

The Chinese-Canadian Bitcoin entrepreneur told Reuters that JAN3 has already signed a memorandum of understanding to assist in developing digital infrastructure in El Salvador.

"It's a general MOU that says we'll work together to build digital infrastructure for the country and for Bitcoin City.”

Mow added that making the decision for JAN3 to work with El Salvador was an easy choice, "I just set up my company and I said 'do you want to work together?' and they said 'sure.’”

Mow and his new firm will work alongside El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, and its government to assist in the establishment of Bitcoin City, a development that will reportedly use geothermal power from nearby volcanoes to power Bitcoin mining as well as the city‘s infrastructure.

According JAN3’s recently established Twitter account, which boasts a rapidly growing follower count of 3,300, the company has reportedly raised $21 million in funding at a valuation of $100 million.

The funding round was led by Alistair Milne, the CIO of Atlanta Digital Currency Fund, Chun Wang, the co-founder of crypto mining firm F2Pool, as well as El Zonte Capital, a new investment fund founded by prominent Bitcoin bull Max Keiser and his wife, Stacy Herbert.

The news comes as Mow spoke at the Bitcoin 2022 Conference, where he announced that two new jurisdictions — The Caribbean island of Roatán and Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal — would be adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. Mow also mentioned Mexico, however the country is still considering the idea.

Related: Bitcoin 2022: Thiel calls Buffett 'sociopathic', Mexican billionaire has 60% in BTC

The name “JAN3” is a reference to Jan. 3rd, 2009, which is the day that Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block — also known as the “genesis block” — of Bitcoin. Playing on this namesake, the company’s first tweet was a not-so-cryptic reference to The Times’ headline on that day.