Salvadoran President to Make Bitcoin Legal Tender
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador announced Saturday that he will submit a bill to recognize bitcoin as legal tender.
The Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida was attended by Jack Mallers Strike founder and CEO who has been working with President Bukele on implementing the plan and is confident it already seems all but assured approval from his country's legislative assembly given that they have an upstart populist party controlling them now.
"Adopting a natively digital currency as legal tender provides El Salvador the most secure, efficient and globally integrated open payments network in the world," Mallers said.
In March, Strike became the first mobile payments app to launch in El Salvador. The company welcomed a new law to be passed by the country that will allow them to use bitcoin technology and is working with officials on how best to make it succeed for all parties involved.
President also announced this past weekend at the Bitcoin 2020 Conference in Miami, FL., USA that he intends to put forth legislation recognizing BTC transactions as official currency under the law for use within their borders.
#Bitcoin has a market cap of $680 billion dollars.
— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) June 6, 2021
If 1% of it is invested in El Salvador, that would increase our GDP by 25%.
On the other side, #Bitcoin will have 10 million potential new users and the fastest growing way to transfer 6 billion dollars a year in remittances.
Some experts are excited about the possibility that El Salvador could become the first country to adopt a Bitcoin standard. This will make it an important player in international cryptocurrency markets and may generate significant economic benefits for years to come.
Nayib Bukele has an ambitious plan to shake up the country's economy. His solution is in stark contrast against a growing trend of digital currency gaining traction among central banks all over the world as they aim to make fiat more compatible with our increasingly digitized society.