El Salvador to Become First Nation With Bitcoin as Legal Tender
The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele has plans to soon make bitcoin legal tender. If the country does carry out the plans according to expectations, El Salvador is all set to become the first nation to have bitcoin as legal tender.
According to the president of El Salvador, this step was taken to protect the nation’s economy from dangerous central bank actions. “In order to mitigate the negative impact from central banks, it becomes necessary to authorize the circulation of a digital currency with the supply that cannot be controlled by any central bank”, said Bukele via a video at Bitcoin 2021. “Next week I will send to Congress a bill that will make bitcoin a legal tender in El Salvador. In the short term, this will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands”, the president further added.
He emphasized the fact that the central bank’s actions can harm the country’s economy and that crypto protects from such actions as the supply of such virtual currency is not controlled by any central bank.
The CEO of bitcoin investment and payments company Zap, Jack Mallers, publicized the news. “They asked me to help write a plan and that they view bitcoin as a world-class currency”, said Mallers. He also mentioned his time in El Salvador and the country’s poverty, only to later assert that with bitcoin as a legal tender, the country can solve most of its wealth-related problems.
According to Roger M. Brown, global head of tax solutions at Lukka, this step is crucial to make bitcoin, a truly global currency, accepted anywhere in the world. “Sure, some countries could seek to wrestle back control, like Turkey’s ban on bitcoin transactions because many residents preferred it to their local currency. However, those actions may not prevail given bitcoin’s decentralized nature”, he further added.
