Stephanie Douse 
Bitcoin entrepreneur, Samson Mow has launched a new company JAN3, which will help in the development of digital infrastructure and Bitcoin City in El Salvador.
Samson Mow, the former chief strategy officer of Blockstream and the founder of Pixelmatic, announced on Thursday the formation of JAN3, a new firm dedicated to boosting Bitcoin adoption.
According to the Chinese-Canadian Bitcoin entrepreneur, JAN3 has already signed a memorandum of understanding to aid in the development of digital infrastructure in El Salvador.
“It’s a general MOU that says we’ll work together to build digital infrastructure for the country and Bitcoin City.”
“I just put up my firm and I said ‘do you want to work together?’ and they responded sure,’” Mow explained of JAN3’s decision to cooperate with El Salvador.
Mow and his new firm will collaborate with El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, and the country’s government to help construct Bitcoin City, a project that would purportedly use geothermal energy from surrounding volcanoes to power Bitcoin mining as well as the city’s infrastructure.
According to JAN3’s newly launched Twitter account, which has a rapidly expanding follower count of 3,300, the company has purportedly raised $21 million in finance at a $100 million valuation.
Alistair Milne, the CIO of Atlanta Digital Currency Fund, Chun Wang, the co-founder of crypto mining business F2Pool, and El Zonte Capital, a new investment fund created by notable Bitcoin bull Max Keiser and his wife, Stacy Herbert, led the funding round.
The announcement comes after Mow announced at the Bitcoin 2022 Conference that two additional jurisdictions — the Caribbean island of Roatán and Madeira, an autonomous part of Portugal — would accept Bitcoin as legal cash. Mow also suggested Mexico, but the country is still thinking about it.
The term “JAN3” refers to January 3rd, 2009, when Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, mined the first block of Bitcoin, commonly known as the “genesis block.” Playing on the name, the company’s first tweet was a not-so-subtle reference to The New York Times’ headline of the day.