Bitcoin to become legal tender in El Salvador from tonight

• Follow

Bitcoin is set to become legal tender in El Salvador, the smallest country in Central America. Reportedly, Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador has announced that there’s almost “a 100% chance” his bill to make Bitcoin legal tender will pass tonight.

In a Twitter Spaces conversation, he said the bill was currently in debate.  However, as his party has 64 out of 84 seats it is expected that he will be signing off on the law later tonight or first thing tomorrow. He also clarified that the Bill will go into effect immediately, without any delay for infrastructure to be in place.

Through his Twitter threads, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele kept tweeted about the journey of the Bill to keep crypto users updated.

La #LeyBitcoin está siendo leída en el pleno de la @AsambleaSV en estos momentos.

The #BitcoinLaw is being read in the @AsambleaSV floor right now.#Btc🇸🇻

— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) June 9, 2021

President Nayid Bukele announced on Saturday, saying he would soon propose a bill that could transform the remittance-dependent economy. The move would make the Central American nation the first in the world to formally accept cryptocurrency as legal money and would “allow the financial inclusion of thousands of people who are outside the legal economy,” Bukele said.

Earlier President Nayid Bukele said the bill aims to create jobs, he said, in a country where “70 per cent of the population does not have a bank account and works in the informal economy.”

Remittances from Salvadorans working overseas represent a major chunk of the economy — equivalent to roughly 22 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. In 2020, remittances to the country totalled $5.9 billion, according to official reports.

According to Bukele, Bitcoin represented “the fastest growing way to transfer” those billions of dollars in remittances and to prevent millions from being lost to intermediaries.” Thanks to the use of bitcoin, the amount received by more than a million low-income families increases by several billion dollars every year,” said the president.

“This improves life and the future of millions of people. “The cryptocurrency market grew to more than $2.5 trillion in mid-May 2020, according to the Coinmarketcap page, driven by interest from increasingly serious investors from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. But the volatility of Bitcoin — currently priced at $33,491– and its murky legal status has raised questions about whether it could ever replace fiat currency in day-to-day.

(With inputs from AFP)