Act 20, Act 22, and the exemption that followed

In 2012, the Puerto Rico legislature passed two laws aimed at a very different problem from the one facing most island residents. Act 20, the Export Services Act, and Act 22, the Individual Investors Act, offered steep tax cuts: to qualifying export-services businesses under Act 20, and to individuals who moved and became bona fide residents of Puerto Rico under Act 22.

For several years, the incentives drew modest interest. That changed around 2016-2017, and accelerated hard after Hurricane María, when a wave of outside investors began moving in to take advantage of the exemptions, especially a group of cryptocurrency figures, among them Brock Pierce and Michael Terpin, the latter saying he moved as early as 2016. The press nicknamed the influx "Puertopia" or "Crypto Rico," and by 2021 Pierce said Puerto Rico had the world's highest concentration of cryptocurrency wealth.

In 2019 the two laws were folded, along with other incentive programs, into a single consolidated code known as Act 60: a rebrand that kept the same basic tax structure standing under one law instead of several.

The incentives never stopped drawing sustained criticism from Puerto Rican grassroots organizations and political groups, who tied them to gentrification, to real-estate prices pushing out longtime residents, and to what critics called "disaster capitalism": wealthy newcomers benefiting from exemptions in the same period in which the island's own population was reeling from hurricanes, earthquakes, and a debt crisis. That tension — low taxes for arriving investors versus displacement pressure on those already there — was never fully resolved, and it still marks debates over Puerto Rico's economic-development policy.

The timing is part of what makes the criticism stick: the strongest acceleration of moves came right after Hurricane María, exactly when much of the island was struggling to rebuild. An economic incentive designed to attract outside capital arrived, for many Puerto Ricans, as a story about who could afford to move in while their own neighbors were still trying to recover.

Sources: Criptomonedas en Puerto Rico. Freeze 2026-08-22.