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Ships Could Pay Panama Canal Transit Fees in Bitcoin and Cut the Line, Panama City Mayor Muses
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By Cheyenne Ligon, Tom Carreras|Edited by Nikhilesh De
May 29, 2025, 8:22 p.m.
- The mayor of Panama City, Mayer Mizrachi, said he is exploring bitcoin payment options inspired by El Salvador’s initiatives.
- Mizrachi is considering a strategic bitcoin reserve and accepting bitcoin for Panama Canal passage.
- Panama City has passed a bill allowing residents to pay taxes and fees using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — The Mayor of Panama City, Mayer Mizrachi, is taking notes on bitcoin from the leader of El Salvador.
Speaking at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on Thursday, Mizrachi said he’s been thinking of ways Panama’s capital city, which is home to the Panama Canal, could implement bitcoin payments.
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This includes potentially setting up a strategic bitcoin reserve for Panama City, as well as possibly taking payments — including for passage through the Panama Canal — in bitcoin, Mizrachi said.
“What if you have a perk for paying in bitcoin?” Mizrachi mused. “You’d get to go faster.”
Under Mizrachi, Panama City passed a bill that allows residents to pay for taxes, parking tickets, permits, and other fees with bitcoin
, ether
and some stablecoins.
Four years ago, at Bitcoin 2021, Nayib Bukele, the leader of Panama’s central American neighbor El Salvador, announced that his country would begin accepting bitcoin as legal tender. Mizrachi said he was directly inspired by Bukele’s policies.
On the news team at CoinDesk, Cheyenne focuses on crypto regulation and crime. Cheyenne is originally from Houston, Texas. She studied political science at Tulane University in Louisiana. In December 2021, she graduated from CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she focused on business and economics reporting. She has no significant crypto holdings.
Tom writes about markets, bitcoin mining and crypto adoption in Latin America. He has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from McGill University, and can usually be found in Costa Rica. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.
