El Salvador, a country in Central America, is considering legislation that would make it the first sovereign nation in the world to accept bitcoin as legal tender beside the US currency.
In a recorded message presented at a Bitcoin conference, a multi-day convention in Miami being billed as the most notable bitcoin event in history, President Nayib Bukele declared El Salvador’s collaboration with Strike, a digital wallet company, to establish the country’s advanced financial infrastructure using Bitcoin technology. President Bukele stated that
We didn’t take care of the future beautiful idea that we create our future that we as humanity can do almost anything that we imagined. Our integrity what separates us from other species. In El Salvador, we are trying to rescue this idea and start the design of a country for the future using the best ingredients that make us who we are while using sensibility to find the best example of ideas from history and around the I believe Bitcoin could be one of these ideas.
El Salvador is principally a cash economy, with around 70% of the population lacking bank accounts or credit cards. Bitcoin has a market cap of $680 billion dollars. If 1% of it is invested in El Salvador, that will improve the country GDP by 25%.
Jack Mallers, founder and CEO of Strike, said “the decision would help unleash the power and potential of bitcoin for daily use cases on an open network that benefits individuals, companies, and public sector services.”
This isn’t El Salvador’s first foray into the world of bitcoin. Strike released its mobile payments app in March, and it immediately became the country’s most downloaded software. President Bukele tweeted,
We hope that this decision will be just the beginning in providing a space where some of the leading innovators can reimagine the future of finance, potentially helping billions around the world.
Bukele has a large following, and his populist New Ideas party just won a landslide of votes. On the other hand, the new assembly has recently come under fire for ousting the attorney general and senior judges. The US Agency for International Development withdrew money from El Salvador’s national police and a public information institution due to the move, redirecting cash to civil society organizations.
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