- April 27, 2021
El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated of the seven Central American countries. That didn’t stop it from making international headlines when it said it would accept cryptocurrencies as legal tender.
El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
The US dollar has been the countries legal tender since 2001. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has mandated that companies accept it as payment for products and services.
Paraguay has been making indications it may soon follow suit.
Everyone is watching if it goes well for El Salvador and if, for example, the cost of remittances drops substantially...other countries will probably seek that advantage and adopt it,
Adoption of Bitcoin has been viewed as a means of facilitating remittance payments from Salvadorans living abroad, as parallel legal tender lowers the cost of remittances.
Strike, the world’s leading digital wallet built on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, applauded the legislation that will make El Salvador the world’s first sovereign nation to recognise bitcoin as legal tender alongside the US dollar.
The world now has an open monetary network, it’s the first one of all time, and throughout the history of the world, open networks really defeat closed networks and usher in a lot of change and innovation and disruption.
Update August 12, 2021