The Legislative Assembly of El Salvador voted to pass a bill that declared Bitcoin as legal tender yesterday.
This move makes El Salvador the world’s first nation to adopt a cryptocurrency as legal tender.
The historic nature of this precedent cannot be underestimated, and although this blog is dedicated to Vow news, this development must take a special place.
Cryptocurrency is no longer going to be a marginalized asset class.
Lawmakers in the Central American nation’s Congress passed the bill late Tuesday and this will eventually allow the famously volatile digital currency to be used for many aspects of daily life, from property purchases to tax contributions.
“The #BitcoinLaw has just been approved by a qualified majority” in the legislative assembly, President Nayib Bukele tweeted after the vote late Tuesday.
“History!” the president added.
The 39-year-old leader said a majority of 62 out of 84 lawmakers approved the bill, which he proposed just last week.
The law passed with the support of Bukele’s allies despite minority opposition parties — who had criticized the speed of the vote — refusing to back it.
El Salvador is a small nation where four out of 10 people live in poverty. It has turned to the top crypto asset that has been backed by billionaires like Elon Musk and large financial companies such as PayPal in a bid to boost its remittance-reliant economy.
El Salvador’s main currency is the US dollar and it remains unclear how the country plans to implement bitcoin as a functioning currency, yet the Salvadoran leader has hailed the virtual currency as “the fastest-growing way to transfer” billions of dollars in remittances and to prevent millions from being lost to intermediaries.
Remittances from Salvadorans working overseas represent a major chunk of the economy, equivalent to roughly 22 percent of Gross Domestic Product. In 2020, remittances to the country totaled $5.9 billion, according to official reports.
Before the vote, Bukele said adopting the cryptocurrency would bring “financial inclusion, investment, tourism, innovation, and economic development” to the country.
“This is a law that will put El Salvador on the world’s radar, we will be more attractive for foreign investment,” Romeo Auerbach, deputy of the Grand Alliance for National Unity party, an ally of Bukele, said.
Everyone knows Bitcoin is slow and volatile. Vow provides the solution to both of these problems for merchants and users. It is the solution for any cryptocurrency to be used for day-to-day spend, remittances and more.
Watch this space.
(Excerpts from Yahoo news, Twitter, Google and Wikipedia.)