Newsletter #33 (Premium): El Salvador are the first nation in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. It's a gamble for President Bukele, but will it pay off?
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All in on Bitcoin
El Salvador has gone all-in on Bitcoin.
Twenty years ago, El Salvador adopted the US Dollar as its official currency. This week, they added Bitcoin as legal tender alongside it.
This is historic because it means that the cryptocurrency has become legal tender for the first time anywhere in the world.
Bitcoin aficionados around the world see this as a sign of great things to come in the nation that translates in English to "the saviour".
What struck me is the extent to which President Bukele and the El Salvador government have gone to promote and educate this move. The public service broadcasts promoting the use of the Chivo wallet explain in layman's terms, that even my mum would get, how to use Bitcoin.
This tweet threat from President Nayib Bukele is in Spanish, but you don't need to speak the language to see that there's nothing geeky, nerdy or technical about the explanation for how to use Chivo or spend Bitcoin.
Tutorial 1: Intro@chivowallet #Bitcoin🇸🇻 pic.twitter.com/FYvXmU3FS5
— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) September 7, 2021
El Salvador has used the incentive of $30 of free Bitcoin for every new signup of the Chivo digital wallet. Interestingly, El Salvador would need around 4,000 Bitcoin to be able to do that for every one of its citizens. Which it can't do because it doesn't have them (the central bank is reported to have a stash of around 400 BTC).