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President of Salvador Vows to Buy “One #Bitcoin Every Day”


El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's idea to legal tender for bitcoin is to give more Salvadorans access to banking services.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s idea to legal tender for bitcoin is to help more Salvadorans access banking services and promote electronic money transfers from about three million foreigners, mainly in the United States, to relatives at home.

President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, the country’s first legal tender for bitcoin, said on Thursday that the country would buy one unit of the currency a day, doubling down on public criticism over his embrace cryptocurrencies.

“We will be buying one #Bitcoin every day starting tomorrow,” the president tweeted.

Bitcoin traded at around $16,500 per unit on Thursday, down from $45,000 in September 2021 when El Salvador accepted the cryptocurrency, and around $68,000 two months later — high historical value its most.

Bukele’s idea is to give more Salvadorans access to banking services and to promote cryptocurrency transfers from approximately three million foreigners, mainly in the United States, to relatives back home.

Remittances account for more than a quarter of El Salvador’s gross domestic product.

But according to data from the Central Bank of Salvador a year after the introduction bitcoin“less than two percent” of the transfers are made in cryptocurrency.

This measure has been questioned by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank due, among other things, to the currency’s notorious volatility.

Taking advantage of the steep price drop, Bukele bought 80 bitcoins with public funds at $19,000 each in July, bringing the Central American nation’s total stockpile to 2,381.

But an opinion poll last month found that more than three-quarters of Salvadorans thought Bukele’s adoption of the coin was a “failure” and less than a quarter used it.

Research conducted by the University of Central America found that nearly 80% of El Salvadorans believe their president “shouldn’t continue to spend wage to buy bitcoins.”

On Wednesday, El Salvador’s ambassador to Washington Milena Mayorga, a Bitcoin advocate, told the state TV channel Canal 10 that its use “is a process, we have to learn about it first, Education is the key.”

© 2022 AFP

quote: President of Salvador vows to buy “one #Bitcoin a day” (2022, Nov 17) get November 17, 2022 from https://techxplore.com/news/2022-11-salvadoran-vows-buy- bitcoin-day.html

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