Topic: El Salvador has become the first country to make #Bitcoin legal tender! 🇸🇻 - page 46. (Read 40464 times)

Your strong reservations about widespread acceptance and legalization of Bitcoin as a means of payment, particularly in countries closely tied to US financial system are valid. While the US position is significant but it is not the sole determinant of whether countries decide to accept Bitcoin as a legal currency. I believe the local context, regulatory approaches and above all potential benefits of adopting  Bitcoin will play major role in shaping up these decision.

I strongly disagree with you that the acceptance and legalization of BTC and its official status as a means of payment in these countries is in principle possible. 
The fact is that all the listed countries are financial satellites in the $USA space.  And any introduction of a currency competing on equal terms is simply impossible without a global indication and permission from the financial authorities of the USA.  And the financial authorities of the USA themselves have not yet decided on the status of BTC, or rather, they have not yet decided what should be done - either completely destroy BTC by some kind of prohibitive measures, or somehow turn it into a secondary financial instrument like shares. 
But then this financial instrument will go along with the dollar in all countries of the world, be it Japan, Korea, France, Gabon, Paraguay... and so on.  And it does not require any approval from local authorities.

El Salvador is a wrong country for bitcoin adoption. This country isn't high-tech country, developed country, instead, it's a developing one with one of the highest crime and murder rate and violence where the highest percentage of population is poor and the whole country is a nest of nepotism and corruption. You can't move this country into Bitcoin ecosystem. I've read that every business is just forced to accept Bitcoin payments whether they want it or not. Bitcoin is not the easiest thing to use.
If there was an attempt of massive Bitcoin adoption in countries like South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Netherlands, Bukele's plan of moving on Bitcoin ecosystem could succeed but in El Salvador, it's not going to happen in near future.

As I understand from this news, investments will flow into the country? If so, then that makes me happy. It has long been necessary for the President of El Salvador to take concrete steps to improve the economic situation in the country. It's sad that a lot of time was wasted. Although, it was necessary to clear a clearing for experiments from bandits and clans.
Will such a small state become an oasis in the midst of poor countries? What interest does Google have in this piece of land? Well, not just because they do it all out of the kindness of their hearts.

Google announced yesterday that it will create a legal entity and office in El Salvador, and will develop the country's digital infrastructure using the cloud.  This is part of a seven-year strategic agreement signed with the government of President Nayib Bukele.
 In a press release, Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, noted that with this alliance, they aim to support the Bukele administration in the process of turning the nation into a technology powerhouse for Central America.
 To formalize the agreement, the president of El Salvador traveled to the USA, where he met with global Google CEO Sundar Pichai,  Kurian and other top managers of the company.
 The agreement still needs legislative approval to become official, but New Ideas MPs have already announced they will cast their votes to make the tech giant's investment take place.



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Bitcoin is not forcing it's way in to take over from fiat, it only existed on it own to serve as an alternative for everyone interested in using a decentralized network just as me and you together with El-Savador who decided to make it a legal tender, the government will not fight against their decision because they have realized that bitcoin is not the only acceptable means of legal tender in El-Savador, secondly, they are fighting against the decentralization of bitcoin because it will renders their role and authorities useless with the network because it's decentralized, other countries are not joining in making bitcoin na legal tender because they are afraid of what may come in after that for them as for those in power, that's why if you're to take a statistics on the rate of bitcoin adoption, only few countries make a law against it use for making payments, others allow but refused to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender, but there's more hope in seing other countries adopting gradually as a legal tender.

Indeed, existing superpowers and well established Finanancial institutions based on fiat currencies will not easily relinquish their control over the global financial system without resistance. The emergence of Bitcoin poses a fundamental challenge to their authority and influence. The adoption of a decentralized currency like Bitcoin could potentially disrupt the current financial landscape which has been shaped up by decades of political, economic and technological development.

Bitcoin's path to mainstream acceptance will continue facing obstacles of regulatory issues, institutional resistance and technological barriers. The journey into mainstream involves negotiations, pushback and adjustments. Despite all these difficulties, we should remain optimistic and continue building strong narrative supporting Bitcoin adoption.

The superpowers of the world will not surrender their hold on global financial system so easily, so it will be funny for anyone to think that it will be an easy for bitcoin to have a free ride into the mainstream. Bitcoin challenges these financial giants in many ways and when bitcoin succeeds, the world will become a kind of just, free and equitable.  Russia and Afghanistan got their external reserve frozen siting sanction and other reasons. Well, this is just to show that there are powers that controls the world financial system... these things are not possible with bitcoin so the superpowers will fight to ensure bitcoin is discourage in the mainstream.

El Salvador took a bold step in making bitcoin a legal tender and this will come with some ripple effects include media propaganda and international conspiracy to sabotage the system so that others who are planning to toe this direction will have a rethink. I was even expecting more negative narratives  from El Salvador following this laudable decision but it seems they are not backing out. If El Salvador succeeds, other countries will join and this will be a very huge milestone for bitcoin.

Additional to this, there's a thread created by @fillippone https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.59983444 on bitcoin adoption as a legal tender in Central African Republic, it's another discussion thread for CAR bitcoin discussion and it adoption as a legal tender in the country, ever since, there have been more insight and careful observations on many countries anticipating in making bitcoin a legal tender even though there haven't been a cognate conclusion on their decision for that, but we have many aspiring countries, while this thread is majorly focused on bitcoin adoption in El-Savador  as a legal tender open discussions, we are still expecting more of this adoption from many other countries over time as a gradual approach for global adoption as a legal tender.

Here's what I think.  It is simply difficult and unusual for all those Salvadorans who work in the USA and accordingly receive a salary in $ to buy in the USA BTC and then send it to relatives in El Salvador itself.  
Firstly, losses on commissions when buying BTC in the USA.  
Secondly, relatives also have to somehow cash out BTC into cash dollar bills.  And even though there are no conversion fees in Chivo, it can still lead to some losses.  So it turns out that few El Salvadors use this translation method.  
Therefore, the percentage of such transfers is small.  
Maybe, taking into account BTC transactions not taken into account in the statistics, it is somewhat larger than these, 1.2 or 1.7%, but it is still small.  In addition, it should be borne in mind that this article was published in one of the main newspapers of El Salvador.  
However, it seems to me, and not without reason, that this is a newspaper that is opposed to President Bukele and often criticizes him.  
Naturally, correspondents of this newspaper  (La prensa grafica) also criticize everything related to Bukele's initiative about BTC.  
So, in reality, the numbers of transfers can be even higher, maybe even 3-4%, which, in my opinion, is a very good adoption, taking into account the current general technological level of development of El Salvador itself.  

And in general, let's be more optimistic about this Bukele initiative.  
He is a brave president and definitely does everything he can for the benefit of the people of this country.  

Yes, there is another country, The Central African Republic (CAR) has become the second country after El-Salvador in taking a bold step towards adopting Bitcoin. The parliament of CAR passed bill in 2022 to legalize Bitcoin. There are many other nations considering acceptance of Bitcoin for cross border including Russia. Reports suggest that Russia is also considering accepting Bitcoin as payment method for its commodities sales like oil.

https://www.cnbctv18.com/cryptocurrency/bitcoin-as-legal-tender-5-countries-that-could-be-next-in-line-to-adopt-15228761.htm

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/28/central-african-republic-adopts-bitcoin-as-legal-tender.html#:~:text=The%20Central%20African%20Republic%20has,a%20statement%20from%20the%20presidency.

Totally not to be forgotten considering that this is the first place on this whole globe who had decided on making Bitcoin as a legal tender, it might not be able to generate that huge volumes which most people been

anticipating but at least they have that able to apply such options which its not shocking that people around or citizens arent really that getting used to it or not really that interested.Sooner or later when
the market tends to hype up or having that bullish sentiment then i doubt that those citizens would really be having that change of heart or mindset on the time that it is really that mooning. On the time that they have realized that they had missed out on having that profits on short year duration then this is where regrets do start.

Just a side question, is there any country or place which did make the same action on what El Salvador did? Like making Bitcoin as a legal tender?

The source article does not seem to specify its methodology including how it is measuring bitcoin wallets.. and who gives any shits about crypto wallets.. .. but like you mentioned Wiwo, it seems a bit difficult to measure transfers that are taking place within private wallets, and then maybe there would be some kind of reflection in the cashing out of the money (or the purchasing of goods/services) after the money were to come from outside of El Salvador and then reaching its destination person.

So if they are measuring bitcoin wallets from various kinds of central services and then saying that it only went up to 1% or 2% of the total that is being transferred, even though such capacities have been added to those third party wallets.  It may well be interesting to figure out if there might be some kind of a methodology that might be in the ballpark of accurate rather than mere spinning of the topic in order to suggest that nothing is happening in El Salvador in respects to bitcoin. 

To proclaim that even though bitcoin has come into the El Salvador space, Salvadoreans are going on with their lives and choosing dollars and they are not using the bitcoin services or getting involved in bitcoin... which seems to be a questionable assertion to suggest that a government's announcement and actions to liberalize abilities to use bitcoin is not resulting in any kind of significant/meaningful increased bitcoin usage.

We shouldn't be surprised at all seing things like this because many are not happy about El-Savador's bitcoin adoption and yet they want to create other negative impression to lead a massive distrust in the era of Nayib Bukele administrative led, this is more of a political propaganda against El-Savador aimed at their president to use the people against the continuous growth and support they have always render towards bitcoin adoption, it's no longer much about what the news says anymore but what the intended target gives to the public, if El-Savador could declare they are progressing well with bitcoin adoption, who are the bad actors in this, shaking the pillars by creating fake news about El-Savador.


Because government have regulations over the financial institutions whereby they remit a monthly allocation to them as part of their agreed and signed MoU, government will always support using the local transaction payments even though they know that bitcoin is far better all these because it solve the problem with high transaction fee, any news should be verified before we could act or take necessary steps on them and every El-Savadoran outside the country should verify information from those within before acting on anything from the media.

How was the static collected in the first place,  I am sure the anti-El Salvador Bitcoin crusaders have employed the means of cutting out the vast majority of Bitcoin users who use decentralized networks to move money around in And out of the country,  what is normally used for this shady statices are tools and data that does not reflect the actual reality of El Salvador Bitcoin usage and international money inflows via Bitcoin.

Such arguments are always expected but majority pf the expects know that Bitcoin transactions can not be 100% monitored and if this survey use the Chivo wallet as a toll for this statics,  it then means that they have used a totally wrong tool and won't the accurate results just like they did in this situations.

Certainly, it is unfair and unjust to blame EL-Salvador for its failure to boost adoption of Bitcoin and relatively lower volumes of local and cross border transactions.It would be rather more appropriate to recognize and appreciate for their proactive and courageous step taken by its political leadership in embracing Bitcoin as method of payment. The role played by El-savador Nayib Bukele will be imprinted in the annals of history and remembered for generations to come.

It does not seem fair to characterize the low adoption of bitcoin transfers into El Salvador as a complete failure, even though those numbers do show a pretty small usage of bitcoin to transfer value from other countries.

Unfortunately, there are disappointing statistics on money transfers from other countries to El Salvador using bitcoin.  If in the first half of 2022 such transfers accounted for 1.7% of all money transfers to the country, then in the first half of 2023 this figure dropped to 1.2%.  Only $46.7M was transferred using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.  At the same time, $4019M was sent to the country by conventional means of money transfer.  So we have to admit that bitcoin payments, introduced by Bukele, who planned that the residents of El Salvador would save on commissions for money transfers, do not work at all yet. 
This is of course very upsetting and unpleasant. 
I understand that for many people in El Salvador working outside the country, apparently mainly in the USA, bitcoin transfers seem too complicated and not reliable.  Apparently, it is more convenient for them to transfer money to relatives in the usual ways and pay these unreasonably high commissions to those companies that deal with such transfers.
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Colleagues in our wonderful forum!  
Well, before writing some news from El Salvador related to the legalization of bitcoin, do not be too lazy to read the previous posts in this topic!  
The news about coffee from El Salvador has already been discussed at least twice.  

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62647986

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62664900

And here is the third same post with the same news.
 

But in any case, this is great and positive news, like almost all the news about the adoption and development of bitcoin payments in El Salvador!