El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said on Twitter that the country had purchased 400 Bitcoins as it prepares to accept the cryptocurrency as legal cash on Tuesday. At current rates, the purchase is worth almost $20 million. In a subsequent tweet, Bukele stated that the nation intends to purchase “a lot more” of the coins.
“As the deadline approaches, our brokers will be purchasing a lot more,” Bukele wrote on Twitter. In June, the government passed legislation making Bitcoin legal money.
All eyes are now on the population to watch how the 45 lakh-strong country reacts to the new currency as it circulates alongside the US dollar, and if the country, which has been plagued by violence and poverty, would gain economically.
El Salvador is the world’s first country to make Bitcoin legal tender. Businesses will be forced to take bitcoin in return for products and services, according to Bloomberg, and even the government will accept it for tax payments.
The country’s 40-year-old president, who has spoken about the move bringing more people into the financial system, is the driving force behind the initiative to make Bitcoin legal money. He goes on to say that adopting cryptocurrency will make sending remittances cheaper.
Experts are keeping a careful eye on the situation. According to Bloomberg, Garrick Hileman, chief of research at Miami-based Blockchain.com, stated, “This is brave new world stuff.” He went on to say that the choice will teach us a lot.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that was established in 2009 by a mysterious figure known only as Satoshi Nakamoto. It’s a decentralized digital currency, meaning it doesn’t have a central bank or administration. There are no actual bitcoins; instead, balances are stored on a publicly accessible ledger. A huge computational power verifies all bitcoin transactions.