The first number a Bitcoiner asks for is the only one most citizenship pages bury. So here it is, unburied. The Vanuatu Development Support Programme, the donation route this site sells, is a $130,000 government contribution for a single applicant. Add the flat 5% advisory, the $5,000 due diligence and VFIU screening, the civil registration, and the passport enrolment, and the file is $145,000 all-in. No “from.” No “contact us for a quote.” That is the floor, and the floor is the whole subject of this page.
Because the honest question is not whether Vanuatu is good. It plainly is: the fastest credible second passport on the planet, with a zero-tax architecture built for a Bitcoin holder. The honest question is what happens if $130,000 is genuinely ahead of where you are today. Not a tire-kicker who will not commit; a real person, actually moving, whose capital simply has not caught up to the floor yet. Most pages answer that person with silence, or with a softer-sounding program they hope you will not price out. This page answers plainly.
The honest answer, said once.
cbi.vu sells one thing: the Republic of Vanuatu’s Development Support Programme. It does not run a slate, it does not hand a qualified buyer to a competitor, and it will not name a cheaper passport and tell you to settle. That discipline is the point of the brand. So the courtesy is brief and it is honest: if your file is genuinely under the $130,000 contribution, 21 CBI, the parent firm, offers bespoke advisory for a sub-$130,000 file. One sentence, said once, as a courtesy to a serious person who is not yet at the floor. That is the entire detour. There is no second budget program waiting in the wings, no cheaper alternative dressed up as the smart play, no consolation passport. If the floor is ahead of you and bespoke advisory is not the fit, the right move is to keep stacking until the floor is behind you. Which raises the real question, the one this whole page is built to answer: why does the $130,000 floor earn its price in the first place?
Why the floor earns its price.
Four mechanical facts carry the program, and each one is a reason the floor is not arbitrary.
Velocity. A clean file moves in thirty to sixty days. No residency clock, no language test, no interview, no years of waiting for a naturalization queue. When a banking relationship is closing, a reporting cycle is approaching, or a window in your own planning is narrowing, the difference between a thirty-day file and a multi-year one is not academic. It is the entire value of the thing. Vanuatu is the fastest legitimate second citizenship in the world, and speed is the first thing you are paying for.
Structure. Vanuatu levies zero personal income tax, zero capital gains tax, zero inheritance tax, and zero corporate income tax. The only material tax is a 15% Value Added Tax on local consumption. Underneath sits the tax-exempt International Business Company framework, in force since 1993, supervised by the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission: a holding vehicle with minimal reporting and no public director or shareholder registry. For a Bitcoin holder pairing self-custody with an offshore operating structure, that architecture is the cleanest in its class, and it is the second thing you are paying for.
Sovereignty. Citizenship under the Vanuatu Citizenship Act, Cap. 112, is hereditary and permanent. It passes to your children and to theirs. You are not renting access for a decade; you are acquiring a generational asset that no future budget cycle can means-test away from your family. That permanence is the third thing the floor buys.
Bitcoin-native settlement. The whole file, the government contribution included, settles in BTC, Lightning, or USDT through BitSettle after compliance clearance; cbi.vu completes the statutory payments with the Vanuatu authorities on your behalf. On-chain source of funds is the starting point of the conversation, not a red flag to be explained away. Every fee is shown in sats alongside USD. This is the fourth thing the floor buys, and for most readers it is the reason they are here rather than anywhere else.
The floor is not arbitrary. It buys velocity, a zero-tax structure, hereditary sovereignty, and a file that settles in Bitcoin. Fund it if you can.
The trade-offs, on the page.
A floor that earns its price still has costs, and hiding them would be the opposite of honest. Vanuatu lost Schengen visa-free access when the Council of the European Union permanently revoked the waiver in December 2024, effective February 2025. The United Kingdom has required a Standard Visitor visa since July 2023, a separate and earlier change. What remains is real and worth naming precisely: eighty-seven destinations visa-free or visa-on-arrival, at approximately #57, weighted toward the Asia-Pacific corridor, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Pacific Islands Forum bloc. If Europe is a trip rather than your whole life, this is still the fastest passport you can hold. If reliable European access is the center of your travel, no amount of speed or tax efficiency changes that, and you should know it before you wire anything.
Two more facts belong in the open. Vanuatu participates in the Common Reporting Standard, the OECD framework for the automatic exchange of financial-account information between participating jurisdictions. A second citizenship is not a way to hide an account from your country of tax residence, and anyone who sells it to you on that basis is selling a slogan. Self-custodied Bitcoin sits outside CRS for a narrow and specific reason: the standard reports financial accounts at participating institutions, and your keys are not an institution. That is a fact about how the standard is scoped, not a shield, and it does not remove any tax, asset, or reporting obligation that may apply to you. Finally, the file is remote except for one mandatory in-person biometric visit, required under the Vanuatu Passport (Amendment) Act 2025, at Port Vila, Dubai, Hong Kong, or New Caledonia. Remote except for that one visit, which we name rather than wave away.
The close.
So the decision is simple, and it is not a price contest. If you can fund the $130,000 contribution, fund Vanuatu: it is the fastest file in its class, the zero-tax structure is the cleanest a Bitcoin holder can hold, the citizenship is hereditary, and the whole file settles in Bitcoin. If $130,000 is genuinely ahead of where you are today, 21 CBI bespoke advisory is the courtesy exit for a sub-$130,000 file, said once and meant honestly; otherwise the move is to keep stacking until the floor is behind you. There is no third door and no consolation passport, and pretending otherwise would be the dishonest thing.
None of this is tax advice for your situation. A second citizenship does not, by itself, change your tax residency; that is separate, deliberate planning, and for a US person it interacts with citizenship-based taxation that a passport alone does not touch. Consult a qualified tax advisor regarding your circumstances. What this page does give you is the shape of the decision and the math behind it, in sats and in USD, on the page where you can act on it. The first call is a $475 engagement via BitSettle (BTC or USDT) or $500 via Stripe; whichever you pay is credited in full toward the advisory if you retain within 90 days, and the Vanuatu Brief is free. Low time preference does not mean no action. It means making the right move at the right time, on your own numbers rather than on a brochure’s.
Adam Juchniewicz, CEO, 21 CBI
Buenos Aires · June 2026