The President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele has made it clear that he will send a to the congress next week to make Bitcoin a legal tender in the country. The message was first played at a Bitcoin conference in Miami on Saturday. The 39-year-old president is known for his autocratic tendency and his fondness for using Twitter to communicate. If congress approves the plan, El Salvador will become the first country to formally accept a digital currency as a means of exchange for goods and services.
Nayib Bukele is very popular in his country and his party has the majority in the countries legislature by this we can expect the new policy to be approved. “next week I will send to Congress a bill that will make Bitcoin a legal tender in El Salvador” He said. “in the short term this will help provide jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside the formal economy and in the medium and long term we hope that this small decision can help us push humanity at least a tiny bit into the right direction.”
Bukele has been working closely with Strike a payment app built on Bitcoins lightning network. they have been present in El Salvador since early 2021 and the companies CEO Jack Maller stated that during peak performances in a day at least 20,000 Salvadorans use the Strike App to carry out Bitcoin transactions. “this is a shot heard round the world for Bitcoin,” Strike Founder and CEO Jack Maller said after introducing the video of the President of El Salvador.
At the moment the plans are not yet clear as to how Bitcoin will work as a legal tender in El Salvador but this is a big boom for Bitcoin advocates and Bukele. This single move is going to bolster the image of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as the future of payments. Many experts at the conference in Miami saw it as a welcome development that can help propel the potentials of the Digital Asset.
El Salvador’s official currency is the U.S dollar and about one-quarter of its population leave in the United States. The money migrants send to their home country accounts for more than 20 percent of the countries GDP. In 2020 alone Salvadorans in the United States of America sent in more than $6 billion in remittances. In a series of tweets by Bukele, he said Bitcoin could be the fastest-growing way to get remittances into the country. He added that a chunk of that $6 billion dollars was lost to intermediaries and stated that the decision would help approximately 70 percent of the people who don’t have bank accounts.
What do you think about this new development around Bitcoin? We track all the developments around this news and keep you updated as El Salvador prepares to become the first country to accept Bitcoin.