El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, accompanied by US Ambassador to El Salvador Ronald Johnson (out of frame), speaks during a joint press conference at Rosales Hospital in San Salvador on May 26, 2020. – Bukele clarified on Tuesday that the country bought hydroxychloroquine for a little more than a half million dollars and not for 575 million dollars, as he previously said on a radio station. (Photo by Yuri CORTEZ / AFP) (Photo by YURI CORTEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Bitcoin’s mass adoption just got a boost as El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele said on Saturday, at the Bitcoin 2021 Miami conference, that he will send a bill to Congress next week to make Bitcoin a legal tender in his nation, citing the cryptocurrency’s potential to help Salvadorans living abroad send remittances home.
Nayib Bukele stated, “In the short term this will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside the formal economy.”
Strike, a mobile payments app that launched in El Salvador in March, said in a statement that endorsed the President’s idea, that it has been working with the country to make using Bitcoin technology a success.
Strike founder and CEO, Jack Mallers stated, “This is the shot heard round the world for bitcoin.” The CEO introduced the President’s video and was quoted as saying at the Miami conference: “Adopting a natively digital currency as legal tender provides El Salvador the most secure, efficient and globally integrated open payments network in the world.”
President Nayib Bukele took to Twitter to call promoting financial inclusion “a moral imperative” as well as a path to growing El Salvador’s economy by providing access to credit, savings, investment and secure transactions.
On the issue of remittances, the president said that currently, “a big chunk of those 6 billion dollars is lost to intermediaries. By using Bitcoin, the amount received by more than a million low-income families will increase in the equivalent of billions of dollars every year.”
He also pointed out that 70% of El Salvador’s population does not have a bank account and works in the informal economy. The president said the adoption of Bitcoin, “will improve lives and the future of millions.”
What you need to know about El Salvador
El Salvador, a country in Central America, is home to 6.5 million people. It is the smallest and most densely populated of the seven Central American countries. Despite having little level land, it traditionally was an agricultural country, heavily dependent upon coffee exports.
As stated by the President, 70% of Salvadorians lack access to financial infrastructure. Bitcoin will greatly fill this gap for Salvadorians by banking the unbanked.
